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Legal BitTorrent Communities for Class Presentation?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the it's-not-the-technology-but-who-uses-t dept.

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?"

5 of 73 comments (clear)

  1. Anime by Bob535 · · Score: 1, Interesting

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

    1. Re:Anime by kinzillah · · Score: 2, Interesting

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

      --
      Douglas P. Price
  2. Fandom by magefile · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

  3. Re:We have a winner. by Directrix1 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    --
    Occam's razor is the blind faith in the natural selection of least resistance and in universal oversimplification. -- EF
  4. AMPFEA.ORG by torpor · · Score: 2, Interesting


    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..)

    --
    ; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --