A basic introduction to BitTorrents, bittorrent clients, bittorrent trackers, file sharing via 4Shared and SlideShare.

1. Perfectly legal
illegal resources
in the web
Catching Slumdogs using a net

2. Fifth
Faculty Development Programme
Talk by
Dr V N Krishnachandran
18 March 2009
Department of Computer Applications
Vidya Academy of Science and Technology
Thalakkottukara, Thrissur 680501, India

3. Part I Torrents
Bit torrents
BitTorrent Clients
μTorrent
Azureus
BitTorrent Trackers
The Pirate Bay
Mininova
Part II Sharing
4 Shared
Slide Share
Part III Conclusion

4. Part I BitTorrents

5. The Basics of BitTorrent
BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer (P2P)
protocol designed to distribute large
amounts of data.
We quot;breakquot; the file being transferred
into smaller segments called pieces.

6. The Basics of BitTorrent
Initially, a file provider makes his
file available to the network. He is
called a seed.
He then allows others, named
peers, to connect and download the
file. Each peer who downloads a
part of the data makes it available
to other peers to download.

7. Exchanging pieces of files

8. Overall Architecture
Web Server Tracker
Web page
with link
to .torrent
C
A
Peer
[Seed]
Peer
[Leech]
B
Downloader
Peer
[Leech]

9. Overall Architecture
Web Server Tracker
Web page
with link
to .torrent
C
A
Peer
[Seed]
Peer
[Leech]
B
Downloader
Peer
[Leech]

10. Overall Architecture
Web Server Tracker
Web page
with link
to .torrent
C
A
Peer
[Seed]
Peer
[Leech]
B
Downloader
Peer
[Leech]

11. Overall Architecture
Web Server Tracker
Web page
with link
to .torrent
C
A
Peer
[Seed]
Peer
[Leech]
B
Downloader
Peer
[Leech]

12. Overall Architecture
Web Server Tracker
Web page
with link
to .torrent
C
A
Peer
[Seed]
Peer
[Leech]
B
Downloader
Peer
[Leech]

13. Overall Architecture
Web Server Tracker
Web page
with link
to .torrent
C
A
Peer
[Seed]
Peer
[Leech]
B
Downloader
Peer
[Leech]

14. Overall Architecture
Web Server Tracker
Web page
with link
to .torrent
C
A
Peer
[Seed]
Peer
[Leech]
B
Downloader
Peer
[Leech]

15. Keywords
Seed
Users that have 100 % of the file(s).
Leechers
Users that do not have the complete file(s). 0–99 %
Peers
Seeds and Leechers (another computer on the
internet that you connect to and transfer data)
Swarm
The group of machines that are collectively
connected for a particular file.

16. Keywords
Torrent
A file you receive from the web server
(the one that ends in .torrent ) .
The file contains information about the
data you want to download,
not the data itself.
Clients
A client is a bittorrent program.

17. Keywords
Trackers
A server that handles and stores the torrent files.
In order for everyone to be able to locate one another,
there needs to be some centralized location that peers
could connect to in order to obtain the other peers' IP
addresses.
BitTorrent trackers serve as this centralized location.
A tracker collects peers’ IP addresses and port numbers to
share with other peers connecting to that same swarm.

18. For more details
Brian's BitTorrent FAQ and
Guide
http://dessent.net/btfaq/
Mininova FAQ
http://www.mininova.org/faq

19. BitTorrent Clients

20. About torrent
• a small file (a few KBs)
• with the suffix .torrent
• containing all the information
• needed to download a file
the torrent was made for.
It contains
• file names,
• their sizes,
• where to download from, etc.

21. Downloadable files
Using torrents we can download
• Movies
• Music
• Games
• Books
• Softwares

22. Torrent clients
To download anything through a
torrent we need a torrent client.
BitTorrent client is a program that
manages torrent downloads and
uploads using the BitTorrent
protocol.

23. Some BitTorrent clients

25. About µTorrent
µTorrent was created by Ludvig
Strigeus.
Currently maintained by BitTorrent,
Inc.
Not open source software.
Free software

26. Home page of µTorrent
http://www.utorrent.com/

27. Download page of µTorrent

28. Selecting filenames in µTorrent

29. Downloading via µTorrent

31. About Vuze
Vuze is a software application enabling you
to find, download, play and share all kinds
of content.
It is a full-featured bittorrent client.
The Vuze application is built on the original
code of the Azureus Bittorrent client.
.
Azureus is a type of poison dart frog found
in South America.

32. Azureus/Vuze home page
http://azureus.sourceforge.net/

33. BitTorrent home page
http://www.bittorrent.com/
BitTornado home page
http://www.bittornado.com/

34. So what is BitTorrent?
BitTorrent
peer-to-peer file sharing (P2P)
communications protocol
BitTorrent
a program (a client) that downloads
files using the BitTorrent protocol
BitTorrent
a company that develops software based
on the BitTorrent protocol

35. BitTorrent Trackers

37. About The Pirate Bay
The Pirate Bay is a Swedish website
that indexes and tracks
BitTorrent files.
“The world's largest
BitTorrent tracker”
Funded with advertisements.

38. About The Pirate Bay
Established in November 2003 by the
Swedish anti-copyright organization
Piratbyrån (The Piracy Bureau).
Operating as a separate organization
since October 2004.

39. About The Pirate Bay
According to the Los Angeles Times,
The Pirate Bay is
quot;one of the world's largest
facilitators of illegal downloading“.

40. The Pirate Bay home page
http://thepiratebay.org/

41. The Pirate Bay search page

42. The Pirate Bay download page

43. Installing Azureus via the Bay

44. Location of The Pirate Bay !

46. About Mininova
Mininova is one of the largest BitTorrent
index sites.
It is a directory and search engine for
many kinds of torrent files.
Based in the Netherlands and started in
January 2005.
Visitors of Mininova can anonymously
upload torrents to this site, tracked by any
BitTorrent tracker.

47. Mininova home page
http://www.mininova.org/

48. Mininova search page

49. Mininova download page

50. Mininova „details‟ page

51. Mininova FAQ

52. Part II Sharing

54. About 4shared?
It is a big online storage
where Internet users store
their text, audio, video, photo, and
other files
and share them with other people.

55. 4 Shared home page
http://www.4shared.com/

56. 4 Shared search page

57. 4 Shared download page

58. 4 Shared folder structure

60. About SlideShare
SlideShare is the world's largest
community
for sharing presentations.
Individuals and organizations upload
presentations
- to share their ideas,
- connect with others,
- generate leads for businesses.

61. About SlideShare
Anyone can find presentations on
topics that interest them.
The SlideShare team is based in
San Francisco (California, USA)
and New Delhi (India).

62. SlideShare home page
http://www.slideshare.net/

63. SlideShare search page

64. Part III Conclusion

65. Is downloading torrent files
legal? Yes !
Torrent files are not copyrighted, so this is allowed.
Opening a torrent file may start the process of
downloading copyrighted content. Depending on the
circumstances, such as the content in question and the
country you're living in, this might be illegal.
Is downloading copyrighted content
Illegal? May be !!

66. Perfectly legal illegal
resources in the web?