Who creates bittorrent .torrent files

Question

I am creating a presentaion about the bittorent protocol. Of course I understand how it works. But I am wondering, who would create a .torrent file for a resource and risk legal issues? I could imagine that mostly the operators of trackers or create them themselfes to have more users on their website. I try to find a logical reason for a private person to upload a new (for instance) music file and risk legal issues.

Edit: I know that P2P is of course also a good way to easily share legal content. But don't be naive: "Of 12,500 most popular torrent files, only two files were legally distributed on BitTorrent" (see https://kickass.so/community/show/invention-bit-torrent-and-some-fun-facts/). I'm explicitly talking about content with copyright.

Answer 1

Why are you assuming that and individual who uploads a new .torrent file is risking legal issues? If I were to record a new album of self written songs that I produced and then create a .torrent so anyone could download it, I'm not risking anything. Maybe I want to give everyone a chance to listen to the music I created.

Torrenting files has a negative perception about it because most people use it for illegal purposes. Back when I was in college there was a student ran tracker on the network that was primarily used to distribute large files such as video lectures since parts of the network was on 10Mbit connections.

However to answer your question, creating the .torrent file doesn't really mean legal issues. The act of initially seeding the torrent is where you'll get nailed to the wall. I would guess that the most likely reason to create a torrent of copyrighted material and seed it would be either because your don't care about copyright laws, or you have malicious intent because there is a payload in the torrent content.

Answer 2

Torrents are not illegal. Distributing or downloading copyrighted data without permission is illegal. There are many legitimate torrents out there. Many Linux distros offer torrents of their OS. World of Warcraft uses torrents to update their game. You can make a torrent out of any file, just make sure you have the rights to distribute it.

Answer 3

You do. In fact, many torrent clients let you do that, and add trackers.

Now, lets say I had an awesomesauce remix of fedora, full of software for helping in the conservation of wild Heffalumps and Woozles. I may include the calls of said creatures, or music that puts them in the mood (Can't save the species without babies!). I don't have a ton of bandwidth, but I know the conservation community would be glad to help.

I do happen to have a torrent client that lets me do that - qbitorrent in my case

(Yeah, its fedora alpha. My distro is as real as the animals that need saving)

I just feed it webseeds (which are useful if you know someone who can host the file), trackers (and register the torrent there if needed).

This has a few advantages over a normal website download.

I save on bandwidth (since its shared by my users), even if I chose to host a copy online (webseeds). Its fast, error corrects automatically and as long as someone has a complete file up in the swarm, anyone can download it.

I'd say there's little reason not to use torrents for legitimate, freely available, large content.