Essentially the title. I was trying to download a file and my colleagues told me that I should use uTorrent. I did some research and figured that this was very popular a while ago, but since then has decreased in popularity. How does it work and why did it decrease in popularity?
In: Technology
Torrents are a peer2peer network. Instead of downloading from a central server you get the file from other users in the network. The file is split into many packages and the Torrent actively looks for packages you’re missing among other users who are online while distributing the ones you already have.
They lost a lot of popularity from two sources: first in many countries they are more illegal than straight up downloads when using them for copyrighted files, because you’re not only a consumer but also actively distributing copyrighted material wich usually comes with harsher punishments.
The other reason is that several torrent clients were found to use your computer for mining crypto
Imagine that there’s some cool written work someone wants to share with the world and everyone interested in it has a copier at home that can be used to copy pages of it and also can send pages to other people.
The normal way of doing it would be to have some big place respond to requests from people by sending them copies of all the pages in sequence. But suppose this someone doesn’t have the means to afford a big place.
So the trick is that this someone finds a large bunch of interested people and starts by sending a copy of a different page to each of them. Then each of these interested people has a page they can start copying and sending to other interested people. This way, they distribute the labor and given some time they’ll all end up with a copy of the work – throughout this process, the original someone is still copying and sending pages at some rate, but it builds up. In this entire analogy, the messages contain coordination information – people being able to communicate which pages they’re still missing.
And, when all that is done, then at a later date a newcomer can show up and send out a call into the aether and it’ll be responded to by multiple people each sending some pages that total to the full work.
…that is, assuming there are people left that don’t just opt to say “I’ve got mine, go away” and stop copying and sending out pages once they have the full work themselves.
Torrents are distributed file sharing. Other folks who already have the file will offer to send it to you. It’s also split into parts, so you can get parts from multiple people at the same time, and increase your download speed. This technology is perfectly legal and totally amazing, but it’s often used to share copyright media without permission, this infringement is illegal. Prior to the media streaming days, this was kind of the only way to get movies online, so it was very popular. But with the advent of low cost streaming solutions, it has become less popular for that. But still is an awesome way to download files! You still see it with open source software for example.
BitTorrent is a protocol that is used for filesharing and rapid downloads.
When it comes to bandwidth upload bandwidth is usually considerably smaller than download bandwidth and therefore considerably more expensive. So if you want to send files to your users this can amount to a considerable expense.
BitTorrent was ostensibly created as a solution to this problem. Users participating in a Torrent both download a file and upload simultaneously.
This allows you to leverage the upload bandwidth of all the users downloading the file so that you can deliver your files more quickly and efficiently to your users.
One practical application for BitTorrent is video game patching. Blizzard specifically uses a form of BitTorrent for deploying it’s rather large video game patches for games like World of Warcraft. You can actually thank them for forcing ISPs to not block or throttle BitTorrent traffic!
Another example is most Linux Distros are downloaded using BitTorrent.
BitTorrent though was and is extensively used for illegal file sharing. Tracker sites exist all over the web to share illegal movie and TV shows using BitTorrent.
BitTorrent has been criticized because participating in a Torrent forces users to upload files (at least by default). So users downloading an illegal file are also uploading them by default even if they are not aware of it, which not only makes them liable for the illegal download but also for distribution.
Several BitTorrent clients have also added in-app advertising to generate revenue (for less than desirable advertisers), or have been caught mining BitCoin on users computers.
Media companies have also been caught monitoring or even creating their own torrents so that they can provide lists of IP addresses of illegal sharers to ISPs to have them punished or to take legal action against them. This is arguably entrapment.
Using BitTorrent for media piracy fell out of favor for a long time because Streaming sites became ubiquitous and easy to use, so online piracy slowed down considerably. It turns out that large numbers of users were perfectly willing to pay reasonable fees for legal content, BitTorrent wasn’t being used necessarily because it was free but rather downloading TV shows was far more convenient than recording them using VHS or waiting for them to appear on TV.
BitTorrent was also used extensively to get around Geo-fencing, where cable providers wouldn’t allow a particular show to air outside the US for example. Game of Thrones famously had twice as many users watching it on BitTorrent than on HBO Max because HBO was either not available in a particular country or was considered far too expensive.
However BitTorrent use has been on the rise again due to the market now being saturated with Streaming Sites.
There are now so many streaming sites that users are refusing to pay for all of them due to the overall expense and lack of in-demand content on each platform. Streaming sites are also starting to add advertising and the quality is dropping as well. So Piracy is once again on the rise.
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Torrents are just peer to peer file sharing. It is like going to someones house directly to give them a letter or a present instead of sending it through the mail.
I think it’s less popular for a few reasons.
There is some stigma around it because it is often used to distribute pirated material like movies.
Most people are tech illiterate, and there are easier ways to send files, like google drives. torrents can handle larger files, but most people don’t have any need to send large files to one another.
Also just for the record, utorrent is terrible and has been for years. qbittorrent is so much better
The best analogy I’ve found to explain how BitTorrent works to a layman is:
I need a bag of Skittles. There are 1000 pieces in a bag. I ask my closest 1000 friends on the internet to copy/paste a single skittle into my bag. I now have my own full bag of skittles.
Popularity has decreased mainly for two reason:
1. Streaming used to be better and easier. Netflix had it all, then it was just NetFlix, Amazon, and Hulu. Now it’s 50+ streaming platforms and the service quality sucks. People are going back to piracy because it’s a better product. No ads, no 50 different apps, you have it forever.
2. Legal threats. If you live in the US, while it’s rare to get sued — it’s very common for the media company to threaten to sue your ISP, who then sends you an angry letter to stop or they’ll ban you as an Internet customer for 2 years. Every country has different laws, some aggressive, some very lenient. In the US, you theoretically could be sued for $100k per movie downloaded. In say, the Netherlands, download 1000 movies and the max fine total is the equivalent of $500.
You can always just VPN into a lenient country and run your torrents from there if you don’t want those angry letters. Alternatively, run something like qBitTorrent on a permanent VPN connection (VM or Docker image), so you don’t have to keep your entire computer on VPN 24/7 so you don’t get an angry letter.
It’s 2004 and you want a file. You find it on a website to download. It begins downloading, slowly bit by bit as a single stream from the website server to your computer. Then your connection drops. Now you have to start the download from the beginning again.
You find a torrent instead. Through your torrent client the torrent file connects you to a tracker. The tracker has a list of all the people online now who have downloaded the file, or are currently downloading it and have bits of it. Now instead of getting the file from one place as a trickle of bits from beginning to end, you can get multiple chunks of different parts of the file from multiple places, with as many connections as your line and PC will allow, a torrent of data, compared to the trickle. You can leave it on for days, weeks even, and if it isn’t a dead torrent it will eventually complete, no matter your connection, or if you turn your computer off.
And as you’re downloading you’re also sending bits of the file back to other people too. After your file finishes, if you’re not a piece of shit, you’ll leave it to seed for a while to a ratio greater than 1 which means you’ve given back more than you took, and the torrent remains healthy.
To answer your second question, it’s a combination of things. Mainly people just don’t know or care about torrenting anymore. With increasing tech-illiteracy and a push from big companies, things like streaming just became easier, especially once internet speeds improved. Even with files, Browsers can resume files and even split them into multiple streams of data now pretty well. Plus, back to the tech illiteracy, many people don’t even have PCs or laptops anymore, everything is done on their phone. Android has some okay torrent clients, but Apple have always been harsh on that side of things. You can do it, but it’s not as easy as just paying a subscription to Netflix or whatever and getting the content more conveniently but at worse quality.
The big guys won.
Everyone that has a file shares that file.
You download the file in parts, with little pieces coming from each person.
It’s typically slower, the popularity comes from the fact that it does not require you to have a high bandwidth server available to facilitate lots of downloads. This makes it low-cost, and therefore very popular for things that are typically used in the non-profit sector.
The way it works lends itself to piracy, and in technical circles if you mention torrents that is what most people are going to expect you’re using them for.
This means that a lot of torrent programs are *shady as fuck*, further stigmatizing the methodology. This, in addition to the fact that it requires a separate program with its own configuration *at all*, makes using torrents more difficult than a conventional download, and creates a barrier to entry. Reducing its popularity.
Bob has a 10 page document. The entire office of 100 people each want their own physical copy of this document.
Regular downloading would be equivalent to Bob himself making 100 copies of all 10 sheets and handing them out to each person.
But this office has several copy machines!
With torrenting, Bob starts by making a single copy of each sheet and handing them off to other people so that they can also use other copy machines to help copy the sheets and distribute them to the entire office. Much faster distribution.
I would not say torrenting has lost popularity, it’s just not the cool new “in” thing anymore.
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