Torrent clients

[nostaw5]

Hey guis

ive seen a lot of posts (I wont link to them for anon) about how people listing torrent clients in their post cant be helped on this site.

obviously this is because of piracy but i have bittorrent installed and id like to say my 2 dollars worth.

Torrent clients are used for more than just piracy, many game developers have a link to download their games (like Black Mesa) instead of direct downloads.

and there are many more legal ways to use a torrent client. So i dont see why they are frowned upon here.

I myself use bittorrent for downloading community made mods for games, games themselves yeah if people cant be helped cuz they have a client installed and listed in their post.


if you want to put in your thoughts you are welcome

 

[Digital Life]

I will put in my 2 dollars worth ( Now you got 4 dollars )
Ubuntu has an official torrent download and so does Debian and so does my favorite Linux mint, The good thing about torrent is if you have a slow or unreliable connection it will resume where you left off

 

[nostaw5]

I will put in my 2 dollars worth ( Now you got 4 dollars )
Ubuntu has an official torrent download and so does Debian and so does my favorite Linux mint, The good thing about torrent is if you have a slow or unreliable connection it will resume where you left off

hehe yay $4! yeah resumable downloading is great for large file sizes. (psst we are talking about the sevenforums here so linux doesnt really matter P: but true!)

 

[Dude]

Make it $6, I have downloaded benchmarks and such and find torrents to be very fast

 

[LMiller7]

To provide some balance:

Torrents do have legitimate uses but:

1. Torrents are frequently used to distribute illegal or pirated content.
2. Torrents are notorious for distributing a wide variety of malicious software. So Beware.

 

[MourningStar]

Make it $6, ...

Most clients have their own support forums and in-house gurus. There is where a wise client user would seek client help. Now give me those 6 bucks!

 

[Dude]

Here you go mate

 

[Alejandro85]

I'll add another $2 so we have a grand total of $8!!

I agree generally with the OP, in that torrents are often associated here with malware/piracy/evil and should be banned from earth, but if you read carefully you won't find and reason that support it. Let's not be fool either, torrents ARE used for piracy actually, but their usage don't automatically implies that, as MS wants us to believe. I think that this anti-torrent campaign comes from the fact that many of the Windows "sales" come in fact from PirateBay, but they overgeneralize and this forum tends to reflect that.

The fundamental thing I would want to clarify is what are torrents and what they do.
BitTorrent is simply a protocol designed for file transfers. It uses a decentralized storage and sharing occurs in a peer-to-peer way, so clients "talk" directly to each others. They rely on a small data file (the .torrent itself) to communicate and to know file contents. There are torrent servers (trackers) that help the peers to connect to each other, but don't take part in file transfer, and there are clients in each user's machine that do the transfer and storage.

That's all about the torrent itself. It's just a technology to transfer files, which is optimized for large amounts of data with many concurrent users. In itself, there is nothing bad/diabolical/evil/malware/piracy-related in it, just one more options for copying data from computer to computer over a network, much like we have HTTP/FTP/SMB/whatever. Saying that BitTorrent is evil without considering anything more is equally to say that webbrowsers are evil because you can get viruses though them. True, but not because of browsers themselves.

Where the problem lies is in the content you try to download. Like everything, if you're going to download something, you must always have permission from its owner to get it legally, but many sites offer pirated content to download via torrents. The illegal thing here is the pirated thing, not the fact that they're using torrents, it would be equally bad if they used direct downloads or FTPs. And the number of piracy-dedicated sites that use torrents for distribution also help to spread the rumors and bad words on them. Also, since pirated things sometimes contain viruses, they're often associated with torrents. But any other form of file transfer would be equally dangerous really, not just using torrents.

Keeping away those sort of sites, torrents DO have their uses, a lot of them in fact, Since they provide cheap redistribution methods and save lot of bandwidth on central servers. For either private use, distribution of free material (or paid one after some authentication), they're used for many things, actually, where they excel and provide a much better option to traditional download methods.
See what Wikipedia says about them: BitTorrent - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[King Arthur]

To provide some balance:

Torrents do have legitimate uses but:

1. Torrents are frequently used to distribute illegal or pirated content.
2. Torrents are notorious for distributing a wide variety of malicious software. So Beware.

The same can be said for web browsers which can facilitate downloading of illegal or malicious data, as well as pretty much any other internet client of some description that transmits data (FTP? IRC? Usenet? etc.).

I agree with the OP (+2 bucks!), BitTorrent clients and the BitTorrent protocol themselves are safe and legal to use and should not be looked down upon or its users scorned simply for using it. BitTorrent is a tool, it has no will of its own and is at the mercy of its users.

 

[LMiller7]

Web browsers and Torrent clients are both tools and both must be used with care. I have already said that Torrents have legitimate uses. But because of the frequent content on torrent sites they must be accessed with particular care. That was my point, one that was not mentioned in the original post.

 

[b0bl335wa993r]

I downloaded all my linux ISO's (though I don't use them) through a torrent client and most recently LightZone photo editor through a legal way, the company's forum provides the download link or .torrent access after you register. It's more likely a cliche that it's wrong to use I opine.