Talk:BitTorrent

I added "in many areas" to the text "Downloading of copyrighted material is ILLEGAL." - because downloading of copyrighted material IS not "universally" illegal - it is only illegal in "many"/"some" areas - US beeing one area I believe. In sweden (where I live) and many other european/african and asian countries it is currently NOT illegal to download copyrighted material without the copyright holders premission - it is ONLY illegal to upload/distribute copyrighted material - only the copyright-holder may distribute his/hers copyrighted material (or license that right to others).

For example, if I were to download say metallicas new album from someones ftp - I am not the one that is doing something illegal where I live - it is the person that owns the ftp. However some uploading might be okay, for example distributing copyrighted material, like metallicas new album, to family and friends fall under fair use in many countries.

There are also countries that has not signed the berne convention (or whichever it is) that deals with copyrights between countries, North Korea beeing one and Cuba another, I believe. (wich means that in those countries you can freely copy anything from the rest of the world).

However it is wrong to state that it IS illegal in a universal sence, and it is more correct to add "in many areas".

The default behaviour of most bittorrent software is to redistribute while obtaining data. --Honta 10:48, 2004 Aug 7 (UTC)

Yes that is why I had ftp as an example and not bittorrent. However the sentence claimed that "downloading of copyrighted material is ILLEGAL", which is what i was objecting to. (it did not say that use of bittorrent to download material is illegal). However it is not certain that downloading of copyrighted material via bittorrent is illegal either - since we are allowed to redistribute small sections of copyrighted works to others (like 30 seconds of a song), or even entire songs/movies to friends and relatives. (fair use, maybe not in the USA). Further on, from the users perspective, he/she is pressing a link on a web-page and downloading a song/movie/software/whatever. So even in the case of bittorrent it is not certain that downloading of copyrighted material via bittorrent *IS* ILLEGAL (*everywhere*). It is simply not a fact. However I am happy with the current text "ILLEGAL in many countries". :)

The article says: "While initially created to distribute legal files, such as GNU/Linux distributions or large movie trailers, BitTorrent is also being used by some to download copyrighted music, movies, and software, similar to many other peer-to-peer networks." Just because software is copyrighted, doesn't mean it can't be distributed legally. The copyright holder has to grant you a license to distribute the license though. The GPL, under which GNU/Linux is distributed, does this. Read GNU General Public License: "The GPL protects, using copyright law, the following freedoms for users and developers of free software". It should be changed to "to illegally download music,...". I'm making this change right now. Hopefully this comment will explain my change to people without legal background.

I think there is something strange with the current wording of the article. It says "BitTorrent can also be used for legal purposes", thus implying that downloading copyrighted material is an illegal purpose. However, in Sweden this is entirely legal, and distribution among friends (such as the 30,000 members of The Piracy Burea) could very well also be legal. Even if it might be illegal to download a movie with BitTorrent (because of the redistribution) the purpose (obtaining the movie) could be legal. Filur 22:27, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

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The MIME for the MNG file is "text/plain." Isn't this a server issue, not a browser issue?--64.108.0.242 21:03, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Yep, it should be set to something (the MNG page suggests the unofficial "video/x-mng"). But we'd need an MNG enabled browser to test that - any suggestions about a "trustworthy" one? -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 21:20, 16 Feb 2004 (UTC)

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I dont understand web seeding. If the dot torrent file says a copy of the FILE is available on website X. What is there to stop me from grabbing the file from the website instead of using a bittorrent client?

The server won't respond to the HTTP request for the file from a web browser. Server-side trackers are actually software running on top of the web server, and as such they can be configured to respond in specific ways to: improper requests, requests from banned IPs, and requests from unknown/unregistered IPs. You can also configure a tracker to do other non-torrent-related tasks such as recording upload/download statistics and making them available in realtime on a website. It can be written in just about any language, although perl, php, and other languages with native web-serving functionality are the easiest (and therefore most common) implementations. Maybe I'll merge some of this info into the main article. ----

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The 'how it works' section ends with:

When there are no longer any nodes connected to the tracker server who possess the complete file (so-called "seeds" or "seeders"), the nodes cannot finish the download if they do not have a complete copy distributed amongst themselves.

1) This is a run-on sentence 2) Is it true? - It is saying if !exists(some(node with all parts)) whereas i think it should be saying if !(for all parts(exists(some node with that part))) 3) It implies that the tracker is not obliged to serve specific parts of the file on request. Is this true?

my rewording would be:

Download of the complete file is only possible if other nodes in your group can supply all the missing parts. The tracker, though in posession of the entire file, is not obliged to support requests for specific parts of the file.

A BitTorrent tracker is not neccessarily in possession of the file. In fact, many simply have the IPs of the seeders/peers and information needed to verify the data. If a tracker is also seeding, it is a seperate action.

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Alternate Views

This should not be mentioned: "the standard eDonkey2000 protocol provides little "leech resistance" -- there are no benefits in providing upload bandwidth, just a UL:DL speed ratio when the upload speed is below 10 kB/s." This is not accurate! All edonkey supporting clients I know prioritize upload to people uploading to you, and try to validate clients as well. It does a lot more than BitTorrent to stop leeching and is a lot more efficient for large groups of files.

Ofcourse it *can* fully replace BitTorrent: if you make an edonkey server to share a small collection of files, and let people connect to it, that will do it. I wont get into technicality, but you can limit people from sharing their files, and you can get people to connect to a server by clicking a link, just like a .torrent file without actually having to download a file.

Further more about leech protection. In mldonkey, I *dont* upload to BitTorrent, since I think edonkey is more efficient. What does BitTorrent do to stop me leeching? But if I try not to upload to edonkey, my download speed drops significantly.

Also speaking about efficiency: have a look at this:

Client Downloaded  Uploaded
eMu 8376563  19087360
OVR 4239362  4359714
eDK 3151872  3502080
tML 1299456  1474560
sZA 359424  274432

This is just taken right now, from my upload list: 22:30pm, 30th June. What efficiency! -- I'm downloading 23 files, download maxed out at 60KB/sec, upload is set to 20KB/sec (bandwidth limit 26KB), also maxed out.

So please dont slander and say things like edonkey offers low leech protection, the original protocol was a little weak on leech protection, but it is of no relevance today. All ed2k clients now offer maximum leech protection, and older clients just get banned.

And as far as I know the only client that exploited the original edonkey protocol was mldonkey =<1.16, the reputation kinda stuck :) -- ofcourse using that client today, gets you banned.

Anyway, please review the bias against edonkey in the article. Although I'm also biased against BitTorrent, I wouldnt post such information on a non discussion page. --User:Hackeron 22:35, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)

- Comment: I believe you would get different results in comparing edonkey to bittorrent if you where to try to max out the bandwidth of 10 mbit upload and 10 mbit download (which is a surprisingly common type of broadband in some countries) on a single file - for example the latest episode of a tv-show. For this bittorrent is, in my experience, superior.

I think in that situation, it may win depending on the source number difference. At the very least, finding sources for a single file is indeed faster on bittorrent since there is a tracker that keeps a separate list of sources for each file. Hardly efficient for tens of millions of files though and on edonkey, you get the benefit of finding sources on *any* server, not limited to the current tracker.

illegal ideas?

"While illegal ideas" Think about this for a sec. What's an illegal idea?

Ask the Attorney General. It is his job to know everything that is legal and illegal, after all, isn't it?

Spam in "Torrent sites"

We need to cleanup the whole torrent sites section, alot of it just seems to be some crap added by the representitives of those sites.

Torrent Sites

• [http://www.torrentreactor.net/index.php Torrentreactor.net] - Categorized list format (very popular.)
• [http://www.bogaa.org/ Bogaa] - Similar to suprnova
• [http://trackerwww.prq.to/ The Pirate Bay] - Created by piratbyrån, they [http://static.thepiratebay.org/legal/ document] all legal threats recieved.
• [http://www.bitoogle.com/ Bitoogle.com] - Search engine
• [http://www.animesuki.com/ AnimeSuki] - keeps track of almost all (unlicensed) Anime Torrents
• [http://www.digital-update.com/ Digital Update] - Internet forum format
  • Needs registration.
• [http://www.filerush.com/ Filerush.com] - All the latest game downloads with high bandwidth seeds.
  • Valid, works a charm.
• [http://www.filesoup.com/ Filesoup.com] - Internet forum format
  • Forum.
• [http://bittorrent.frozen-layer.net Frozen-Layer Network] - Spanish Anime distribution page.
• [http://isohunt.com/ isoHunt.com] - IRC and BitTorrent search engine, P2P releases system
• [http://www.tlm-project.org/ The Linux Mirror Project] - Loads of Linux distribution ISO images as downloadable torrents.
  • Connection refused (03/05/05)
• [http://kov4eg.net/ Lucky Ark] - The great russian bittorent project and community.
• [http://bittorrent.mafiotzii.ro mafiotzii.ro] - The first Romanian Bittorrent community.
• [http://www.sharegroundz.info/ ShareGroundz.info] - Linux iso's, games and apps, all legal. (Like free MMORPG's)
• [http://www.solidz.com/ SolidZ.com] - Linux torrents and various other open source apps.
• [http://www.torrentbits.org/ Torrentbits.org] - A torrent tracker with leech resistance.
• [http://sourceforge.net/projects/webtorrent/ WebTorrent] - A PHP Frontend for Bittorrent, serving as a centralised BitTorrent download server.

down

• [http://www.suprnova.org/ Suprnova.org] (shutdown on the 12/19/2004)
• [http://www.corruptlogic.com/torrents/ CorruptLogic.com] - Light mirror of suprnova
• [http://caffeinated.homelinux.net/ Caffeinated Music] - Trade Friendly Music Torrents.
• [http://www.btorrents.com/ Btorrents.com] - Large BitTorrent community. Internet forum
• [http://www.lokitorrent.com/ LokiTorrent]
• [http://strikingcomic.com/torrents.html Nabasu's BitTorrent Bookmarks] - A good complete list with the biggest and the not so big trackers.
• [http://www.tvtorrents.net/ TvTorrents.net] - Tracker with RSS feed, focused mainly on tv-series.

kazaa

The bit about Kazaa and Participation Level should be a footnote or one sentence long, not a paragraph and change. That belongs in its own page (which it has) or in Kazaa; this is the BitTorrent writeup.

what's with the image

I took out this image:

animated GIF, animated MNG

because it's not at all clear what it's showing

Please sign your posts AaronSw.

It's supposed to show the distribution of data among computers sharing data via bittorrent, the botttom computer being the tracker. -- Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 09:49, 2004 Nov 22 (UTC)

In that case I don't think it's very helpful. I don't see why I should sign my posts -- this isn't a personal position.

Why do you not think it's helpful? With a good explanation I think it would be very useful. And please see the signing guideline. violet/riga (t) 23:22, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

A graphic could be helpful, but this one is too fast and noisy to understand. I guess I oppose the policy, then. I do sign my posts when I want people to respond to me personally, of course, but not in cases like this one where I don't want to be drawn into a discussion.

It would be much better imho if it was slowed down a lot --PopUpPirate 22:33, Feb 7, 2005 (UTC)

I agree that it needs to be slowed down especially when it starts to get busy with all those connections (lines), but it's otherwise not a bad illustration. Some labels or a good description would also be helpful. --WurdBendur 01:15, Feb 8, 2005 (UTC)

I believe that this picture could be redone, gifs have a tendancy to be large, so make one that expresses and visually shows fragments of the "file" moving along (and more of them). I believe the gif moves too fast anyways. Perhaps showing a small example with 10 or so leeches, then zooming out to hundreds, helping to seed them. (just my 2 cents) --x1987x 22:54, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

There should be something to explain the things in the image, for example the colors. ripa 02:04, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Uploading to Commons

Could you upload these images to Commons so that we can use them in Wikipedia of other language?

Choking

I've seen the term "choking" used quite a bit... Can we have an explanation of it?

It refers to the state of an uploader, i.e. the thread that sends data to another peer. When a connection is choked, it means that the transmitter doesn't currently want to send anything on that link.

Should this page have links to copyrighted content?

In this page are many links to sites tracking specific copyrighted content, such as the South Park or Simpsons trackers. Is it legally appropriate for Wikipedia to provide links to sites which enable copyright violation?

As has been noted before, this is legal in many countries. Even in the US, I don't think there is any law preventing linking to a site that provides links to material which are protected under copyright. I suppose the question is rather whether it is appropriate for an encyclopedia to provide links to resources rather than links to other pages that describe the given topic. I think the links are helpful to anyone trying to understand what BitTorrent is. Many other wikipedia pages have external links like this. I say keep them.

i agree. the same argument (that wikipedia shouldn't provide information which can be used to infringe copyrights) holds for bittorent itself. i think it is critical that a distinction be made between Italic textinfringingItalic text copyrights and providing the Italic textabilityItalic text to do so, especially when the information provided can be used for legitimate purposes.

Obvious Exeem Advertisment

Under Decentralization, I saw this little beaut:

"Try it here: http://www.exeem.com/"

I pulled it out because it is clearly an advertisment. I'm also sure this text is also...

"eXeem marries the best features of a decentralized network, the easy searchability of an indexing server and the swarming powers of the BitTorrent network into one program. It also does this in a way that makes the whole system very easy to use. Something that has always prevented mass adoption by the surfing public."

Hell, the whole Exeem part should be rewritten. I'll leave the link out and let y'all decide what to do. -- Ghost Freeman 17:51, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Since Exeem is in beta now, perhaps it's not premature to write an Exeem article. Most of the above can be converted into "these are the program's aims; whether it lives up to it is too early to tell and probably a matter of opinion even afterwards." -- Antaeus Feldspar 18:01, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Make sure to write how much it's a overmarketed FLOP! I still miss suprnova --x1987x 22:55, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

Exeem is hardly having a major impact as yet, it seems to be not all its cracked up to be imho --PopUpPirate 00:10, Feb 6, 2005 (UTC)

Without disputing your conclusion, I must point out that that is in fact your conclusion on the issue. -- Antaeus Feldspar 19:27, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)

As I re-read the entry, it strikes me that the whole Exeem discussion is off-topic. Exeem doesn't purport to be a BitTorrent client, just a BitTorrent replacement incorporating some of its features. As such, I'd like to see a link to its own entry, with the discussion/debate about the program's merits there....not here. --Barte 16:41, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)

License

Bram Cohen's website says BitTorrent is released under the MIT License, not a "BitTorrent License."

Lokitorrent

LokiTorrent shut down today. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02/10/loki_down_mpaa/ Jooler 23:22, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Speculation Article - for curious people (copied from somewhere)

On several BitTorrent and P2P forums we have noticed reports that LokiTorrent actually has been holding out hoping that the MPAA will make an offer to shut them down rather then wage on with the expensive pending lawsuit. We have decided to research this rumor ourselves to see what this popular torrent site is up to. Original this was posted on p2pforum but has vanished... We are posting this story for the public awareness. Some things we have noticed about the popular bit torrent site Lokitorrent that have raised some red flags is that they started collecting a US$30,000 legal fund to defend their site before they even were being sued! Even more odd was once they were sued they raised this amount to US$30,000 per month in legal fees plus US$4000 per month in site costs. To us this all sounds kind of fishy. Our question is why? After several failed attempts to reach Lokitorrent site admins looking for answers we went and contacted the MPAA which was more than happy to state that yes Lokitorrent and the MPAA were in negotiations and that the current offer could not be disclosed nor could the terms if the deal were to be reached. We all know bit torrent site admins take pride in their grassroots, non-profit image however most sites make huge amounts of money. Suprnova which claims to have shutdown due to MPAA pressure and to finish working on their Exeem project for their client is completely just lies. Suprnova was making alot of money. Figure if they had 2,000,000 visitors per day (which is what lokitorrent claims to have, suprnova many estimate had closer to 5,000,000) they would have made close to US$90,000 per month just from per-click ads. Do the math, (all you blog site admins will be kicking yourself because you know this is true) if even only 1.5% (my blog site even gets about 6%, so 1.5% is really low estimate) click an ad, even if by mistake they get an average of $.10 per click so they would be making US$3000 per day times 30 days, not to mention those annoying high paying popups. So now you are asking why would Suprnova shutdown if they were making so much? Well the answer is simple, with Exeem they have much lower costs as their whole system can run on 2 or 3 servers and their effort to maintain those 2 or 3 servers is alot lower as well when you consider they had more then 25 servers going at their peak. Exeem also will make them a ton of money through Cydoor. Some estimate they can easily make $1 per user per day which would put them at close to US$300,000 per day with their current user base. Cydoor is a information harvesting company. They harvest the users info to either sell to marketing companies and spammers or to use your info to hit you with ads directly for their clients. By using Exeem these companies know everything about you just by monitoring your online actions. You go to your email, they now know your email address, you fill in a form they have your name and home address, the information they can harvest is limitless and it is totally legal because when you install Exeem the user license informs you of this if you were to actually read it. If you dont believe us click here and read the part about Cydoor carefully. So why do Lokitorrent and Suprnova care so much about the public knowing about all this? They care because if you knew about it their image as being modern day Robinhoods would be tarnished and they would not be able to sucker you their user into donating Thousands of dollars to them. Our prediction is this Lokitorrent will sign a deal with the MPAA to shutdown, they will claim to shutdown saying that do to lack of donations they ca not afford to fight the case. The Lokitorrent admins save face with the BitTorrent community and continue their mufftorrent porn site and everyone goes on thinking they were just underdogs that could not afford to fight. We would actually like to hear a reply from lokitorrent or suprnova on this actually and we welcome their reply. Again this is all just still brain food and speculation at this point.

web torrent quote

The italicized paragraph in this section is odd, as there is no citation for the quote. It should probably be re-written. --Paraphelion 11:13, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I believe it's from the original WebTorrent paper here; unfortunately it 404'd when I checked it just now. -- Antaeus Feldspar 17:52, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)

WebTorrent

WebTorrent doesn't appear to really exist. The link points to a directory for old term papers from 6.824, which is a class in distributed algorithms at MIT. Many classes such as this at MIT require students to design hypothetical applications. The author's website shows no indication of the software nor can it be found elsewhere on the web. The name WebTorrent also belongs to this bittorrent client. RSpeer 05:13, Feb 15, 2005 (UTC)

Torrent Links

Does anyone else think all links to existing torrent sites should be removed? Given that most torrent sites are being shut down left and right these days, it's best not to advertise each address to anyone who may be reading. Ofcourse, by typing this, I'm not saying that I support any downloading, because I have a NPOV. - PSYCH 09:34, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Headline text

I don't know why, but someone found relevant to remove info about eXeem, LokiTorrent and Suprnova. They are (or were) very important aspects of BitTorrent. --Jolivierld 21:33, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Well, you'd know why if you read this talk page. eXeem was getting too much discussion on the BitTorrent page for something that actually isn't and never was part of BitTorrent, which is why it has its own article now. -- Antaeus Feldspar 17:06, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Other Data

"and some other data." seems very unessesary. Phoenix Hacker

Disambiguation

Some people may be confused that BitTorrent is the name of a program, yet it is also possible to use BitTorrent by using a program called something else (e.g. Azureus). I think this could be made clearer in the first paragraph, perhaps with "and the success of the protocol has led to many other clients being created by others". Or perhaps even by creating BitTorrent (protocol) and BitTorrent (client).

External links

40% of this article are external links. We definately have to remove 90% of these. Wikipedia is not DMoz. --minghong 11:26, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

True, but you just removed all the links to the most active torrent sites, we should at least have the most active ones. —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 12:16, 2005 May 5 (UTC)

You know, it's hard to define "most". When you add back a few "most active" sites, someone else will add a few more. The list will be expanded again. So the best solution is to not list at not. I believe people won't come to Wikipedia looking for warez, fan-sub, pr0n, etc, right? --minghong 18:54, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

Your argument doesn't hold water, we do just fine with external links on other topics which have alot of websites dedicated to those topics, we can remove obvious advertisement and prune other links by consensus just like we always have. —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 17:45, 2005 May 9 (UTC)

shouldn't we be weary posting any links to active torrent sites, given that most are being shut down? Do we really want to advertise these sites to the wrong people?

Large ones like the pirate bay frequently make tech news, you really can't justify a bittorrent article without a mention of some of them, since they're an integrated part of BT culture as it were. –Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 04:30, 2005 May 10 (UTC)

I agree that links should be included, but if much of the article was links (which I thought was fine before), then perhaps another article just for those could be made? Tertiary7 23:09, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

Is there anyway to put those links on their own page??? They make the article 20,000 pixels long (exaggeration). --x1987x 22:58, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

50% of net traffic

i read recently that the bittorrent protocol now accounts for over 50% of total net traffic. i think on /. - if anyone could source this statistic - would be worth quoting.

Try the new link to InfoAnarchy. SqueakBox 22:50, May 31, 2005 (UTC)

Search engines

Should we have a search engine here or not? Can we discuss the issue rather than reverting, we don't want an edit war. I propose we don't have one until this issue is discussed here, SqueakBox 22:49, May 31, 2005 (UTC)

I put this at Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous), and got this response:

It has been suggested we should not put a BitTorrent search engine external link in the article because of the legal ambiguity of BitTorrent. Ideas? SqueakBox 23:30, May 31, 2005 (UTC)

There is no legal ambiguity about BitTorrent. It would be like making FTP illegal. If the site itself is subject to a CRIMINAL case then definitly no, but since all these things are civil suits, I don't think it's a problem. IANAL, ofcours, just my two cents gkhan 23:40, May 31, 2005 (UTC)

1. There is no legal ambiguity about BitTorrent. In no way is BitTorrent itself is illegal. However, it is very clear that people who run search engines will be prosecuted and shut down. These sites are obviously illegal by modern standards.
2. Since BitTorrent itself is running a search engine (for as long as it can...) there is no real need to include links to other ones.
3. This amounts to link spam. Wikipedia is not a repository of links, and these sites are in not directly relevant to BitTorrent. It would be like including a link to Google in every article. —Sean κ. + 03:37, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)

On the strength of this I am returning the search engine, as I fully agrree, SqueakBox 23:46, May 31, 2005 (UTC)

While in some countries there have been rulings against linking sites that link to copyrighted material, in the US it should be fine I think. However, that's not the issue. Wikipedia is not a web directory. If this was an article about that specific Torrent search engine the link would be appropriate, per Wikipedia:External links. However here's it not the official link to a web entity, neither is it an information source. That's what the external links section is for. --W(t) 01:14, 2005 Jun 1 (UTC)

I think the link is very informative as it allows the reader to understand BitTorrent that much better, by searching for something, than would be the case otherwise, SqueakBox 02:17, Jun 1, 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, not buying it. External links is for content, not services. If we can't explain what bittorrent is in the article we've got bigger problems than not having a torrent search engine in the external links. --W(t) 02:38, 2005 Jun 1 (UTC)

I'm buying it. A web directory is simply a database of links, however this page contains much more additional content describing the subject. The mere inclusion of these links does not render this page as a "directory", as you suggest. It's not like this is a print encyclopedia where we need to conserve space. --kizzle 07:11, Jun 1, 2005 (UTC)

The official site, the first external link, is also a search engine. Are you suggesting we remove that too, and if we remove on we should move all 3, as your objections cover all 3 links. Whois is full of whois search engines, IP address is full of IP search locator sites, to give 2 examples. In my opinion by offering links to these engines we are very much helping our reader and doing our share towards disseminating the knowledge of everything. For me as a reader these external links have added value to these articles, and if we take tem away we make the articles less informative, SqueakBox 05:57, Jun 1, 2005 (UTC)

The link to the official site is itsself information about bittorrent, namely "What is it's official site?". (It's also item one of what to link on the excellent Wikipedia:External links). If we're going to link madtorrent, why not link isohunt? and btbot? and bitoogle? and yotoshi? and ... ? --W(t) 03:24, 2005 Jun 2 (UTC)

That is what happens at Whois and IP address, and I believe all these other dsites should be linked here. Lets give our readers choice. And grouping together lots of rival sites links is not spamming, SqueakBox 03:48, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)

Can we have a debate about external links, and not just blank them. Why deny them to our readers (disapproving of BitTorrent is no reason, SqueakBox 14:50, Jun 8, 2005 (UTC)

I think that having a link to one search engine would be legal and helpful to readers. Any more than that just adds clutter and detracts from the information we are trying to provide. coyote376 04:21 10 Jun 05 (UTC)

Maybe create an article about bit torrent search engines..keeping track not only of active ones, but ones that have gotten take down notices and by who, etc. I agree, the search engine links don't belong here. --Paraphelion 14:59, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Given the legal controversies around the search engines creating a separate article sounds an excellent idea-and of course the search engine links would then live there (or not) but as a separate issue from this article. So strong support if someone will do it, 16:10, Jun 10, 2005 (UTC)

Since there seems to be an agreement that for the most part the search engines don't belong there, I am removing them. coyote376 23:37 13 Jun 05 (UTC)

There is no consensus, and even less for your spamming stance of only having MadTorrent search engine alone, SqueakBox 21:49, Jun 13, 2005 (UTC)

There may or may not be consensus, but at the very least there is a very large majority against including the links, at least three people have removed them (and that's not including the anons). --W(t) 21:51, 2005 Jun 13 (UTC)

The discussion here indicates there is not a consensus. How, given the above, can you possibly claim it is just me, SqueakBox 21:54, Jun 13, 2005 (UTC)

Read back, it's everyone arguing against including them and you arguing for including them. Whether or not there is consensus against including them or not is subjective, but there very clearly is a strong majority against including them. --W(t) 21:56, 2005 Jun 13 (UTC)

Legal Issues Removed

I removed the "Legal Issues" section because it is not NPOV. Although BitTorrent can be use to infringe copyright, so can many other things such as FastTrack, Gnutella, eDonkey 2000, and even things such as DVD, CD-R, and the VCR. None of those articles have a whole section devoted to illegal uses of the technology. The only mentions of Intellectual Property issues are technical measures used to prevent infringement. In a broader scope, things such as cars, knives, and dice have illegal uses, and none of those are mentioned in the respective articles. The inclusion of a section here is simply FUD. --160.102.72.223 1 July 2005 16:06 (UTC)

In light of this week's supreme court decision, I think legal issues are very relevant. In particular, if a program is marketed to infringe copyright (and, yes, I think Bram is a bloody fool for putting a search engine on the official BT webpage), then it can be legally liable for copyright infringement done with the program. This in mind, I restored the "legal issues" section. Samboy 29 June 2005 07:07 (UTC)

First of all, the inclusion of the search engine on the BitTorrent home pages does not constitute endorsement of copyright infringement, see the search engine TOS at [1]. Pay special attetion to sections 2 (agreement not to use the site to do illegal things, including copyright infringement), 4 (limitation of liablity), 5 (links are generated through an automated process, BitTorrent has no control), and 12 (DMCA safe harbor notification.) This clearly shows that BitTorrent is not marketed to encourage copyright violations. Also, you did not respond to any of my initial objections, and they are still valid. If you want to place a short section regarding the supreme court decision on the page, that would be okay, and I wouldn't revert it if it was NPOV, but I don't think that it is really that relavant. I will revert the legal issues section for now though. (BTW, I am the intial objector, I just forgot to sign my post) --160.102.72.223 1 July 2005 16:06 (UTC)

Etiquette

Since the Etiquette section mentioned it is considered to polite to upload as much data as you have downloaded, I added a paragraph on why many consider such a policy a bad idea. I didn't spend much time on it, so if someone wants to clean it up or better explain the math behind it, feel free. I think both items should stay because it is considered polite by many users of BT to seed until a 1.00 ratio but many users also are well aware that it is rather impossible to accomplish due to the math involved.

Torrent Search Engines

I think its not fair that users like SqueakBox, Weyes delete torrent search engines. Bittorrent lucks search option and just giving Cohen's site which doesn't index most of the torrent sites is one sided... If the sites doesn't contain any adware/spyware and popups and offers good search for torrents it deserves to be in the links section

Wikipedia is not a web directory. --W(t) 13:46, 2005 Jun 22 (UTC)

I agree with you and not Weyes on this one. I am deleting any stray search engine links because one link alone is spam for that company (ie none is better than one), but I do believe we should replace all the bitTorrent search engines or create a new article BitTorrent search engine and put them there, SqueakBox 14:54, Jun 22, 2005 (UTC)

Jun 22 Yes wiki is not a web directory that why it has information about a subject not just links... links complement the information If we take your reasoning Weyes then we should delete all links going outside of wiki

Nope, just those not per Wikipedia:External links. --W(t) 03:10, 2005 Jun 23 (UTC)

In light of this week's US supreme court decision, I don't think we should be linking to these kinds of search engines. Bit Torrent was designed to make downloading of Linux distributions possible without overloading FTP servers; I have used it to download Fedora Core two and Fedora Core three. While people do use BitTorrent to "steal music and movies over the internet" (these are not my words; there are Ted Bridis' words from today's newspaper), I don't think we should encourage that activity by posting links in this article. Samboy 29 June 2005 05:13 (UTC)

Requested RFC for search engine issue

I posted a RFC for the search engine edit war, as the only consensus that seemes to be reached is that there is no consensus. We've been debating this for too long, it's time to get it resolved, and this is a good step towards doing that. I myself am undecided on the issue, but I do feel that it needs to be decided one way or the other.

I woukld like Weyes or someone to explain exactly why in Wikipedia:External links it prohibits the search engine links. See the end of Talk:IP address#ip2location, SqueakBox 23:23, Jun 26, 2005 (UTC)

1. First phrase of the first line: "Wikipedia is not a web directory", quoting from WP:NOT
2. BitTorrent search engines meet none of the criteria in the "What should be linked to" section
3. BitTorrent search engines meet none of the criteria in the "Maybe OK to add" section
4. BitTorrent search engines get taken down for copyright reasons all the time. In general, external links should be to sites that are likely to be there in a few years.

That enough reasons for not including the links? --Carnildo 01:39, 27 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I have removed the BitTorrent search engine until this situation is resolved. None or many but one one is pure spam. I have also delinked the search engines on thios page to avoid similar spam, etc charges. I will respond to Carnildo later, SqueakBox June 28, 2005 14:37 (UTC)

Ok, I agree with your none or all idea. That does make sense. But what happened to the Official BT Homepage? That site is not *primarily* a search engine. The *main* purpose of the site is information about BitTorrent stright from the creator. I think we should continue to include the BT Official Site in the external links. coyote376 June 29, 2005 01:08 (UTC)

Agreed, the bittorrent homepage should be linked obviously (heck, it's the first entry of WP:EL). When was this removed? --W(t) June 29, 2005 01:19 (UTC)

It is very much of a search engine. Keeping your favourite search engine and removing the rest sounds like spamming to me, SqueakBox June 29, 2005 01:24 (UTC)

It is the official homepage of bittorrent, there's both WP:EL and a huge pile of precedent saying this should be linked. If you object to it being linked as being a search engine, I've removed the description that says it's a search engine too (that's not what we're linking it for after all). --W(t) 29 June 2005 01:30 (UTC)

I have replaced it with their FAQ. Much more informative, and no search engine in site. Given the controversty over the search engines it is not acceptable to just have the BitTorrent one,

We link to the subject homepage for all subjects that have one, there is no reason for this article to be different. --W(t) 29 June 2005 01:36 (UTC)

I'm against linking to these kinds of search engines; BitTorrent is for downloading popular open source software without overloading FTP and web servers. Any other use is, I hope, not endorsed by Bram Cohen. In light of the supreme court decision, any other position is very dangerous. Samboy 29 June 2005 05:17 (UTC)

Seems clear that BT homepage should be linked to, and no other search engines. Link to BT homepage is necessary for informational purposes about what BT itself is, and if that link leads to a search engine, well, them's the breaks. Dcarrano 29 June 2005 06:05 (UTC)

I agree. If Bram wants to shoot himself in the foot by marketing BT as a copyright infringement application, we shouldn't stop linking to his page. Samboy 29 June 2005 06:49 (UTC)

Why is it necessary to link to the home page when all it contains is a search engine and how to download the BT; in other words it contains no useful info, but it does mean we as Wikipedia endorse Bram's BT search engine and noone else's, SqueakBox June 29, 2005 14:21 (UTC)

Wikipedia doesn't endorse anything. We merely provide information, and in the case of subject homepages, it's information we've decided we want to provide for all articles. --W(t) 29 June 2005 19:43 (UTC)