Login
You're viewing the mstdn.social public feed.

Replies

  • Dianealienghic@timeloop.cafe
    Jul 9, 2026, 10:58 PM

    @akamran @gwendolenau

    Bittorrent is a protocol for sharing large fixed files that takes advantage of the upload bandwidth of those who are trying to download a copy of the file.

    To take a simple and safe example, libreoffice is a relatively large application so they have torrent links on their download page.

    libreoffice.org/download/

    if you have a torrent application installed for example
    transmissionbt.com/

    after you download the torrent file it should load into the torrent downloader application which will connect to a "tracker" server to see what other computers that have parts of the file you're interested in to download from.

    But your computer will also announce to the tracker what parts you have and someone might download them from you.

    For things like free software downloads or archives of big things like wikipedia this is all totally fine.

    peertube internally uses bittorrents to help share the load of distributing the video file, so if one video became popular others watching the video can share parts so the primary host doesn't get crushed needing to serve more data than what the cheap server can support.

    However people often want to share commercial movie, music, and tv files and because the default behavior of bittorrent shares your IP address, a motivated company can force your ISP to turn over your account information over to the law suit happy media companies.

    💬 2🔄 6⭐ 7
  • Bitslingers-R-UsAnachronistJohn@zia.io
    Jul 9, 2026, 11:13 PM

    @alienghic @akamran @gwendolenau It’s also used to distribute files that, if hosted with regular hosting providers, might get taken down, because hosting companies tend to cave to political and/or megacorp whims.

    For instance, I’m currently torrenting (making available to others) a few terabytes of Gaza genocide files so they can’t be erased from the Internet.

    💬 1🔄 0⭐ 2
  • 💬 1🔄 0⭐ 4
  • datenwolfdatenwolf@chaos.social
    Jul 10, 2026, 7:36 AM

    @akamran @AnachronistJohn @gwendolenau @alienghic

    As long as the distribution of the files is legal within the jurisdiction you're seeding them, you're mostly fine.

    The trouble is, that seeding material you don't have the copyright to through your "normal" IP will have lawyers crawl up your ass with easy-money-cease-and-desist orders. In Germany there's a number of law firms specialized on that.

    There's zero privacy in BT and trackers will just blurt out the IP addresses of everyone seeding.

    💬 0🔄 0⭐ 3
  • 💬 0🔄 0⭐ 2