Tutorial 1: A Basic Guide to Torrenting
November 22, 2024
It is time to take the internet into your own hands! Behold the power of anonimity and curate your own libraries of physical media! Say suck it to Apple, Amazon, Google, Crunchyroll and Spotify ripping our precious physical media from our hands whenever they feel like it!
Welcome to the world of torrenting.
Table of contents
- Intro
- Browser Choice and VPN
- Torrenting Clients
- Torrenting Ettiquette
- Organization
- How do I find things?
Intro
What is torrenting? Torrenting is a type of downloading method where the networks of other computers are used to create a downloading network where you can download extremely large (or any size) files at a very low computational capacity, rather than connecting to a central server and directly downloading the file. It's like the communism of downloading--if we all work together, we can make anything happen. Including downloading an entire series in 4K.
Torrenting is not strictly illegal. It is a grey zone, which I have talked about in this blog post. That being said, this is definitely a riskier part of the internet. I would strongly suggest doing your own research into the risks you take when you torrent. r/Torrents is a particularly helpful place. Look at multiple sources. Be thorough.
The likelihood of you actually getting caught is quite low. There are billions of people around the world using the internet at the same time, pings echoing in a chorus around our planet. Most likely, if you torrent carelessly, you'll get a cease and desist letter from your internet service provider (ISP) eventually. If you continue doing it, they can shut down your internet service, and sometimes charge you a fee.
With the proper set-up, the risk becomes infinitesimal, though it will never truly go away. If you do chose to torrent, the world is at your fingertips.
Browser Choice and VPN
In order to Torrent, you must first put in the necessary scaffolding in order to protect yourself. This is good practice in general for navigating the internet, which is becoming increasingly hostile to its users, yet increasing necessary to function in the modern world. I personally prefer to be a little anarchistic with my internet usage (obviously, I'm writing this article on neocities no less), so I run a pretty tight browser ship.
Step one: Use firefox. Do not use anything chromium, the ad-blocking software does not do the thing. Also, google (and subsequently any 'law enforcement' entity thanks to the good old Patriot Act) can access your browsing history if they so wish. Mozilla can do the same thing too if they were under serious duress, but the tools available in firefox to keep your browsing history to yourself are much stronger, it's a nonprofit company, and firefox is open source. Power back to the people. This does come with some downsides (firefox vanilla sometimes has trouble loading widgets like instagram embeds, or will sometimes mess up a page's formatting). But I think these slight wonks are worth the peace of mind. For torrenting, especially torrenting media, it is a necessity.
Next up, arm yourself with some anti-ad and malware shielding. My choice of array is U-Block Origin, Ad Nausium, Privacy Badger, Privacy Possum and Whatcampaign. These are all somewhat redundant, but it gives me peace of mind to have additional layers of security. U-block origin is a must, everything else is up to your discretion.
Now armed with your shielding array, time to go invisible. Buy a VPN.
What is a VPN? A 'virtual private network'. Most VPN providers can come with additional software and apps, but the things they do that matter are encrypting your internet traffic, and assigning you a remote IP address. If you torrent without one, you run the risk of 1) your torrenting activity being visible (no encryption), and 2) your torrenting activity being tracable to your computer (which your ISP has access to from your connection point).
You may be tempted to use a free vpn service. Do not do this, free vpn services will often not allow torrenting, and have the liability of giving up your information. Unfortunately, there isn't really a way of getting around this. If you don't use a VPN, read the opening section of this guide again, and decide if you want to accept those risks.
The most ideal VPN service to use is one that allows port forwarding. I don't usually bother with this, it just reduces your seed pool. I personally use Proton VPN, which I quite like.
Once you've downloaded and set up, Proton VPN should start on startup. If not, go to your apps and enable this feature. That way, you'll be automatically connected to the VPN when you boot up. You can disconnect and reconnect easily. Sometimes my speeds will randomly throttle, which can be fixed by disconnecting and reconnecting.
The final step is to bind your VPN to your torrenting client. We'll get to that momentarily.
Torrenting Clients
Use qbittorrent. It is easily the best torrenting client, contains no adds within the client window, and is remarkably easy to use with color-coded commands and intuitive interfacing. It's also open-source, which is always a plus.
Technically, there are other clients available out there. I have not seen any recommendations other than qbit, especially once you get to a high number of torrent files. There are a few to avoid however: don't use utorrent (microtorrent) or bittorrent, which are both ad-infested malware.
Once you've downloaded qbit, open /Options/Advanced/Network Intervace, and in the dropdown menu select your VPN provider. And now, you are ready to begin torrenting.
Torrenting Ettiquette
When you select your first torrent file and open it in qbit torrent (where you'll be getting those files is in the next section), your network connects into the peer-to-peer sharing network, and starts grabbing little packets of data from everyone in the network who has the file. At this stage, you are a 'leecher'. Fear not, we all start as leechers. Within your torrenting client, this is your download speed.
However, once you hit a certain size with your file packets, you can also start sharing what you've downloaded. This is when you become a peer, and you can sometimes begin downloading and uploading simultaneously. Joining in with the brain network of information.
Once you've downloaded the file, you become a seeder. And this is extremely important and part of torrenting etiquette: DO NOT CLOSE YOUR CLIENT WHEN YOU ARE DONE DOWNLOADING. Pay it forward!! Users who leech but don't seed are called leechers (derogatory). It is bad etiquette!
Even when I'm not curating my yuri library and not actively downloading anything, whenever I'm on my desktop I keep my client open so I can seed. This is why binding the client to the vpn is essential -- your torrenting activity is still occuring even when you're not actively downloading. I will turn my computer off at night to give her a rest, but fluctuation like that fine as long as you open it again when you boot up next time. This is part of the reason why qbit is great -- it is relatively resource light, so you can indeed just keep it in the background during your normal activity. Your vpn will be up, so you're safe, invisible and shielded.
If you ever download a torrent and don't have anyone seeding you, the torrent is dead and you won't be able to download it. Sometimes, for weird and obscure media, just leave it up and hopefully eventually someone will connect. This has happened to me a few times, always a nice surprise. But sometimes, you just simply have to look elsewhere.
One other note: in terms of the types of things you should and shouldn't torrent, I always favor torrenting movies, tv, and AAA games over books, music and indie games. I will occasionally also torrent comics from big publishing houses (comics are unfortunately extremely expensive, but I try and avoid doing this for indie comics). For music, indie games and books, I think it is always better to support the creator directly. They are harmed heavily by losing the revenue from their creation. Movies and TV, however, operate through millionaire hollywood producers and corps dumping money into it, and by the time the movie is made, all of the workers (the techs, the crew, the actors, the caterers etc) have already been paid. The people who lose the money are the millionares, more often than not). I suppose there is an argument to be made about everyone losing residuals for TV. Decide for yourself where you draw the line.
Organization
One of the easiest ways you can become a leecher is by moving your torrented file from its original location. Thus, set yourself up for success and create your file system before you start.
My method: I have my 5tb external hard drive connected to my main computer. On that HDD is a folder just called 'media'. Here I put all of my movies and tv. (Remember, I personally don't torrent music). When I go to download a torrent, I select the location of the file to be in that media folder. When downloading things like individual episodes, you'll want to group them in a file for that series first to avoid running into location-based problems. Find whatever archiving method works best for you. Some people like to keep movies and tv separate. À chacun son goût.
How do I find things?
Loose lips sink ships! If you've done your research and checked out some of the places I recommeded you go, you should be able to find reputable sites. If you're familiar with the old fandom citrus scale, my favorite site is T-rated themed.
Unfortunately, thepiratebay and kickasstorrents (two of the most famous sites) are no longer usable. Stay clear from them!
I'll follow up this with a guide on how to set up your media library once you're ready to go. But that just about brings this to a close.
Best of luck on the high seas! Operate with caution, think twice, and diversify your sources. And remember: loose lips sink ships.