BitTorrent

Strictly speaking, BitTorrent does not involve sharing files, but rather bits of files that add up to a whole.28 In essence, one peer has a particular file and acts as a “seed” node.29 The seed node then breaks the file into a number of pieces of equal size and distributes them to several other peers that are seeking to obtain the file; each peer receives one piece.30 Those other peers then exchange pieces with each other until each peer has obtained a full copy of the original file.31 Because the seed node sends only one copy of the file – in pieces, to the other peers – the “sharing” process is more efficient and requires less bandwidth than if the seed node had to send a full copy of the file to each of the other peers.32 BitTorrent’s ability to conserve bandwidth in this manner makes it feasible to download much larger files – such as computer operating systems, movies, and television programs – that are more cumbersome to share using other P2P file-sharing programs.33 The search mechanism for BitTorrent also works differently than the search mechanism in the original Napster or in a FastTrack application. Instead of searching other users’ hard drives, a BitTorrent user must search for a website that has the so-called “torrent” file associated with the file the user ultimately wants to download.34 The “torrent” file contains information about the location of the computer with the “seed” node for a particular file, and the location of the server, known as a “tracker,” that is currently coordinating the exchange of pieces of that file.35 Clicking on the “torrent” file allows a BitTorrent user to join this exchange process.36 As soon as the user downloads a piece of the desired file, BitTorrent automatically begins uploading that piece to other users who are looking for that file.37