Torrents vs Limewire

Here is one of my absolute favorite topics to write about!

It should be noted that the term illegal here might not be what you think. It is not illegal to use limewire to download files, or torrents for that matter. What IS illegal is the downloading of copyrighted material

Everyone downloads music and movies, legally or illegally. I wanna say off the bat that I'm not advocating downloading music or movies illegally, I'm just here to say that when I hear people say they use programs like Limewire or Emule I want to slap them in the face a few times

But why?
Limewire is great for getting music
Torrents are too hard to figure out, and you can't just download one song
Torrents take forever and slow down the internet

...that's when the slap comes

You'll find me picking on Limewire the most, only because it seems to be the most popular, and though I pick on it, that's not to say torrents are absolutely safe either, but first, lets list the REAL advantages of each...

Limewire

* quick search engine
* ability to quickly download individual files
* indexes everyone connected to the network
* very easy to upload/download



Torrents

* can download entire albums (can also download individual files despite popular belief)
* larger files will download quickly (given enough seeds/leeches)
* greater sense of security (this should be the selling point to EVERYONE)
* torrent sites will have comment sections to tell the validity of the file



So what's so risky about Limewire anyways? Think of it like this, this is a Peer to Peer network. You want to download YMCA.mp3? You run YMCA into the search engine and get however many hits, you go, you download the song, and play it when it's done. At no point is YMCA.mp3 being uploaded to a server and scanned for malicious code, you're pulling it off some strangers computer and just trusting to run it.

How about this scenario; you search YMCA, and go to download YMCA.mp3, you go to run it and it's a Coheed and Cambria song that some punk just renamed to confuse you. Ok no harm done.

try this scenario; you search YMCA and go to download YMCA.exe! I think most tech savvy people who would read know the difference between .mp3 and .exe, but if anyone doesnt, .mp3 is an extension for music files, while .exe's are extensions for executable files, the kind that install things on your computer. Things like trojans. Bad news bears.

different scenario: you want to download a program, photoshop. You're expecting a .exe of a pretty big file size. But have you heard of file binding? Check this out. You can hide .exe files in each other, say something like an installer for the bandook trojan (really an interesting one, read about it here). Lets say it's called bandook.exe, and someone decides to bind that to photoshop.exe. You download photoshop.exe and run it, and in the background, bandook.exe installs itself. oops! there goes your computer

Ever download a video only to have it tell you that you need to download a special player in order to watch it? Don't do that ;)

Now of course all these problems exist in torrent files as well, but torrents have more security measures in place. Private trackers that require membership to the site often scan files to death to ensure that they're legit. Many sites will have a comments section where people who have already downloaded the file can say if the file is a fake, or is infected, and then you can move to have the torrent taken down and the person who uploaded it banned

People complain that you can't download individual files with torrents, you have to get the whole package. wrong, there is always a way to uncheck the files that you don't want to download

People complain that it takes longer to download files, and that it will slow down the network that they're on. This is true, it will slow it down, but that's such a small price to pay for the huge increase in security you get from downloading torrents. And if you want say the entire season of a popular show like Lost, grab the torrent and you'll be amazed at how quickly it goes, quicker then any Limewire download. Even not so popular shows will download fairly quickly

My only problem with torrents is that they're a little difficult for someone who's just started to get into. First you need a program to do the actual downloading, utorrent, bitcommet, bitlord, and azureus are some popular ones. Then once the program is downloaded, you may need to configure some settings like which port to use to download files, and what your connection speed is. Some people may get confused and frustrated at this point. After you manage to configure everything, you need to download a .torrent file. Say you want to download South Park season 4, you would go to a site like thepiratebay.org, mininova.com, demonoid.com, or torrentz.com (kind of like the google of torrents) and you would search South Park, find it, download, and it would finish right away and a lot of people get confused at that, they don't realize that they didn't just download South Park, they downloaded what can be considered a ticket, and when they run that ticket, it'll pass the South Park torrents information to the download program they use, and THATS when the real download starts

Then sometimes the download wont start at all! This could be because a certain port is blocked that you need open to download with, or because there aren't enough peers on, that is, people who have the file, or parts of the file, and are giving it to you. Seeders = Uploaders, Leechers = Downloaders, you'll usually see a S/L section letting you know how many people are uploading/downloading the file. If you see 0 seeders, don't even bother

Check out this tutorial if you're interested in learning more:


Hope this helped any wayward people that download things and aren't doing so via torrents. Always remember to keep your firewall ON and your antivirus program up to date, and scan everything you download!

Happy pirating!