A coworker asked me yesterday about how to use bittorrent, so I thought I’d include a quick guide on japadamus. 

Basically, bittorrent is a peer-to-peer file sharing system, but unlike kazaa for example, it segments a single file into many little pieces that are shared by many users.  So, when you download a single file, you are actually getting a bunch of little pieces of the file from different users.  Similarly, when you share a file, you are sending off little pieces of the file to different users.

Overall, it is very easy and pretty safe.  I’ve been using it since kazaa fell off, and I would say it’s superior to peer-to-peer networks in almost every way.

First, download and install a bittorrent client.  I use Azureus.  You can get it here.  It is free and it is one of the best bittorrent clients i have used.  the bittorrent client helps to find out where all the little file pieces are, and put them together in the corrent order to you get your complete file.  you can’t really use bittorrent without one.

Next, go to a torrent portal to find some stuff to download.  My favorite currently is BT Junkie.  Other good ones include TorrentReactor, MegaNova, IsoHunt and Pirate Bay.

Basically, torrent portals provide you with a search mechanism for the millions of torrentss that are out there.  the one i listed provide various types of search, and you can often specify searches for video, audio, application, games, etc.

Once you find a file you want, you can just click on it and click ‘open.’  That should open up Azureus and start the download.  You may be asked where you want to save the file, etc.

Note that the torrent file you download from these sites is not an actual song or movie or whatever.  It just tells your bittorrent client how to go out and find all the little pieces of your file from other sharers, and how to put this file together.  The torrent files are actually very small, and download in about a second.

And that’s pretty much it.  If you are downloading a big file, i.e. gigs, it can take a day or more to download.  But normally files such as a single album download pretty fast.

You may also want to turn on port forwarding to improve your download speed.  This is a little more complex, and there is a good guide here.  This isn’t mandatory, but it can speed things up considerably for you.

As for piracy concerns, I haven’t seen any cases with the RIAA suing bittorrent users.  So far, i’ve only seen the RIAA going after bittorrent portals which provide access to torrent files.  With that said, all IP information about bittorrent users is available while your are downloading/sharing, so it is possible that a suit could be brought up against a bittorrent user.  What I think will happen first however, is that the RIAA will go after the original torrent seeders (the people who first post up a file), since that person has the clearest link between sharing and downloading.  I think it is unlikley that the RIAA will attempt to go after individual bittorrent downloaders, in the near future at least.

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