Why are direct downloads considered safer than torrents?

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25th-July-2011, 02:29
bobert123

Why are direct downloads considered safer than torrents?

Why is it that direct downloads are considered safer than torrents (anti-piracy wise). I know some torrents can be tracked and your ip can be logged if a ISP or watchdog group like the ESA is monitoring the torrent.

But why isn't that so for direct download sites like megaupload what has to happen in order for your ISP to monitor those sites and is it even possible for a 3rd party watchdog group to do so? Because it feels like a direct download site would be x100 times safer than torrenting because from what I see most copyright infringement letters come from watchdog groups that your isp forwards to you.

I am just wondering this out of curiosity, if you have any knowledge as to why or just some crack pot theory please feel free to add.
25th-July-2011, 03:07
Slacker Magician

You're connected to the download server, and that's it? Hosting sites probably don't log traffic.
25th-July-2011, 03:40
bobert123

I would assume you are right in both points, from what I have read direct download sites can go down badly if they are taken over by a government source for the purpose of sting operations, but since most sites like megaupload don't purposely put illegal things on it, it would be hard to take over the site for that reason.

Has there been any cases of someone getting in trouble for downloading games, music or movies? because I have looked around and haven't seen anything downloading wise, I am sure there must be something for the uploaders.
25th-July-2011, 03:42
DoomKefka

torrents can be perfectly safe if you know how to set your computer up correctly.
25th-July-2011, 04:33
bobert123

Quote:

Originally Posted by DoomKefka

torrents can be perfectly safe if you know how to set your computer up correctly.

I know they can be considered safe when you setup with peer guardian and such, but still wouldn't direct download still be consider safer in general?

And still considered safer even with problems like peer guardian (anti-piracy wise, because safety wise with viruses I would consider a torrent more safe).
25th-July-2011, 04:46
Colamisu

Peer Guardian just prevents you from connecting to known "dangerous" IPs. It's not hard for a government agency to get their IP changed. And there are plenty of members, even on trusted trackers, that are simply accounts for governments or private companies that wish to log the list of IPs attached to a torrent. Even if you're doing something like using a proxy so your real IP won't be listed on torrents, nothing is 100% secure.

Furthermore, the peer-dependent speeds from torrents can increase the amount of time you're required to be connected, increasing the chances of someone catching the transfer-in-progress.

The biggest reason that torrents are technically more dangerous than direct downloads is the fact that you are almost always forced to seed to some extent. By seeding, you are distributing copyrighted works, and therefore are committing criminal copyright infringement, rather than civil copyright infringement (downloading for personal use).

But really, it's all irrelevant. Your main concern should be your ISP. If your ISP outs you, you're screwed no matter what method you use.
25th-July-2011, 05:57
bobert123

Quote:

Originally Posted by Colamisu

Peer Guardian just prevents you from connecting to known "dangerous" IPs. It's not hard for a government agency to get their IP changed. And there are plenty of members, even on trusted trackers, that are simply accounts for governments or private companies that wish to log the list of IPs attached to a torrent. Even if you're doing something like using a proxy so your real IP won't be listed on torrents, nothing is 100% secure.

Furthermore, the peer-dependent speeds from torrents can increase the amount of time you're required to be connected, increasing the chances of someone catching the transfer-in-progress.

The biggest reason that torrents are technically more dangerous than direct downloads is the fact that you are almost always forced to seed to some extent. By seeding, you are distributing copyrighted works, and therefore are committing criminal copyright infringement, rather than civil copyright infringement (downloading for personal use).

But really, it's all irrelevant. Your main concern should be your ISP. If your ISP outs you, you're screwed no matter what method you use.

I see what you mean, but I don't see why a ISP would rat you out unless you were downloading things that were something along the lines of children being exploited or something of that matter because they would lose you as a customer thus losing money which is something a business never really wants to do.

I also don't see the government searching for someone just downloading either I would assume they have better things to do like to stop the uploaders and to deal with more violent crimes.

I know my ISP does a 3 strikes your out kind of policy, I don't know if they enforce it, but it seems like that is the standard for most ISPs because I would assume they firstly care about money then about upholding copyright laws.
25th-July-2011, 06:35
Supreme Warrior

all I know is stay away from anything 'Dangerous' im pretty sure you can guess what those are classified as.
25th-July-2011, 06:50
daveom25

I just plain out stay away from torrents, I've heard only bad things.
25th-July-2011, 06:57
Supreme Warrior

Torrents are nice, I used to badmouth them all the time too, until i tried um when they had seeders, MAX SPEED downloading just yeah, I wish there was a way somewtimes to stop seeding period.

but I only use places like UG and HDDX .
25th-July-2011, 07:02
Heiji1412

Get Usenet, security, maximum speed, no ratios, what more do you want?
25th-July-2011, 07:14
DoomKefka

torrents are awesome, if you dont knwo what your doing then dont mess with them...and if your paranoid dont touchem...otherwise its the best thing to do and stop being so worried about gettin caught...too bad your missing out on alot of good stuff d/l torrents for years no issues no virsues just read comments description and dont beilve what your virus scanner says because all torrenst are illegal and deemed not ok by most protectors but you just gotta have common sense and be a lil computer saavy. dont be a uber noober and expand your knowledge!
25th-July-2011, 17:12
Slacker Magician

Quote:

Originally Posted by Supreme Warrior

Torrents are nice, I used to badmouth them all the time too, until i tried um when they had seeders, MAX SPEED downloading just yeah, I wish there was a way somewtimes to stop seeding period.

but I only use places like UG and HDDX .

As opposed to direct downloads and max speed all the time :wacko:.
25th-July-2011, 17:32
Supreme Warrior

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shardnax

As opposed to direct downloads and max speed all the time :wacko:.

nope, torrents with a good amount of seeders goes around 1.5 MB a sec, rarely does that happen when DDLing from a file host.

I know there must be away to torrent and block seeding entirely.
25th-July-2011, 19:17
Slacker Magician

Quote:

Originally Posted by Supreme Warrior

nope, torrents with a good amount of seeders goes around 1.5 MB a sec, rarely does that happen when DDLing from a file host.

I know there must be away to torrent and block seeding entirely.

Every torrent program I know of forces seeding on you. They would have you believe some BS about it being necessary to get better speeds.
25th-July-2011, 19:38
Inferno.

Limit your upload speed to 1KB/s? As good as not seeding at all.
25th-July-2011, 21:22
bobert123

At 1 kb/s your still technically uploading which usually is the thing lands you in hot water because you are still sending data out and that is how watchdog groups get your ISP. With direct downloads you don't upload so there is no way a third party could detect you downloading from these sites.

But I have no idea if your ISP monitors this kind of traffic or the government.
27th-July-2011, 07:07
Joe Blog

Direct downloads and torrents both have the ability to be risky as each other. In my experience it pays to be cautious with all forms of downloads
27th-July-2011, 20:53
Colamisu

Quote:

Originally Posted by DoomKefka

torrents are awesome, if you dont knwo what your doing then dont mess with them...and if your paranoid dont touchem...otherwise its the best thing to do and stop being so worried about gettin caught...too bad your missing out on alot of good stuff d/l torrents for years no issues no virsues just read comments description and dont beilve what your virus scanner says because all torrenst are illegal and deemed not ok by most protectors but you just gotta have common sense and be a lil computer saavy. dont be a uber noober and expand your knowledge!

Entirely untrue. Torrents themselves are entirely legal. It's only the content that is illegal. If you're using a torrent to download/upload something that is a) your own, completely original, non-derivative, work or b) public domain, it's entirely legal. The transmission medium is irrelevant in terms of legality. That's how the companies behind BitTorrent, uTorrent, and all the other clients have survived this long.
28th-July-2011, 15:58
SsJVasto

I guess people dont use usenet because you have to pay... I use it and i dont know how i survived via torrents... I still use Demonoid for stuff i cant find on usenet, but you just need to find the right newsgroup (kinda like a tracker for torrents)

Sent from my Nexus One using Tapatalk
28th-July-2011, 16:12
Inferno.

I used to hammer usenet for new release 360 games since my ISP gives free usenet access with 7 days retention. Not the best, but decent enough to grab new release/posted items without having to pay. :P
1st-August-2011, 07:41
Heiji1412

Quote:

Originally Posted by SsJVasto

I guess people dont use usenet because you have to pay... I use it and i dont know how i survived via torrents... I still use Demonoid for stuff i cant find on usenet, but you just need to find the right newsgroup (kinda like a tracker for torrents)

Sent from my Nexus One using Tapatalk

You have a point, but in my case I get free Astraweb service from my ISP, the retention is over 1000 days now.

Any reason you're not using NZBs? Not from those crappy NZB sites, just from Usenet search engines able to create NZBs, beats downloading headers.
1st-August-2011, 12:04
Inferno.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Heiji1412

You have a point, but in my case I get free Astraweb service from my ISP, the retention is over 1000 days now.

Any reason you're not using NZBs? Not from those crappy NZB sites, just from Usenet search engines able to create NZBs, beats downloading headers.

1000 days retention for free? :doink: So jelly right now.

I'd download and download and download until my eyes bled from all my downloads... :wacko:
1st-August-2011, 20:21
crimsonedge

Sometimes you might download a torrent that has a keygen or crack that registers as a false positive on your virus scan. So you just put the file on the ignore list when it shows up on a scan. Other than that I haven't really had any problems getting viruses from torrents, but I have gotten them multiple times from direct downloads. From my experience, torrents are safer as long as you keep an eye out and read the comments posted about it. It is just a misinformation campaign against filesharing, spreading rumors of it not being safe, or as safe. And I say its plenty safe enough as long as you use good judgement in which torrents you download.

Same goes for direct downloads, if you get a pop up that says you just won, click here and you get a trojan, then that is nobody's fault but your own. Anyone dumb enough to get trojans like that either needs to wise up about the internet, or just shouldn't be using a PC at all.

I much prefer torrents to direct downloads, for one, my speed isn't capped and get WAY better DL speeds providing its seeded, and you can stop/resume download any time you want. Not all sites let you stop/resume downloads, but all torrents let you do that.

As far as them tracking down pirates? I am not the slightest bit concerned. There is just too much of a volume of traffic on the internet for them to have the manpower to monitor every person. But they really go after people who burn copies of pirated material and sell them for profit on a larger scale, those people they can track and go after. I don't even think my government is competent enough to organize such an operation even if they did have the manpower, desire and the resources to monitor and catch everyone using filesharing.
1st-August-2011, 20:48
SsJVasto

Quote:

Originally Posted by bobert123

Why is it that direct downloads are considered safer than torrents (anti-piracy wise). I know some torrents can be tracked and your ip can be logged if a ISP or watchdog group like the ESA is monitoring the torrent.

But why isn't that so for direct download sites like megaupload what has to happen in order for your ISP to monitor those sites and is it even possible for a 3rd party watchdog group to do so? Because it feels like a direct download site would be x100 times safer than torrenting because from what I see most copyright infringement letters come from watchdog groups that your isp forwards to you.

I am just wondering this out of curiosity, if you have any knowledge as to why or just some crack pot theory please feel free to add.

Because (in most countries) downloading is not illegal. Suppose you click a link to direct download an .MP3 files, the ISP knows NOTHING of what's going on. Heck, there could be a background song on the website (HTML5) that loads the MP3 file and plays them. There is nothing illegal about displaying what should be displayed.

Torrents, on the other hand, are evil to ISP's. Where downloading is not illegal, uploading is. Torrents are a share-based protocol (peer 2 peer) in which you upload to others what you downloaded from others. The fact that you redistribute copywrited material puts you at risk.

And for the people who think they're so 1337 because they can limit their upload speed at 1kb/s, well good for you... You completely defeat the purpose of p2p protocols. IE: that's the reason that there is absolutely NOTHING going on at http://bt.emuparadise.org:6969/... People leech and leave, not considering other people might share their interests.

PS: Oh and another thing: BT is not BitTorrent, but rather Bittorrent Tracker. Logs are kept, not to put you in danger, that's just the way torrents work... the tracker needs to keep a list of all people who are active on the torrent so they can send that list to people who want to download it. An ISP could acquire the list for like "Windows 8 Leaked Torrent x86!" and check see if any of the IP addresses belong to them, and send them kind letters in exchange. Also, the BT Ports are probably watched... (Direct Download is in HTTP (port 80, like a website), Usenet is in HTTPS (secure download, like banking/paypal) and torrents have their own port... Easily tracable...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Heiji1412

You have a point, but in my case I get free Astraweb service from my ISP, the retention is over 1000 days now.

Any reason you're not using NZBs? Not from those crappy NZB sites, just from Usenet search engines able to create NZBs, beats downloading headers.

What do you mean I don't use NZB files? I create them dynamically on binsearch.info...
2nd-August-2011, 18:40
lordrand11

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shardnax

Every torrent program I know of forces seeding on you. They would have you believe some BS about it being necessary to get better speeds.

As far as speed is concerned they're looking at all around speed. hence the torrent name. If they're isn't any pressure (yea yea I know water reference) their isn't going to be any flow (whether it be water or dl speed) Your uploading isn't gonna affect your download speed only other people's download speeds.
2nd-August-2011, 18:59
SsJVasto

Quote:

Originally Posted by lordrand11

As far as speed is concerned they're looking at all around speed. hence the torrent name. If they're isn't any pressure (yea yea I know water reference) their isn't going to be any flow (whether it be water or dl speed) Your uploading isn't gonna affect your download speed only other people's download speeds.

That's not true, I've seen clients that limit your download speed depending on your upload speed... These are mostly a 90%-10% ratio, but I have seen 50%-50%... Meaning that if you upload at 1kb/s, your download should be around 9kb/s (I stopped using Azureus because of that...)