BitTorrent - Downloading

[Slippery_When_Oiled]

Has anyone had any experience with BitTorrent (the P2P communications protocol) to download videos from the internet?

I have been told that BitComet ( http://www.bitcomet.com ) is a good software to use or do you suggest another BitTorrent application software to use?

It seems like the Swedish website The Pirate Bay ( http://thepiratebay.org ) is one of the largest and busiest websites of Torrent files. Any other suggestions?

Any security or legal concerns about downloading Torrent files?

 

[Voyager]

I`ve tried a couple of programs, and had good luck using uTorrent. There are also quite a few sites available, depending upon what you are looking for (music, movies, TV shows, porn) and some torrent software may not work at all sites. uTorrent seems to work everywhere.

Techman had a great post awhile back which explains alot about torrents... post #17 in this thread should help you out.

Regards,

Voyager

 

[Techman]

For people who are new to torrents, one of the easiest client programs to learn to use and setup is Bitlord while the best programs are widely accepted to be Azureus and utorrent.

to find the torrents you want, the sites are varied. For movies, and just about everything else for that matter, there is rlslog.net. For general searches you should use activedots.com which is a multiple search engine that will search many sites including piratebay. Piratebay has two sides to it...a public site as well as a private members only section. Another great site for movies is superfundo.org. On that site you will find all of axxo's torrents which are among the best quality on the net.

For television programs the best site is eztv.it.

Membership, or private tracker sites, are the best but it usually takes an invitation from an existing member to be granted membership. There is no charge for these sites. Any site that attempts to charge a fee is one to stay away from.

If what you want is porn, you should look at puretna.com and empornium.com. Both member only sites, but free to join. Member sites require you to upload at least as much as you download. And this is just common courtesy to give as much as you receive. I make it a habit to do at least this with every torrent I download, from a private tracker or public.

As far as security and legal issues, I have had no problems with virus or malware when downloading from reputable torrent sites. Legally things may change here in Canada soon but for the time being it is a grey area and I have never heard of any problems from torrent downloading.

Techman

 

[Slippery_When_Oiled]

IP Address

Thanks for the info … this is quite helpful.

I do have another question: Can the sites that provide the Torrent files obtain the IP Address of those downloading the file? If yes, then wouldn't the authorities likely have access to it as well?

 

[Techman]

Any website you visit will have a record of your IP address. But it takes a court order for LE to obtain this information. When it comes to torrent files, what you are downloading from the torrent site is just a tracking file, it is not the file itself. The file itself is downloaded from hundreds of different systems on the net at the same time, diffferent bits from different systems. Some sites, such as releaselog, do not even host the torrent file but instead include a search link to help people find what they are looking for.

Unlike the original Napster program which used centralized servers to coordinate all the downloads, there are no servers involved in torrent downloading, only the client program you choose to use. This makes it almost impossible to stop and very difficult to prosecute anyone for using it.

The only people who really get targeted by LE are those who are routinely seeding large quantities of copyright protected material. The average file sharer really has nothing to worry about.

There are programs available to hide your IP address from outside eyes but in general they are not necessary here in Canada.

This link from my original post on torrents is a very useful guide. Some things may be outdated though, I haven't checked if it has been updated.
http://btfaq.com/serve/cache/1.html

One thing to note...Sympatico, and many other ISPs, currently limits download speeds on torrent connections between 6 PM and 2 AM. The download is capped at around 35Kbps. So if you seem to be getting lousy speed and find it takes forever to get what you want, just leave your system running overnight and you will often find the dl has finished when you check in the morning.

Some things, such as complete seasons of a TV show like the X-Files for example, can take days or even weeks before they complete. Don't worry about it. Sometimes it takes a while to get what you want. Older movies and shows may have few seeders uploading the file.

Anyways...don't get paranoid about it. Have fun and don't forget to seed what you leach.

Techman

 

[Techman]

Oli, you should really check out www.rlslog.net

They post all the latest releases. Just have to be careful and check the comments to see if the quality is worth the download. TS and CAM mean recorded with a video camera and are not the best quality. Screener is a pre-release to the video retailers and often have black and white scenes and 'property of' messages in the video. Again, check the comments to see about this. R5 are overseas releases and are usually decent quality.

www.superfundo.org carries all the latest axxo releases along with other rippers. They have a ripper named SiriusShare who covers mostly very old movies. This guy posts some really old, hard to find movies. Not always DVD qauality but he rips from VHS, or recorded from TV, if that's the only available source. I've gotten some great stuff here.

www.activedots.com is the replacement for torrentpond. It can search all the major torrent sites including piratebay and mininova.

 

[Techman]

Oh yeah...one thing I forgot to mention. If you have a recent dvd player that is Dvix compatible, you can burn the majority of movies you download directly to either cd or dvd and play them in your player. This way you can burn up to 6 movies per DVD, no conversion required.

You will find they look better on your television than on your PC monitor as regular TVs are lower resolution than your PC.

 

[jackyo8193]

I use www.empornium.us (note its "us" and not "com").

Lots of stuff available on it.

I've also used piratebay but empornium does at least provide you with an idea of which files are active and which ones aren't. Saves you on time and effort trying to download files which may turn out not to be completable (if there is such a word).

 

[Techman]

I use www.empornium.us (note its "us" and not "com").

Lots of stuff available on it.

Oops, you're right it is .us. Don't forget that it is a member only site which means you have to keep your share ratio in decent shape or you will be prevented from downloading. And it should also be noted that it is for porn only.

 

[Slippery_When_Oiled]

Thanks again.

Do any of you have experience with any of the "Hide IP" Software? If yes, which ones?

 

[Techman]

I have never used any software to hide what I am doing on torrent. There is no point in it at all. In fact some seeders block people who use such software which leads to much longer download times. There is no reason to be paranoid about using torrent programs. There are literally millions of people downloading through torrent all the time. The worst thing that will happen is that your ISP receives a complaint and sends you a cease and desist notice. In the years I have been downloading I have never known of anyone who has gotten even the slightest complaint sent their way.

And in case you were wondering...your ISP cannot tell what you are downloading, only that there is traffic on your connection on the ports that torrent uses to download. And many companies use torrent to distribute their software. Most Linux companies, Ubuntu for an example, use torrent to distribute their O/S. There is no reason to worry about it at all.