4 ms·

How many people are using torrents for non-piracy reasons?

by nr2x 4y ago

zahma 4y ago
You can download some Linux distros and other open source software this way, but yeah…it is largely used for piracy.
- blooalien 4y ago
  > "You can download some Linux distros and other open source software this way" … That's pretty much all I use it for. Great for grabbing the latest shiny Linux iso image.
akdor1154 4y ago
Yeah it makes me a bit sad.. torrents are technically really cool, and the casual anarchist in me likes how they remove the need for expensive infra/bandwidth to serve huge data. Yet the overwhelming use by far is just to pirate vids.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- heartbeats 4y ago
  People will use a technology for what it's best at. It's no different from how people use(d) Bitcoin mainly to buy drugs. BitTorrent is maybe slightly superior for legal file-sharing, but strongly superior for illegal one, and so it only dominates in the latter. I don't think it's anything to be sad about; people use it because it works. It would be much sadder if it weren't used at all.
- lambdadmitry 4y ago
  Shouldn't the casual anarchist in you rejoice at people hitting back on predatory, monopolistic, customer-hostile business practices of Big Movie though?
jpgvm 4y ago
Installed ArchLinux from iso downloaded via BitTorrent just this weekend. BT is great for me because I live in Thailand and we don't always have the best mirrors but generally plenty of peers on fast domestic fibre links.
- nr2x 4y ago
  That’s awesome, perfect use case.
philliphaydon 4y ago
I’ve used it once in the past to get a distro iso. Wish more stuff used it.
- nr2x 4y ago
  Good point, I forgot that use case.
Shank 4y ago
Archive.org supports torrents for downloading huge files (i.e., >50gb archives of content) and the like. You can probably debate endlessly piracy, ethics, "backups of media that have been purchased but have rotted away due to disc rot", etc. But fundamentally torrents are just a mechanism for delivery of large files or large sets of files, and they work extremely well for things in the tens-of-gigabytes range.
strken 4y ago
The old WoW launcher used to use torrents for distributing the base game and for updates. For some reason they removed that.
midasz 4y ago
Another example is Facepacks for Football Manager, those are in the tens of GBs. Torrents are a great way to share them around.
Akronymus 4y ago
I occasionally use a torrent to simply move large files to a slow endpoint (essentially a 1:1 connection), so I don't have to keep the session alive for the whole file move. I know there are probably other, better, solutions for that, but it works for me.
- jokethrowaway 4y ago
  magic-wormhole would be a better alternative it's durable (as long as the process is still running it will keep sending on reconnection) and more private

How many people are using torrents for non-piracy reasons?

by nr2x 4y ago

How many people are using torrents for non-piracy reasons?

zahma 4y ago

You can download some Linux distros and other open source software this way, but yeah…it is largely used for piracy.

blooalien 4y ago
> "You can download some Linux distros and other open source software this way" … That's pretty much all I use it for. Great for grabbing the latest shiny Linux iso image.

akdor1154 4y ago

Yeah it makes me a bit sad.. torrents are technically really cool, and the casual anarchist in me likes how they remove the need for expensive infra/bandwidth to serve huge data. Yet the overwhelming use by far is just to pirate vids.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
heartbeats 4y ago
People will use a technology for what it's best at. It's no different from how people use(d) Bitcoin mainly to buy drugs. BitTorrent is maybe slightly superior for legal file-sharing, but strongly superior for illegal one, and so it only dominates in the latter. I don't think it's anything to be sad about; people use it because it works. It would be much sadder if it weren't used at all.
lambdadmitry 4y ago
Shouldn't the casual anarchist in you rejoice at people hitting back on predatory, monopolistic, customer-hostile business practices of Big Movie though?

jpgvm 4y ago

Installed ArchLinux from iso downloaded via BitTorrent just this weekend. BT is great for me because I live in Thailand and we don't always have the best mirrors but generally plenty of peers on fast domestic fibre links.

nr2x 4y ago
That’s awesome, perfect use case.

philliphaydon 4y ago

I’ve used it once in the past to get a distro iso. Wish more stuff used it.

nr2x 4y ago
Good point, I forgot that use case.

Shank 4y ago

Archive.org supports torrents for downloading huge files (i.e., >50gb archives of content) and the like. You can probably debate endlessly piracy, ethics, "backups of media that have been purchased but have rotted away due to disc rot", etc. But fundamentally torrents are just a mechanism for delivery of large files or large sets of files, and they work extremely well for things in the tens-of-gigabytes range.

strken 4y ago

The old WoW launcher used to use torrents for distributing the base game and for updates. For some reason they removed that.

midasz 4y ago

Another example is Facepacks for Football Manager, those are in the tens of GBs. Torrents are a great way to share them around.

Akronymus 4y ago

I occasionally use a torrent to simply move large files to a slow endpoint (essentially a 1:1 connection), so I don't have to keep the session alive for the whole file move. I know there are probably other, better, solutions for that, but it works for me.

jokethrowaway 4y ago
magic-wormhole would be a better alternative it's durable (as long as the process is still running it will keep sending on reconnection) and more private