Legal BitTorrent Communities for Class Presentation?

OnBeyondBeing asks: "A few of my friends and I are taking a class at a local university called 'Internet and Society' and we have to do a 'Technology Tour' on innovations that have social aspects or uses (like Google Maps, Kiko (an Internet-based calendar), LiveJournal and Frappr). We chose to do our presentation on BitTorrent. As part of our presentation, we have to do a lab in which the students and teachers use BitTorrent in some way. I was thinking of having people join some BitTorrent community that interests them and join a torrent, but most of these communities contain material that is not suited for an academic presentation. Aside from places like CommonBits and Etree (and others that were mentioned in a previous Slashdot post), what sites have you found that use BitTorrent as the basis of a community that are clean and legal enough for a class presentation? Alternatively, what other interesting, legal uses of BitTorrent have you found?"

Comments

Linux Torrents

[SocialEngineer]

There are always Linux Torrents

Re:Linux Torrents

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it he meant "Suck teh ball!"

Cringely's NerdTV

[headkase]

Cringely offers NerdTV as a bittorrent download. As it is legal there's usually a ton of seeds on each download - nothing better to demonstrate the speed possible with bittorrent.

Anime

[Bob535]

Animesuki.com Fansubs of a good deal of asian programming that has never been licensed in North America (and therefore legal)

Re:Anime

[kinzillah]

Not legal, but the companies look the other way because they recognize the advertising value.

Re:Anime

[theNetImp]

Them not being licensed to an american distributor DOES NOT MAKE THEM LEGAL. They are still protected by international copyright law. Use some common sense.

Re:Anime

[Anonymous Coward]

A little angry, aren't we? It's technically copyright infringement, but fansubs cost the company nothing and drum up interest for licencing in the US and Europe. Not to mention having a ready-made audience for the western release.

The site linked to is one of the biggest bittorrent hubs, only tracks torrents that are not licenced for a western release, and the owning companies have never expressed any desire to ban fansubs.

I may be biased here, because I use animesuki.com pretty regularily to download interesting looking series. Eyeshield 21's pretty interesting. It's a japanese anime series about american football, which is pretty bizare. It's really good though. Shame american football is shown so late at night here, kind of getting into it :-|

Re:Anime

[Nicholas Evans]

It's not legal. It's less unethical.

Re:Anime

[EMeta]

No, actually it IS legal, up until a North American corperation liscences it. This is a detailed desciption of why based on US and Japanese copyright law, but it boils down to a combination of 'fair use,' 'non-commercial' and no one standing to lose money over it (since no one owns a translated (sellable) copy).

That's why most fansubbed stuff has "do not sell or auction, do not distribute after has been liscenced" in it. Because that keeps them legal. I would also like to say that I was going to suggest Animesuki myself, as it does keep to only 100% legal stuff. (Unlike others I could name.)

Re:Anime

[theNetImp]

There's nothing technical about it. It "is" copyright infringment. I'm not saying I disagree with the fact that the Anime industry overlooks it. Whether it tracks licensed or not, it is not an example of legal torrent downloads, they are still illegal. I may be biased because I have gone to Japan and spent $200-$300 for a series that I could have downloaded for free, and that my DVD collection in toll is close to 500 discs, including the region2s from Japan and the UK.

Re:Anime

[james b]

Thanks - interesting article. But the last line reads: "In the end, regardless of ethics, or motive, fansubs are technicaly illegal." - that doesn't seem to support your argument, or have I misunderstood?

Re:Anime

[PylonHead]

Wow, did you even read the article you linked to? Let me post the conclusion for you:

Conclusion

Legally, there is no difference between "fansubs" and "bootlegs". In the eyes of the law, both could be seen as damaging to the market. Regardless of whether or not a title has been technicaly licensed in North America, it is illegal. Lack of enforsement of copyright laws in terms of unlicensed fansubs maybe the result of several different factors. Some companies may believe that the early introduction of the title to North America is beneficial. Others may simply tolerate a "fan-activity" as long as it does not become too damaging to sales. And yet other companies may not want to or be able to invest the time and money necessary to prosecute foreign violations of their copyright.

In the end, regardless of ethics, or motive, fansubs are technicaly illegal.

Re:Anime

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. Your link details precisely why it is illegal. Jump to the conclusion if you have to, where it says fansubs and bootlegs are the same thing. Did you actually read it, or did a friend give you the link?

The only thing legal is the actual translation, so websites that distribute the translated scripts to the shows are perfectly legal. All you have to do then is buy the Japanese DVD and use some special software to display the translated script. That's legal.

Downloading an entire series with video and audio is not legal, whether or not it has a translation on it. It's not even legal to do so in Taiwan anymore, since they joined the WTO. You'd have to be in a country that hasn't signed the Berne Convention for it to be legal, and even then you couldn't take the fansub to the U.S. legally.

It might be possible to argue that downloading the first 10% of a series (2.6 episodes of a 26 episode series) is legal under the fair use clause... but it would be a really weak argument.

Re:Anime

[james b]

the owning companies have never expressed any desire to ban fansubs

That's not quite true: Anime company Media Factory ('Kimi Ga Nozomu Eien', 'Akane Maniax') asked animesuki to stop listing fansubs of their works, even though there were no US-licenced versions.

Re:Anime

[Kuukai]

the owning companies have never expressed any desire to ban fansubs

Yes they have. Media Factory is one that has actually threatened litigation, but think about it. All the creators speak Japanese and live in Japan. International litigation is expensive (plus Japanese lawyers are even more expensive than ours), and most don't seem to know this is going on anyway. Whenever the fansub issue does come up at conventions, the Japanese guests are shocked and often outraged. And what do you even mean by "ban", anyway? Fansubs are illegal. If anything, they've expressed no desire to unban them. I'm not claiming that "piracy is bad", etc., since I don't necessarily believe that's the case. Just, if you believe you're doing this with the blessings of the creators, or anyone else for that matter, you're sadly mistaken.

Re:Anime

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, sorry about that. There should have been a "that" in the argument i.e.

The site linked to is one of the biggest bittorrent hubs, only tracks torrents that are not licenced for a western release, and THAT the owning companies have never expressed any desire to ban fansubs.

It's still badly worded, but that should make my point slightly clearer.

Re:Anime

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, you're right enough. I was derailing the discussion into the ethics of fansubbing rather than the illegality (which isn't in question), sorry about that.

Re:Anime

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, that post was really badly worded. I wasn't intending to defend all fansubs sites, just use animesuki.com as an example that's closer to tolerated than most. Given that example:

(1) "international litigation is expensive"

Why litigate? If this site is honest about it's stance on licencing, which I have no reason to doubt, a simple email stating the companies position should do the trick. However, a pretty good question is why it's the companies responsibility to have to track down each site and refuse permission

(2) "most don't seem to know this is going on anyway"

Are you sure? I'm no expert on this kind of stuff (only started downloading anime recently, although been buying it for a while), but it was my understanding that the whole fansubs thing was difficult to miss. It's been going on since the mid eighties, it can build up huge support for titles to be released over in america and europe (Azumanga Daioh being the obvious example) and it's not exactly hidden (a search on google brings up around 2 million results).
Also, I'd imagine making an explicit statement in favour of fansubbing would have the potential to harm licensing agreements with us and european firms. Given that, it's hard to tell whether a companies silence on the subject represents lack of knowledge of free distribution of their properties, apathy, or encouragement in hope of increasing us sales in the long run.

(3) "Whenever the fansub issue does come up at conventions, the Japanese guests are shocked and often outraged"

This is kind of new to me, I would have assumed not caring would be more of a typical response. I haven't actually ever been to a convention, nor do i know much about the business, though, so you could well be correct.

(4) "Fansubs are illegal"

Yes, sorry for the first post, which may have given you the impression I disagreed with this.

(5) "Just, if you believe you're doing this with the blessings of the creators, or anyone else for that matter, you're sadly mistaken."

Nope, I don't believe this. Apathy is probably the most benevolent interpretation of non-enforcement of copyright. After all, actual bought copies are far more important than the people who download copies of unavailable properties.

I'd like to add that I've been buying anime on and off for the last five years and only found out about sites like animesuki.com last month, so I'm not the most knowledgable person to talk to about things like this.

Christ, this was a long post.

Re:Anime

[Kuukai]

(2) "most don't seem to know this is going on anyway"

Are you sure? I'm no expert on this kind of stuff (only started downloading anime recently, although been buying it for a while), but it was my understanding that the whole fansubs thing was difficult to miss. It's been going on since the mid eighties, it can build up huge support for titles to be released over in america and europe (Azumanga Daioh being the obvious example) and it's not exactly hidden (a search on google brings up around 2 million results). Also, I'd imagine making an explicit statement in favour of fansubbing would have the potential to harm licensing agreements with us and european firms. Given that, it's hard to tell whether a companies silence on the subject represents lack of knowledge of free distribution of their properties, apathy, or encouragement in hope of increasing us sales in the long run.

I meant creators don't. In the 80's, fansubs were underground video creations. There was no real internet presence, so it was much smaler scale, and they actually lived up to the "they're not licensed in this region, so fansubing isn't hurting anybody", because you had to physically distribute the tapes. Now that it's moved to bittorrent, what's stoping Japanese people from downloading them and ignoring the subtitles? Have you never in you life witnessed someone doing that with a Chinese "fansub"? When you search in English, you find loads of information about it on Google. Like I said, the creators usually don't speak English. And even then, you only find that information if you're looking for it. Ask your oldest relative who owns a computer if they know what fansubs are. I've been to many conventions in both the U.S. and Japan, and I can't say I've seen a positive reaction to the topic of fansubbing. To them it's usually hand in hand with piracy. I'd say it's not apathy, but instead the Pacific ocean and a language barrier that keeps them from responding.

(From my bookmark list)

[TheDarkener]

http://www.legaltorrents.com

ETree - Legal Bootleg Torrents

Open Source Torrents

Re:(From my bookmark list)

[omega_cubed]

filesoup has moved to filesoup.co.uk. But I wouldn't recommend that for an educational setting (especially if the OP intends for the teachers/students to join as a member of the community). IIRC, they even have a red light district.

We have a winner.

[Senes]

Demonstrate bittorrent without infringing on copyrights, and show people FOSS at the same time. Not really much more needs to be said.

Re:We have a winner.

[Directrix1]

But at the same time looking for a bittorrent "community" with no illegal downloading is like finding a job to fit a tool. The approach to the problem is completely wrong. He should be showing that bittorrent is a tool. It is only a tool. It can be used for legal and illegal things. It just so happens that many illegal downloads' needs are fullfilled by this tool. He should be showing how it can be used any place where large frequently accessed files are in use to save bandwidth, since that is all it really does.

Re:We have a winner.

[takeya]

http://www.legaltorrents.com/index.htm

Re:We have a winner.

[Anonymous Coward]

He should be showing how it can be used any place where large frequently accessed files are in use to save bandwidth, since that is all it really does.

"any place" like where? Surely during the presentation all the points you made will be show but when it comes time for examples... what? Yes bittorrent can be used anyplace to save the host but who does it. When you have to show presumed newbies how to use bittorrent in the academic setting you can't show them how to use ThePirateBay. The poster is asking for examples to display.

Sure any good mechanic can teach you what a hammer is and how it works but it's really helpful to have a nail and a board handy for people to really grasp the concept. --
The Wolfkin

Re:We have a winner.

[Bing Tsher E]

All that link provided was a redirect to a snopes page.

Legal Torrents

[Bullet-Dodger]

Legal Torrents is quite good. Creative Commons-licensed music, movies, books, and such.

C2C

[Anonymous Coward]

"Alternatively, what other interesting, legal uses of BitTorrent have you found?"

Doesn't Croquet use a peer to peer architecture.

electric sheep has novel use of torrents

[spot]

The Electric Sheep server uses BitTorrent to distribute results of aesthetic evolution. Get the torrents of the RSS feed of torrents here. It's currently delivering about 150GB daily by torrent.

World of Warcraft

[Psionicist]

Let them install World of Warcraft on their computers as Blizzard use BitTorrent to distribute patches. Then if they are good studens you can let them play abit afterwards. :-)

Re:World of Warcraft

[Brandee07]

Blizzard's servers buckle under the strain of just keeping the game running; I imagine if they actually had to provide direct downloads to all however many million subscribers, then several serverfarms across the country would spontaneously explode on patch days. Bittorrent was really the perfect solution, although in the beginning some users complained that they shouldn't have to give their upload bandwidth to others. The Blizzard Downloader also does something different from normal torrents; my university network is capable of blocking normal (illegal) bittorrent traffic while allowing blizzard traffic to go through.

ETree

[lunk]

I like ETree for all my music needs. http://bt.etree.org/ is a free tracker for free music. The bands, who's music appears on this site, allow and encourage people to make tapes of their live shows and share them with their friends. It is this general philosophy that lead to the large followings of The Greatful Dead and Phish and Linux.

Re:ETree

[ksheff]

http://www.dimeadozen.org/
http://www.thetradersden.org/
http://www.cotapers.org/

Re:ETree

[Xtifr]

Dimeadozen: not legal (although they do have standards, i.e. no official releases/commercial material).

Tradersden: similar to dimeadozen

COTapers: Now we're getting somewhere! Legal, but (mostly) limited to Colorado shows. Very tiny compared to Etree. There's a similar site for New Orleans, but I lost the link, unfortunately. There are also small sites devoted to particular bands (e.g. FishboneLive.org.

But if the original poster doesn't think Etree is "suited for an academic presentation", then I doubt if he'd think any differently about these smaller, Etree-like sites. Live rock-n-roll doesn't seem to be what he's after. Of course, I'm not exactly sure why....

Re:ETree

[ksheff]

Why is dimeadozen "not legal" and etree & cotapers legal? They all seem to follow the same standards (nothing commercial, bands must be taper friendly, etc). From the dimeadozen FAQ:

• No torrent may distribute any official material. This includes:
  • OOP material and the separated audio part of VHS videos, Laserdisc videos, and DVD videos -- even if the recording is from a different source than the officially available material;
  • Alternate recording sources of any officially released performance, unless specifically permitted by the artist's policy for trading;
  • Video material whose audio portion has officially released content;
  • Remixes or remasters of any officially available material;
  • So called "bastard" mixes and DJ sets.
• No torrent may distribute any material of artists respectively bands who do not agree to the electronic distribution of their unofficially recorded live shows. For a list of bands/artists see here.
• No torrent may distribute recordings (audio or video) of shows from subscription cable or broadcast channels (such as, but not limited to, HBO or Showtime, XM Radio, SIRIUS, Canal+, Wowow, and Mezzo). These stations assert and enforce copyrights on all their broadcasts. The same applies to all pay-per-view events on any station or channel.

If you are not sure if your torrent will adhere to these rules, please ask the moderators first. Torrents violating the rules or contra bonos mores of live music trading will be banned without further notice.

Why etree & etree-like sites not considered worthy of being included in a paper of legal bittorrent use is beyond me. People automatically view P2P applications was tools used to steal music and here are examples where people are using them to get music that the musicians want shared.

Pure Pwnage

[Trouvist]

Pure Pwnage uses BitTorrent to distribute their shows. That's legal and it has a cult-following of nerds to boot.

Let see...

[Anonymous Coward]

uh...
mininova.. thepiratebay.. torrentspy.. torrentreactor.. newnova..
Oh. Legal.

here, let me do your homework for you...

[artifex2004]

Legal Torrents.
Note that you could have used Google for that one. :)

And if you want to call SXSW a community, here is a link to their free MP3 archive torrent for 2006. There's a 2005 you can Google for, too.

Damn!

[Zadaz]

When I was in school I had to do research for papers by my self.

But then again, we had Gopher, not Google, so I'll shut up.

Anyway, off the top of my head, Democracy player is a combination video player, RSS reader and torrent client that hooks up a community of legal (well, most of it) video distribution.

It was also announced this week that Steven Soderbergh will be releasing a short through BitTorrent. (I'll let you find the link, you hard working student.)

Plus it's educational!

[Anonymous Coward]

And interesting too.

xandros/suse

[mikesd81]

Xandros and Suse both had torrent downloads.. I'm sure others do to but I only got those.

Re:xandros/suse

[DeadManCoding]

Ubuntuu, Mandriva are some extras. I've gotten Ubuntuu, Mandriva, and Suse all via Torrent.

Open Office

[TheZorch]

OpenOffice.org distributes their software via BitTorrent in order to help save bandwidth. You can get it other traditional ways but this is an example of where P2P can be used legitimately.

Fandom

[magefile]

I've found a bunch of fan movies on BT. Star Wars: Revelations is one, and I believe it's unofficially smiled upon by LucasFilms. Star Wreck: In The Pirkinning is another. Star Trek: The New Voyages. I suspect the Blender/Maya/3d-animation communities also have torrentable media available, as do various machinima communities. Another possibility is backup. Bittorrent is a semi-decent protocol for moving a shitload of stuff from one computer to another; in that case, you're not taking advantage of a swarm, you're just taking advantage of the fact that resumability, NAT traversal, etc., are made simpler (if you don't want to deal with, or have access to, something like rsync). I've moved my iTunes library that way a few times.

promotion of music

[scum-e-bag]

www.djmixes2k.com

Gutenberg?

[AussieVamp2]

You could find a Project Gutenberg torrent.

Red vs. Blue

[Spy der Mann]

Don't forget the redvsblue episodes available on the net.

How to configure Bit Torrent on Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm kind of new to Linux (Ubuntu) and have never used Bit Torrent before, ever (in Windows for example).

Besides torrent sites with legal content, are there any good sites describing how best to configure Bit Torrent in Linux so that a person using it doesn't mess up and open up their whole hard drive to the world?

I'd like to use Bit Torrent, but if I have a bunch of .mp3s on my hard drive that I ripped from my own purchased CDs, I don't want to suddenly discover that I'm being sued by the RIAA because I accidentally shared them with the whole planet.

Ideas?

Re:How to configure Bit Torrent on Linux?

[Lord Kano]

Besides torrent sites with legal content, are there any good sites describing how best to configure Bit Torrent in Linux so that a person using it doesn't mess up and open up their whole hard drive to the world?

I would highly doubt it. It's a fair concern, but it doesn't apply to bittorrent. With Bittorrent, you only make available that which you have explicitly shared.

Unless you make a torrent of c:\ or / you don't have anything to worry about.

LK

Ibiblio

[nitrocloud]

Ibiblio has torrents for a lot of their content. The seeds are some of the main servers and therefore are fast, plus the added client bandwidth probably helps a lot too.

Songfight

[adjuster]

We used Bittorrent to host some of the larger Songfight weeks. (Songfight is a semi-weekly music competition where artists / bands / etc compose a song based on a title chosen by the "Fightmaster". The following week, all the compositions are posted and voted-on.) Bittorrent was never used as the primary means of distribution for the songs, but in weeks that the 'fight was 100MB+ it was nice to have a torrent available.

Re:Songfight

[tepples]

Songfight is a semi-weekly music competition where artists / bands / etc compose a song based on a title chosen by the "Fightmaster". The following week, all the compositions are posted and voted-on.

How did you make sure that none of your entrants subconsciously copied an existing work that they had heard 10 years ago on the radio? (See Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music, the "My Sweet Lord" case.) If you required all artists to warrant that they had done this checking themselves, what method did you suggest that they use?

Re:Songfight

[adjuster]

How did you make sure that none of your entrants subconsciously copied an existing work that they had heard 10 years ago on the radio? (See Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music, the "My Sweet Lord" case.) If you required all artists to warrant that they had done this checking themselves, what method did you suggest that they use?

I don't run the site, so I don't see it as my problem. Believe me, I'm as angry and frustrated by the silliness in the U.S. "intellectual property" law as you appear to be. It's a, pardon the vulgarity, dumb fucking pain. I write songs occasionally for the site, release them as public domain, and don't particularly care to get in a fight w/ anybody 'bout the intellectual property concerns. Something's gotta give, w/ respect to intellectual property and the way that things work in this "Internet age". I think we're in line for a copyright-fundend police state, destruction of the Internet as we know it, and ubiquitous prohibition of free expression. I hate it, but I can't really do much of anything about it.

Re:Songfight

[Anonymous Coward]

But you claimed to be running a legal torrent site, then admitted that you basically don't seek to prevent the sort of infringement the parent referred to. So which is it?

Independant musicians and labels

[sabit666]

http://www.jamendo.com/en/

Public Domain Torrents

[optikSmoke]

Public Domain Torrents has torrents of movies in the public domain in various formats. Some hidden gems in there, though I don't know how much of a "community" you could say they have.

AMPFEA.ORG

[torpor]

We use Torrents on AMPFEA.ORG, which is a community made for people who want a way to put their original-content (only) material online free of charge.

If its free to the world, its free to use AMPFEA.ORG .. we discourage mis-use and abuse by active community audits, and we've got a veritable stash of interesting material - music, images, video - online for people to peruse.

(Archives Made Persistent For Everyones Access..)

NASA

[kitejumping]

Don't forget NASA - http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=nasa+bittorre nt ...now must be that time of year to be giving presentations, I just gave one on Bittorrent a few weeks ago...

We have a winner-Double or nothing.

[Anonymous Coward]

"He should be showing how it can be used any place where large frequently accessed files are in use to save bandwidth, since that is all it really does."

I'm not certain one can claim that BT saves bandwith. If it was more like FTP* then yes, but the sharing part of BT means that more goes in and out than just the size of the file. What's really ment is that BT saves bandwith by moving the responsability elsewere, not getting rid of it.

*FTP even has a resume capability. Same as BT.

Re:We have a winner-Double or nothing.

[Anonymous Coward]

He should be showing how it can be used any place where large frequently accessed files are in use to save bandwidth, since that is all it really does.

I'm not certain one can claim that BT saves bandwith. If it was more like FTP* then yes, but the sharing part of BT means that more goes in and out than just the size of the file. What's really ment is that BT saves bandwith by moving the responsability elsewere, not getting rid of it.

*FTP even has a resume capability. Same as BT.

I think by "to save bandwidth" we can all safely assume that "to save host bandwidth" is implied. Shuffle your 'responsibility' where you may Bitorrent can save the host a LOT of bandwidth by sharing the load with peers. --
The Wolfkin

This Week In Tech

[cazbar]

TWiT distributes their shows through bittorrent. Sometimes they even have video.

Revision3 also distributes their shows on bittorrent.

Humorous Juxtaposition

[Panaphonix]

Compare the number of comments in the "Related Story", Legal Torrent Sites Help Legitimize BitTorrent, with this story--actually asking for legal torrent sites.

Copying by accident?

[tepples]

If its free to the world, its free to use AMPFEA.ORG .. we discourage mis-use and abuse by active community audits

Once your audit turns up a work that a user claims to have created and believes in good faith that he has created but turns out to be substantially similar to a work published a decade ago, which is likely to happen by accident in the case of music, what sanctions if any are imposed on the user? Or is the work simply removed? I couldn't find a Terms of Service on the site.

what's the difference if it's legal or not?

[Punto]

If your presentation is about the impact of bittorrent in society, what difference does it make if the use is legal or not? There are a lot of things that shape society that aren't legal.. For example, I'm sure any history class will teach you about the black market of alcohol created by prohibition, that was part of society.. There are current, technology-related examples too; Napster became pretty popular in its time, and I'm sure most of the stuff on those 60gb mp3 players people have now is not exactly legal (at least not to the satisfaction of the RIAA).

The truth is that most people use bittorrent to download illegal music, illegal movies/tv show, illegal anime (yes, fansubs are illegal no matter how you put it). That's the real effect on society, and you can show it objectively (I think it's a good thing, but that's another discussion).

New 'Group Torrents' system

[simon333]

Over at mitosis.com we're about to launch a custom 'groups' system which gives users their own blog, user management tools, etc. etc. The interesting part is that we're also introducing a fully integrated torrents section along with it.

An average visitor will view the 'torrents' page and be able to search, sort and/or download all the freeware, open source and copyright free/allowed 'community torrents' while a mitosis member that belongs to a group (or multiple groups) will view the torrents page and see all those torrents as well as the torrents posted to the private group they belong to.

With this system, a user is rewarded for social networking with an increased torrent library. Plus, a user can view and search the group info pages to find groups with shared interests. ...users can send join request or a group admin can send individual invites to users to join their group.

NOTE: Mitosis membership is free however there is a fee if you want to setup your own private group. We would rather do it this way then become slaves to online advertisers. (no offense slashdot) ;)

Oh, you can view the beta at http://www.mitosis.com/sections/torrents/ You probably won't be able to do or see much but as I said, we're very close launch so feel free to check back.

OnBeyondBeing, I'd be happy to answer any questions you have if you wanted to use mitosis.com in your study. ...You can contact me through the website.

Later,

- Simon

Live Music

[Anonymous Coward]

http://bt.etree.org/ is a hub for several well known bands offering their live shows for free download. Bands include Phish, Widespread Panic, Grateful Dead, etc. All bands have policies stating their intentions for sharing the music including specific provisions (such as no soundboard copies in the case of the Grateful Dead).

Legal Bittorents

[Anonymous Coward]

"Alternatively, what other interesting, legal uses of BitTorrent have you found?"

I use them for distributing episodes of the jackass-esque TV show my friends and I worked up. http://www.dgzmedia.com./

Torrents are outstanding for distributing large files without having to provide a lot of server base. You only have to host the file on one machine, and if it's popular enough the downloaders of that file will take care of the distribution and bandwidth for you.

OpenOffice also uses torrents to distribute binaries, and downloading via Bittorrent is often considerably faster than a plain HTTP download from one of their mirrors. When OpenOffice 2.0 was released I snagged it about the second or third day it was out. I managed to pull just over 2 megabytes per second download speed most of the way. I didn't even know my lowly office ISP could go that fast...

knoppix trackers

[anderiv]

The knoppix tracker would also seem like a good choice. There's usually a fair amount of seeders, and you'd get the benefit of exposing them to a very high-quality linux live cd at the same time.

Game Updates

[silvwolf]

http://www.gameupdates.org/ - patches and updates and demos for games.

R.E.M.'s "Give It Away"

[NefariousAryq]

At Murmurs.com, a fansite for the band R.E.M., they operate a section of their site called "Give It Away" (a reference to an R.E.M. song, for those in the know). This is a legal list of torrents of live R.E.M. material, over the bands 20-some year career. R.E.M. is perfectly A-Ok happy with allowing the sharing of their live music, and infact Ethan, the guy running Murmurs.com, works for the bands record company. Check it out: http://www.murmurs.com/torrents/ ~~Aryq~~