What's a "Torrent"

Topic: Torrents|Level: Intermediate|Type: Informational / How-To

You may have heard the term "Torrent" before (in computer terminology, not like a hurricane). A Torrent is basically a way of downloading very large files or groups of files from other users over the Internet. It's similar to Peer-to-Peer file sharing, but has a couple benefits over them. Now I don't claim to fully understand how all of this works myself, but I know enough to understand what it does.

What's in a Torrent
A Torrent basically contains information on where to go to download a file or files. They're ideal for getting very large, popular file(s). They're commonly used to (frequently illegally) share TV Shows, entire seaons of TV shows, movies, entire CDs, entire software applications, etc.

How they Work
First of all you have to have a torrent downloader application. There are a few common ones out there such as uTorrent (www.uTorrent.com). Once you have a torrent downloader application, you then use it to open a .torrent file (that could possibly be found at various torrent hosting sites such as thepiratebay.org or mininova.org, or simply doing a web search for something you want to find along with the word 'torrent' in the search). The .torrent file contains information about what file or files are contained in the torrent and about some "Trackers". The Trackers are servers on the Internet that keep track of users that are downloading but not uploading ("Leeching") or also uploading ("Seeding") the file(s) in that torrent also. The Trackers do not actually host the file(s) contained in the torrent. When you choose to download the contents of a .torrent with your downloader application it then asks the Trackers who else is sharing the file(s) in it. Your downloader app then goes to them and starts getting chunks of data from them. The downloader app also does this with potentially many other users all over the Internet, all at the same time. When you download a file from a particular website or server you're pulling that file from a single source. But with torrents you potentially download pieces of the file(s) from multiple sources at the same time. This allows the file(s) to be downloaded much more quickly than trying to pull them all from one source. Also with torrents your downloader app takes care of asking the other sources for different chunks of the file(s) to maximize download efficiencies.

Benefits of Torrents
Because of how Torrents work they are ideal for sharing large amounts of data / files. Also more popular items can then be downloaded more quickly because there're more users who have that file to share. Torrent technology also makes it possible for your torrent downloader application to priorize particular files in a torrent's collection of files, or even particular torrents above others. You can even choose to download some files but not others from a particular torrent's collection of files. Or you can pause and resume large downloads without issue if you need to shutdown your computer or sharing application for some reason.

Legality of Torrents
Torrents and Torrent technology itself is not illegal. However they are more often than not used to share copyrighted material. A Server on the Internet that hosts files for downloads is generally a publicly registered entity. Therefore if they were to illegally host copyrighted material they could easily be found and face legal action. However, somebody hosting a .torrent file or running a Tracker is not actually sharing copyrighted material, therefore they have a degree of deniability protecting them. However, this is a very gray area of the law and is undergoing some change right now. One of the biggest torrent hosting sites on the Internet, thepiragebay.org, recently had its 4 founding members arrested and fined several million dollars each for copyright infringement.