Bit Torrent

100750107047

ABSTRACT
Bit Torrent is one of the most common protocols for transferring large files. It is

a protocol that underpins the practice of peer-to-peer file sharing and is used for distributing large amounts of data over the Internet.
Bit Torrent is one of the most common protocols for transferring large files and it has

been estimated that, collectively, peer-to-peer networks have accounted for approximately 43% to 70% of all Internet traffic (depending on geographical location) as of February 2009. Most of this peer-to-peer traffic is likely from Bit Torrent, after the demise of Lime Wire.
As of January 2012, Bit Torrent is utilized by 150 million active users (according to

Bit Torrent, Inc.). Based on this figure, the total number of monthly Bit Torrent users can be estimated at more than a quarter of a billion. At any given instant, Bit Torrent has, on average, more active users than YouTube and Facebook combined (this refers to the number of active users at any instant and not to the total number of unique users). Since 2010, more than 200,000 users of the protocol have been sued by copyright trolls.
It's a peer-to-peer file sharing protocol used for distributing large amount of data. It

accounts for 27-55% of all Internet traffic. The protocol works as an alternative data distribution method that makes even small computers with low bandwidth capable of participating in large data transfers.

BT Components
On a public domain site, obtain .torrent file.

For example: http://bt.LOR.net http://bt.HarryPotter.com/

~1~

Bit Torrent

100750107047

Fig Torrent Process

~2~

Bit Torrent

100750107047

UNIT 1 BITTORRENT RELATED TERMS

Torrent :

It is the torrent file itself. The .torrent file is extremely small and it just contains the information about the actual file and the people who are sharing it.

Bit Torrent client :

It is a piece of software which takes the .torrent file, then reads the information in it and starts the download.

It is implemented in several clients, such as Bit Comet, Bit Torrent, K Torrent and Torrent.

Seeders:

Seeders are, if someone who has finished downloading and after that to keep the file active to let users download it, seeders are used.

Leecher :

After downloading the file, a leecher becomes a seeder when he downloads the entire file and then shares it across the network.

Peer :

Peer is any computer participating in the download and upload of a torrent file..

~3~

Bit Torrent Swarm :

100750107047

The swarm is the sum total of all the leechers and seeders participating in the torrent process.

Tracker :

The tracker is a server which has the information of who has what files and who needs which ones.

Thus acting as a bridge between seeders and leechers.

Piece :

Torrent is made up of small pieces.

You never download all the pieces from one pieces unless there's one seed.

Pieces are usually less than a couple megabytes each.

~4~

Bit Torrent

100750107047

UNIT 2 WORKING

A Bit Torrent client is any program that implements the Bit Torrent protocol. Each

client is capable of preparing, requesting, and transmitting any type of computer file over a network, using the protocol. A peer is any computer running an instance of a client.

To share a file or group of files, a peer first creates a small file called a "torrent" .This

file containment data about the files to be shared and about the tracker, the computer that coordinates the file distribution. Peers that want to download the file must first obtain a torrent file for it and connect to the specified tracker, which tells them from which other peers to download the pieces of the file.

Though both ultimately transfer files over a network, a Bit Torrent download differs

from a classic download (as is typical with an HTTP or FTP request, for example) in several fundamental ways:

1) BitTorrent makes many small data requests over different TCP connections to

different machines, while classic downloading is typically made via a single TCP connection to a single machine.
2) Bit Torrent downloads in a random or in a "rarest-first" approach that ensures high

availability, while classic downloads are sequential.

~5~

Bit Torrent

100750107047

Fig 3.1 Working of Bit Torrent client

In this figure, the colored bars beneath all of the 7 clients in the animation above

represent the file, with each color representing an individual piece of the file.
After the initial pieces transfer from the seed (large system at the bottom), the pieces

are individually transferred from client to client.

The original seeders only needs to send out one copy of the file for all the clients to

receive a copy.
So this how all the lechers download the torrent file from seeders. Taken together, these differences allow Bit Torrent to achieve much lower cost to the

content provider, much higher redundancy, and much greater resistance to abuse or to "flash crowds" than regular server software.
However, this protection, theoretically, comes at a cost: downloads can take time to

rise to full speed because it may take time for enough peer connections to be established, and it may take time for a node to receive sufficient data to become an effective uploaded.

~6~

Bit Torrent 100750107047 This contrasts with regular downloads (such as from an HTTP server, for example)

that, while more vulnerable to overload and abuse, rise to full speed very quickly and maintain this speed throughout.

Creating and publishing torrents :

The peer distributing a data file treats the file as a number of identically sized pieces, usually with byte sizes of a power of 2, and typically between 32 kB and 16 MB each. The peer creates a hash for each piece, using the SHA-1 hash function, and records it in the torrent file. Pieces with sizes greater than 512 kB will reduce the size of a torrent file for a very large payload, but is claimed to reduce the efficiency of the protocol.

When another peer later receives a particular piece, the hash of the piece is compared to the recorded hash to test that the piece is error-free. Peers that provide a complete file are called seeders, and the peer providing the initial copy is called the initial seeder.

The exact information contained in the torrent file depends on the version of the BitTorrent protocol. By convention, the name of a torrent file has the suffix.torrent. Torrent files have an "announce" section, which specifies the URL of the tracker, and an "info" section, containing (suggested) names for the files, their lengths, the piece length used, and a SHA-1 hash code for each piece, all of which are used by clients to verify the integrity of the data they receive.

Torrent files are typically published on websites or elsewhere, and registered with at least one tracker. The tracker maintains lists of the clients currently participating in the torrent. Alternatively, in a trackerless system (decentralized tracking) every peer acts as a tracker.

Azureus was the first BitTorrent client to implement such a system through the distributed hash table (DHT) method. An alternative and incompatible DHT

~7~

Bit Torrent

100750107047

system,

known as Mainline DHT, was

later developed and

adopted by

the BitTorrent (Mainline), Torrent, Transmission, rTorrent, KTorrent, BitComet, and Deluge clients.

After the DHT was adopted, a "private" flag analogous to the broadcast flag was unofficially introduced, telling clients to restrict the use of decentralized tracking regardless of the user's desires. The flag is intentionally placed in the info section of the torrent so that it cannot be disabled or removed without changing the identity of the torrent.

The purpose of the flag is to prevent torrents from being shared with clients that do not have access to the tracker. The flag was requested for inclusion in the official specification in August, 2008, but has not been accepted yet. Clients that have ignored the private flag were banned by many trackers, discouraging the practice.

Downloading torrents and sharing files

Users find a torrent of interest, by browsing the web or by other means, download it, and open it with a BitTorrent client. The client connects to the tracker(s) specified in the torrent file, from which it receives a list of peers currently transferring pieces of the file(s) specified in the torrent. The client connects to those peers to obtain the various pieces.

If the swarm contains only the initial seeder, the client connects directly to it and begins to request pieces.Clients incorporate mechanisms to optimize their download and upload rates; for example they download pieces in a random order to increase the opportunity to exchange data, which is only possible if two peers have different pieces of the file.

~8~

Bit Torrent 100750107047 The effectiveness of this data exchange depends largely on the policies that clients use

to determine to whom to send data. Clients may prefer to send data to peers that send data back to them , which encourages fair trading.

But strict policies often result in suboptimal situations, such as when newly joined peers are unable to receive any data because they don't have any pieces yet to trade themselves or when two peers with a good connection between them do not exchange data simply because neither of them takes the initiative.

To counter these effects, the official Bit Torrent client program uses a mechanism called "optimistic unhooking", whereby the client reserves a portion of its available bandwidth for sending pieces to random peers (not necessarily known good partners, so called preferred peers) in hopes of discovering even better partners and to ensure that newcomers get a chance to join the swarm.

Although swarming scales well to tolerate flash crowds for popular content, it is less useful for unpopular content. Peers arriving after the initial rush might find the content unavailable and need to wait for the arrival of a seed in order to complete their downloads.

The seed arrival, in turn, may take long to happen (this is termed the seeder promotion problem). Since maintaining seeds for unpopular content entails high bandwidth and administrative costs, this runs counter to the goals of publishers that value BitTorrent as a cheap alternative to a client-server approach.

This occurs on a huge scale; measurements have shown that 38% of all new torrents become unavailable within the first month. A strategy adopted by many publishers which significantly increases availability of unpopular content consists of bundling multiple files in a single swarm.

~9~

Bit Torrent

100750107047

More sophisticated solutions have also been proposed; generally, these use crosstorrent mechanisms through which multiple torrents can cooperate to better share content.

Bit Torrent does not offer its users anonymity. It is possible to obtain the IP addresses of all current and possibly previous participants in a swarm from the tracker. This may expose users with insecure systems to attacks. It may also expose users to the risk of being sued, if they are distributing files without permission from the copyright holder(s).

However, there are ways to promote anonymity; for example, the OneSwarm project layers privacy-preserving sharing mechanisms on top of the original BitTorrent protocol.

Fig 3.2 Graph of seeder and leechers

~ 10 ~

Bit Torrent

100750107047

UNIT 3 TECHNOLOGIS BUILT ON BITTORRENT

The Bit Torrent protocol is still under development and therefore may still acquire

new features and other enhancements such as improved efficiency.

Distributed trackers : On May 2, 2005, Azures 2.3.0.0 (now known as Vuze) was released, introducing

support for "tracker less" torrents through a system called the "distributed database." This system is a DHT implementation which allows the client to use torrents that do not have a working Bit Torrent tracker. The following month, Bit Torrent, Inc. released version 4.2.0 of the Mainline Bit Torrent client, which supported an alternative DHT implementation (popularly known as "Mainline DHT", outlined in a draft on their website) that is incompatible with that of Azures.
Current

versions

of

the

official BitTorrent

client

, utorrent, BitComet,Transmission and BitSpirit all share compatibility with Mainline DHT. Both DHT implementations are based on Kademlia. As of version 3.0.5.0, Azures also supports Mainline DHT in addition to its own distributed database through use of an optional application plugin.This potentially allows the Azures client to reach a bigger swarm.

Another idea that has surfaced in Vuze is that of virtual torrents. This idea is based on

the distributed tracker approach and is used to describe some web resource. Currently, it is used for instant messaging. It is implemented using a special messaging protocol and requires an appropriate plug-in. Anatomic P2P is another approach, which uses a decentralized network of nodes that route traffic to dynamic trackers.

~ 11 ~

Bit Torrent

100750107047

Most BitTorrent clients also use Peer exchange (PEX) to gather peers in addition

to trackers and DHT. Peer exchange checks with known peers to see if they know of any other peers. With the 3.0.5.0 release of Vuze, all major BitTorrent clients now have compatible peer exchange.

Web seeding : Web seeding was implemented in 2006 as the ability of BitTorrent clients to download

torrent pieces from an HTTP source in addition to the swarm. The advantage of this feature is that a website may distribute a torrent for a particular file or batch of files and make those files available for download from that same web server; this can simplify long-term seeding and load balancing through the use of existing, cheap, web hosting setups. In theory, this would make using BitTorrent almost as easy for a web publisher as creating a direct HTTP download. In addition, it would allow the "web seed" to be disabled if the swarm becomes too popular while still allowing the file to be readily available.

This feature has two distinct and incompatible specifications. 1) The

first

was

created

by

John

"TheSHAD0W"

Hoffman,

who

created BitTornado. From version 5.0 onward, the Mainline BitTorrent client also supports web seeds, and the BitTorrent web site had a simple publishing tool that creates web seeded torrents. Torrent added support for web seeds in version 1.7. BitComet added support for web seeds in version 1.14. This first specification requires running a web service that serves content by info-hash and piece number, rather than filename.
2) The other specification is created by GetRight authors and can rely on a basic HTTP

download space (using byte serving).In September 2010, a new service named Burnbit was launched which generates a torrent from any URL using webseeding.

~ 12 ~

Bit Torrent

100750107047

There exist server-side solutions that provide initial seeding of the file from the webserver via standard BitTorrent protocol and when the number of external seeders reach a limit, they stop serving the file from the original source.

RSS feeds :

A technique called broad catching combines RSS with the BitTorrent protocol to create a content delivery system, further simplifying and automating content distribution. Steve Gillmor explained the concept in a column for Ziff-Davis in December, 2003. The discussion spread quickly among bloggers (Ernest Miller, Chris Pirillo, etc.). In an article entitled Broad catching with BitTorrent, Scott Raymond explained:

I want RSS feeds of BitTorrent files. A script would periodically check the feed for

new items, and use them to start the download. Then, I could find a trusted publisher of an Alias RSS feed, and "subscribe" to all new episodes of the show, which would then start downloading automatically like the "season pass" feature of the TiVo. Scott Raymond.

The RSS feed will track the content, while BitTorrent ensures content integrity

with cryptographic hashing of all data, so feed subscribers will receive uncorrupted content.

One of the first and popular software clients (free and open source) for broad

catching is Micro. Other free software clients such as Penguin TV and Ketch are also now supporting broad catching.

The BitTorrent web-service Move Digital had the ability to make torrents available to

any web application capable of parsing XML through its standard REST-based

~ 13 ~

Bit Torrent

100750107047

interface, although this has since been discontinued. Additionally, Torrent hut is developing a similar torrent API that will provide the same features, as well as further intuition to help bring the torrent community to Web 2.0 standards. Alongside this release is a first PHP application built using the API called PEP, which will parse any Really Simple Syndication (RSS 2.0) feed and automatically create and seed a torrent for each enclosure found in that feed.

Throttling and encryption : Since BitTorrent makes up a large proportion of total traffic, some ISPs have chosen

to throttle (slow down) BitTorrent transfers to ensure network capacity remains available for other uses. For this reason, methods have been developed to disguise BitTorrent traffic in an attempt to thwart these efforts.
Protocol header encrypts (PHE) and Message stream encryption/Protocol encryption

(MSE/PE) are features of some BitTorrent clients that attempt to make BitTorrent hard to detect and throttle.

At

the

moment Vuze, Bitcomet, KTorrent, Transmission, Deluge, Torrent,

MooPolice, Halite, rTorrent and the latest official BitTorrent client (v6) support MSE/PE encryption.

In September 2006 it was reported that some software could detect and throttle

BitTorrent traffic masquerading as HTTP traffic.Reports in August 2007 indicated that Comcast was preventing BitTorrent seeding by monitoring and interfering with the communication between peers. Protection against these efforts is provided by proxying the client-tracker traffic via an encrypted tunnel to a point outside of the Comcast network. Comcast has more recently called a "truce" with BitTorrent, Inc. with the intention of shaping traffic in a protocol-agnostic manner. Questions about the ethics and legality of Comcast's behavior have led to renewed debate about net neutrality in the United States.

~ 14 ~

Bit Torrent 100750107047 In general, although encryption can make it difficult to determine what is being

shared, BitTorrent is vulnerable to traffic analysis. Thus, even with MSE/PE, it may be possible for an ISP to recognize BitTorrent and also to determine that a system is no longer downloading but only uploading data, and terminate its connection by injecting TCP RST (reset flag) packets.

MultiTracker :

Another unofficial feature is an extension to the BitTorrent metadata format proposed by John Hoffman and implemented by several indexing websites. It allows the use of multiple trackers per file, so if one tracker fails, others can continue to support file transfer. It is implemented in several clients, such

as BitComet, BitTornado, BitTorrent, KTorrent,Transmission, Deluge, Torrent, rtorr ent, Vuze, Frostwire. Trackers are placed in groups, or tiers, with a tracker randomly chosen from the top tier and tried, moving to the next tier if all the trackers in the top tier fail. Torrents with multiple trackers can decrease the time it takes to download a file, but also has a few consequences:

Poorly implemented clients may contact multiple trackers, leading to more overheadtraffic.

Torrents from closed trackers suddenly become downloadable by non-members, as they can connect to a seed via an open tracker.

Decentralized keyword search : The Tribler BitTorrent client is the first to incorporate decentralized search

capabilities. With Tribler, users can find .torrent files that are hosted among other peers, instead of on a centralized index sites. It adds such an ability to the BitTorrent protocol using a gossip protocol, somewhat similar to the eXeem network which was shut down in 2005. The software includes the ability to recommend content as well. After a dozen downloads the Tribler software can roughly estimate the download taste of the user and recommend additional content.

~ 15 ~

Bit Torrent

100750107047

In May 2007 Cornell University published a paper proposing a new approach to

searching a peer-to-peer network for inexact strings, which could replace the functionality of a central indexing site. A year later, the same team implemented the system as a plugin for Vuze called Cubit and published a follow-up paper reporting its success.

A somewhat similar facility but with a slightly different approach is provided by

the BitComet client through its "Torrent Exchange" feature. Whenever two peers using BitComet (with Torrent Exchange enabled) connect to each other they exchange lists of all the torrents (name and info-hash) they have in the Torrent Share storage (torrent files which were previously downloaded and for which the user chose to enable sharing by Torrent Exchange).

Thus each client builds up a list of all the torrents shared by the peers it connected to

in the current session (or it can even maintain the list between sessions if instructed). At any time the user can search into that Torrent Collection list for a certain torrent and sort the list by categories. When the user chooses to download a torrent from that list, the .torrent file is automatically searched for (by info-hash value) in the DHT Network and when found it is downloaded by the querying client which can after that create and initiate a downloading task.

~ 16 ~

Bit Torrent

100750107047

UNIT 4 META-SEARCH ENGINE

There are the torrent meta-search engines, which basically search a bunch of torrent Sites.

Torrent scan Select a torrent site from a long list and use Torrentscan webpage to scout out your torrent.

Torrent-Finder Search 172 torrent sites and trackers with this multi-search engine.

Torrentz A simple no fuss torrent meta-search engine.

And of course, there are the regular search engines like Google too, search with a torrent query..

where you can

SITES THAT PROVIDE TORRENT

thepiratebay.se newtorrents.info vertor.com fenopy.eu torlock.com

~ 17 ~

Bit Torrent

100750107047

UNIT 5 IMPLEMENTATION

The BitTorrent specification is free to use and many clients are open source, so

BitTorrent clients have been created for all common operating systems using a variety of programming languages.

The official BitTorrent client, Torrent, Xunlei, Vuze and BitComet are some of the most popular clients.

Some BitTorrent implementations such as MLDonkey and Torrentflux are designed to

run as servers. For example, this can be used to centralize file sharing on a single dedicated server which users share access to on the network.

Server-oriented

BitTorrent implementations can also be hosted by hosting

providers at co-located facilities with high bandwidth Internet connectivity (e.g., a datacenter) which can provide dramatic speed benefits over using BitTorrent from a regular home broadband connection.Services such as ImageShack can download files on BitTorrent for the user, allowing them to download the entire file by HTTP once it is finished.

The Opera web browser supports BitTorrent, as does Wyzo. BitLet allows users to

download Torrents directly from their browser using a Java applet. An increasing number of hardware devices are being made to support BitTorrent. These include routers and NAS devices containing BitTorrent-capable firmware like OpenWrt.

~ 18 ~

Bit Torrent 100750107047 Proprietary versions of the protocol which implement DRM, encryption, and

authentication

are

found

within

managed

clients

such

as Pando.

IMPLEMENTS

Film, Video and Music.

BitTorrent Inc. has obtained a number of licenses from Hollywood studios for distributing popular content from their websites.

Sub Pop Records releases tracks and videos via BitTorrent Inc. to distribute its 1000+ albums. Babyshambles and The Libertines (both bands associated with Pete Doherty) have extensively used torrents to distribute hundreds of demos and live videos. US industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails frequently distributes albums via BitTorrent.

Podcasting software is starting to integrate BitTorrent to help podcasters deal with the download demands of known their MP3 "radio" as Democracy Player) programs. support

Specifically, Juice and Miro (formerly

automatic processing of .torrent files from RSS feeds. Similarly, some BitTorrent clients, such as Torrent, are able to process web feeds and automatically download content found within them.

DGM Live purchases are provided via BitTorrent. Vodo, a service which distributes "free-to-share" movies and TV show BitTorrent.

Broadcasters
In 2008, the CBC became the first public broadcaster in North America to make a full show (Canada's Next Great Prime Minister) available for download using BitTorrent.

The Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK) has since March 2008 experimented with bittorrent distribution, available online. Only selected material in which NRK owns all royalties are published. Responses have been very positive, and NRK is planning to offer more content.

~ 19 ~

Bit Torrent 100750107047 The Dutch VPRO broadcasting organization released four documentaries under

a Creative

Commons license

using

the

content

distribution

feature

of

the Mininova tracker.

Software
Blizzard Entertainment uses BitTorrent (via a proprietary client called the "Blizzard Downloader") to distribute content and patches for Diablo III, StarCraft II and World of Warcraft, including the games themselves.

Many software games, especially those whose large size makes them difficult to host due to bandwidth limits, extremely frequent downloads, and unpredictable changes in network traffic, will distribute instead a specialized, stripped down bittorrent client with enough functionality to download the game from the other running clients and the primary server (which is maintained in case not enough peers are available).

Many major open source and free software projects encourage BitTorrent as well as conventional downloads of their products (via HTTP, FTP etc.) to increase availability and to reduce load on their own servers, especially when dealing with larger files.

Personal material

The Amazon S3 "Simple Storage Service" is a scalable Internet-based storage service with a simple web service interface, equipped with built-in BitTorrent support.

Blog Torrent offers a simplified BitTorrent tracker to enable bloggers and nontechnical users to host a tracker on their site. Blog Torrent also allows visitors to download a "stub" loader, which acts as a BitTorrent client to download the desired file, allowing users without BitTorrent software to use the protocol. This is similar to the concept of a self-extracting archive.

~ 20 ~

Bit Torrent

100750107047

Government & education

The UK government used BitTorrent to distribute details about how the tax money of UK citizens was spent.

Florida State University uses BitTorrent to distribute large scientific data sets to its researchers.

Many universities that have BOINC distributed computing projects have used the BitTorrent functionality of the client-server system to reduce the bandwidth costs of distributing the client side applications used to process the scientific data.

Others
Facebook uses BitTorrent to distribute updates to Facebook servers.

Twitter uses BitTorrent to distribute updates to Twitter servers.

The Internet Archive added Bittorrent to its file download options for over 1.3 million existing files, and all newly uploaded files, in August 2012. This method is the fastest means of downloading media from the Archive.

As of 2011 BitTorrent has 100 million users and a greater share of network bandwidth than Netflix and Hulu combined.At any given instant of time BitTorrent has, on average, more active users than YouTube and Facebook combined. (This refers to the number of active users at any instant and not to the total number of registered users.)

CableLabs, the research organization of the North American cable industry, estimates that BitTorrent represents 18% of all broadband traffic. In 2004, CacheLogic put that number at roughly 35% of all traffic on the Internet.The discrepancies in these

~ 21 ~

Bit Torrent

100750107047

numbers are caused by differences in the method used to measure P2P traffic on the Internet.

Routers that use network address translation (NAT) must maintain tables of source and destination IP addresses and ports. Typical home routers are limited to about 2000 table entries while some more expensive routers have larger table capacities. BitTorrent frequently contacts 2030 servers per second, rapidly filling the NAT tables. This is a common cause of home routers locking up.

~ 22 ~

Bit Torrent

100750107047

UNIT 6 DEVELOPMENT

An unimplemented (as of February 2008) unofficial feature is Similarity Enhanced

Transfer (SET), a technique for improving the speed at which peer-to-peer file sharing and content distribution systems can share data.

SET, proposed by researchers Pucha, Andersen, and Kaminsky, works by spotting

chunks of identical data in files that are an exact or near match to the one needed and transferring these data to the client if the "exact" data are not present.

Their experiments suggested that SET will help greatly with less popular files, but not

as much for popular data, where many peers are already downloading it. Andersen believes that this technique could be immediately used by developers with the BitTorrent file sharing system.

As of December 2008, BitTorrent, Inc. is working with Oversi on new Policy

Discover Protocols that query the ISP for capabilities and network architecture information. Oversi's ISP hosted NetEnhancer box is designed to "improve peer selection" by helping peers find local nodes, improving download speeds while reducing the loads into and out of the ISP's network.

~ 23 ~

Bit Torrent

100750107047

UNIT 7

LEGAL ISSUES

There has been much controversy over the use of BitTorrent trackers. BitTorrent

metafiles themselves do not store file contents. Whether the publishers of BitTorrent metafiles violate copyrights by linking to copyrighted material without the authorization of copyright holders is controversial.

Various jurisdictions have pursued legal action against websites that host BitTorrent

trackers.

High-profile

examples

include

the

closing

of Suprnova.org, TorrentSpy, LokiTorrent,BTJunkie, Mininova, Demonoid and Oink's Pink Palace. The Pirate Bay torrent website, formed by a Swedish group, is noted for the "legal" section of its website in which letters and replies on the subject of alleged copyright infringements are publicly displayed.

On 31 May 2006, The Pirate Bay's servers in Sweden were raided by Swedish police on allegations by the MPAA of copyright infringement; however, the tracker was up and running again three days later.

In the study used to value NBC Universal in its merger with Comcast, Envisional

found that all of the top 10,000 torrents on the BitTorrent network violated copyright.Between 2010 and 2012, 200,000 people have been sued by copyright trolls for uploading and downloading copyrighted content through BitTorrent.In 2011, 18.8% of North American internet traffic was used by peer-to-peer networks which equates to 132 billion music file transfers and 11 billion movie file transfers on the BitTorrent network.

~ 24 ~

Bit Torrent 100750107047 On April 30, 2012 the UK High Court ordered five ISPs to block BitTorrent search

engine The Pirate Bay.

Historically it has a bad reputation due to its decentralized method of file transfer.This makes it difficult to remove a download , such as one that is illegal. Many of the sites which provide torrent files have been banned due to the Act held, named SOPA(Stop Online Piracy Act).

The main reason for these legal issues is that they provide the data which is

copyrighted due to which many of the companies were incurring losses.

~ 25 ~

Bit Torrent

100750107047

UNIT 8 BITTORRENT & MALWARE

Several studies on BitTorrent have indicated that a large portion of files available for

download via BitTorrent contain malware.

In particular, one small sample indicated that 18% of all executable programs

available for download contained malware.

Another study claims that as much as 14.5% of BitTorrent downloads contain zero-

day malware, and that BitTorrent was used as the distribution mechanism for 47% of all zero-day malware they have found.

~ 26 ~

Bit Torrent

100750107047

UNIT 9 Conclusion
Right now torrents are facing legal consequences but the torrents can definitely be used to optimize the sharing of files on the internet and can surely be proved as a reliable server supporting system. Moreover, the official audio-video clips, Documents and many other personal information which in a way is bigger in size for mailing can take the shelter of the torrent client so as to keep the approach and access towards these files wide open from world wide. The thing is that, piracy of various data on internet is due to human nature and of course, torrent ,as a model, has nothing to do with it. Hence, piracy can never be counted as a backdrop for torrents as torrents originally were not created for piracy of movies, sound, documents, compilations, etc.

~ 27 ~

Bit Torrent

100750107047

REFERENCES

1. Internet Study 2008/2009 2. Fastcompany.com 3. Comscore.com 4. Theory.org 5. BitTorrent Protocol 1.0 6. Private Torrents 7. DGMlive.com 8. Computer Network by Tanenbaum

~ 28 ~