Can someone enlighten me please, why torrents?

[markus]

First of all, I don't want to criticize anyone, period!
People here share their work, and that is something I highly appreciate!

But take as an example the last 'happening' here, the preview of 7 deadly sins, ... there are
people who post that their are stuck at whatever percentage, that there are not enough seeders and such.

I for example wanted to check that video to help the creator with his technical problems, but I don't want to use a torrent.

So I ask myself, where is the benefit of using torrents instead of a filehoster like in example Mega, Keep2share, fboom or whatever?
(The uploading can take some time, but seeding must also take it's time, probably even more, ... once it's uploaded to a filehoster, there is no seeding/uploading needed anymore.

Like the title of this topic says:
Please, if I don't see the benefits for using torrents, let me know (help me to understand why torrents are used here, I simply don't understand that.

[thatsprettyhot]

I like torrents because then download/sharing speeds are not limited by the file hosting service, and then everyone can help sharing it further. For extra privacy you can just use a VPN service

[zingg]

I personally prefer torrents to everything else. The biggest reason is that torrents are much less likely to simply go offline. As long as there's at least one person out there who's still seeding the file, it's not going to go away. On the other hand, file hosts can and do go offline, and files uploaded can expire or hit caps. To me, torrents provide permanence.

There's also the issue of speed. Even among the rare few good hosts that don't artificially limit speed (Mega is a good example of a good file host here), I generally get a slower download than I would via torrents. The BitTorrent protocol is very, very good at disseminating files as quickly as possible. As for uploading, the better clients use a trick called super-seeding that should get a full copy of the file out into the swarm nearly as quickly as uploading to a file host. As long as there's a few fast peers in the swarm, it should be pretty much near-optimal.

That said, one big concern with torrents is privacy/legal issues. Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice. If you download from a file host, you're only really vulnerable if the host gets subpoenaed and it keeps logs. If you download from a torrent, it's much easier for someone to find out that you downloaded a file, and you're also guilty of uploading the file to others by the nature of the protocol. This is less of a concern for CH videos because, even if they infringe copyrights, the rightsholders generally aren't trying very hard to take them down (I'm not aware of any attempts at all, actually). But it's still something to consider. As always, if you're concerned, use a VPN (for torrents and file hosts).

Summary: torrents are good for permanence and speed, but somewhat bad for legal issues when the content infringes copyright.

[spaisin]

As zingg above explains, torrents pretty much are "the better tech".

The opposite question is the interesting one; why are you reluctant to use torrents?

Legality fears, difficulty?

The actual difficulty of torrents is a non-issue.. it takes an hour to figure out, once. And even that is sort of artificial; whenever an easy torrenting/file sharing method shows up, it gets legally shot down by copyright companies. If that wasn't an issue, we'd all be watching our porn over some popcorn-time type sharing system, most likely for a decade by now. As things are, only the "difficult enough to be unpopular" torrenting gets to live.

They haven't been able to shut down torrenting as a whole, and thus they've ended up running fear tactics against it. And the public buys the message.. the people using torrents are practically seen as criminals. It is enchanced by the problem that there's no "positive" message attached to torrenting in public - no-one specific has anything to gain from positive torrenting coverage and plenty of fearmongers "think they profit" from the negative ones.

My favorite Long story short, copyright needs to go.

[tommarr]

Filehost delete files without notice. They often have download speed limitations and scream for REGISTER HERE, get 50kb/s more speed. Their websites are 99% of time full of ads even if you use adblockers (hardcoded ads). You also need to keep your browser open while downloading and cannot continue if your internet dies / browser crashes. Only advantage is you MIGHT get new file faster initially when with torrent it takes while to get torrent seeded

So imo torrents are superior

[figroll]

Most of the file hosters are deliberately awful experiences designed to annoy you into accepting the accepting upsell. If I ever end up on that one which offers Premium Download estimated time 20s! vs Free download artificially throttled to 20kb/s will start in 30s I usually don't bother. The one exception being Mega -- and it confuses me why anyone would use anything else given how universally terrible the others are.

Well working torrents are much better in every respect (faster, less hassle, free, more resilient, better retention), except they work well in massive public open trackers for stuff in such high demand seed ratios are never a problem and well in a small private trackers like Empornium where everyone plays by the rules so they don't get kicked out. What doesn't work so well are very small public trackers like Milovana where the swarms are so small they often lack critical mass and have problems with retention of older content.

Upload to Mega and start a torrent would be my preferred option.

[book_guy]

Damn good question. See .sig.

[Sombre]

Torrent is better. Just next generation need to learn to use it. And it would never have again seeders problems.

[markus]

First of all, thanks for all your replies, now I understand some benefits of using torrents which I didn't see before!

The opposite question is the interesting one; why are you reluctant to use torrents?

Legality fears, difficulty?

Legality fears are the only reason.

Filehost delete files without notice.

I have different experiences with filehosters, but what's important is that I only talk about those 'big'
filehosters which are in buisness for many years and are very popular, so K2S, fboom and especially mega.

I had files uploaded to K2S, and I got many warnings via email that it would expire soon before it was deleted, same on mega.

They often have download speed limitations and scream for REGISTER HERE, get 50kb/s more speed.

On mega you get high-speed downloading, but right, on k2s or fboom it's limited to a sad, sad download-speed.

Their websites are 99% of time full of ads even if you use adblockers (hardcoded ads). You also need to keep your browser open while downloading and cannot continue if your internet dies / browser crashes.

A recommendation on this point:
If you want to download something from filehosters, use the software 'JDownloader 2', ... it's said that it is a
beta version, but it runs just fine, I use it for many years:
- You don't have to visit the filehoster-page -> No ads.
- Most filehosters like k2s, fboom and of course mega supports reconnection, so you actually can continue downloading if your internet dies
- You can close your browser, no problem.
- It even can handle Pornhub Links to download the video from that source

Upload to Mega and start a torrent would be my preferred option.

Amen!!!

[Liquid]

Upload to Mega and start a torrent would be my preferred option.

Amen!!!

What you are describing is commonly known as a seed-box

[book_guy]

Upload to Mega and start a torrent would be my preferred option.

Amen!!!

What you are describing is commonly known as a seed-box

I would love it if Mega would make seed-boxing a possibility. I think that the description ("upload to Mega and start a torrent") is not "commonly known as a seed-box", because Mega's upload-download methods don't provide for any sort of seed-boxing. So really what you meant was, "What you are describing WOULD commonly be known as a seed-box IF you were talking about doing it at a host which ALLOWED you to do that." And you knew that ... but I figured I'd clarify for the board's sakes.

[tommarr]

A recommendation on this point:
If you want to download something from filehosters, use the software 'JDownloader 2', ... it's said that it is a
beta version, but it runs just fine, I use it for many years:
- You don't have to visit the filehoster-page -> No ads.
- Most filehosters like k2s, fboom and of course mega supports reconnection, so you actually can continue downloading if your internet dies
- You can close your browser, no problem.
- It even can handle Pornhub Links to download the video from that source

Tried jdownloader in the past, it was very cumbersome and buggy. So yeah, nope. There is working solution which is torrents

Mega is okish. However I've seen them deleting material

Every other filehost sucks

[book_guy]

here is working solution which is torrents

Mega is okish. However I've seen them deleting material

Aside from the risk of Mega deleting material, can you explain (again? maybe I missed it) any other advantage(s) of torrents? I don't really get it ... sorry, I think it's implied in this thread, but if I could get the explicit statement maybe it would get past my rather resistant pre-frontal cortex and into my cognitive medulla ...

[pixelwhore]

Difficult to choose one over the other. For me it's a matter of convenience and tech. But I do use both. There are pros and cons to each.

For popular files, torrents are just the easier route. Hit the link, let Transmission or uTorrent do the work ― either being far lighter processes than a single tab of a browser churning localstorage to your browser's temp location (which is usually unfortunately placed on your OS partition; no matter where you tell it to save that file, it's going to be writing there first.).

For less popular files, it's nice to have them on a Mega in case they aren't seeded. If it's been a while for you, Mega's interface has gotten a lot easier to deal with. Just clone it over to your own account files and then download. Sure, you have to make an account. Sure it has more steps. But it's a great second option for unseeded files.

[zingg]

Yeah, JDownloader's worked decently for me in the past, but it's still a pain. Torrents are simpler, and youtube-dl picks up the slack (despite the name, it supports damn near every video hosting site).

If you're concerned about legality, always always always go with a VPN.