Torrents: A Closer Look
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| PC: thehustle.co |
It was somewhere around eighth grade that I heard the term "Torrent" for the first time. One of my friends told me that he got that one trending PC game at the time, and that too all for free. I asked him where'd he get it from? He told me something about ThePirateBay and that he torrented it from there. I remember thinking two things to myself at that moment. One: What a cool-sounding name for a website. Two: how exactly do you torrent something?
The next thing I did as soon as I got my hands on my computer was foraging the Internet to explore everything about torrents. And boy was I in for a treat. It was like discovering a portal to geek heaven if that's even a thing. I mean what else does a 14-year old want besides a plethora of free media including video games, movies, complete discographies of their favorite music artists, e-books, premium Softwares, and ahem....you know what else (wink).
Now, before I get into the technicalities of how the whole torrent network works, let's just have a look at how torrents came into existence.
A Brief History of Torrents
The internet is a gargantuan sea of data and it continues to expand ever so more. Amidst all that, Torrents are more than a decade-old technology that drives a third of all internet traffic.
Now, online file sharing has been around for quite a while. And torrents were not how it all started. We're talking of the ARPANET era, perhaps even before that. Several of the antecedents including USENET were ephemeral technologies. Plus there were a lot of shortcomings in the traditional file sharing methods. Here's the Wikipedia list for a Timeline of file sharing if you're one of those list freaks who just wants a list for everything for some mysterious reason.
While the roots of Peer-to-Peer file sharing could be traced back to Shawn Fanning; the pioneer behind the widely popular and controversial Napster in 1999.
To tackle the shortcomings of the conventional way of file sharing, a trailblazing programmer from the University at Buffalo, New York named Bram Cohen designed a new protocol for faster and more reliable means of file sharing over the internet. Enter the BitTorrent protocol which revolutionized the whole file-sharing landscape.
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| source: explainthatstuff.com |
Prior to the development of the BitTorrent protocol, a web file was stored on a central server. So when multiple users wanted to download the file, the server had to make multiple connections and serve separate parts of the file to the clients. The BitTorrent Protocol dramatically changed this. The objective was to decentralize file sharing rather than centralize file downloading.
How Does it Work?
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| source: codespot.org |
Why is the theory behind the BitTorrent Protocol so fascinating? That's because it's an exceptionally smart way to make better use of the web's distributed architecture for file sharing.
The idea of decentralization is key in the working mechanism of the BitTorrent Protocol. Now, since there is no central computer server where the file is stored, every system that's online is technically connected to every other system over the internet. Two nodes over the network can send and receive data by communicating directly and this is what's called peer-to-peer (P2P) communication.
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| The colourful dots beneath each machine represent various sections of the file being exchanged in this animation illustrating protocol usage. By the time each of those parts has completed a copy to a destination computer, a copy to another destination computer of that component (or other parts) has already begun between users. The tracker (server) only offers a single copy of the file, which all users clone from one another. Source: thenewbits.wordpress.com |
Now, if you've ever tried downloading a file from torrent, chances are you might've heard the following terms that sound like straight out of a bug's life story:
- SEEDERS: The PC that hosts the complete original file is known as a seed, and it divides the file into several parts. A peer might then use a connection to the seeder to download the full file or portions of it.
- LEECHERS: Leechers are the computers stored with partial contents of the file. Assume that someone has downloaded 3 of the 6 data files from the internet. He could then send this information to another peer while continuing to download the other three parts.
- TRACKERS: Trackers keep track of the seeders and leechers i.e., which computers have which bits of the file. With various BitTorrent clients, this operates in different ways. Some people use trackers, which are centralized computers that keep track of where all the components of a file may be found at any one time.
- SWARM: A swarm is a linked network of seeders, peers, and trackers all sharing the same torrent.
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| Source: winxdvd.com |
Torrents are cool, Piracy is not!
One can really appreciate the genius behind the algorithm of BitTorrent only if they respect the value of collaborative work. You see, it was designed to enhance the way people shared files and information over the Internet amongst each other. It's sad to realize what torrenting has become over the years.
let's dive in and see what the whole torrents and piracy facade is all about.
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| source: express.co.uk |
Because BitTorrent substantially decreases the cost of publishing huge files online, it is most immediately beneficial to individuals who want to make large files available rather than those who want to download them. As a result, content producers can afford to make a wider selection of files available, which helps the entire community.
BitTorrent also helps in reducing congestion by distributing internet traffic. It's also worth noting that BitTorrent uploads help make content available for download via other means.
All that said, it is pretty conclusive that P2P and the BitTorrent Protocol are remarkable from a technological point of view. When it comes to the legal aspects though, torrents are anything but.
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| Source: MakeTechEasier |
Torrenting paved the way for free download of copyrighted material which is not only illegal but immoral in some senses. Just try to put yourself in the shoes of the creators and publishers who worked day and night on their work, be it for music, films, software or any of the illimitable media that is quite literally being stolen on a vast open network. It is media theft and copyright violation in its most unresponsive form. It is our generations most impetuous crimes. Yet we fail to realize the immorality of it when we consume pirated media mindlessly.
While the technology is impressive when it comes to sharing large files as a result of which it has become a popular source of distribution for open-source systems and software. Things take the ugly turn when copyrighted material is shared on torrents. You see it is a kind of property theft which is a heinous cybercrime.
According to study published on Researchgate.com, 98.8% of material shared over P2P is copyrighted, internet piracy costs the economy $12.5 billion each year, and the average iPod includes $800 worth of piarted music.
What's the Takeaway?
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| Source: 2oceansvibe.com |
It's pretty evident that all of us are guilty of consuming pirated media, if not downloading. Well, one might claim what's the harm in a little mischievousness with these capitalistic industries whose solo motif is to make money at all cost. Torrent sites are like a huge middle finger to these money-hungry corporations.
The primary point of contention with P2P file sharing is copyright infringement. Moreso, Corporations can't sue BitTorrent for copyright infringement because BitTorrent has nothing to do with the files being hosted; the files are uploaded by one person, then another person downloads and usually leaves it to "seed," and so on until thousands of people are "seeding" a single file, making it impossible to determine who the original host was. Sites like TVTeam, YIFY, and 1337X take advantage of this by hosting illegible files.
Conclusively, we as consumers are all culpable of consuming pirated media every now and then. Looking at the scenario it seems it is being normalized too but that doesn't put us in the clear. So, next time you are about to consume a copyrighted material downloaded illegally from the internet ask yourself a question. Is this worth it? Put yourself in the shoes of the artists and creators who put their heart and soul to create their work only to incur huge losses of their sales and businesses due to online piracy.
According to www.pri.org 70% of users find nothing wrong with illegal downloads. Clearly, Pioneers like Fanning and Cohen introduced something revolutionary but failed to contain the repercussions of decentralized or P2P file sharing. Seems like it's high time for another revolutionary technology to come along to save the legacy of torrents and upgrading the online file-sharing landscape, therefore resolving the issue of online piracy.
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