BitTorrent

[g/re/p]

I noticed a recent thread concerning BitTorrent that was locked with
the comment that we do not discuss P-to-P clients on this site.

I also did a search and found several open threads relating directly
to BitTorrent which are still open.

Is BitTorrent considered P-to-P - and if not, are we allowed to discuss
or help troubleshoot it on macosx.com?

[HateEternal]

BitTorrent has plenty of legitimate uses.

My vote is that if it's a general BT question we should be able to help/discuss. If they come right out and say "I need to get BT to work so I can get some m4d w4r3z" no discussion is needed.

I guess you never know what someone is really going to use it for, but there are a lot of sites that offer legitimate downloads as torrents.

[ScottW]

It is really the moderators discretion on if it will be allowed and is usually based on the above posters comment that depending on the question, whether it will be allowed or not.

Like all things, think social engineering. You don't call up a company and say, hey, I need your password... you call in sounding legitimate in a effort to get that which you should not have.

So... asking say... How can I download Photoshop from Demonoid is not as creative and will probably be closed or removed... vs... I am trying to download Fedora Core software which is being offered as a optional BitTorrent download from their site - can you help me?

[fryke]

I'm tempted to edit your post, ScottW.

[ElDiabloConCaca]

Heh... edit it! Edit it! He gave pretty explicit instructions on where to obtain a torrent for PhotoShop! Ack! For SHAME! FOR SHAME!



Just as a side-note, obtaining Linux via torrents is a MUCH faster and more efficient means than using a mirror FTP or HTTP link. For those of us (yep, me in particular) who like to dabble in the latest-and-greatest nightlies of different Linux distros, BitTorrent is a God-send. While I agree that BitTorrent has some legitimate uses, and in the future may actually be an acceptable method of transferring legitimate and legal bits of information, for now it's pretty much relegated to the Napster and other P2P software package bin -- it's main use is to illegally distribute and obtain copyrighted software. It's a shame; it's actually a VERY nifty technology.

[fryke]

I dunno. For my linux distros, I usually go to a good sunsite-mirror near me and get max. speeds for my 3.6 Mbps line. Bittorrent can't do better there. Actually, Bittorrent is worse, because it clogs my upstream at the same time. So it really depends how I feel about sharing bandwidth on a particular day that I need to download such a biggie. But I guess Bittorrent _will_ be the primary way for big open source projects, anyway. Bandwidth is just too costly _not_ to use Bittorrent.