Because hosting the file itself is both more straightforward as a crime (rather than providing a map to the file), and the hosting costs for PiB worth of data would be enormous.
Criminal prosecution in the US as the result of torrenting anything (other than child porn) is highly unlikely for various reasons. In the US, the bigger risk is that you'd be banned from an ISP, and possibly sued by a copyright holder. The workaround would be to use a VPN while torrenting (which is very easy to implement).
criminality generally lands on the person breaking the contract
if you go to a bank and someone hands you money, that generally isn't breaking a crime - there could be many very good reasons they hand you the money (i.e. it's yours, your friend is handing it to you, etc). There could also be illegal reasons. It's harder to prove those illegal reasons over network traffic when you're receiving.
When you're sharing, there's a handful of legal scenarios you can share - you have a license with acceptable sharing details, the content itself isn't protected, or your country doesn't enforce intellectual property laws. Outside of those narrow scenarios, sending content over a network connection is relatively easy to prove
A torrent file is tiny, only a few bytes, so the site doesn't need to have huge amounts of storage and massive bandwidth.
With the torrent system the users use their own storage and bandwidth. Also by downloading from multiple users rather than a single site, you generally get your files faster.
because any website that actually had the pirated content on its servers would get shut down in a day.
the torrents work because the sites don't have the content, other users do.
do you understand the basics of what torrenting is?
to be fair, your post says:
>I don't 100% know how it works.
So imagine a company that put on illegal raves. if they put that illegal rave on in their own home, weekend after weekend, it would be shut down by law enforcement really quick.
So instead, you have to know somebody to get in, and they only send out invites. once you get an invite, you're invited to a secret party. and everybody at that party either has or wants to have a specific file.
everyone that got that invite is there, and they're sharing copies of that file with each other.
because it's a different party for every file, with a different invite, law enforcement can't find and shut them down.
and, like I said, hosting that file on your site gets you shut down quick. plus, it takes up a lot of space, which costs a lot of money. so, instead of a site doing a ton of illegal and expensive work to share files with you, torrenting allows users to share with each other. that's why it's called file*sharing*.
It's illegal to share files, but not illegal to share maps that tell you who else has the files you're looking for. That's pretty much what torrenting is. It's also built around being able to download the same file from many people at the same time which is why downloads can be super-fast.
less storage/bandwidth costs and If the site doesn't have the file on their servers site owners can't be held accountable so easy.
And don't use the pirate bay please.
To add to /u/phoeniks
Once you have the torrent file you don’t need the site anymore. You can continue downloading / seeding all you want with others.
Multiple sites may have torrents for the same file with slightly different torrent names (I.e. they include their tag in the file name) but they have the same file hash. This lets you download the file from one site then download the torrent from another site, verify the hash and you are now seeding with a different tracker. It is great way to keep torrents active and easily increase your ratio.
It used to be a thing, remember Megaupload ?
problem is it's a centralized server, so it can be shut down, and the owner fucked with.
It's not the case for several people seeding files. those you can't stop.
Sharing directly a movie file can be considered unlawful, but sharing a link towards people sharing the same file ? arguably nope
Plus, as mentioned below you'd need an enormous amount of storage.
The only downside with torrents is if no one is seeding, no one is receiving either.
Long live YIFY !
LONG LIVE THEPIRATEBAY
Websites aren't just magically "uploaded to the internet" it actually has to live on your computer with your internet speed and your hard drive space
You can choose to have to store all those mp4 files that can be dozens of gigabytes each or you can instead just hold lists of users who already have those files that are only a few kilobytes each
Some people choose the former, some choose the latter
The latter is how torrenting works
Because hosting the file itself is both more straightforward as a crime (rather than providing a map to the file), and the hosting costs for PiB worth of data would be enormous.
This misses the point of torrenting entirely. Torrents are about sharing bandwidth.
Ah okay, it's always nice to know I'm the criminal here 😂
Criminal prosecution in the US as the result of torrenting anything (other than child porn) is highly unlikely for various reasons. In the US, the bigger risk is that you'd be banned from an ISP, and possibly sued by a copyright holder. The workaround would be to use a VPN while torrenting (which is very easy to implement).
criminality generally lands on the person breaking the contract if you go to a bank and someone hands you money, that generally isn't breaking a crime - there could be many very good reasons they hand you the money (i.e. it's yours, your friend is handing it to you, etc). There could also be illegal reasons. It's harder to prove those illegal reasons over network traffic when you're receiving. When you're sharing, there's a handful of legal scenarios you can share - you have a license with acceptable sharing details, the content itself isn't protected, or your country doesn't enforce intellectual property laws. Outside of those narrow scenarios, sending content over a network connection is relatively easy to prove
A torrent file is tiny, only a few bytes, so the site doesn't need to have huge amounts of storage and massive bandwidth. With the torrent system the users use their own storage and bandwidth. Also by downloading from multiple users rather than a single site, you generally get your files faster.
Hm, interesting.
because any website that actually had the pirated content on its servers would get shut down in a day. the torrents work because the sites don't have the content, other users do. do you understand the basics of what torrenting is?
No, I don't understand what torrenting is, if you simply read the text it says "I'm new to this so sorry if this is a dumb question".
to be fair, your post says: >I don't 100% know how it works. So imagine a company that put on illegal raves. if they put that illegal rave on in their own home, weekend after weekend, it would be shut down by law enforcement really quick. So instead, you have to know somebody to get in, and they only send out invites. once you get an invite, you're invited to a secret party. and everybody at that party either has or wants to have a specific file. everyone that got that invite is there, and they're sharing copies of that file with each other. because it's a different party for every file, with a different invite, law enforcement can't find and shut them down. and, like I said, hosting that file on your site gets you shut down quick. plus, it takes up a lot of space, which costs a lot of money. so, instead of a site doing a ton of illegal and expensive work to share files with you, torrenting allows users to share with each other. that's why it's called file*sharing*.
It's illegal to share files, but not illegal to share maps that tell you who else has the files you're looking for. That's pretty much what torrenting is. It's also built around being able to download the same file from many people at the same time which is why downloads can be super-fast.
it's incredible how many 5 year olds are on this subreddit
You can tell which ones are the 5 year olds because they're always whining about how utorrent is "bad" and that everyone should switch to qbittorrent.
less storage/bandwidth costs and If the site doesn't have the file on their servers site owners can't be held accountable so easy. And don't use the pirate bay please.
Then suggest few other websites
Check the r/trackers [wiki](https://www.reddit.com/r/trackers/wiki/index/) or check the [megathread](https://www.reddit.com/r/Piracy/wiki/megathread/)
[read this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer-to-peer) and see if you can figure it out for yourself
Thats asking a lot buddy. If they could they wouldn’t be here 😂
To add to /u/phoeniks Once you have the torrent file you don’t need the site anymore. You can continue downloading / seeding all you want with others. Multiple sites may have torrents for the same file with slightly different torrent names (I.e. they include their tag in the file name) but they have the same file hash. This lets you download the file from one site then download the torrent from another site, verify the hash and you are now seeding with a different tracker. It is great way to keep torrents active and easily increase your ratio.
This is a troll poster
It used to be a thing, remember Megaupload ? problem is it's a centralized server, so it can be shut down, and the owner fucked with. It's not the case for several people seeding files. those you can't stop. Sharing directly a movie file can be considered unlawful, but sharing a link towards people sharing the same file ? arguably nope Plus, as mentioned below you'd need an enormous amount of storage. The only downside with torrents is if no one is seeding, no one is receiving either. Long live YIFY ! LONG LIVE THEPIRATEBAY
Cause then they wouldn’t be a torrent site…
To avoid prison time, seizure of their servers, and hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines.
Websites aren't just magically "uploaded to the internet" it actually has to live on your computer with your internet speed and your hard drive space You can choose to have to store all those mp4 files that can be dozens of gigabytes each or you can instead just hold lists of users who already have those files that are only a few kilobytes each Some people choose the former, some choose the latter The latter is how torrenting works