Why are direct downloads considered safer than torrents?

[Inferno.]

Limit your upload speed to 1KB/s? As good as not seeding at all.

[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.

[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

[Colamisu]

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.

[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

[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.

[Heiji1412]

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.

[Inferno.]

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? So jelly right now.

I'd download and download and download until my eyes bled from all my downloads...

[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.

[SsJVasto]

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...

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...

[lordrand11]

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.

[SsJVasto]

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...)