Bit torrent - all piracy?

We are all aware that people are using the Internet for the illegal distribution of music, films. software and documents. The Bit torrent technique has added greatly to this activity. What is it and is there a legitimate use for it?

Bit torrent is a way of overcoming the problem of asymmetrical connections to the Internet. It is a communication protocol invented by Bram Cohen in 2001. We all talk about 'broadband' as being a download speed of 1 megabits per sec or more. ( I'm with Tiscali and the service stinks. Speeds vary, often stopping for short periods.)

In order to cut costs the ISPs have reduced the upload speeds, prioritising the download speeds. So uploading a film takes ages. What bit torrent does, is share the upload of a file by co ordiating its upload and download from a number of people who have the same file. This is called 'seeding'. Once you have downloaded a file, its etiquette to let it seed to others. By using your limited upload bandwidth and that of other peers, the downloads can be (for a very popular file) extremely quick.

In order to use a bit torrent you need to download a small bit torrent file and open in an application (Bit torrent client) that will handle the upload/download. There are a number of freely available ones. I have used Transmission (Mac only) in the past. It works well and is simple to operate.


There have been 2 occasions when I have used it.

Last summer Director Bruce McDonald released all the rushes for his latest film - Tracey Fragments . He made 36 gigs of data (Quicktime) files available for an edit-yourself- competition. It took me 4 days to download the lot! More recently I wanted to download the film, Good copy- bad copy, a documentary about the current state of copyright and culture. Its a quicktime file of about 700mb. I found this is a film from the Open Source Cinema movement's website.