Are Bittorents legal?

[TheGLIVEN]

Are Bittorents legal?

[Lord Dalek]

That's fairly vague. Most arent but some are.

[Duke]

Depends on what you're downloading. For instance, downloading torrents of, say, One Piece or CSI or Survivor episodes not released by the companies that owns the rights is illegal.

However, if you download one of the Bittorrent from the official licensor (such as ADV's recent Bittorrent packages or a band that offers their album on their website), then it's perfectly legal.

The program itself is 100% legal, just like KaZaA, Napster, Morpheus, and all the other P2P programs are (though BT isn't P2P). Though at least 80% of most Bittorrent stuff is illegal, and highly chastised if DVDs have been released in your home country of said shows.

[solarflere]

Torrents and P2P's (Peer to Peer) aplications have always been legal. Its not the old Napster. The files that you transfer between them might be ilegal (depends on the files of cource). Napster was deemed ilegal because it restricted any other file to be transfered other than MP3. So basicaly to answer your question, bit torrents are legal, just be careful what you transfer through them.

[solarflere]

Depends on what you're downloading. For instance, downloading torrents of, say, One Piece or CSI or Survivor episodes not released by the companies that owns the rights is illegal.

However, if you download one of the Bittorrent from the official licensor (such as ADV's recent Bittorrent packages or a band that offers their album on their website), then it's perfectly legal.

The program itself is 100% legal, just like KaZaA, Napster, Morpheus, and all the other P2P programs are (though BT isn't P2P). Though at least 80% of most Bittorrent stuff is illegal, and highly chastised if DVDs have been released in your home country of said shows. Napster was ilegal because it was made to pirate music, nothing else.

[mikestorm]

P2P and BitTorrent only refer to the method in which files are transferred. The legality issue focuses on the content of what is transferred.

Anything that is public domain that is transferred via BitTorrent or P2P is perfectly legal. Any transfers of copywrited material is not. Unfortunately, about 99% of the transfers via BitTorrent or P2P is copywrited, so people automatically assume everything about P2P and BitTorrent is illegal.

P2P technology was pretty slick back in the day, but Bram Cohen's creation (BitTorrent) is absolutely ingenious. Anyone who's downloaded a torrent with a properly configured system knows how lightning fast it can be. Also, unlike P2P, BitTorrent more efficiently enforces sharing, cutting down on (or at least identifying) leechers. Also, the collective's downloading habits can affect download speed. If no one leeches (many seeders), then everyone's downloads would be lightning fast, if everybody leeches, then the downloads become sloooow.

[sdp]

That's fairly vague. Most arent but some are.
you have it backwards, most are but some aren't.

and P2P and torrents are two totally different things, i woldn't group them together.

[Jave]

Are bittorrents illegal?

The software? No. The files? Most of them, yes.

[mikestorm]

That's fairly vague. Most arent but some are.you have it backwards, most are but some aren't.

and P2P and torrents are two totally different things, i woldn't group them together. Actually you have it backwards. Most content traded via P2P or BitTorrent is copyrighted and therefore illegal.

Also, while P2P and BitTorrent refer to two distinct technologies, they both share the same purpose.

[Romanesque]

Actually you have it backwards. Most content traded via P2P or BitTorrent is copyrighted and therefore illegal.Y'know, one can try to rationalize why one way might be true, but does anyone actually have any stats on the matter?

Also, while P2P and BitTorrent refer to two distinct technologies, they both share the same purpose.For illegal file sharing, yeah, the ultimate purpose is about the same, but for legal file distribution, no, the purpose isn't the same at all.

--Romey

[zmanjz]

Actually p2p includes things like Instant messenger file transfers.


I use those everyday to quick send memos, pictures, and brief drafts.

ADV has put out several well publicized bit torrents containing promotional materials/trailers, and they were awesome.


so in short, Bittorrents ARE legal, however they can be used to do Legal, Illegal or semi-legal things.

[AF$]

Here is the breakdown. Your bittorrent client (Azuerus, etc) is legal. Having this program is perfectly fine. Downloading torrent files and sharing legal, not copyrighted files is also fine. Downloading copyrighted materials (movies, tv shows, etc...) are about 99% of the time not legal, depending on who owns the copyright and who they allow to distribute the media. As others have said, Bittorrent is used by many companies to distribute legal files, such as software updates (Blizzard for World of Warcraft), game trailers, that kind of thing. Bittorrent itself is not inherently illegal, it's what you download with it.

[atf487]

Bittorrent has some very good legal uses though, so while many of these p2p programs bite the dust I think BT will stick around.

I use it for some legal things, like new Linux distros.