Torrents Yay or Nay your thoughts

[Reptoholic]

Yay or Nay. Do you Use Torrents or do you stay away, If so why and why not, what are your reasons? Is it good to use them or stay away?

[lolrawr]

Nay.

I used to torrent all the time because it was faster than filesharing. I don't do it anymore because I've already received two copyright claims from Comcast. Companies put in trackers that then tell Comcast to send a letter to their customers telling them to stop. I don't think it's anything serious if it happens a few times, but I don't want to take the risk anymore. I'm fine if I use filesharing or XDCC. (though that won't always be the case I'm sure in the future)

[Digatu]

I've used torrents since as far back as I can remember basically since they appeared on the scene and never had an issue.

Bad points about torrent. None for me.

Good points. speed and ease. Some things I've wanted only available via torrents.

Virus. Had more via just visiting websites than through torrents.

I do avoid cinema rips and latest music. Music now is crap anyway for most part and cam jobs are not worth the watching. If I want to see it that bad. I'll go to the cinema.

[JohnFlower]

I prefer torrents over filehosts any day of the week. That is mainly because I use a seedbox to download all my torrents.

I do avoid cinema rips and latest music. Music now is crap anyway for most part and cam jobs are not worth the watching. If I want to see it that bad. I'll go to the cinema.

Same here. Pink Floyd ftw.

[Gedo Mazo]

No bad thoughts, since I used it to download small series of some latest dual audio anime and other stuff. Sites I used, would be Demonoid ,Nyaa.eu/ and Bakabt.me/

[Koby]

Torrents are slowly but surely being killed off. The USA for instance is having a lot of the big ISPs to begin monitoring their customers torrent usage and/or blocking it. Pretty much I would say DO NOT use torrents via your home connection. If you must use them, use an offshore seedbox/vps then grab the files via ftp.

I've gotten rid of torrent programs from my PC and I strictly do torrenting via my server in France.

[Asce]

Never used torrents, not for any particularly horrible reason, or that I found an issue with them; I just always used fileshare. I think it might just be more of a case of being a creature of habit, rather than any bias against torrents. Although, now that I think about it, when I did decide not to use torrents was several years ago when I used to watch my friend download using torrents and then he would have to wait forever to re-encode it, or whatever it was he was doing (I am not the most computer savvy person). I used to just get want I wanted episode by episode as it was released. I had my sites that I was familiar with that I used to donate too, and I stuck with that. But then again, that was a while back and I’m sure all that stuff doesn’t take nearly as long as it used to.

Edited July 16, 2012 by Asce

[Digatu]

Torrents are slowly but surely being killed off. The USA for instance is having a lot of the big ISPs to begin monitoring their customers torrent usage and/or blocking it. Pretty much I would say DO NOT use torrents via your home connection. If you must use them, use an offshore seedbox/vps then grab the files via ftp.

I've gotten rid of torrent programs from my PC and I strictly do torrenting via my server in France.

I'm sure it will die eventually. I'll milk it for now but dont get me wrong I dont sit with my connection uploading and downloading 24/7. When the time comes I will adapt.

@ JohnFlower.

Not heard Pink Floyd in a few years. I'll need to have a listen sometime soon

[corocoro]

I use whatever I can to get the files I want - Usenet, cyberlockers, torrents, and XDCC.

Since the speeds I get are roughly in the same order, that's also the order of preference in which I grab stuff.

Of course, all of these go via servers or VPS located offshore - avoiding pretty much all legal problems that arise from downloading things.

[Koby]

Usenet, cyberlockers, torrents, and XDCC.

Since the speeds I get are roughly in the same order,

Not to be rude, despite how my post may sound, but I find that order BS, because there is no way in hell cyberlockers top torrents and xdcc in speed, they never have, much less now when their speeds are at an all time low. Besides Usenet which I have no clue over because I found it utterly useless to pay to get what you can get otherwise for free.... The only way you could possibly think that is if, you haven't had much experience with XDCC bots, and/or if your internet is so slow, that you don't have a good enough speed to hit the limits set upon the cyberlockers you use.

XDCC is by far faster than ANY cyberlocker has EVER been. MegaUpload and FileServe had the fastest speeds of cyberlockers for premium users, but their max speed was like no more than ~2 - 5 MB/s.

Torrents also rely on the seeders and thus are not usually very stable after the first couple of months. Speeds average around 100KB/s max usually on torrents over 2 months old (although there is pretty much no limit to a fresh torrent if a lot of seedboxes are connected), if they even still have more than 1 seeder. The average seeder however will not have a seedbox, thus typically I've found most seeders capable of seeding no more than 20 to 120 KB/s each.

On the other hand, a half decent XDCC bot is ran on a 100Mb connection and therefore can top out a stable 12MB/s which surpasses cyberlockers any day of the week.

It's true torrents CAN top that, but ONLY if they have enough seeders running seedboxes which ironically, typically a seedbox is ran off the same dedi that an xdcc bot could have been ran on anyhow.

[dark4yoyo]

I don't mind using torrents, since the popular torrents are usually as fast as xdcc on my connection (max 3.5 mbps), or nearly. And as I'm in France, I don't think we're being monitored at all, at any rate I've never received any warnings, even when downloading recent movies.

[JohnFlower]

Just used usenet to grab a couple of BD's that weren't available anywhere else... Got a average download speed of 8mb/s (100mbit connection). I was amazed at how fast it was. Might start using it more.

Edited July 16, 2012 by JohnFlower

[Zangou]

I don't mind using torrents, since the popular torrents are usually as fast as xdcc on my connection (max 3.5 mbps), or nearly. And as I'm in France, I don't think we're being monitored at all, at any rate I've never received any warnings, even when downloading recent movies.

What about hadopi and the 3 strikes law? Here is an article that might be relevant to your interests. It talks about some statistics for how many file sharers in France are on their first, second, and third strikes. http://torrentfreak....up-22-5-120119/

[corocoro]

Not to be rude, despite how my post may sound, but I find that order BS, because there is no way in hell cyberlockers top torrents and xdcc in speed, they never have, much less now when their speeds are at an all time low.

I don't know about your setup, but that order is based on real life experience.

I've seen both Usenet and cyberlockers max out the 1Gbit line to the server - something neither XDCC or torrents ever managed. At those speeds the limits of the other side and IO become what slows you down, not your own connection. I've never seen torrents go beyond around 200Mbit (I/O on the RAID can't keep up beyond that for random writes) and XDCC is usually caped by the other server to something between 40~100Mbit. XDCC also gets knocked down quite a bit by the fact you can only have a single connection to the server - which means that even if you could theoretically use get more bandwidth, you won't.

Usenet is placed in front of cyberlockers because it is nowadays delivering stable high speed while DDLs vary a bit with the time of day.

Here's a screenshot taken a minute or so ago:

I'm not in the mood to grab a bin of Usenet, so you'll have to take my word for that one.

[Hashman]

Hey All,

I'm pretty much a Torrent kind of guy... been using them for Donkey's year and they are still doing the trick for me (except for getting my dubbed Bleach fix - as they are not available on torrents)... I used Rapidshare and Megaupload for a while which worked well, but Torrents are still cheaper (free) compared to having to pay for a RS / Mega account. Luckily I live in South Africa and they aren't nearly as strict here as they are overseas (for now)...

Pro's of Torrents: Free, they have been around for ages, you can get decent speeds depending on how old the torrent is

Con's of Torrents: Infringement notices from ISP's and speeds depending on the age

Just my 2cents worth And it's quite nice being able to see everyone else's view point on this

[Strick9]

I use torrents mostly for TV shows and the occasional out-of-print album. (There have'nt been many good movies released on DVD lately and I refuse to watch a cam copy.) I like the torrent protocol because it gives the user a chance to give the material back to the community, making one a participant of the Internet rather than a consumer. Whenever I do get something, I always seed it back 5X. Yes, I have recieved a couple of nastygrams from my ISP, but that was about a year ago. I read that it's not your ISP that does the tracking, but the owner of the "intellectual property" that joins the peer group and records the IP addresses of the others in the group. Then, they have to do a WHOIS and complain to the ISPs. If they were to try to take further action, it would come out that they were participating in the same "illegal" activity, both leeching and seeding, which amounts to entrapment. The way I see it, it's not stealing music unless a song goes missing.

[dark4yoyo]

What about hadopi and the 3 strikes law? Here is an article that might be relevant to your interests. It talks about some statistics for how many file sharers in France are on their first, second, and third strikes. http://torrentfreak....up-22-5-120119/

Hadopi is kinda a joke and I've yet to hear about someone having even a "first strike".

Hadopi may dissapear altogether pretty soon with our new president.

[Rivinhal]

I don't mind using torrents, since the popular torrents are usually as fast as xdcc on my connection (max 3.5 mbps), or nearly. And as I'm in France, I don't think we're being monitored at all, at any rate I've never received any warnings, even when downloading recent movies.

Meh, me either, despite the fact I live in the US. It seems like people here are blowing copyright claims stuff out of proportion, or perhaps they just live in an area with a crazy observant provider or aren't very selective/smart about their downloading... I just find it odd that i've used torrents for like a decade now with no issues (and if they were going to shut ANYONE down, it would be me lol), and now people want to act as if torreting is an instant ticket to prison or something, despite the fact that most people (ie. the majority) have never had issues. Just irks me a bit. Also, generally, if you are smart enough to simply read comments and be selective about your downloads, you can avoid downloading files that others have had "issues" with. But that's just how I feel about torrenting and copyright protection.

But on topic, I say Yay. Torrents imo, are much more simple compared to XDCC and cyberlockers as they are quite hasslefree if you know what you are doing. It's literally click, and wait. Plus it's MUCH faster if you can find a file with proper seeds. (Cyberlockers and XDCC are both my secondary choices, both coming in 2nd place, although Cyberlockers are useless for anything beyond episodes, small files and such, while usenet is just useLESS imo.)

Edited July 26, 2012 by Rivinhal

[oathkeeper75]

I used to use torrents a lot of the time like 2-3 years ago, but now I usually just DDL from a few sites mainly and even when I do torrent it's just the newest episodes of animes an even then I hop on some open network in my room for it.

[SerafinaStar]

I used to use torrents a lot, but for fear of ISP notices I've stopped and mainly relied on DDL forums. From here on out I'll probably start using IRC/XDCC at the forums I am a member of just because DDL links are getting taken down/reported so often.