jmke

By this definition, all of the 476 movies or TV shows in the sample were found to be likely infringing. We found seven of the 148 files in the games and software category to be likely non-infringing—including two Linux distributions, free plug-in packs for games, as well as free and beta software. In the pornography category, one of the 145 files claimed to be an amateur video, and we gave it the benefit of the doubt as likely non-infringing. All of the 98 music torrents were likely infringing. Two of the fifteen files in the books/guides category seemed to be likely non-infringing.

Overall, we classified ten of the 1021 files, or approximately 1%, as likely non-infringing, This result should be interpreted with caution, as we may have missed some non-infringing files, and our sample is of files available, not files actually downloaded. Still, the result suggests strongly that copyright infringement is widespread among BitTorrent users.

http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/blo...ble-bittorrent

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wutske

Not that much of a duh!
I already knew that most files offered via torrents are illegal, but not 99% of them as there are still a lot of legal files offered via bittorent (plenty linux distributions use torrents, openoffice has torrents and probably many more I can't remember atm).

jmke

really?
I've never used BitTorrent, for anything, legal or illegal. In fact, when downloading OpenOffice or Linux Distros I prefer FTP and HTTP ; instead of having my internet connection abused to upload content.

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wutske

I use both, depending on which is the fastest of the two.
When it comes to downloading free stuff like openoffice or linux distro's I tend to use Bittorrent because I'd rather see their money spend on the software than on the on the servers to host the distro's

jmke

I'm pretty sure get a sweet deal from the hosting company to compensate for bandwidth usage

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wutske

Sure, but less bandwith is probably still cheaper and they can also cut storage costs down and reduce the amount of mirrors.
You can also look at bittorrent as a CDN, except you don't have to pay per IO's and/or CPU cycles

Kougar

Claiming 99% of torrents are illegal is only true if your sample size comes from a torrent site. Not really a representative sample.

Quite a few sites in the business of transferring large files use P2P now, not just linux distros. Have seen torrents used to propagate Indie games and user game mods/patches. Even ASUS uses P2P to transfer drivers, only method that even works half the time with their site.

Even if they did get a sweet deal, what do they pay it with? Most Linux distros don't have revenue source or sufficient page advertising to pay for it.