How to download with Torrents
This post aims to help its readers understand media downloading in our current generation of torrents and help make aware the risks and best tactics to download media. Please note that everything discussed in this article IS illegal in many countries, but like many users, you probably already know that
Kazaa and Limewire are DEAD
It’s amazing to me how many people are still using the old method (pure) Peer to Peer (P2P) which connects a user directly to other users to download software, music, movies, and other media. Peer-to-peer applications such as limewire, kazaa, morpheus, ares, and others, were popular through the late 80′s and early 00′s. Many people still recognize and remember these popular names of programs and when they decide they want to download a song, they often go looking for what they know. But using these legacy programs could cost you.. a lot. I’m sure everyone reading this post has heard of the Music Industry’s attack on downloading and P2P as it’s been all over the news for the last few years. These media industries are finding and suing individuals for downloading media illegally and the easiest way for them to execute these seek-and-destroy lawsuits is to use a rapid spread environment like legacy P2P applications (to classify legacy, I’m referring to 1st-3rd generation P2P). Let me give you a hypothetical which is the most common model for these seek-and-destroy lawsuits to use:
You hear a song on the radio that you really want. It’s a very popular song and you know you’ve seen it all over the net, but haven’t been able to find a site to download it from for free. You know that you could probably download it the way your friends have been doing it for years.. let’s think.. well, you don’t know much about how they download, but you know they use a program called limewire. Or maybe you even used limewire a few years ago, but stopped for whatever reason for a time.
So you google and find a copy of limewire to download and install. You run it and search for the song. Minutes later your song appears to be downloaded and working just fine. It’s shows a full 3 minutes or so, and even the file size seems to be a normal mp3 size. Let’s pretend you even go one step further to be safe and run a virus scan, and the file appears to be okay. So you open it up in your music player, and nothing plays, it’s just blank. You mess around with it for a bit, and then give up and delete it, thinking it must just be a dud.
Stop the hypothetical. What you just did was download a trojan, a file that appears harmless but opens a “back door” on your computer allowing someone to enter in silently. Many media industries now have the right to compromise your computer and then scan and find just how many files are illegally downloaded on their. They gave them this right by downloading and opening that music file. You knew it wasn’t legal, but you did it anyway. That’s all the justification that empowers them to come at you and sue you for all the music you own illegally. This has happened to a large number of legacy P2P users and is still happening in the present. It’s no joke, and it’s something to be worried about.
But there’s hope.. say hello to Torrents
Bram Cohen invented a technology called BitTorrent in 2001 which allowed for P2P to become a safe place again. BitTorrent is a P2P file-sharing protocol used to distribute large amounts of data in smaller segments and is one of the most common protocols for file transfer. By some estimates BitTorrent accounts for almost 50% of all traffic on the entire Internet [source]. On top of that, isoHunt estimates the total amount of content/media is currently more than 1.2 petabytes. Those numbers are frightening to some and encouraging to others, take it as you will.
How BitTorrent works
Torrents start first with a seed. The initial distributor of the file(s) acts as the first seed. Each peer who downloads the seed also uploads them in segments to other peers, which allows for a highly efficient transferring across many users. Picture torrents as a puzzle, a minimum of one completed puzzle or seed is needed to begin spreading the pieces among thousands of users/peers and the addition of more seeds increases the likelihood of a successful connection exponentially. This meaning that if out of 3 peers you are PERSON A and you need PIECE 3, if PERSON B doesn’t have it, you check another peer. Once you find one, such as PERSON C, you can then retrieve that piece from that peer. Once all the pieces are retrieved, your application completes the puzzle and you have a final result of the file you were trying to attain. Relative to standard Internet hosting, this provides a significant reduction in the original distributor’s hardware and bandwidth resource costs as well as provides redundancy against system problems and reduces dependence on the original distributor. From a legal standpoint this has advantages as well, because rather than downloading song.mp3 which is clearly a music file, you are instead simply downloading segments of data, which can be argued in court on whether those segments make song.mp3 or are simply random bits of data that could make anything. I’m sure this would make sense why it would be harder for the media to inject their Trojan Files as well.
So am I safe using torrents?
While torrents aren’t completely safe from the media, they are even less safe from viruses. Don’t misunderstand me in that statement, however, because torrents are still quite a bit safer than the legacy methods of P2P. The original seeder can still inject a virus or trojan into whatever file they’re sharing, so it’s best to read comments or information about the tracker/seed and see what others are saying. Generally if it’s had a few downloads, it will also have a few comments and peers are your best defense. Overall torrents are the 4 generation of P2P file sharing, and are much safer than old methods.
I feel good about it, where do I go now
There are many torrent applications out there as well as many torrent search engines. I’m going to provide my bias opinions in my recommendations, but here is a non-bias torrent software listing.
Vuze
Vuze (formerly know as “azureus”) is a cross-platform torrent application that installs if JAVA is enabled. It may be slightly slower than other applications for initial load times and memory used, but for the average user, it’s well worth it for a better interface and built in search functionality that will most likely eliminate your need to search anywhere else.
uTorrent
Known as both “u-torrent” and “micro torrent”, this is the most popular torrent tool today. uTorrent is lightweight and fast, however is limited to Windows. While many prefer uTorrent, I find it to be a little less than Vuze.
BitComet
This application used to be my favorite, and it’s still up there, but it’s just doesn’t stand-up to how lightweight and simplistic uTorrent is.
Torrent Search Engines
If you’re having trouble finding a torrent, you can always manually look in different torrent search engines. Here are the best ones according to about.com:
- Special Mention: SpiralFrog – while not directly a torrent site, spiralfrog offers membership-only free and legal music downloads using a very special license-renewal concept
- Gpirate – is getting rave reviews from several About.com readers
- Mininova – is the successor to Supernova, one of the original big torrent databases of the Web
- Torrent-finder – several readers from the central USA submitted this site recently. This site is gaining a bigger readership every day
- Demonoid – is now back online! They have established themselves outside of the USA this spring 2008, and have resumed torrent operations. Demonoid is still a private community, and members are held liable for any leeching that their invited friends do in this community. If you are lucky enough to get a Demonoid membership, invite your friends carefully, lest you lose your own membership.
- Isohunt – in a shocking turn of the tables this September, the Isohunt webmaster is counter-suing the Canadian music industry. He is claiming that previous copyright violation suits against him were unfounded, and that he is entitled to have his legal expenses recovered.
- The Pirate Bay – by readership size, is the most popular torrent search site today. Pirate Bay also has an immense database of 600,000+ torrents, the single largest database available on the web.
- Bitsoup – is a growing favorite amongst P2P downloaders. As the trend towards private torrent sharing continues, you will need to signup and join as a member to participate in the Bitsoup swarm.
- Torrentscan – is a search engine that searches other torrent search engines
