What the hell is a torrent?
Many of you will find this post controversial. I'm told the new P2P sharing network is all the rage with kids today. After doing some extensive research with a few other techies, I hope to give you a quick run down of this file sharing network. Granted, if you choose to use the network for illegal downloads then don't blame me if the RIAA or Viacom slaps a crazy stupid lawsuit on you. I'm also not responsible if you use this network and happen to download some evil virus that destroys all the pictures from your vacation to Intercourse, Pennsylvania and Fucking, Austria.
You've probably already read the Wikipedia article which gives you the basics, so I won't try to elaborate on what is said there. Instead, I hope to give you some tips and tricks from the Torrent veterans I've spoken with.
First lets start with the client. By far, the most popular BitTorrent client, is NOT the default BitTorrent, rather its µTorrent which is an amazingly well written application that has a tiny footprint. From the people I've talked to, they said to not even bother with other clients, as they just don't have the same quality.
The next big question is where to find torrents to download and is it illegal to download them. Let me answer the second question by telling you to consult your attorney for any legal questions, as most of my friends already know that I'm no legal expert. As far as where to find good torrents, that's a harder question.
Let's start with the most famous of all sites, Pirate Bay. They are famous, not for having a great selection of torrents (which they do), but rather because they have been thumbing their noses at the law for years. They live in Sweden, and the DMCA does not apply to them, so they are apparently untouchable. Reading their actual responses to "cease and desist" letters is like reading a comic book. Take this piece of comedy genius:
Hello and thank you for contacting us. We have shut down the website in
question.
Oh wait, just kidding. We haven't, since the site in question is fully
legal. Unlike certain other countries, such as the one you're in, we have
sane copyright laws here. But we also have polar bears roaming the
streets and attacking people :-(.
Please don't sue us right now, our lawyer is passed out in an alley from
too much moonshine, so please at least wait until he's found and doesn't
have a huge hangover...
You're free to demand anything you want. So are we. We demand that you
cease and desist sending letters like this, since they're frivolous and
meaningless. Where should I send the bill for the consumed diskspace and
bandwidth?
PirateBay has been shut down one time in the past, but it recovered quickly and downloads were only interrupted momentarily. For the Oscars this year, they even set up a site where users could download all the nominated movies. Wow.
Most users I've talked to have told me that PirateBay is good and all, but it lags behind most of the other sites. By far, the most widely used site is Mininova. Most people post new torrents to Mininova and then other sites repost hashes collected from there.
From my techie contact, they've told me that they typically use the Torrent network to download 5 different types of files: music, movies, TV shows, software and pr0n. I'm not going to spend much time on software or pr0n as a discussion of either or those would likely get me in trouble with potential employers. Everyone has covered the music aspect of P2P since Napster started 8 years ago (has it really been that long?) Apparently, Music, TV Shows and Movies are the most popular downloads from these sites.
When downloading TV shows or movies, the more popular the show is, the more likely that people are sharing it out. The download times are shorter when more people are sharing the file. Thus if you try to download a file that's been available for a couple years it is more likely to take longer than a file that was published hours ago because less people will be sharing it out.
In the TV space, there are few publishers that post high quality HDTV shows in a matter of hours from the broadcast. EZTV and NoTV are the most widely recognized. In the movie space, no one compares to aXXo. Though with a little searching you can find torrents for almost anything. A friend of mine pointed me to site that specializes in football games - not that I would actually want to download football games, but its good to know that its there.
OK, you found a great torrent. You've downloaded it, and now you have a folder filled with files that end in .RAR or .R01 or something like that. What?!?! I thought I was downloading a movie. Well, hold the phone. You've downloaded everything correctly, its just that publishers sometimes split the file into multiple pieces for easier download. Just install a decompression tool like WinRAR and you should be able to reconstruct the file easily. Cool. Once you've reconstructed the file you may have a file in a format not recognized by your media player -- don't fret, there's yet another tool to help you out. VideoLAN is the gold standard for media players. It's open source and is available on almost any platform. It will play almost anything -- It has some really great features like the ability to add subtitles or add delays to the audio track of a movie. What if you did all of that and you still can't play the media, or all you get is sound but no video. Then there's a good chance you need a video codec to decode the video. Almost all the media on the torrent network uses DivX or XviD. Install those codecs and you should be good to go.
You may wonder why large movie files are split into 2 or more pieces. Basically, the publisher's intent is that you'll burn the files on to CD's for playback in your DVD player using the VCD format. It seems like a pain to me, but apparently a lot of people archive movies that way.
So that's your tutorial on the torrent world. Again, use this at your own risk! I do not condone or support piracy. Even though this post focused on some of the more questionable uses of BitTorrent, there are plenty of legit uses as well but they are just a lot less interesting to speak about. Good luck!