Torrent : Disadvantages and Controversies

Hi,

In a previous post about Torrent, I have explained working mechanism and origin of BitTorrent protocol and its use. If you missed, you may want to read that post at http://www.pyarb.com/2014/01/introduction-to-torrent.html. We also learnt about the advantages of Torrent and shared some snapshots also.

Now on continuation of that series, lets talk about its dis-advantages.

Disadvantages:

Torrent has many advantages like saving of time, peer to peer distribution, advance download experience for slower connection, it has many disadvantages too. Some of its dis-advantages are as listed below.

1. No one can tell what is inside file until he finish downloading. Suppose creator told that it is Linux distribution with of Ubuntu's latest version and named file as resembling one. But no one can guaranty what is inside file actually until user finished downloading and open file. In case of illegal content or provider did not supplier any hash or MD5 sum over public, it can not predetermined. 
2. For the first time, seeder must be online and seeding until the torrent gets popular. Or he must be always online to serve file and that too with higher internet speed. If he left in between, no one will get the file and users who downloaded some part will stuck at that point.
3. Internet speed and computer performance is used by Bit-torrent protocol. Mostly upload speed of Internet is used to serve file and which may cause other services that depends on Internet to freeze.
4. If the distribution has started once, it is hard to stop. If file gets popular and seeder thinks of stopping the distribution, it is impossible to stop until all users downloading torrent stop. That does not remains the property of creator.
5. Un-authorized distribution has created a very big loss to most Software, Game, Movies and Music vendors. Some of users who paid for it distributed file over Internet using Torrent and that gets popular within minutes. Which caused loss in business. Many copyrighted materials are licked and distributed. Sometimes, the content is hijacked and distributed creating huge financial loss and reputation damage intentionally.
6. The speed can not be stable (in most cases it is slow) and predetermined, depends upon the number of Seeders but that can not guaranty the speed. 
7. File is served in pieces from different servers, so sometime result may be damaged or corrupted file.
8. You can not use Download Managers or Accelerators to increase speed. 
9. Source of media (file) is unrestricted. Illegal content hosting is very cheap and reliable using Torrent. If you own a website and host a copyrighted file, your web host may send you notice and if you do not stop your account may be suspended, but while using Torrent, no one is there is to stop except your ISP (Internet Service Provider).
10. Torrent has great role on increasing Pornographic content over internet.
11. If you are using Static IP to use Internet, there is privacy concern. Everybody downloading that torrent file can see your IP address and know what you are downloading.
12. You must have a good Antivirus program, because sometime the torrent comes with Virus.
13. The original content can not be altered once after serving started. For new versions or modified files you must create another torrent and share this While in case of direct download if the file changes in server, all users will get newer file automatically.

There are many other dis-advantages in case of Bit-Torrent system. You can add your own.

Controversies

Torrent has been always in Controversies since its early age. However it was created with a good motive, but it was being used to distribute copyrighted, paid, legal and sensitive data free of cost. Which caused lots of reputation and business loss to Software giants and specially Multimedia productions like Sony, Warner Bros, Universal and other many. The users uploaded the Paid Blue Ray discs or DVDs of movie and songs to torrent community causing birth to unstoppable piracy.

Some of the countries and authorities have declared Torrent safe and good while some other authorities put restrictions over torrent. Resulting many of the torrent site to legal threats and court cases. The most controversial website related to Torrent is ThePirateBay, TPB in short. TPB was founded by a Swedish group of members who are against copyright matters and want the content over internet to be shared free of cost. Which resulted them Lots of Penalty, many legal cases in different courts over globe, ban of their website on most countries. Instead of stopping their service, they started to display legal mails from Different high profile companies like Microsoft, Apple, Universal Studio and so many in their website publicly. Members who supported TPB including web hosting company and financier are also jailed for some month due to these controversies. Their server was attached multiple time by Internet authorities and other hackers who are against Torrent. But they are still stand and serving contents regularly. 

Other some top website examples are Supernova, TorrentSpy, Demonoid, etc which are on controversies due to serving Torrent file or indexing them.

If you have any suggestions of feedback about the post and our contents, do write us as comment or contact page. Till then keep visiting.

+John Bhatt 

Read More

Introduction to Torrent

Hi,

Have you heard of torrent? Oh! you must have. Many of you have used torrent to download files and other documents from internet. But many of us are unaware of how torrent works and what torrent is?

Lets talk about Torrent in detail.

What is torrent?

Torrent is actually a computer file type used by BitTorrent protocol. This file contains meta data about the file's and folder's size, their list of locations (called trackers in language of torrent). This has extension of .torrent. One more and most important thing about torrent file is that, it does not contain files or folders that you want to download. It only contains the Structure, Location and other information about file. In current days, this has been replaced by Magnet Link which is a web version (hyper link) of this file containing all information about this file.

History of BitTorrent?

BitTorrent is a peer to peer file sharing protocol developed by Programmer Bram Cohen and first released on April 2001. He released it for public on 2 July 2001 on first time and continuously developed till 2008. As per BitTorrent, Inc which has published official client also, revealed that number of Torrent users per day over world is twice than the users of Facebook and YouTube combined together. 

How it works?

Now, if the torrent file does not contain files to be downloaded, how actually it works? Lets see a image below to understand more clearly.

Requirement and Background

While the file is of Gigantic size and need to be distributed among many users, what is the cost of server. The same amount of data has been transferred to each users. Suppose a file of one GB is to be shared among a thousand users. Then server needs more than a one Terra Byte of bandwidth which will surely cost a lot for any company. This will also impact the performance of server. To overcome this, BitTorrent protocol is designed where you need not to distribute file to each user, Once user downloaded a file, that can even uploaded from users PC.
Most of Computer Science students are known and for others information, data is transmitted in Packets over internet. A complete file can not be transferred at at time if that has lot of data. And you have heard of Bit and Byte. At a single time a limited byte of data can only travel or transmits between two IP (computers).
Suppose, we have a file of 100 MB and our computer hardware determines and think that it can be transmitted if the file has been broken into 100 pieces and then tells receiver that it has send 100 pieces of a file, combine and give to user, in general language. This is also applicable for torrent also. Torrent file has meta data where the piece size has been mentioned. The complete file has been broken into pieces and assigned a serial number (virtual). Then at the time of distribution, these pieces are downloaded to users computer one by one. And most importantly, based on permission from user, the downloaded pieces are again uploaded to other user who is downloading same file.

Advantage

Following are major advantage of torrent protocol for user and uploader.

• Server cost is reduces because file is later shared using peers (other users who are downloading)
• Even your Internet get disconnected or you shut down your computer, your files are saved in hard disk and if you think of continuing the download, only remaining pieces will downloaded. This is intelligence added in BitTorrent clients. 
• Better download speed.
• Faster distribution

We will talk about legal controversies and other bad aspects of torrent system on later post. 

If you find this post helpful, say thanks on comments or you have any suggestions or feedback on this, please comment.

+John Bhatt 

Read More