What kind of protocol is downloading torrents

More than , users were sued in the United States between and for downloading copyrighted material using BitTorrent. Since that time, lawsuits have been replaced by copyright trolls who are authorized to act on behalf of copyright holders. Because the BitTorrent technology reveals the IP addresses of devices connected to its data stream — called a torrent — trolls can identify which addresses download files.

The trolls send settlement letters to the internet service providers ISPs , who then forward the letters to their clients. Because IP addresses aren't considered legal entities, however, the trolls rarely have individuals' names and therefore can't pursue collection.

Downloading patches, modifications, and updates for older, unsupported video games and user-generated modifications for supported games is a compelling reason for accessing BitTorrent. Accessing classic movies, B movies, indie music, books, and software in the public domain or available through Creative Commons licenses is another legitimate case for using BitTorrent. Examples of legal sites include Public Domain Torrents and the indie site Vodo , among others.

Torrenting should be approached with caution. BitTorrent has a reputation as a technology used to pirate movies, games, and other copyrighted content. ISPs know this and often send warning letters and anti-piracy educational materials to BitTorrent users. Repeat offenders could find their bandwidth reduced or their accounts suspended.

ISPs may not differentiate between legitimate BitTorrent sites distributing material with Creative Commons licenses from those sharing pirated content. Additionally, hackers often use free content as a malware-laden lure to wreak havoc on users' computers or launch attacks. To minimize the risk, BitTorrent streaming sites that claim to check files for viruses and other malware have emerged. Visibility is another danger.

The ISP addresses of users and the content they transmit are visible to all BitTorrent users — and this information is often tracked by copyright holders, law enforcement, advertisers, and hackers. In the meantime, you can do something else. You should do this if you want to become a contributing member of the torrenting community.

Once this happens, depending on the network you are on, you may get limited speeds. The vast majority want a ratio, meaning that you should upload the file s that you have downloaded at least once. These rules and regulations are not there to annoy or harm users.

In fact, they are of vital importance if the torrenting community is to survive in the future. So, always make sure that you give back at least the amount you have taken from the community. What if your VPN connection drops or your antivirus stops working? This can leave your IP address exposed and someone can steal your personal information if they have the right tools and the technical knowledge to do so.

Sticking to reputable torrenting sites, using reputable torrent clients and avoiding copyrighted material are all good measures to take. Torrenting clients also share your device information and IP address to other peers, and your personal information can be easily tracked down by copyright trolls and internet service providers. More on that further in this guide. If the file and the content therein is not restricted or copyrighted, then torrenting it is legal. However, the act of downloading and sharing unsanctioned and copyrighted material is illegal.

So, sharing such content has its consequences. Users could face litigation for copyright infringement. This is important:. A VPN short for Virtual Private Network is one of the best tools you can use to protect your personal details such as your name, email, location, etc.

It hides your real IP address and changes it to another IP, thereby making it impossible for copyright trolls and ISPs to track you down. If a VPN has a large pool of servers to choose from, users can change their IP address to any country they want. With modern encryption technology, using a VPN has become as easy as visiting torrent sites and starting a torrent download.

Read about the best VPNs available here. ETTV is a torrent site with a massive database of torrent files mainly focusing on TV series and shows.

The website offers users the possibility to sign up for a premium membership option, for a better browsing experience, displaying fully dynamic pages with no caching, no popups or ads among other benefits. ETTV also has a section for books, anime, and music as well, and search result could be filtered easily using the advanced search option. Overall, the website is legit, however, and for many torrents, the number of existing seeds seems to be low as compared to other competitor websites mainly due to the fact that the website is only two years old.

According to SimilarWeb data, around 8 million online users visit the website on a monthly basis. Torrentfunk is a popular torrenting website with an interesting status verification indicator. The website operators implemented various measures to unveil fake torrents and misleading titles, allowing for community engagement through dedicated comment sections for each torrent file.

Launched back in , the website features various torrent files for downloading movies, videos, software, and eBooks among others. In the last couple of months; however, SimilarWeb traffic shows a steady decline in monthly visitors and the website seems to be battling with regulators over a potential shut down. The website supports magnet links, direct download, and even anonymous download options.

Despite being a decade old, the website has managed to survive and thrive at a certain point. Each listed torrent has an information section related to it where users can find the number of seeds and peers, size, category, and the number of times it has been reported for presenting a threat and allows verified users to comment on each torrent. The interface is minimalist and neat , and the website seems easy to navigate and download content from. In fact, before the usage of such torrents for distributed peers, trackers used to be the only method of finding peers with a certain content to share.

The use of DHT or Distributed Hash Table by BitTorrent clients to find peers via the BitTorrent protocol is a means of distributed tracking that gained significant popularity given that the decentralized approach goes hand in hand with the philosophy behind the BitTorrent protocol relying on minimizing the need of a central issuing authority.

The website offers a simple interface, collects metadata and analyses the DHT network. One of the main advantages of this website is that no content is stored on its servers and no torrents are involved. The search result displays all the torrent related information such as name, size, age and number of files and lists a single link to be executed with a BitTorrent client.

Originally founded as myBittorrent back in , Yourbittorrent is a torrent tracking website that came as a result of a split in ownership in The website does not host files but hosts information about their location in an indexed torrent file. It was the first BitTorrent site to ever been kidnapped by its registrar after a disagreement between its owners over its future.

Despite a bad history, the website interface is fairly easy to use and lists a huge set of mostly verified links. YourBittorent has over a million links indexed in various categories and gets over a million monthly visits according to SimilarWeb data. Monova is another torrenting option that has been around for 14 years making it one of the oldest sites in the torrent business.

However, the extensive ads displayed as soon as a user tries to search for a torrent makes the overall browsing experience a bit frustrating. Monova has an extensive database of books, audio files, movies, and software among others, and allows users to register and upload torrents to the platform.

According to SimilarWeb a little over one million online users visit the website monthly. Besides being around for just three years, the website has an impressive 18 million large database and has been steadily gaining popularity ever since its inception.

The website has the particularity of having a mobile version, making torrenting on smartphones not only easy but enjoyable.

A search result for a torrent displays the torrent file attributes like its age, size, the number of seeds and a link to the magnet URL to be executed with the BitTorrent client. Torrent sites can be unsafe if they are not used properly.

Files shared on torrent sites are uploaded by other users, so there's no guarantees that the files which you download are safe and virus-free. You should always use up-to-date antivirus software if browsing and utilizing torrent sites to avoid viruses and malware.

Torrenting can be risky if you are downloading copyrighted content. It is never advisable to download illegal material, however, many users choose to use a VPN for added security. Generally, free VPNs are a bad idea. They are slow, they often keep logs of everything you use them for, and there are often security and privacy issues with the VPN client software.

It is legal if the files being shared are not licensed or copyrighted. It's perfectly fine to share files that are within the public domain but outside of this area, torrenting is illegal in many areas.

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