How to/How Not to be a Seeder

Something I forgot to mention in a previous post was exactly how one ends up becoming a seeder. In uTorrent, you are automatically set up as a seeder. You can actually specify exactly how much you want to contribute to re-seeding the file you just leeched from other users, or you can even choose not to contribute at all.

If you don't want uTorrent using up any bandwidth at all for uploading bits of your torrent files (the little amount that it does use) or it is against the law in your country to upload files via The Pirate Bay, I would recommend turning it off after you download the file. To do this you first need to open up uTorrent. After you open it, find the file that you just downloaded and under "Status" it should say “Seeding” and under “Up Speed” there may or may not be a number such as 20 kB/s, or in this case only 2.0 kB/s.

Now either right click the file and click the option called “Stop” or left click to highlight the file and click the red stop button on the top task bar.

Once clicked, the status should change to “Finished” and there should be nothing under “Up Speed.”

If you want to contribute but just don't want to give away all of your bandwidth, you can also limit the amount of bandwidth used to upload. To do this, find the file you just downloaded, right click it, find Bandwidth Allocation > Set Upload Limit > 10kB/s-250kB/s click one of the options and that's that!

It may seem annoying to have to seed and help others but just remember, you only reason you were even able to download that torrent in the first place was because there was someone else out there that was kind and willing enough to seed his file for you.

Disclaimer:

I am not responsible for any illegal activity due to this tutorial

Seeding certain files is not recommended in countries where it is illegal to do so.

Torrenting copyrighted material is not recommended in countries where it is illegal to do so

Bittorrenting: Venturing into The Pirate Bay

The Pirate Bay is a file sharing website that lets different people around the world upload and share files with others. It is extremely easy to use but as with anything, there are some precautions that need to be taken before entering this website, and there are things to be learned such as how to "seed".

Right when you enter thepiratebay.org you will notice the extremely simple layout. This is one of the reasons that this is my favorite website to use. Now lets start by searching a movie, lets go with Beastly (don't judge) (and remember, this is only an example, I do not recommend downloading this specific torrent because of certain copyright issues.). Just type Beastly into the search bar and hit enter.

One thing that I would like to note is that you will most likely get a pop-up after you search, but don't worry, just exit out of the pop-up and you're good to go. When you get to the next page, there will be a big list of sometimes confusing titles and this may be confusing at first but it is really pretty simple.

The first thing I will explain is what seeders and leechers are. On the right side of each torrent file there should be numbers under the letters LE and SE. LE stands for leechers, or how many people are using that torrent to download to their own computer. SE stands for seeders, or how many people have already downloaded the file but are still allowing uTorrent (or whatever program they are using) to share the file with others in the same way that they downloaded it. What you want to do first is find the file with the highest number of seeders while making sure that there aren't too many leechers either. A file with 500 seeders may seem good, but if it has 2000 leechers, you might want to look elsewhere.

Secondly, once you find a few that you are considering downloading, find the file size. a lot of movies are around 712MiB which will download farely quickly. The higher the number, usually the better the quality but also the slower the download. Although this is not always true. Something to also keep in mind is that 1 GiB is bigger than 712MiB so be aware of that.

Third, after you have found a file with a good amount of seeders and one that is the size you are comfortable with downloading, check to see if the author is any of these things: "Trusted" "VIP" "Helper". These are usually good signs that the file is safe.

Fourth, and almost one of the most important thing in my book, is check to see if it has any comments. If there are comments, they are either praising the download for how good it is, or warning others of viruses, so it really helps to read the comments before downloading. And although the chance is slim to get a virus from thepiratebay you always want to be safer than sorry.

Lastly, and the MOST IMPORTANT. Do not click the wrong "download" button. Never press the big button or any of the ads that say "download here". THIS is a picture of what you should click.

The reason I am making such a big deal out of this is because the first time I ever downloaded a torrent, I clicked the big download button because it looked right and it was always in the same spot unlike ads that move around to different spots from page to page. I ended up getting a virus that told me that my HDD was broken or something stupid and that I needed to buy certain virus software to fix it and it would only let me go to that one website and I couldn't open up any other application including my already installed anti-malware program. Luckily I already had manual virus protection so I got rid of the virus in safe mode. Don't be like me. Do it right the first time!

Have fun downloading!

Disclaimer:

I am not responsible for any illegal activity due to this tutorial

Torrenting copyrighted material is not recommended in countries where it is illegal to do so

Bittorrenting: What do I Need and Where do I Go?

Bittorenting for the first time can be a scary and unfamiliar process. There are thousands of scams and viruses just waiting for an unsuspecting first time downloader to come in clicking around without caution and then BAM. They get hit with spyware, adware, trojans, and other viruses that can make a computer completely unusable. At first the viruses can be sneaky and quiet, but once they start adding up, they can steal all of your computer's bandwidth, CPU processing space, infect your Hard Disk Drive, spy on your computer, and make it almost impossible for a normal user to ever get rid of them. So the first thing you are going to need, is caution.

Caution is one thing that I did not have when I first started downloading. I was young and stupid and thought I knew what I was doing until I finally ended up making my computer useless until I figured out how to fix the mistakes I had made. I will go into the exact steps of how to be cautious in a later post, but for now the one piece of advice I am going to state is do not start clicking around on everything that looks legitimate. And there certainly are exceptions to this rule but I have come to realize that you should never press the big button. (This rule is only meant to be applied with The Pirate Bay) I will go into a bit more detail about what that means in my next post. For now, lets talk about what programs you are going to need.

1. The first thing you will need is a platform for downloading your files onto. This is similar to Itunes or Steam, which are used for downloading and organized music, movie, and video game files. The platform I recommend using is uTorrent <-Click to go to website. Once you are on the main page, there should be a button that looks like this.Go ahead and click the button and when it prompts you, click save file. It shouldn't take too long to finish downloading.
2. Secondly, you are going to need a good website to download files from. There are quite a few, including uTorrent which has its own search engine used to find downloadable torrents, but the website that I highly recommend is thepiratebay<-Click. The Pirate Bay is a polish website where torrenting is perfectly legal. They even joke around at the idea of Americans trying to sue them. On their website they have posted threat emails and their responses which I find quite humorous and have linked in the word "responses". Something to remember about The Pirate Bay is that they do have ads, and one must be careful not to click the ad and download the wrong file. There is also one pop up every time you enter The Pirate Bay, but this is just business and it is not a pop up virus so do not worry.
3. Lastly, an optional step, but recommended if you are planning on downloading movies. The Pirate Bay's torrents have a very wide range of video file formats that microsoft video player and many other default players will just not play, for instance mkv which is a Russian file. There is one program that I recommend above all others. VLC Media Player(Click). VLC will play almost every video format out there, so once you set it as your default video player, you will never have to worry about a video not playing again. Once you get to the website you should see something along the lines of this...

Click this button and save file when prompted as with any normal download.

So far, I've given you the materials you need, the place to go, and the caution you should have and I hope this helps you to get started on your journey to bittorenting. The steps listed are the basic stepping stones needed, but there is always more that can be learned such as which files are safe to download, how to tell the difference between an ad and the real thing, how to find either the fastest download or instead the highest quality download, and lastly how to become a good sharer and seed files so that it makes it easier for everyone to download.

Links Used:

http://www.utorrent.com/

http://thepiratebay.org/

http://thepiratebay.org/legal

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

What is Torrenting and What are the Legal Dangers?

Torrenting, which is the short term for bittorent, is known as P2P, or peer to peer sharing in which many different users contribute to the uploading of a single file or application. This file is split up into many different bits from each of the sources and then put back together to recreate the final product. This form of downloading makes it easy to share files and the breaking down of the files makes downloading much faster than downloading from one source. Most torrents are free of charge making it a popular option for downloading music, movies, games, and computer applications.

Bittorrent downloading has become one of the most popular and easy ways to get free music. A popular file sharing program that was recently shutdown was Limewire, which was the free streaming of mp3 files using bittorrent file sharing. Limewire along with many other file sharing programs make downloading files very easy as long as you know what you are doing, but the recent shutdown of Limewire has made the dangers of torrenting obvious.

Bittorrenting has become extremely controversial in the United States of America and other countries as to whether it should be illegal to share certain files and applications through the internet for free or not. In some other countries, for instance Sweden or Canada, laws against bitorrenting are widely unenforced, although it is illegal to upload (not download) music files in Canada. In places such as, but not limited to, the United States, parts of Europe, and Australia, file sharers can be sued for thousands of dollars.

It is important to know the risks of bittorrenting in countries where it is illegal, and even though many do know these legal risks, thousands of torrents are downloaded and uploaded everyday. Torrenting is growing in popularity around the world and as much as many authorities would like to see it disappear, torrenting will always live strong as long as technology exists.