Safe Torrenting Guide

Torrenting files through Peer-to-Peer (P2P) connections allows for files to be shared very efficiently through a decentralized network. There are many perfectly legitimate uses for P2P file-sharing, as well as some that can get us in trouble with our network provider.

Definitions

Leeching: Leeching is downloading the file you are torrenting from someone else.

Seeding: Seeding is uploading the file you have torrented and making it available to other leechers.

Torrent Client: The software program that you run on your computer to torrent files.

In general, you should always satisfy one or both of the following conditions when torrenting on the Escher network:

• You are certain that the content you are torrenting is permitted by its creators to be freely distributed (ex. Not under copyright, covered by GPL/MIT licenses, etc.)
• You are using a VPN on whatever device you are torrenting on.

If none of these conditions are met, then you risk our reputation with our internet service provider if you accidentally leech or seed something that is not licensed to be shared.

Considerations for Torrent Client:

Qbittorrent is one of the most widely-used torrent clients, and I do recommend it for torrenting. However, you have to be sure to completely close the program after you are done torrenting and before you turn off your VPN. If you simply close the window, it still runs in the background and seeds your torrents. You have to kill the program in the taskbar or task manager. Otherwise, if you disconnect from the VPN but the program is still running, you could seed on our network and we can get complaints if you haven’t thoroughly checked the copyright status of your download.

Considerations for VPN:

I recommend Windscribe VPN because they have very cheap build-it-yourself plans where you can select one or two locations for $1 each a month and unlimited data for $1 a month, for a total of $2-3 a month (click the “Build a plan” button on the right of the page that I linked to).