Quote:
Originally Posted by dreams
So, how do I know if what I am doing is legal or not?
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Well, If you find a torrent with books by Shakespeare and Dickens, that is most probably legal. If you find torrent with books from Stephen King, or Harry Potter books , or Twilight or whatever, those are most probably not legal.
Even if downloading is legal in your country, you have to consider that a torrent protocol works like that:
- .torrent file is just directions where to find server used to find other people that are downloading (Leeching) or providing complete file[s] for download (Seeding)
- The file you are downloading is divided to large number of small packages that are downloaded concurrently from many different sources (seeders and ALSO leechers) The downloaded file is assembled as the parts come in.
- when you start to download (leech), your client starts also providing the already downloaded parts for others downloaders so you do not overburden the computer that started to provide the file (the first seeder).
SO AS YOU ARE
DOWNLOADING, YOU ARE
ALSO DISTRIBUTING.
So if you want to stay strictly "legal" stay away from torrents with content you do not want to be caught DISTRIBUTING. This is how RIAA finds filesharers. They search for an mp3 by Metallica, start downloading ald log all the IP addresses where parts come from.
In some p2p clients you can throttle, or even completely disable outgoing traffic, but very often that also means that you won't be able to download anything, because when other clients "find out" they refuse to provide files for you.
On the other hand, if you want to download a Linux distribution and you do not want to bring down the ftp server (together with hundred thousand other users that need to install that new Ubuntu RIGHT NOW!) *do* use torrent. The more users download, the more resources to download from.
Even some providers of legal media content are experimenting with this technology.