Visit Surfshark VPN. Mikaela Bray. Contributing Writer Mikaela is an investigative journalist that likes to cover the ever-changing world of technology. Cancel reply. Jamie C. Cox May 23, at am. Dammy Gosh April 7, at pm. Cody Byrne March 31, at am. Alana Hinger March 30, at am. Table of Contents:. No, thanks. Get NordVPN. Become a Patron of Ask Leo!

We do it every time we view a web page. Unfortunately, bitTorrent technology has become confused with illegal file sharing, simply because so much of that illegal activity uses that technology. And yes, bitTorrent and bitTorrent-like technology can most definitely be used for totally legal activities. As just one example, many Linux distributions are made available using bitTorrent. Subscribe to Confident Computing!

Less frustration and more confidence, solutions, answers, and tips in your inbox every week. Download right-click, Save-As Duration: — 2. Read the article. I understand copyright and all but how do those guys on U tube get away with it? Copyright lasts for years and years and it seems no one person has a right to anything these days.

Do they have copyright — do they have a right at all? But what about designers? This is my main seller, and some of the items in there are deliberately not available for free — there are other products I offer for free. I contacted them and told them to remove it which they did, but the next day I went back and they are offering the same product under a different name. What rights do I have? I created it, I own it, I am the only distributor of it.

I want their site removed, they are prats. Can you tell me who I should contact in Canada to report someone who excessively down loads movies? People like this cause a lot of job loss in the country! How do i get it off. All music, software , text files, videos etc are illegal downloads if they have a copy right on it.

Lets say thats true, i have downloaded games online and was found later on because i was sharing it. Is it possible to just download torrent files for yourself and not get caught and arrested for copyright infringement or theft?

Can a copyright owner create a version of his material with trojan horse or other malware to trick pirates? I just recieved a cease and desist regarding a piece of Adobe photoshop that I downloaded from a torrent site. The file I downloaded was a trial, and it was infected, so I got rid of it immediately. I actually complied before I was even warned. How can me the user, prove that I did not use it, and them the copyright holder prove that I used the software, or rather did not.

I did activate the trial that I recieved, but it had an infected executable anyways. I was initally downloading the same software from the adobe website on a trial basis, but it was terribly slow, and I have downloaded trials from torrent sites before and this has never happened up until now.

The only other thing i have downloaded was a adobe trial which was really big and boring…So yea that really my question. I downloaded a game from what I thought was a real company but come to find out I had paid a person that had no connection to the game at all and then they threatened to charge me for copy right infringement so be careful. Hi Thank you so much.

I got the full benefit from this. My question is: I have read in some sites that the torrent is legal. I do need to download so many things I can not pay for. Why do not they do it? Well quiet frankly I didnt know bit torrents where illegal i have downloaded a couple of older games that i didnt even know they had for pc but with all this warnings coming in the mail to people iam honestly getting kind of scared besides i have no money to pay a big fine for something so simple.

I think that the law system in the USA is quiet messed up and upside down in some aspects but what can 1 voice change? Like one of the previous reader posted on top what will a leak of couple of thousand dollars , dollars do to their billion dollar industry comon people thats like a penny from a dollar.

I can be accused of falling into the instant gratification instant gratification gave me. In other words, if you want it buy it. Unfortunately, downloading or uploading any piece of software, game, or music without the necessary copyright agreement is a violation of the copyright.

Being in the web development industry I can see both sides of the arguement, as companies are losing money from their product not being paid for. On the flip side, many recording artists, or companies are just lining their pockets with the extra revenue. What are the minimum and maximum sentences? Are the chances of being caught and the consequences associated with them even influencing the way people torrent?

Is our legal system incompetent to the rapidly growing technology? Now the people getting caught, are they getting punished for sharing files or just downloading the Torrent? What is the difference between sharing online, and handing the physical DVD or game to a friend to try or view??? How many of us have shared our movies with friends and families or a CD??? Which then brings up a question about the movies and games that are rented from a video store. The video store is not giving royalties to the production corporations……Hmmmmm— How does that work???

All of this sounds like nonsense to me. It is crazy especially when dealing with the internet. The only reason why people are using the internet and the advance technology is because they have the ability to copy a file or movie that may have purchased and would love to protect their investment by making a copy. This stops then from buying another music cd, movie, or another copy of application in the future which may be hard to find or the price has gone up.

Once that happen, you will wonder what happen to the internet and the technology. I say get rid of the internet if it involves downloading a file, sales, or just viewing a movie.

In a case where I legally purchased an album digitally, would it be legal to redownload that album, considering you already bought it elsewhere? One would think, but this is one reason why people hate DRM so much. Unless you have a way to download the original from iTunes again, it is apparently still illegal to redownload the album from elsewhere.

Stupid, IMO, but apparently the way it is. As always remember:. Because i know downloading movies is but im not sure about Series…. Then if I share it with a friend by sending it over the internet does that make it illegal? HI I am now even more confused.

In certain countries, including the US, ISPs are allowed to share this information with third parties including intellectual property owners. It is proprietary—not open source—software maintained by a legal US company. Like BitTorrent, the uTorrent software itself is legal, although it can be used for digital piracy. The official uTorrent is free of malware and can be used safely and privately in combination with a VPN.

It does not, however, prevent users from downloading malicious files that can infect their device. The BitTorrent protocol rose to become the most popular medium for peer-to-peer file sharing in the world after the demise of centralized services like Napster and Limewire. Unlike those services, torrenting is almost completely decentralized save for the trackers that allow users to search and download torrent files and magnet links. Torrent files and magnet links are used to find other users on the network who host the desired file or files but do not actually host those files for downloading.

The BitTorrent protocol is not in itself illegal or unsafe. It is just the means to share any type of file, and plenty of legal torrenting services do exist. The most popular torrent trackers, such as ThePirateBay and KickassTorrents, however, operate in a legal grey area, offering users free access to copyrighted content. Sharing and downloading copyrighted content by BitTorrent, or other means, is illegal in many countries and can be unsafe since sites including KickassTorrents have been shown to host malware.

These trackers would argue that they simply find and organize information that is already out there, and they do not illegally host any copyrighted content on their own servers. Just like the BitTorrent protocol itself, they are the means to an end.

Not everyone is convinced. Major trackers have come under heavy legal scrutiny from content creators and distributors who argue the trackers enable and encourage theft. The blame ultimately shifts to the users, the millions of individuals who host files on their personal computers, downloading and uploading movies, games, software, music, ebooks, and more.

Users connected to the same tracker are called peers, and they fall into two categories. A leech uses a torrent file or magnet link to download the file from other users on the network who already have the file. These users who already have the file are called seeds. When a leech is finished downloading a file or even just part of a file , he or she becomes a seed, allowing other leeches to download the file from his or her computer.

Comparitech does not condone or encourage any violation of copyright law or restrictions. Please consider the law, victims, and risks of copyright piracy before downloading copyrighted material without permission. Legally speaking, seeding and leeching copyrighted material fall into different criminal categories. Think of it like buying illegal drugs: purchasing the drugs for personal use is definitely a crime, but a relatively minor one. Turning around and selling those drugs to others is a much more serious offense.

The prosecution of torrent users has been sporadic. The chances of actually going to court or having to pay a settlement are pretty slim, but the penalties can be extremely high. The frequency of copyright holders suing torrenters for copyright infringement peaked in the late s.

Copyright pirates were sued for wildly disproportionate amounts of money, and most settled out of court. These public scare tactics shone poorly on the recording and movie industries because they were portrayed as petty millionaires bullying poor college students.

Direct lawsuits are much less common these days, but the campaign against torrenters is far from over. Now the job of going after individual copyright pirates has been outsourced to a growing number of small businesses known as copyright trolls.

These companies locate torrenters who illegally download copyrighted content through their real IP addresses. They then approach the copyright owners and sign a deal that lets them take legal action on their behalf. Others are hired directly by Hollywood production companies to sniff out pirates.

With legal leverage and a list of names, the copyright trolls then go after torrenters via mail, email, or even by going door to door and handing out settlement letters. These letters are not legally binding documents or injunctions. Copyright trolls use intimidation, fear, and shame to make torrenters pay without ever going to court.

The most common way to receive a settlement letter is through your internet provider. A copyright troll will go through the court system to subpoena your ISP and force it to email customers with a legal threat and hand over personal details.

Chances are you might. Also i feel that i am addicted to downloading torrents. The longer you do this, though, the higher your chances are. Most people use this. How can we get caught it? If i download it from example Ipad and they come to the door and just hide the Ipad and turn off can they find it then :D?

Im moving from Croatia to Germany next week so wondering how to dl torrent and be safe. Im downloading torrent to some Franch server justseed. Is that safe enough? What do you suggest? Hi guys, Im moving from Croatia to Germany next week so wondering how to dl torrent and be safe. I cannot speculate on this, since this is a highly sensitive matter that could have legal implications.

I am asking if this is legal what I am doing since the torrent is being downloaded to franch server and I just dl completed file with out any sharing to my mac? The same can be said for German law. Hello, I live in Bangladesh. I know torrent is legal here since everybody download via torrent and nothing happens. I downloaded over 2 TB of movies and tv shows and copied everything in a hard drive.

I will go to california for university within a couple of months and take the hard drive full of movies with me. Will I get caught if I watched theses torrent downloaded videos from the hard drive over there in my pc. Another thing is are streaming websites for tv shows available in usa such as watchseries.

If it has pirated films, only you would know that. To be safe, I tried the site you mentioned from a remote computer in the United States, and it worked fine.

Will the customs not check the hard drive or DVD one is carrying? How safe is it to carry a hard disk into US? Junaid makes a good point. Do I take my external hard drive and laptop with me in my carry on bag or do I put my external hard drive in my suit case? Do US customs check the contents of my external hard drive and laptop? The internet, the final frontier, these are the downloads from those bold enough to share what no man has shared before.

What is any law enforcement group going to do really…. They cant say you did it, only that it was done using your internet connection. You could claim a virus did it on your computer. Basically i couldnt imagine any court deciding that based on your ownership of an internet service policy that you are responsible for things downloaded without knowing that you were the one to download it.

That would be like saying that you are responsible for a car crash when your car was stolen just because you owned it, this shit wont ever make it through the system based on expense and the fact that they cant pick and choose who they want the prosecute they cant ignore part of the list and send different parts of it to gaol, that would be discrimination.

If you are concerned with the ethics behind it then consider that you basically still pay the full amount to see the movie at the cinemas. Paying the full price to watch the movie once and then paying the full price to get the movie to watch again is a scam anyway. As for the torrent software, you do not have to delete it. There are cases when downloading certain things through Torrent is either legal or permissibly decriminalized. I can tell you more details if you want to know.

The files that were downloaded must be deleted in order for you to clear yourself of any probable cause for infringement. Most likely, nothing will happen. But if you want to completely clear yourself of any wrongdoing, eliminate anything that may show signs you still possess the copyrighted material. Thank you very much for your reply!

As far as I can see, everything is copyrighted.. Works of art that are either in the public domain music, movies, etc. I think that for the US, the author has to have been dead for at least 70 years. Syria has copyright law here. The government there has many more things to worry about than someone downloading music, software, or films illegally. I have watched 20 movies in the last few days.

I learn some tricks from experts for the ppz that have problems with downloading from torrents. If you can, get a 2nd laptop.

Torrents are illegal and they are all digital copies, so digital copies are also illegal so when you buy a dvd and they give you a digital copy it is also illegal. If you make copies and sell them that I can see would be very illegal. What I do is exactly like streaming view it and forget it. I downloads torrents such as :- Tv Series Game of thrones , Games CoD , Movies etc from pirate bay I just search the thing I want , looks for a better quality and seeds and download it via Utorrent.

Is it Illegal? And is pirate bay illegal in bangladesh? Hello everyone. To keep it real, yes torrenting is illegal. Using utorrent, bit-torrent, and all the other programs will definitely get you in trouble. My service provider turned off my internet and sent a letter in the mail a few days after my internet was shut off. I was mad when I thought my router was broken. I talked to my service provider and they told me that there was illegal downloading being performed that was being monitored.

They even knew that I downloaded a movie 4 months prior to the shut off of my internet. Save your money and pay for what you want no matter how bad you want a program, music, or to watch a video and delete it after you watched it.

If you dont believe me, read what the privacy of what information they gather and what these Antivirus programs do with your personal information after it scans your computer for viruses and malware. Its too easy now and days to get thrown in jail. Especially from downloading a few of your favorite programs.

Save that money and buy it. I think if your country does not forbid you to download torrent and you use it for private use, then it may be legal? It is so easy to use.

Just paste the URL to it and it will download the movie with high speed. Fed Up with Facebook? Switch to One of these 7 Alternatives. These high levels of piracy have resulted in at least a partial crackdown by Spanish authorities under pressure to do something about the situation. In , for example, ISPs were ordered by a court to block The Pirate Bay and several other high-profile torrent sites.

Any such efforts have been undermined by a court ruling that downloading content for personal use is not a criminal offense, as long as there is no intent to profit from it. Despite this, a number of successful high profile civil cases and speculative invoicing campaigns have been brought against copyright pirates.

This is basically a cease and desist letter. Most countries also have similar legally binding instruments, which are commonly if inaccurately referred to simply as DMCA notices. What happens next depends very much on your ISP, who can easily map the IP address and the time it was used to your customer account.

These systems have all died a quiet death, however, with ignored warnings potentially resulting in your ISP handing over your account details to the copyright holder instead.

Please note: Your ISP is under no obligation whatsoever to issue a warning before handing over your details or even to inform you once the act is done. Once a copyright holder has identified the owner of the IP address that has been caught torrenting, it can push for criminal prosecution if such laws exist in your country or pursue civil damages in court. Even in countries that technically criminalize torrenting, there has so far been little appetite for convicting individuals who download purely for personal use, although those who profit from copyright piracy have faced some extremely stiff jail sentences.

This leaves pursuing civil damages in court. But doing so is an expensive and time-consuming process for all involved, with a high chance of failure for the copyright holder. It involves extorting smaller amounts of money from offenders by threatening them with ruinous legal action unless they make an out-of-court settlement. The UK government's official advice is to never ignore such a letter and to seek legal counsel if you receive one. A copyright holder may decide to take you to court for damages related to loss of earnings following a refusal to pay up after being speculatively invoiced, or they may opt to skip that part and just take you to court which is usually done to make an example of someone.

Taking a case to court is very hit-and-miss for all parties involved, hence the popularity of speculative invoicing. But when the copyright owners win, they tend to win big.

Even when individuals win, they are often landed with crippling legal costs, and when they lose, are often also ordered to pay all legal costs for the winning party. In the unlucky event you receive a subpoena for copyright offenses, the EEF offers some good advice plus resources, much of which may also be broadly useful outside the United States.

To the best of our knowledge, no-one anywhere has been subject to a criminal prosecution just for file-sharing content for personal non-profit use. But an increasing number of countries have enacted laws that, at least on paper, allow alarmingly severe criminal punishments to be leveled against ordinary torrenters.

As already discussed, for example, there is no minimum level of copyright infringement in the UK before offenders can be sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment. Such laws can be enforced at any time, and governments are not known for passing laws they never intend to use.