The Power of the Torrent
February 15, 2008
The Internet is a media-junkie’s dream store. It is open 24 hours a day, every day, and is not a walk but a just a click away. There is enough readily-accessible multimedia to fill even the pickiest of critics’ music and movie collections — so how does one get to it?
The main way of downloading multimedia is through a peer-to-peer (P2P) network. At Tufts, however, everyone using the university-provided Internet is banned from joining P2P networks and sharing multimedia through programs such as Kazaa, Limewire, or BearShare. I suggest forgetting about this kind of P2P downloading. It’s not worth the consequences.
For Tufts students, torrenting is definitely best. Torrenting, much like “Googling,” is an Internet-derived verb that refers to downloading bits of one multimedia file from many computers within a network. Torrenting can be used to download nearly every type of computer file, most of which are movies, CD’s, and software, and are technically illegal to download. Unlike some P2P networking, Tufts doesn’t devote the resources or energy to restrict or prevent students from torrenting.
There are two quick steps that give anyone with an Internet connection the power to torrent. First, download a torrent client, the fancy name for the software that downloads and reassembles the individual pieces of a torrented file. There are many torrent clients, but this author suggests Googling uTorrent for a PC only, or Azureus or BitTorrent for both Mac and PC. All are free. It is now possible to download files — but from where?
The second step is finding a torrent to download. Search for torrents using Web site search engines created exclusively to sift through torrents. Some of the best sites for torrent searching are torrentz.com, sumotorrent.com, and mininova.org. Type into one of these web sites’ search engines the name of the movie, CD, artist discography, or software that you want and watch it return a neatly organized index of results, all there for your downloading pleasure.
Beware, however, of the rare but still worrisome viruses. A torrent’s label does not fully reveal all the files inside the single torrent file. For example, torrenting Radiohead’s newest album In Rainbows would require downloading a single torrent file, titled In Rainbows, which would have 10 individual song files contained in it.
Sometimes, torrents will contain hidden files which can be harmful to your computer. They are rare, but it is worth taking two precautions to prevent downloading them. After searching for a torrent and selecting one to download, check the file’s table of contents. The aforementioned websites all provide an easy-to-understand breakdown of the files found within each torrent file. The file types should always correspond to what you plan on downloading. If you plan on downloading a movie, the torrent should contain a movie file (.avi, for example); likewise, CD torrents should contain audio files such as .mp3. Torrents will often come with a word or text document with information about the torrent, so do not be alarmed if your torrent has .doc or .txt files attached. If you are downloading anything other than software, never download a torrent containing a file ending in .exe or any other executable file extension.
It is also beneficial to check a torrent’s comments, which are displayed on the same webpage as the torrent’s table of contents and other information. Once you have selected a torrent, download it using your torrent client (your torrent client will automatically ask you to begin the download). Relax and enjoy; you are now on your way to building the ultimate multimedia collection.
*The author’s name has been changed to protect his identity.