Gadgetory

if you downloaded a TV show or a movie without paying for it the last few years you probably used a torrent there one of the major ways to transfer file making up as much as a half of all Internet traffic by some estimates they're a big deal and while it can seem like torrenting is just downloading a file directly from the web the reality is a lot more interesting just to keep things legal let's say you're looking for the complete works of Shakespeare it starts with the torrent file usually named after whatever your download that's not the full package though it just lets your computer know what it's looking for to read that file you need a client something like utorrent or transmission which manages the download and assembles the fine assembling that file is really complicated work when it becomes a torrent your file gets broken down into thousands of tiny snippets and the torrent file lets you know where to find each one one might be on a computer in Singapore another in Brazil but the client lets you download all of them separately and reassemble the minor computer and once each chunk of data is safely on your computer you start sending it out again sharing the parts of the file you have well you look for the ones you don't to figure out where to get those snippets you need a tracking system typically a server that's specified the initial torrent file it keeps track of who's got which snippets giving you a real-time map where all the different parts of the file are there are a couple technical benefits to this I like direct downloads a single torrent can serve tens of thousands of people without any significant load on the track lesser if a few nodes go down the network doesn't really care it turns out to be a really robust way to distribute big files across a lot of far-flung computers but if we're honest that's not the real reason to get files this way the real reason is you're stealing things and you don't want to get caught if a single person we're hosting the file that would be the first personal lawyers would go after and back when people were using Napster and so see that's exactly what I have but now when they want to pull the same move on a popular torrent they have to go after 10,000 people at once it still happens but it's a lot harder for content owners and it doesn't happen nearly as much they can also go after the tracking surfers like they did with the Pirate Bay but systems like magnet links mean you don't always necessarily need a tracking server it's the result of a twenty-year arms race between pirates and entertainment industry and at least for right now it's just a kind of a free-form beautiful