The BitTorrent protocol rose to become the most popular medium for peer-to-peer file sharing in the world after the demise of centralized services like Napster and Limewire. Unlike those services, torrenting is almost completely decentralized save for the trackers that allow users to search and download torrent files and magnet links.
Torrent files and magnet links are used to find other users on the network who host the desired file or files but do not actually host those files for downloading.
The BitTorrent protocol is not in itself illegal or unsafe. It is just the means to share any type of file, and plenty of legal torrenting services do exist. The most popular torrent trackers, such as ThePirateBay and KickassTorrents, however, operate in a legal grey area, offering users free access to copyrighted content.
Sharing and downloading copyrighted content by BitTorrent, or other means, is illegal in many countries and can be unsafe since sites including KickassTorrents have been shown to host malware. These trackers would argue that they simply find and organize information that is already out there, and they do not illegally host any copyrighted content on their own servers.
Just like the BitTorrent protocol itself, they are the means to an end. Not everyone is convinced. Major trackers have come under heavy legal scrutiny from content creators and distributors who argue the trackers enable and encourage theft. The blame ultimately shifts to the users, the millions of individuals who host files on their personal computers, downloading and uploading movies, games, software, music, ebooks, and more. Users connected to the same tracker are called peers, and they fall into two categories.
A leech uses a torrent file or magnet link to download the file from other users on the network who already have the file. These users who already have the file are called seeds. When a leech is finished downloading a file or even just part of a file , he or she becomes a seed, allowing other leeches to download the file from his or her computer.
Comparitech does not condone or encourage any violation of copyright law or restrictions. Please consider the law, victims, and risks of copyright piracy before downloading copyrighted material without permission.
Legally speaking, seeding and leeching copyrighted material fall into different criminal categories. Think of it like buying illegal drugs: purchasing the drugs for personal use is definitely a crime, but a relatively minor one. Turning around and selling those drugs to others is a much more serious offense.
The prosecution of torrent users has been sporadic. The chances of actually going to court or having to pay a settlement are pretty slim, but the penalties can be extremely high. The frequency of copyright holders suing torrenters for copyright infringement peaked in the late s. Copyright pirates were sued for wildly disproportionate amounts of money, and most settled out of court. These public scare tactics shone poorly on the recording and movie industries because they were portrayed as petty millionaires bullying poor college students.
Direct lawsuits are much less common these days, but the campaign against torrenters is far from over. Now the job of going after individual copyright pirates has been outsourced to a growing number of small businesses known as copyright trolls. These companies locate torrenters who illegally download copyrighted content through their real IP addresses. They then approach the copyright owners and sign a deal that lets them take legal action on their behalf.
Others are hired directly by Hollywood production companies to sniff out pirates. With legal leverage and a list of names, the copyright trolls then go after torrenters via mail, email, or even by going door to door and handing out settlement letters.
These letters are not legally binding documents or injunctions. Copyright trolls use intimidation, fear, and shame to make torrenters pay without ever going to court. The most common way to receive a settlement letter is through your internet provider. A copyright troll will go through the court system to subpoena your ISP and force it to email customers with a legal threat and hand over personal details.
According to US law, an IP address is not a person. Your case could be dismissed before the date that your ISP is set to reveal your personal details to the troll. If you respond and identify yourself, that gives the troll a more direct means of targeting you. This is a game of probability for copyright trolls. If they send out 1, threatening emails and 50 people reply, they only need a handful to actually cough up money to make it worth their time.
If things escalate and you decide to take action, lawyer up. Depending on your ISP, it may take actions against you on its own behalf. That could mean throttling your internet connection or threatening to hand over personal details to a copyright troll. Why does your ISP even care? Because torrenting takes up a lot of bandwidth, and that bandwidth costs ISPs money. On top of that, an ISP could be receiving kickbacks from content owners and their associates.
However, if you insist on torrenting, take the time to protect your online privacy and keep copyright trolls at bay. The best way to torrent safely is by using a VPN. A VPN accomplishes two things: first, it re-routes all your internet traffic through a server in a location of your choosing, which changes your real IP address to one used by hundreds or thousands of other people assuming your VPN uses shared IP addresses, which most do.
This adds a significant layer of anonymity and makes it much more difficult for anyone to track you. Second, a VPN encrypts all your torrent traffic before it leaves your computer. That means your ISP cannot monitor your internet activity, nor can anyone else. Not all VPNs tolerate torrenting.
You can check out our list of the best VPNs for torrenting here , which are services with fast download speeds and a focus on online privacy, security and anonymity like NordVPN , Surfshark , and ExpressVPN among others. We recommend a VPN over Tor for a couple reasons. First, Tor is slow, and usually best for simple browsing and other low-bandwidth activity.
Another popular app among torrenters is Peerblock. Peerblock is a desktop firewall with a regularly updated blacklist of IP addresses.
These IP addresses belong to entities that try to track your activity online, especially on peer-to-peer networks. Unfortunately, the blacklist is only updated once upon installation. After that, users must pay to keep them updated. Instead of torrenting, another alternative is Usenet. Usenet downloads are much, much faster; often as fast as your ISP can handle. Usenet is more private as well. Some even throw in VPNs for good measure. Torrents, on the other hand, require that you share at least some identifying information to connect to the tracker and peers.
Usenet providers make files available for a certain number of days. How many depends on the provider, but the standard is 1, days after the original posting. Apr 23, View code. Awesome Piracy A curated list of arrrrrrrrr! Preamble Over the past couple of years, I've accumulated bookmarks, saved Reddit posts, and GitHub stars all related to piracy in some form or another. Background Information Wikipedia "File sharing" category Wikipedia's full list of file-sharing related articles.
TorrentFreak Article by Ernesto privacytools. Plenty of information to help protect your privacy online. It is also rated as one of the fastest VPNs out there. It aims to be faster, simpler, leaner, and more useful than IPSec. It can be used to sell your spare bandwidth for cryptocurrency.
Privacy Badger Privacy Badger blocks spying ads and invisible trackers. Fast and lean. ScriptSafe A browser extension that gives users control of the web and more secure browsing while emphasizing simplicity and intuitiveness. NoScript Allow active content to run only from sites you trust, and protect yourself against XSS and clickjacking attacks. Firefox only. Burlesco Read the news without subscribing, bypass the paywall Universal Bypass Universal Bypass automatically skips annoying link shorteners.
Violentmonkey An open-source userscript manager. Anti-Paywall A browser extension that maximizes the chances of bypassing paywalls Google Unlocked Uncensor google search results. AdsBypasser This user script helps you to skip countdown ads or continue pages and prevent ad pop-up windows. Torrentz2 Magnet Add magnet link to torrentz2 Bypass paywalls for scientific documents This script adds download buttons on Google Scholar, Scopus, and Web Of Science, which lead to sci-hub.
This is a fork of the original. Follows the Unix philosophy. Dashlane An intuitive password manager with over with over 8 million users worldwide. LessPass Stateless open source password manager Psono Open source and self-hosted password manager for teams Buttercup Another open source password manager with desktop, mobile, and browser clients. Be sure to opt-out of sending anonymous usage statistics. I2P I2P is an anonymous overlay network - a network within a network.
It is intended to protect communication from dragnet surveillance and monitoring by third parties such as ISPs. Freenet Freenet is free software which lets you anonymously share files, browse and publish "freesites" web sites accessible only through Freenet and chat on forums, without fear of censorship.
Zeronet Open, free and uncensorable websites, using Bitcoin cryptography and BitTorrent network Loki Lokinet is an anonymous, decentralized and IP based overlay network for the internet.
IPFS A peer-to-peer hypermedia protocol designed to make the web faster, safer, and more open. Yggdrasil Makes use of a global spanning tree to form a scalable IPv6 encrypted mesh network. Domain Names Njalla a privacy-aware domain registration service xip. Domainr Domainr finds domain names and short URLs. Instantly check availability and register for all top-level domains.
This guide explains many of the methods involved with keeping on top of this sometimes difficult task. AnimeBytes AB community centralized around Japanese media, including anime, manga, and music Audionews AN Private torrent tracker for music production audio. No RAR files allowed. Scene torrents are unrared, and then allowed. GazelleGames GGn Currently the largest private tracker for games.
It is a ratioless tracker so it is great for beginners. Good tracker for beginners. Also known as The-Archive and HeyNow. Redacted RED Largest private music tracker at 1. Somewhat out of date. Private trackers Guide on how to get into and survive the world of private trackers.
RED Interview Prep This site was written as a guide for potential users to learn about music formats, transcodes, torrenting, and burning and ripping — everything you need to know to pass the RED interview. Public Trackers x x is a torrent site that offers verified torrent downloads.
Try one of these proxy sites. Torrentz2 A good replacement of the defunct Torrentz. TorrentKing Torrentking is a popular movie torrent site. Zonatorrent Spanish tracker TorrentFunk TorrentFunk is a torrent site providing verified torrents for all kinds of content. OTorrents Yet another public torrent tracker Torlock Torlock is a torrent index and torrent search that helps to access the latest in TV series and movies.
Transmission Default torrent client in many distros. Popcorn Time Popcorn Time is a multi-platform, free software BitTorrent client that includes an integrated media player.
Tornado Tornado is a modern web-first BitTorrent client designed with usability in mind. Based on Transmission. AutoRemovePlus Auto removing of deluge torrents ltConfig ltConfig is a plugin for Deluge that allows direct modification to libtorrent settings and has preset support. Web-based Cloud Seedboxes Seedr Essentially a seedbox you can paste torrents into which returns a streamable direct link ZXCFiles A similar service that allows you to paste magnet links or upload torrent files and get a DDL.
The first 20GB are free. Free accounts offer 1GB for free. Torrent Safe Free plan includes 1GB max file size, 2 days file lifetime. Discounts for paid subscriptions pop up on their Facebook page Furk. IO Seedbox Hosting Providers novaDedi novaDedi formerly known as metaDedi was created to help to find you the cheapest dedicated server for your intended use case. Kimsufi Affordable dedicated servers Online. Usenet Usenet Usenet is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers.
Usenet newsgroup A Usenet newsgroup is a repository usually within the Usenet system, for messages posted from many users in different locations using the Internet. Usenet Providers Usenet Providers and Backbones This is a simple overview of the current companies, backbones, providers and resellers in the Usenet landscape. NZBCat Meow cough nzb-hair-bal.
NZBKing This service allows you to search and browse binary files that have been posted to Usenet newsgroups. Cross platfrom. Persepolis Front-end for aria2. Can stream Mega videos directly. It can be easily called from scripts, cronjobs, terminals without X-Windows support, etc.
Easily installable on most operating systems. All these movies are in HD video quality such as p, p, p, 4k and 3D and in the smallest file size. With its friendly-use interface, YTS offers trailer and screenshots of the movie torrent and list similar movies for you. Also, a movie torrent is available in various video qualities.
Torrentz2 is a torrent meta-search engine for BitTorrent which is the best alternative of the torrent site Torrentz. For this reason, users cannot upload any torrent files to this website.
It was founded 13 years ago and became increasing popular after Kickass Torrents was shut down. Kickass was founded by some of the former Kickass Torrents staff.
Similar to other torrent sites, with Kickass, you can search for movies, TV series, music, games, apps and many more. But one drawback is that this website probably jumps to NordVPN after clicking on somewhere of its web page. Torrent Galaxy is one of the best torrent sites for movies. You can find tons of movies and TV shows here and download their torrent files or get their magnet links. More than that, some movie torrents also let you stream online at the fastest speed.
One drawback is annoying ads often pop up when you browse the website. Where to watch dubbed anime? Read this post and choose a website to watch dubbed anime online free. Zooqle has over 4 million verified torrents and most of them are movie torrents.
In addition to movie torrents, it also offers TV show torrents, game torrents, eBook torrents, anime torrents, picture torrents, etc. As a movie torrent site, LimeTorrents has over 1 million movie torrents.
Besides, it also offers millions of files for TV shows, anime, apps, games, music and other. TorrentDwonloads is another best torrent site for The Pirate Bay. Also, it has a detailed interface that offers most active torrents, most seeded torrents, most leeched torrents, etc. The top 10 torrent websites are listed in this post, check it out!
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