Torrents Are Not Illegal

[Tramposch 1]

What I HATE is when people think that torrents, just torrents are ILLEGAL.THEY ARE NOT ILLEGAL.They are files containing information, of WHERE to download something. Even if the torrent file is FOR downloading something illegal, it isn't illegal.At least I don't know how the laws work in that situation, it may be considered illegal since its kind of helping somebody do an illegal action.but it still makes me VERY angry when people say in general that torrents are illegal and things like "Torrents should be shutdown" or "You can't talk about torrents! they are illegal" so on and so forth! It irritates me very very much!TORRENTS CAN BE LEGAL.

[TheDisturbedOne 1]

Torrents ARE legal. In fact, the charges that the Swedish government made up to prosicute the owners of the Pirate Bay was along the lines of "Aiding Copyright infringement".Torrents are completely legal, and if you look around, there are tons of legal torrents. The only thing that really sucks about torrents is if you find an old torrent and nobody seeds it.

[akashi 0]

Some ppl said that because other ppl are torrenting licensed stuffs out there. But the torrent itself is legal for me. I download linux ISO and other free stuffs using torrent and it's true that it sucks if no one seeding the file you want

[truefusion 3]

Concerning the legislation (or judicial) system, if i can argue this, objects are not marked illegal, since objects by nature are neutral. Only actions can be marked illegal. For that reason, torrents will always be legal. Even the contents can be marked legal even though they may contain cracks to the program. For example, the torrents that contain cracks (almost) always contain the demo of the software. Merely downloading the contents of the torrents and installing the demo from the contents is not illegal. It becomes illegal when you take the time to apply any cracks to the program—the act of "unlocking" the program through means not allowed by the author(s) of the medium. Cracks are useless if not put to use—and i don't mean to imply that they should be put to use, especially since i consider myself a programmer.

[TheDisturbedOne 1]

Good point. And even the cracks aren't illegal, unless they are used.

[akashi 0]

Hm, but that doesn't mean we can have / distribute licensed materials such as mp3, movie, and dvd, right?

[FruitRocks 0]

Well, you try saying that to a judge after you downloaded a few gigs of mp3's and see what happens. Torrents themselves aren't illegal, its what you choose to download.

[truefusion 3]

Hm, but that doesn't mean we can have / distribute licensed materials such as mp3, movie, and dvd, right?

Right, what i said doesn't mean that. In those cases any DRM would have already been broken, and unless the creators themselves were giving away the torrents, it would be illegal to bear ownership of those forms of media if you do not already own that form of media. From what i hear you are entitled to a back-up of your data though you are not allowed to give away that back-up. My statement, though, was mostly directed to computer programs. Ripping is a different context than cracking.

[TheDisturbedOne 1]

I have downloaded torrents before that have lower quality of mp3s. Often when I rip right from a CD, the files are too big for me to have more than 20 albums on my iPod, so I get a lower quality from torrents. It would probably be perfectly legal, as long as you own the original media. I even think that you are allowed to get a backup if the disk is damaged or scratched, but I'm not completely sure.

[Alex Cicala 0]

What I HATE is when people think that torrents, just torrents are ILLEGAL.
THEY ARE NOT ILLEGAL.

They are files containing information, of WHERE to download something. Even if the torrent file is FOR downloading something illegal, it isn't illegal.
At least I don't know how the laws work in that situation, it may be considered illegal since its kind of helping somebody do an illegal action.

but it still makes me VERY angry when people say in general that torrents are illegal and things like "Torrents should be shutdown" or "You can't talk about torrents! they are illegal" so on and so forth! It irritates me very very much!

TORRENTS CAN BE LEGAL.

In Australia the general idea of torrents or torrent downloading will get our home internet suspended or possible jail terms/penalties. It's stupid that the government would think of such things to combat piracy. The best way too combat piracy is to find the source of the content uploader and give that person the penalties. I use torrents to send CS:S maps to people, the torrent content can contain up to 4gb sometimes. This is why I use torrents, it is more useful then flying overseas and delivering the content on a disc or USB drive. Piracy has latched onto torrents for sometime now. The general idea of people downloading the content is that the content will remain in-house and not sold or publicly viewed.

[akashi 0]

Does this also happen even we're downloading legal materials, such as linux distro, etc? If yes, than it really sucks.

In Australia the general idea of torrents or torrent downloading will get our home internet suspended or possible jail terms/penalties.

[myke 0]

In Australia the general idea of torrents or torrent downloading will get our home internet suspended or possible jail terms/penalties. It's stupid that the government would think of such things to combat piracy. The best way too combat piracy is to find the source of the content uploader and give that person the penalties. I use torrents to send CS:S maps to people, the torrent content can contain up to 4gb sometimes. This is why I use torrents, it is more useful then flying overseas and delivering the content on a disc or USB drive. Piracy has latched onto torrents for sometime now. The general idea of people downloading the content is that the content will remain in-house and not sold or publicly viewed.

is that really true!?
you can be jailed if you torrent some © files! yay
if im in your place! my life sucks forever! bec. downloading files at torrent is awsome, specially us people who loves free/crack software.. wahahaha

[nol 0]

Wasn't there something like this, like a big thing about shutting down limewire because of the mass illegal mp3 and video downloading on it? But they allowed limewire because it still does serve a purpose of torrents that aren't legal (however I don't think there are too many uses for limewire really, besides the downloading of illegal mp3s)

[iGuest 3]

Replying to myke>> downloading files at torrent is awsome, specially us people who loves free/crack software.. WahahahaTorrents should be banned only for you people.Learn to crack yourself and you'll no longer need the software... 

[iGuest 3]

you can set itunes or windows media player, whatever software you use to rip at a lower bitrate so the files arent as big and save a lot of time downloading torrents!