What the hell is a bit torrent? My nephew asked me about it the other day and I was totally clueless? Anyone care to explain?

I'm usually the techie uncle, but I guess I'm old an can't keep up.

I'm not sure, but it must be porn related.

A means of illegally stealing movies and such

You mean like using a program (dvdxcopy, dvddecryptor, etc) to copy the movies?

Quoted: What the hell is a bit torrent? My nephew asked me about it the other day and I was totally clueless? Anyone care to explain? I'm usually the techie uncle, but I guess I'm old an can't keep up.

A file sharing protocol.  Basically, large files are broken down into small bits and then distributed to many users.  At the client end, these segments are reassembled into the original file.

Since the material is not stored on any server, it bypasses copyright restrictions on the servers.  But its real utility is decreasing server requirements since the files are well distributed.

The person with the initial file or a complete copy is known as a seeder.  

its a program to transfer files.

its only illegal if what you are transferring is illegal, plenty of legal uses for it.

Quoted: A means of illegally stealing movies and such

That is definitely the primary use.

Quoted: Quoted: A means of illegally stealing movies and such That is definitely the primary use.

Big movie companies are dealing with the creator of Bittorrent to as a way to distribute movies to theaters and are going to get into the business of selling movies via Bittorrent.

Yaaarrrr, tis be a pirate ship!

Can my nephew get in trouble for using it?

Quoted: Yaaarrrr, tis be a pirate ship!

so would a bay with a pirate ship, be called piratebay.

Quoted: Can my nephew get in trouble for using it?

only if he downloads illegal things.  and then only if he is caught with said illegal things.



or if where ever he is downloading has some sort of restriction on band width use.  Bit torrent is very good at making use of all available band width




I recommend downloading

Bit tornado


That is a "client" program you need to have in order to download torrents.  There are many different "client" programs.  This is just my favorite one.

Quoted: Can my nephew get in trouble for using it?

That depends. If he uses it to pirate music, movies, television shows, software, or other copyrighted material, he can technically get in as much trouble for it as for any other filesharing program, although if he uses it smartly it's not likely.

However, if he uses it solely for legal things (many, many open source software packages, including operating systems, are legally distributed via bittorrent, as well as some proprietary things), he will, of course, not get in trouble. The software itself is not illegal no matter how you use it; it's instead the violation of copyright from illegally acquiring copyrighted material that is illegal.

Edit: as far as bittorrent clients, I'd recommend Azureus. And if he is downloading illegal material, I'd also recommend going through a proxy chain, such as using the EFF's Tor software, as well as taking other security precautions. And, of course, a good antivirus (not McAfee or Norton; I'd recommend Kaspersky if you're on Windows, or Avira Antivir if you need it free; or ClamAV for Linux) and a good firewall (can't really say which firewalls are best) as a general precaution against malware, but you should have those anyway if you're using the internet.

IT is a system for file transfers. It is great because you are not just downloading from a central server that thousands of other people are trying to download from.

What it does is one person downloads a bit of the file, say, 1/100th of it. As he is downloading the 2nd 1/100th, he passes the first 1/100th on to two more people.

It makes large downloads faster and more reliable thatn from a dedicated server.

Quoted: Quoted: Yaaarrrr, tis be a pirate ship! so would a bay with a pirate ship, be called piratebay.

Aye.

Bittorrents are legal; if you use them to download copyrighted content without permission you're breaking the law.

The problem solved by bittorrents is the central download server. If you've got a single server with a 50 GB file and a thousand people who want to download it, everyone has to go to the single site and go across one network pipe to get it. This clogs up the network pipe; high bandwidth WAN connections are expensive, and even a big one would be overwhelmed by that sort of demand.

The bittorrent solves this problem by making every downloader into a server. After you download a chunk of the file from the original server your computer advertises it as available to the other downloaders. The other downloaders have the option of getting it from you rather than the original server, which reduces the demand on the centeral server's network connection. As more people download, more download bandwidth becomes available, and in the end the limiting factor should be your computer's download bandwidth, not the upload bandwidth of the single server.

You can use this for plenty of legal things, like downloading OS updates. You can also use it to download pirated movies.

Torrents work like this.

You d/l a file straight from someone elses comp.  As you d/l that file you also have other people d/l the file off you while you finish the file.  Then you can either leave you file availalbe and become a "Seeder" and allow more people to d/l off you and continue the chain.

It's a great way to distribut large files with out killing someones sever bandwidth.  It's main use is movies, games, programs or anyting else.

Very, very interesting thread.  So how does this differ from... say... Limewire, Bearshare, and the like?  Also, what format are the files (video) that you download (i.e. mpeg, avi, etc)?  

Quoted: Very, very interesting thread.  So how does this differ from... say... Limewire, Bearshare, and the like?  Also, what format are the files (video) that you download (i.e. mpeg, avi, etc)?

You can download any file type.


Limewire and similar programs work like this:

You download the whole file from some one.  Then people can download the whole file from you.


Bit torrent works like this:

You download one bit from one person and another bit from some one else.  While you're doing that you're uploading your bits to other people.  So the more people downloading a particular file the faster it is downloaded.

The seeder has a whole file that is cut into thousands of bits and sends out it's bits to everyone ... one for you, one for you, one for you and so on.  then everyone shares their info to make a whole file for each person.

Thanks for the info everyone.

I use BitLord. It can be used for Legal and Illegal purposes. Torrents are 100% better then P2P such as Bearshare, and Limewire. If you know how to look you can find ANYTHING.

I recommend you download (and use ) PeerGuardian2 while downloading files(Even if they are legal). It Blocks thousands of IPs. Among them the governments, adaware, and spy-ware. I know people who don't download files and still run it for "protection"..

A "torrent" is a way to download one file from more than one computer, basically.

A program like Direct Connect, Kazaa or Soulseek is a file-sharing program that only supports "one-to-one" connections. Such as: if I had a MP3 of a song and you wanted it, your computer would connect directly to mine, and your download speed would be limited to whatever upload speed my internet connection had--because obviously you cannot get it any faster than my one computer can send it. You can have more than one connection at a time--but each connection can only be to ONE other computer, and the download speeds you see are limited by whatever the other person's upload speed is.

-------------

A "torrent" system is a way of tracking which computers have downloaded which pieces of the file. There is a "tracker" and a "seeder", which may be the same computer but often aren't. The seeder is the original source of the file, and the tracker keeps track of all the computers that have downloaded pieces of that file, and which pieces they have downloaded. ......When you want to download a file from a torrent (such as a movie or whatever) your computer connects to the torrent, and requests where to find a few of the pieces. The torrent tells your computer the addresses of a few other computers that have those pieces, and your computer connects to several other computers and begins to download from all of them. When that's finished, your computer tells the torrent that it has those pieces, and asks for where to find a few more pieces. And likewise, the torrent will then begin to tell other computers to download file peces from your computer, that it knows that you have.

The advantage of a torrent is that your download speeds can be much faster than any one computer's upload speeds, but it only works this way when a lot of people are connected. If there are few people connected, or only TWO people involved (the seeder and you) then it won't go any faster than a direct connection would have.

The tracker doesn't keep all that data forever of course, it drops it after so long of a time limit after your computer goes offline (stops responding, or stops requesting/reporting in). And in practice, many torrent programs do have a "share ratio" that requires you upload some-minimum-percentage. I think with Azureus it is 10% minimum, so if your upload speeds really stink you will run into that limit (when you have downloaded nine times as much as you have uploaded, your download speed will automatically slow down to equal with whatever your upoad speed is).
~

Quoted: What the hell is a bit torrent?

None of your business! Back to work!!!

Quoted: What the hell is a bit torrent? My nephew asked me about it the other day and I was totally clueless? Anyone care to explain? I'm usually the techie uncle, but I guess I'm old an can't keep up.

check out my sig line, watch the video  link here

That took me about 5 seconds.

Quoted: That took me about 5 seconds.

Yeah, I read that too. But it didn't really make sense to me. I must be getting old.

was going to say PEER to PEER

but google is your best friend ...

thats how I found out that I can build an AR ! by GOOGLE and found this lovely forum !!!!!

Quoted: A means of illegally stealing movies and such

As opposed to legally stealing them?

i use it to download stuff all the time.

linux software..   fedora knoppix, slax,    stuff like that

then seed @ night when i feel like it

So you are all saying this is at the stage, say, Napster was before the .gov cracked down on that stuff, so we should take advantage of illegal downloads now while it is still new?  

Quoted: Quoted: What the hell is a bit torrent? My nephew asked me about it the other day and I was totally clueless? Anyone care to explain? I'm usually the techie uncle, but I guess I'm old an can't keep up. A file sharing protocol.  Basically, large files are broken down into small bits and then distributed to many users.  At the client end, these segments are reassembled into the original file. Since the material is not stored on any server, it bypasses copyright restrictions on the servers.  But its real utility is decreasing server requirements since the files are well distributed. The person with the initial file or a complete copy is known as a seeder.

Very good description.  And yes you can download massive amounts of porn with it.  Not that have ever done that.

hmmmm

i never could get it to work

txl

Quoted: Quoted: A means of illegally stealing movies and such As opposed to legally stealing them?

From the office of redundant repetition

Where do you get this PeerGuardian2 and how hard is it to set up?

Quoted: i use it to download stuff all the time. linux software..   fedora knoppix, slax,    stuff like that then seed @ night when i feel like it

Yep it works great for HUGE downloads, multi gigabyte such as Americas Army, or most of the nix distributions.

Just to stir the pot:

The intended use of Bit Torrent is for the theft of intellectual property; just as radar detectors only use is for the criminal avoidance of law enforcement.  

<patiently awaits for someone to make the intellectually dishonest argument that "The same can be said for gun ownership".  That is untrue.>

Quoted: Just to stir the pot: The intended use of Bit Torrent is for the theft of intellectual property; just as radar detectors only use is for the criminal avoidance of law enforcement.   <patiently awaits for someone to make the intellectually dishonest argument that "The same can be said for gun ownership".  That is untrue.>

I believe the original purposes of Bittorrent are Linux file distributions and the sharing of anime fansubs.