OT: Torrent? some naive questions

blink3times wrote on 1/3/2009, 7:21 AM

I wanted to download Pixela image mixer for some experiments and all I could find were these "torrent" files of which I know NOTHING about. Apparently I need the Torrent software to download these files so I downloaded the torrent software and began to download Pixela.

What I'm looking at here is CLEARLY not a normal download. From what I gather the torrent software is running around the net scavenging bits and pieces of pixela where it can find it. The question I had is why... and it occurred to me that maybe Torrent is actually STEALING pieces of pixela where it can find it and then putting it back together for me on my machine. (I have canceled the download for fear of taking on some unknown virus or trojan)

Is this true?
Is it legal?
Is Torrent's intention built to steal files?
Sorry if these are kind of naive questions but I have never seen this kind of download technique before.

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 1/3/2009, 7:37 AM

BitTorrent is kind of an idea who's time has passed. It was somewhat useful in the dialup days, but now that most people have broadband it's not that useful anymore.

The idea was that if you wanted to share a huge file with lots of other people, it would take forever for the transfer from you to each person. Even if the next person to get it started sharing to other people it would still take a long time. So some bright minds got together and realized that if the first person had gotten some of the file, they could start sharing what they had gotten already. As more people got more parts, new people could start getting those parts from more and more sources, thus eliminating the need for any one person to have to supply the entire file.

As such, it was a useful tool. And as useful tools go, they often get perverted.

Lots of people use BitTorrent to host and download illegal material because it is a shared resource and doesn't depend on one site to host it. Lots of people use it to circulate copyrighted material. BitTorrent itself isn't illegal (well, there have been some cases in which using it or aiding it's use has been tried as criminal intent), but people do use it for illegal things. Probably the fact that it isn't monitored the way that straight downloads are, and that those supplying the data are spread out wide all over the globe, makes it more attractive for illegal content shares because it appears to be harder to track.

There are also lots of BitTorrent clients that either open your computer up to back door hacking and virus distribution, or are themselves viruses.

As far as Pixela goes, i believe it is copyrighted software. As far as i know the only way to obtain it legally is to buy a SONY camera. Now, unless Pixela has improved about 193,392,954,512,682,731.4 times better than it was the last time i saw it, i'd run away screaming and lock the doors. It was the most awful piece of software i've ever used. It pretty much defined the 'user-hostile' category.

blink3times wrote on 1/3/2009, 7:59 AM

"As far as Pixela goes, i believe it is copyrighted software."

Thanks.
I sort of figured something a little....'funny' was going on.

Yes, I recognize that Pixela comes very close to replicating doggy-doo-doo, but apparently it has the ability to pull the time/date stamp from the avchd clips and I wanted to run a few experiments on this basis.

TheHappyFriar wrote on 1/3/2009, 8:03 AM

a way I use to find software w/i having to sift through the illegal ones is instead of searching with the word "download" I use "website". That normally brings up the original website about the software.

I know game people still use torrents to help distribute large files. What was found out (one reason I never really liked it) is that unlike FTP, http, etc. downloads with a single server, torrent-only files can 100% dissapear. If nobody wants to download/upload, then the file isn't available, and thus it's 100% gone from the internet.

Chienworks wrote on 1/3/2009, 8:08 AM

Probably another reason that torrents are favored by the dark side. If law enforcement starts sniffing the trail they can pull their seeds offline and it disappears.

TheHappyFriar wrote on 1/3/2009, 9:15 AM

Sounds good, but for some strange reason pirates WANT to be known for distributing so they don't do that. It's like trying to quit smoking. ;)

Terje wrote on 1/3/2009, 3:57 PM

BitTorrent is kind of an idea who's time has passed.

I have to completely disagree with this one, and considering the amount of traffic on the internet that is torrent traffic, somewhere around 30% of the total the last time I heard, so does the rest of the world. In fact, bittorrent is an immensely useful protocol, and I would be surprised if it doesn't show up in a lot of media style devices in the next couple of years.

As blink points out, when you download a torrent file you only download an "address" for the actual file. The file it self has to be downloaded by a special bittorrent program, currently the most popular is Vuze (nee Azuerus).

Bittorrent can be used for legal downloads - see Vuze, and it can be abused, as with all other technologies.

The "genius" of the torrent protocol is that you don't download the content from the original publisher. You download it from anyone who has it. As a protocol for distributing very large amounts of data to a large number of users it is therefore very, very, very useful. Why? Because the publisher of the content doesn't have to upload it more than once. Typically he will, but rarely more than about three times. No matter how many people download it. This means that the upload speed of the original publisher is irrelevant once a handful of people have downloaded the content.

I use it with my family to distribute video content. Once I have put together something they can all, in my case, parents, two brothers and five in-laws download it at once. Living in California with all the downloaders in Norway I have found that the bittorrent way is about four to five times faster than any alternative. I have never uploaded the content more than one and a half time, compared to eight times needed using any other protocol.

In the not too distant future, if they have any brains at all, people like Time Warner et al will start using the protocol for distribution of on-demand content. If they do they will significantly reduce the amount of traffic on their network and at the same time significantly improve the user experience. Imagine TW being able to cut their bandwidth requirements by 90% and at the same time giving me the content twice as fast and reliable. Now that sounds like a win-win to me.

Want to try really fast download of legal high-def content, try Vuze at http://www.vuze.com

farss wrote on 1/3/2009, 8:47 PM

I think t's already being used a lot for legal content delivery by Paramount, MTV Warner Bros etc. D-Link support it, Thecus network appliances ship with a torrent client and I read a common use for an old PC is as a torrent client.

Bob.

DrLumen wrote on 1/3/2009, 9:09 PM

Torrents are becoming more relevant every day. The amount of legal content is starting to increase as companies start using it to publish driver updates, patches, etc.

Like Terje was saying, it keeps the bandwidth from being drawn from one particular point. They are currently researching a torrent method that can give precedence to particular geographical regions. This will help keep the torrent traffic on the edges of the networks so that torrents only cross the backbone when necessary. This gives the advantage of lower backbone traffic and higher transfer rates by eliminating extraneous hops and latency.

rsp wrote on 1/4/2009, 9:17 AM

Interesting to read Terje's comments on sharing content with family - please could you share some info on how to create and restrict torrents for friends/family only.

Would be most interested to learn how to share footage with family and friends as usually video files are way too big to send through email !

rudi

Terje wrote on 1/5/2009, 8:06 AM

Interesting to read Terje's comments on sharing content with family - please could you share some info on how to create and restrict torrents for friends/family only.

This isn't particularly hard, but the method I use is not 100% "safe". I create my torrent files in Vuze and I publish using the internal tracker of Vuze. Then I send the torrent file to whoever I want to share it with. Without access to the torrent file nobody else can download it.

The reason it is not safe is that someone could snoop on my or their mail and get the torrent file, but I'd be surprised if anyone is that interested.

nolonemo wrote on 1/5/2009, 8:53 AM

Bear in mind that two requirements will have to be met for the torrenting to family and friends to work, as I understand it:

1. You will have to have a server to host the entire video file until it has been completely uploaded by the peers downloading. (A "seed" is someone who is hosting the entire file; a "peer" is someone who is hosting only a portion of the file.)

2. The peers downloading will have to keep their torrent sessions active in order to make the bits they have downloaded available to the other peers.

With large-audience torrents, item 2 is not a problem, because at almost any given time, there will be a peer with an active torrent session. But in a small group session, for a real torrentting distribution to happen, I would think the peers would have to keep their sessions active until all the peers had completed the download. Bear in mind that if as long as you are seeding the file on your server, any peer can get the whole thing - but if only a single peer is torrenting, what you have is functionally the same as if you were hosting the file on an ftp server; i.e., there is not distributed distribution happening.

At least, that's the way I understand it - if I am incorrect, please post and I will amend this post accordingly.

rsp wrote on 1/5/2009, 9:51 AM

Thanks Terje for explaining

think i will give it a try next time i need to send out big video files

Terje wrote on 1/6/2009, 6:06 AM

Bear in mind that two requirements will have to be met for the torrenting to family and friends to work, as I understand it:

You are almost correct. For #1, you need a server to host it, this is not correct. With Vuze (Azureus) you can host with your own personal computer. This may or may not work depending on how your firewall and your ISPs firewalls are set up. With TW cable it works fine for me.

For #2, the peers do indeed have to keep their torrents active for others to be able to get at them. Again, this is not really an issue, since your torrent is active if you download (typically). In other words, as long as you are downloading you are also sharing (by default). The torrent clients are relatively smart in the way that they are downloading bits and pieces, trying to maximize availability and minimize traffic.

For example, if you start sharing a file that is, for the sake of argument, divided into three parts by your torrent software, and you have three peers (father, brother and cousin) then fathers client will typically start downloading part one, brothers part two and cousin part three. This means that once each of them have downloaded their piece, you do in fact no longer have to share the file for all three of them to get it. This is theoretical and oversimplified but illustrative.