Group items tagged

a typical BitTorrent download will gradually rise to very high speeds, and then slowly fall back down toward the end of the download. This contrasts with an HTTP server that, while more vulnerable to overload and abuse, rises to full speed very quickly and maintains this speed throughout.

To share a file or group of files, a peer first creates a "torrent." This small file contains metadata about the files to be shared and about the tracker, the computer that coordinates the file distribution. Peers that want to download the file first obtain a torrent file for it, and connect to the specified tracker, which tells them from which other peers to download the pieces of the file.

BitTorrent accounted for 53 percent of all P2P Internet traffic in June of 2004.

P2P traffic accounts for two-thirds of the traffic on the 'Net

the Copyright Cartel is not going after the technology or the hosting companies. It is targeting Web site owners who have links on their sites to copyrighted material it is illegal for them to offer.

"I visit a torrent site weekly to download this week's episode of my two favorite tv shows, House M.D. and The Apprentice. I work on the nights that both shows air on national tv, so I download a torrent file of each. To me, this is no different that setting the VCR to record something while I'm at work... but the benefit with a torrent file is that it takes up a lot less space than a video tape. I received a letter from my cable internet provider, who was contacted by NBC Universal saying that they'd tracked illegal downloading of a HOUSE MD file. It was a 'cease and desist' letter notifying me that, essentially, NBC was 'on' to me, and if they so chose, they could take me to court for pirating copyrighted material."