Quote:
Originally Posted by GA Russell
Don't sites like The Pirate Bay cost money? Aren't you risking a lot by giving them your credit card number? I can understand college kids doing it, but it sounds dangerous to me.
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No. The Pirate Bay is free, as far as I know. I would be very surprised if other torrent sites charged money too. I've never used TPB though and I'm aware they've had legal difficulties, so I don't know if they've changed to a Napster-like model recently. In any case, TPB acts like a distributor of torrents and such torrent sites often claim they're not responsible for the material their users post. In addition, according to some of my unashamedly freeloading friends, TPB hasn't been seen as a 'good' torrent site in a long time -- it's just the most public. Invite-only torrent sites, which are free but have only limited signups, are seemingly becoming more popular.
I don't want people going away thinking that 'torrent' is synonymous with 'illegal activity' though. Torrenting is also a very effective way to distribute legitimate material. Examples are
clearbits,
GameUpdates.org for game demos, patches, and mods, and
LinuxTracker.