Torrents

[Evil Ryan]

We all know what they are and we all use them. Are they actually legal? How are these sites able to stay up? Free downloading isnt very acceptable to most companies. Remember the whole Napster crisis? Napster wasnt free anymore, but then all of a sudden tons of these programs and sites went up and nobody is saying anything.

Thoughts?

:evil:Ry4n

[Lee]

The problem with torrents, much like tube sites, is that they have been given a bad name because of a few that have gone the piracy route.

Torrents, in their humble beginnings, were actually business tools used by some pretty major corporations to allow their workers to transmit large powerpoint files from cross country location to cross country location.

So in their original format, they are perfectly legal to use and operate, unfortunately as with most things usefull, people start to abuse them which gives them a bad name, much like tube sites right now.

Regards,

Lee

[vaqueros]

I agree with Lee. The technology of torrents is neutral, it can be used for legitimate or illegal purposes. I was talking with my brother, a musician, yesterday about some out-of-print music books he has been looking for. I suggested that he check Project Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org) to see if they have them. It's a wonderful site that preserves and publishes out-of-copyright works and one of the transfer methods they use is torrents.

Kevin