I can imagine a few things :
1. BitTorrent has a bad rep. Most people still associate it with just illegal download.
2. It requires slightly more complex firewall rules, and asking the network admin to put them in place might raise some eyebrow for reason 1. On very restrictive network, they might not want to allow them at all due to the fact that it opens the door for, well, BitTorrent.
3. A BitTorrent client is more complicated than an HTTP client, and not installed on most company computer / ci pipeline (for lack of need, and again reason 1.). A lot of people just want to `curl` and be done with it.
4. A lot of people think they are required to seed, and for some reason that scare the hell of them.
Overall, I think it is mostly 1 and the fact that you can just simply `curl` stuff and have everything working. I do sadden me that people do not understand how good of a file transfer protocol BT is and how it is underused. I do remember some video game client using BT for updates under the hood, and peertube use webtorrent, but BT is sadly not very popular.
At a previous job, I was downloading daily legal torrent data when IT flagged me. The IT admin, eager to catch me doing something wrong, burst into the room shouting with management in tow. I had to calmly explain the situation, as management assumed all torrenting was illegal and there had been previous legal issues with an intern pirating movies. Fortunately, other colleagues backed me up.
Hey, ages ago, as an intern, I have been flagged for BitTorrent downloads. As it turned out, I was downloading/sharing Ubuntu isos, so things didn't escalate too far, but it was a scary moment.
So, I'm not using BT at work anymore.
I left a Linux ISO (possibly Ubuntu) seeding on a lab computer at university, and forgot about it after I'd burned the DVD. You can see this was a while ago.
A month later an IT admin came to ask what I might be doing with port 6881. Once I remembered, we went to the tracker's website and saw "imperial.ac.uk" had the top position for seeding, by far.
The admin said to leave running.
> The admin said to leave running.
This can be read in two wildly different ways.
Fortunately, it was the nice way — that university is one of the backbone nodes of the UK academic network, so the bandwidth use was pretty much irrelevant.
S3 had BitTorrent support for a long time...
"S3 quietly deprecates BitTorrent support" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27524549
At least the planet download offers BitTorrent. https://planet.openstreetmap.org/
So does Wikipedia https://meta.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Data_dump_torrents
Truly the last two open web titans.
> A lot of people think they are required to seed, and for some reason that scare the hell of them.
Some of the reasons consists of lawyers sending put costly cease and desist letters even to "legitimate" users
Do companies send out C&Ds for your average user torrenting? I've gotten thousands of DMCA letters but never a C&D, and I've only ever heard of 1 person getting one, and they were silly enough to be hosting a collection of paid content that they scraped themselves, from their home.
DMCA demands are, as far as I'm aware, completely automated and couldn't really cost much.
For seeding map data?
Particularly if your torrent traffic is encrypted, they don't always bother to check what you are torrenting
Are you just theorizing, or is there precedent of this? I mean of lawyers sending cease and desist letters to people torrenting random encrypted streams of data?
When I was working in p2p research, we used to get regular C&Ds just for scraping the tracker (not even downloading anything!). IP holders be wilding
Appreciate your response, madness indeed!
Bad rep ...
You know what has a bad rep? Big companies that use and trade my personal information like they own it. I'll start caring about copyrights when governments force these big companies to care about my information.
Lol, bad rep? Interesting, in my country everybody is using it to download movies :D Even more so now, after this botched streaming war. (EU)
To play devil's advocate, I think the author of the message was talking about the corporate context where it's not possible to install a torrent client; Microsoft Defender will even remove it as a "potentially unwanted program", precisely because it is mostly used to download illegal content.
Obviously illegal ≠ immoral, and being a free-software/libre advocate opposed to copyright, I am in favor of the free sharing of humanity's knowledge, and therefore supportive of piracy, but that doesn't change the perception in a corporate environment.
What? Transmission never triggers any warning from Defender.
That will depend on how Defender is configured - in a corporate environment it may be set to be far more strict. In fact tools other than Defender are likely to be used, but these often get conflated with Defender in general discussions.
Wow, that's vile. U have many objections to this but they all boil down to M$ telling you what you cannot do with your own computer.
Most people want Microsoft preventing them from installing malware on their own computer.
Most software coming out of SV these days is malware by the original definition yet for some reason never gets blocked.
But it isn't malware by any stretch of the imagination.
There are various common malware payloads that include data transfer tools (http proxies, bittorrent clients, etc.) - it isn't just password scanners, keyboard monitors, and crypto miners. These tools can be used for the transfer of further malware payloads, to create a mesh network so more directed hacking attempts are much more difficult to track, to host illegal or immoral content, or for the speedy exfiltration of data after a successful directed hack (perhaps a spear-phish).
Your use of the stuff might not be at all malware like, but in a corporate environment if it isn't needed it gets flagged as something to be checked up on in case it is not there for good reason. I've been flagged for some of the tools I've played with, and this is fine: I have legitimate use for that sort of thing in my dealings with infrastructure, there are flags ticked that say “Dave has good reason to have these tools installed, don't bother us about it again unless he fails to install security updates that are released for them”, and this is fine: I want those things flagged in case people who won't be doing the things I do end up with such stuff installed without there knowledge, so it can be dealt with (and they can be given more compulsory “don't just thoughtlessly click on every link in any email you receive, and carelessly type your credentials into resulting forms” training!).
Which is exactly why it has a bad rep. In most people mind BitTorrent = illegal download.
downloading movies for personal use is legal in many countries.
Not in any country that is part of the big international IP agreements (Berne convention, Paris Act).
The only exception (sort of) is Switzerland. And the reason downloading copyrighted content you haven't bought for personal use is legal in Switzerland is because the government is essentially paying for it - there is a tax in Switzerland on empty media, the proceeds from which are distributed to copyright holders whose content is consumed in Switzerland, regardless of whether it is bought directly from the rights holder or otherwise.
Apparently the legal status of downloading copyrighted materials for personal use is also murky in Spain, where apparently at least one judge found that it is legal - but I don't know how solid the reasoning was or whether other judges would agree (being a civil law country, legal precedent is not binding in Spain to the same extent that it would be in the UK or USA).
> Not in any country that is part of the big international IP agreements (Berne convention, Paris Act).
Poland signed Berne convention in 1919, has "well regulated" copyright, but still downloading all media (except for software) for personal use is fully legal. Tax on "empty media" is in place as well.
No it isn't.
Format shifting and personal copying are legal in Poland, but you as an individual still have to have legally obtained your original in the first place to exercise that right, and an illicit download certainly doesn't count. Taxing "empty media" is to compensate for those format shifting rights, but it doesn't cover renumeration for acquiring media in the first place (and indeed no EU member state could operate such a scheme - they are prohibited by EU Directive 2001/29 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri=celex%3A...).
> Format shifting and personal copying are legal in Poland, but you as an individual still have to have legally obtained your original in the first place to exercise that right, and an illicit download certainly doesn't count.
Like everywhere else where personal copies are legal and you can download them. If both conditions are true, then the mere fact that you are downloading it, it's not a sign you are downloading pirated content.
OTOH there is also Spain where piracy with no direct monetary gain is tolerated and nobody goes after people torrenting.
Yes it is. As long as the content was intentionally distributed by the rights holder (for example a movie had its premiere) you can legally download it from anywhere and use it for your own (and your friends) enjoyment however you please. You can't make it (or even the content you bought) available to people who aren't your actual friends (random people on the internet).
That's the Polish law, both the letter and the implementation. On at least one occasion the police issued an official statement saying exactly that.
I think no one was ever fined in Poland for incidental upload while using bittorrent protocol to download. There are high profile cases for people who where publishing large amounts of media files, especially commercially. Little more than a decade ago there was one case where some company tried to go after bittorrent downloaders of 3 specific Polish movies. But I think it was ultimately thrown out or cheaply settled because no case like that has been publicized ever since and everybody who knows how to use bittorent, does.
Again, it covers everything except for software that has more restrictive laws more similar to what you think the law is.
Tax on empties was set up long time ago to support creators who's music is shared among friends directly. It's was not intended to compensate for downloads. I think only Polish artists receive any money from this (I might be wrong on that) and the organization that distributes the money is highly inefficient. They tried to extend the tax to electronic devices, but nobody likes them, companies and people both, so they didn't get too far with this proposal for now.
Poland enjoys a lot of digital freedoms and is conscious of them and ready to defend them against ACTA, Chat Control and extend them with Stop Killing Games.
There is also the US. It is legal to download movies in the United States. You can, however, get dinged by the automated lawsuit or complaint bots for uploading them, which makes torrenting without a vpn less than ideal.
> It is legal to download movies in the United States.
No it isn't.
It's not a criminal offense, but if someone can sue you for it and win then it isn't "legal" under any technical or popular definition of the word.
Finding examples of people getting successfully sued for downloading or viewing movies without sharing them should be trivial, then.
Otherwise, less any examples of enforcement or successful legal action, downloading movies is illegal in the US in the same way that blasphemy is illegal in Michigan.
https://www.legislature.mi.gov/Laws/MCL?objectName=MCL-750-1...
This is what I heard and experienced. Is the guy above just making shit up?
It's absolutely illegal in the USA to download a movie (or game, or song, or book, etc) that you haven't bought [0].
It could be argued that if you bought a movie, say on DVD, downloading another copy of it from an online source could fall under fair use, but this is more debatable.
[0] https://legalclarity.org/is-pirating-movies-illegal-what-are...
I am not aware of a single example of someone getting successfully sued for downloading a movie. Every lawsuit that I’m aware of (even going back to the Napster days) people got sued for sharing content using p2p software. The current lawsuit robots download a torrent and then wait for individual IPs to upload some chunk of a copyrighted file to them, which they then use as proof of somebody sharing copyrighted material for their complaint.
Even the Protecting Lawful Streaming Act of 2020 explicitly does not punish consumers of copyrighted content, only its distributors.
>Tillis stated that the bill is tailored to specifically target the websites themselves, and not "those who may use the sites nor those individuals who access pirated streams or unwittingly stream unauthorized copies of copyrighted works"
There are so many paragraphs in response to my “You can’t get in trouble for downloading movies in the US” post and none of them have any examples of people getting in trouble for downloading movies in the US.
I'll tldr your reply: "yes, there are countries where it's legal to download for personal use".
Thank you.
This is a useless discussion. Imagine how the firewall-guy/network-team in your company will react to that argument.
This is not a useless discussion just because it'll inconvenience someone who is at work anyway.
How about the uploading part of it, which is behind the magic of Bittorrent and default mode of operation?
download yes, but using bittorrent means you are sharing, and that's not allowed in most countries even if downloading is.
Really?? Which countries allow copyright infringement by individuals?
None. Because you projected your country's laws in the discussion, you failed to see that the countries that allow copyrighted material to be downloaded for personal usage do not qualify that download as "copyright infringement" in the first place.
To answer your question with the only answer I know: Switzerland.
See above: there are a few, but it's not copyright infringement.
How is downloading a movie copyright infringement?
A download is a copy of a work. So, downloading a movie is making a copy of a work that you are not a copyright holder of - in other words, either you or the site you are downloading from are infringing on the copyright holder's exclusive right to create copies of their work. You could claim there is some fair use exemption for this case, or you can have an alternative way of authorizing copies and paying for them like Switzerland does, but there is no doubt in any legal system that downloading is the same kind of action as copying a book at a print shop.
I love how enthusiastic this post is while being wrong.
Making a copy of a thing does not violate copyright (eg you can photocopy a book that you possess even temporarily). Sharing a copy that you made can violate copyright.
It is like mixing up “it’s illegal to poison somebody with bleach” and “it’s illegal to own bleach”. The action you take makes a big difference
Also, as an aside, when you view a legitimately-purchased and downloaded video file that you have license to watch, the video player you use makes a copy from the disk to memory.
If I own a license to listen to Metallica - Enter Sandman.m4a that I bought on iTunes and in the download folder I screw up and I make
Metallica - Enter Sandman(1).m4a
Metallica - Enter Sandman(2).m4a
Metallica - Enter Sandman(3).m4a
How much money do I owe Lars Ulrich for doing that based on The Law of The Earth Everywhere But Switzerland?
> I love how enthusiastic this post is while being wrong.
This is a very funny thing to say given that post is entirely correct, while you are wrong.
> Making a copy of a thing does not violate copyright
Yes it does, unless it's permitted under a designated copyright exemption by local law. For instance, you mention that the video player makes a copy from disk to memory, well that is explicitly permitted by Article 5(1) of the Copyright Directive 2001 in the EU as a use that is "temporary, transient or incidental and an integral and essential part of a technological process", as otherwise it would be illegal as by default, any action to copy is a breach of copyright. That's literally where the word comes from.
> If I own a license to listen to Metallica - Enter Sandman.m4a that I bought on iTunes and in the download folder I screw up and I make
> Metallica - Enter Sandman(1).m4a
> Metallica - Enter Sandman(2).m4a
> Metallica - Enter Sandman(3).m4a
In legal terms you do indeed owe him something, yes. It would probably be covered under the private copy exemptions in some EU territories, but only on the basis that blank media is taxed to pay rightsholders a royalty for these actions under the relevant collective management associations.
You're mixing up several things, all of which actually boil down to the fair use exceptions I was mentioning.
Making copies of a book you legally own for personal use is an established fair use exception to copyright. However, making copies of a book that you borrowed from a library would be copyright infringement. Similarly, lending the copies you've made of a book to friends would technically void the fair use exception for your copies.
The copy that a playback device has to make of a copyrighted audio/video file for its basic functioning is typically mentioned explicitly in the license you buy, thus being an authorized copy for a specific purpose. If you make several copies of a file on your own system for personal use, then again you are likely within fair use exemptions, similar to copying a book case - though this is often a bit more complicated legally by the fact that you don't own a copy but a license to use the work in various ways, and some companies' licenses can theoretically prohibit even archival copies, which in turn may or may not be legal in various jurisdictions.
But in no jurisdiction is it legal to, for example, go with a portable photocopy machine into a bookstore and make copies of books you find in there, even if they are only for personal use: you first have to legally acquire an authorized copy from the rights holder. All other exemptions apply to what you do with that legally obtained copy.
This even means that you don't have any rights to use a fraudulent copy of a work, even if you legitimately believed you were obtaining a legal copy. For example, say a library legally bought a book from a shady bookstore that, unbeknownst to them, was selling counterfeit copies of a book. If the copyright holder finds out, they can legally force the library to pay them to continue offering this book, or to destroy it otherwise, along with any archival copies that they had made of this book. The library can of course seek to obtain reparations from the store that sold them the illegal copy, but they can't refuse to pay the legal copyright holder.
I got billed 1200€ for downloading 2 movies when I was 15. I will never use torrents again.
When injustice slaps you, you should do more of that, not less, but protecting yourself (vpn, tor, etc.)
Tell that my 15 year old self back in the day. I didn't even know by torreting id also seed, which was the part they got me for.
I assume this is Germany. Usually you can haggle it down to the low hundreds if it's the first time and you show you're just a regular young person with not much income.
Yea it was. Was 15 years ago though. Never looked back at it, I just won't ever use torrents again so I'll never face this issue again.
You mean some asshole asked your parents for that sum to not go to a trial that they would lose and your parents paid.
First off it was like 2 months after my father's death we didnt have time for this, secondly my mom got an attorney that I paid. Was roughly the same amount though. We never paid them.
> It requires slightly more complex firewall rules, and asking the network admin to put them in place might raise some eyebrow for reason 1
Well, in many such situations data is provided for free, putting huge burden on the other side. Even it it's a little bit less convenient it makes service a lot more sustainable. I imagine torrent for free tier and direct download as a premium option would work perfectly
I wish... I overpay more than double market value for my connection, and am not allowed to configure my router. This is the norm for most apartment dwellers in the US as far as I'm aware.
VPN is a thing
Sure, but I would also like to be able to forward ports. Right now, my best workaround is tailnet, which requires a client.
5. Most residential internet connections are woefully underprovisioned for upload so anything that uses it more (and yes you need people to seed for bittorrent to make sense) can slow down the entire connection.
6. Service providers have little control over the service level of seeders and thus the user experience. And that's before you get malicious users.
Webtorrent exists. It uses webrtc to let users connect to each other. There's support in popular trackers.
This basically handles every problem stated. There's nothing to install on computers: it's just js running on the page. There's no firewall rules or port forwarding to setup, all handled by the stun/turn in webrtc. Users wouldn't necessarily even be aware they are uploading.
STUN is not always possible and TURN means proxying the connection through a server which would be counter-productive for the purpose of using bit-torrent as an alternative to direct HTTP downloads as you are now paying for the bandwidth in both directions. This is very much not a problem with magic solutions.
Agreed! But STUN's success rate is pretty good! As the number of peers goes up it should be less likely that one would need to use TURN to connect to a peer, but I am skeptical webrtc is built to fall back like this, to try other peers first.
The advantage is that at least it's all builtin. It's not a magic solution, but it's a pretty good solution, with fallbacks builtin for when the networking gets in the way of the magic.
seeding is uploading after you are done downloading.
but you are already uploading while you are still downloading. and that can't be turned off. if seeding scares someone, then uploading should scare them too. so they are right, because they are required to upload.
If you are in the scene long enough, you should have known that there are some uncooperative clients that always send 0% (Xunlei being one of the more notorious example with their VIP schemes, and later on they would straight up spoof their client string when people started blocking them). Being a leecher nowadays is almost a norm for a lot of users, and I don't blame them since they are afraid of consequences in a more regulated jurisdiction. But a must seed when leech requirement? Hoho no, that's more like a suggestion.
> Hoho no, that's more like a suggestion.
For public trackers maybe.
> but you are already uploading while you are still downloading. and that can't be turned off
Almost every client let you set uploading limit, which you can set at 0. The only thing that generate upload bp usage that cannot be deactivated would be protocol stuff (but you can deactivate part of bt like using the DHT).
I think it should be up to the client to decide whether they want to seed. As another commenter mentioned, it could be for legal reasons. Perhaps downloading in that jurisdiction is legal but uploading is not. Perhaps their upload traffic is more expensive.
Now, as a seeder, you may still be interested in those clients being able to download and reach whatever information you are seeding.
In the same vein, as a seeder, you may just not serve those clients. That's kind of the beauty of it. I understand that there may be some old school/cultural "code of conduct" but really this is not a problem with a behavioral but instead with a technical solution that happens to be already built-in.
I think it should be up to the client to decide whether they want to seed
well, yes and no. legal issues aside (think about using bittorrent only for legal stuff), the whole point of bittorrent is that it works best if everyone uploads.
actually, allowing clients to disable uploading is almost an acknowledgement that illegal uses should be supported, because there are few reasons why legal uses should need to disable uploading.
and as an uploader i also don't want others not to upload. so while disabling upload is technically possible, it is also reasonable and not unlikely that connections from such clients could be rejected.
In the US, data caps are one reason to be stingy about seeding even if legality is not an issue. In that case though the user could still do something like limit the upload bandwidth while still seeding long-term, so their contribution is to provide availability and prevent a situation where no full seeds exist.
Some BitTorrent clients make it easier to set than others, but if it's a healthy torrent I often limit upload rate to so slow that it doesn't transfer anything up. Ratio is 0.00 and I still get 100s of mb/s.
Transmission allows turning this off by setting upload to 0. It's simply a client setting, but most clients don't offer it.