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Ok, so BitTorrent is like the biggest filesharing program out there right now. As of this posting, there is some news surfacing that it may not be around in its current form too much longer because Bram Cohen (the guy who invented it) got his soul purchased by the MPAA or something.

But let's talk about it anyway.

Here is essentially how BitTorrent works:
You go to a website [http://www.mininova.org] and download the .torrent file of your choice. This is NOT the file that you are looking for. It merely points your BitTorrent client to the direction of the file you are looking for.

So what's a BitTorrent client, you ask?
It is a file that interprets that .torrent file you downloaded. That .torrent file tells your BitTorrent client where to find computers that actually have the complete file you are looking for. I recommend for new users to try BitComet for Windows. I do not know too much about Mac BitTorrent clients, but BitComet is pretty easy to use and not too memory intensive. It doesn't use java like the Azureus client so it's a little faster I believe.

Example:
Let's say you are looking for Ocean's Twelve. You go to your website of choice, and search "Ocean's Twelve" and it will bring up a list of files, hopefully. If nothing comes up, check your spelling, try a shorter search query that is less specific, like "ocean," or try a different website. So you download the .torrent file from there that sounds most like what you are looking for, and has the most seeders. NOTE: If a file has 0 seeders, that means NO ONE HAS A COMPLETE COPY OF THAT FILE AS OF THE TIME THE WEBSITE WAS UPDATED. Open that .torrent file in your bittorrent client. Your download should start, and after a while you'll have whatever it was you were looking for, in this case, Ocean's Twelve. The speed of the download will vary depending on how many people are "seeding" the file, and how many people are trying to get it from those seeders at the same time as you.

If you have a firewall up this will be more complicated. Post here in this thread and we'll try to work out your problems.

Ok, so I just got BitTorrent and I don't really know where to start. I'm looking for mostly underground hip hop but what sites are best? How do you know if the files are legit, just by guessing?

stupidregister wrote:Ok, so I just got BitTorrent and I don't really know where to start. I'm looking for mostly underground hip hop but what sites are best? How do you know if the files are legit, just by guessing?

Unless other people here know something I don't, torrents are not that great for underground and obscure hip hop. They're good for general music, movies, software etc. For the stuff you can't find, try eMule or Soulseek.

Mininova is a pretty good torrent site: -

http://www.mininova.org/

TorrentSpy is a torrent search engine: -

http://www.torrentspy.com/

RapHustle is a hip hop related torrent site: -

http://www.raphustle.com/

Fakes usually affect TV shows more than anything else. I've never downloaded any fake music, although I have downloaded zip files that are password protected and I haven't been able to extract the songs. That doesn't happen too often though.

Ok so I've gone onto Torrentspy and I went to download a movie but it says it has 4 days remaining...WTF? Is this the case for most movies? Its going at 3KB's a sec.

Thats shite.

Jizzy wrote:Ok so I've gone onto Torrentspy and I went to download a movie but it says it has 4 days remaining...WTF? Is this the case for most movies? Its going at 3KB's a sec.

Thats shite.

it depends on the movie, more popular stuff usually has more seeders and thus faster times....some obscure stuff i've wanted has taken a while

alpha wrote:

Jizzy wrote:Ok so I've gone onto Torrentspy and I went to download a movie but it says it has 4 days remaining...WTF? Is this the case for most movies? Its going at 3KB's a sec.

Thats shite.

it depends on the movie, more popular stuff usually has more seeders and thus faster times....some obscure stuff i've wanted has taken a while

It actually went a bit faster after about 26KB's. Which is still rubbish when I have 2MB Broadband (downloads usually go at 230KB's a sec)I'm gonna keep my eyes peeled for the new episodes of Lost on there for sure!