Is downloading of bit torrents legal

Many people claim that someone else did it but they lack evidence to prove it. For example, a year-old great-grandmother with a wireless router that is not password-protected is going to get more people to believe that she didn't download something than a college student with a password-protected router. The information provided on this site is not legal advice, does not constitute a lawyer referral service, and no attorney-client or confidential relationship is or will be formed by use of the site.

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Talk to a Lawyer. Grow Your Legal Practice. Meet the Editors. You have received a notice from your ISP indicating that you have been sued in a bit torrent file sharing lawsuit. What now? Yes, this is somewhat standard in these cases. Option 1: What if you just ignore the notice? Business Formation. Choosing a Business Structure. Sole Proprietorships. Forming a Corporation. See All Business Formation Articles. Talk to a Lawyer Need help? Start here. Practice Area Please select Zip Code.

How it Works Briefly tell us about your case Provide your contact information Choose attorneys to contact you. Related Products More. BitTorrent BT for short as I understand it, was actually developed inside the community of music traders - music fans who have been trading in live concert tapes by bands like the Grateful Dead since the early 's. The music that is traded is in most cases NOT copyrighted, and the trading is allowed by most of the bands and artists involved, as a matter of fact, many of the trading sites and networks stick to an ethical honor code of never selling any of the live recordings, and of immediately stopping the trade in certain recordings if the band involved requests they stop.

I discovered Torrents in this way, by following the live recordings of a number of contemporary bands. In the music trading communities that use BT, many shows are only available for a limited time such as a few days or a week, and then the seed is shut down.

You can also find vast libraries like Archive. So contrary to popular impressions, there is plenty of legal material out there for download on Torrents. Of course, there are always going to be those who "catch a ride" on the effectiveness of the Torrent downloads, and that's where all the other mostly copyrighted stuff comes in - the movies, TV shows, magazines, photos, documents, etc.

Posted by: J Schwab 03 Mar I quit using bit torrent years ago, but I can advise you to take caution if looking for old music or film files on places like Pirate's Bay. These sites are loaded with malware and I found the only safe way to poke around such files was to use Linux, which cannot run an. Ubuntu Linux is your easiest route, for it comes with a torrent client, but seriously--be prudent about what you download--you really don't want to get hit with a lawsuit because you wanted a few episodes of some TV show you missed or a movie you were too cheap to purchase--it just isn't worth the risk.

Posted by: Callie 03 Mar I don't download files, but did discover a couple of sites where I can watch old episodes of TV shows. Is a streaming site legal? Is it legal to watch movies on YouTube? Posted by: Charles 03 Mar Also many clients will send out requests for Random Chunks of the file they are seeking rather than downloading in order.

This tends to avoid the "everyone only has the start of the file" problem as the chance of a "hit" goes up. The Clients sometime even show this graphicaly as a line that gradually fills in one dot at a time.

Finaly it is good Netiquete to leave your client running after the download for at least as long as the download took, so that you can do your part in sharing the file. Your IP address will be in the Bittorent cache of the sites you got bits of the file from so other users will be looking to your computer to get bits of the file. Posted by: J Silberman 04 Mar Is Bittorrent Downloading Illegal? As Bob says, depends on what you are downloading or sharing.

There is a lot of legal content to download. Yes you need to be careful of what you are downloading to avoid malware. Some sites are more reputable than others. Bittorrent Downloading is a great capability that I frequently use legally. In regards to BT clients, I prefer Vuze. Easy to configure, easy to use. Posted by: cybercipher50 04 Mar I'd add an emphatic second to J Schwab's comments. If you're in the habit of downloading torrent files, check your hosts file - it'll be an eye-opener; it's also a great way to unwittingly become part of a bot-net.

Posted by: Paul 04 Mar I still love to download linux ISO's etc with Bittorrent as it seems much faster especially when servers are slow or overburdened. Also I used to be a die-hard uTorrent fan but have since switched to the lightweight open source qBittorrent www. Posted by: BaliRob 04 Mar Well done Bob - this is the first time I have read a fully informative article on the BitTorrent issue in one place.

Your information has inspired great comments and confessions ha ha ha. As for me, I have neither the need or use for such downloads and trying to do this in Indonesia would be a joke. Loved the analogy using the 'knife' by the way. Posted by: Henk Smulders 04 Mar Reason so many people download illigal stuf is because of the high price you need to pay for it. If good working software was sold for just a few bucks then everybody would buy the programs to be able to work trouble free with them, And, the company who made the program would probably will make more profit too.

Just think on it, If just million people would buy Windows-8 for only 25 dollar howmuch money would be made. Or a good PC protection program for 5 dollar each, I guess almost everybody would start paying for it. If you like quality movies for home use then you need to wait untill they coming out on DVD or better disks. Explain me why a movie that is already 3 or more months old does cost on DVD so much more than when it was brandnew in the cinema? Making stuff afordable for everybody results in way less illigal downloads, and that means a way higer sales rate for the makers, and as result, they get most likely way, way more income of there products.

Posted by: Sheri 04 Mar I completely agree with everything that has been said about torrent sites in the article and the comments: most of the downloading is done by the millions of people worldwide, who want to get the latest movies and albums for free - ILLEGALLY!

They think that by sitting at home downloading these movies and albums, no-one is going to know that they are in fact stealing them! However, I think that illegal downloading would be greatly reduced if they just brought the prices right down for DVD movies and music CD's.

Although, there are probably millions of people who download illegal copies and make further copies to sell at a tidy profit, which in my opinion is a much more serious crime.

What I don't understand is why Governments can't just close all the torrent sites down? Because one would think that would be a whole lot easier than leaving ISP's to sanction individual users and companies filing law suits against illegal downloaders? Posted by: Old Man 04 Mar Sheri said: What I don't understand is why Governments can't just close all the torrent sites down?

There are just too many legitimate uses. It would be like banning cars so they wouldn't be used as getaway vehicles. The "cure" would be worse than the "disease. One thing she said, though, has been well documented in various studies - lower the price to increase sales and make pirating less attractive.

As for those who think it's OK to download old movies and music, remember the Copyright has been upped to 75 years. So, unless what you are downloading was produced prior to , it's illegal. Even though the publishers may no longer care, it's still pirating. Websites like The Pirate Bay that offer illegal torrents are generally blocked in many countries and regions.

Luckily, that is not the case with licit torrenting websites and they are available worldwide. Unfortunately, speeds on the free movie torrents downloads website are generally slow.

Visit Public Domain Torrents. If you consider yourself a Linux buff, then straight away bookmark Linux Tracker. The Linux Bittorrent Website has been operational and tracking Linux torrents from the past 12 years. Linux Trackers display the added time, size, and category of every open-source torrent. Visit Linux Tracker. The enormous collection of 9, videos from the movies archive section makes Internet Archive one of the safe sites to download free movies on the Internet.

Besides movies, the torrents section of Internet Archive consists of 1,, ebooks, , items from the music and audio section of the Archive. Do note that these numbers are gathered from data and they have grown exponentially since then. Visit Internet Archive. BitTorrent is the primary technology that is utilized by every existing peer-to-peer file-sharing website.

The company behind this technology has a legit torrent website namely BitTorrent Now. In order to enhance the content library of BitTorrent Now, the official BitTorrent client has partnered with content creators. On this website, you will get access to numerous free and legal music torrents, movies torrents, and audiobooks torrents.

The modern and very well-developed material user interface is another major highlight of BitTorrent Now is its. Visit BitTorrent Now. Vodo kills two birds with one stone as it can be used for both discovering and uploading independent content. Similar to mainstream content streaming services, content is categorized. Vodo can help you discover the entertaining world of indie cinema. If you are reading this article from India, then definitely bookmark this website as its a prominent legal torrenting sites in India.

Using the platform you can support independent filmmakers in the form of donations. Lastly, Vodo sports a clean and easy to navigate interface and the free movies option showcases the entire content library of Vodo.