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Magnet links - for those that are interested


Coss

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Where I be, they've just passed a law that will ultimately penalise those who avail themselves of the goodies available via torrent files. This below may be of interest to the end user.

 

Magnet links

 

Magnet links though are just links, they have no files associated with them just data. The links are an evolving URI standard developed primarily to be used by p2p networks. They differ from URLs, for example, in that they don't hold information on the location of a resource but rather on the content of the file or files to which they link. Technically, magnet links are made up of a series of parameters containing various data in no particular order. In the case of BitTorrent, they hold the hash value of the torrent which is then used to locate copies of the files among the peers. They may also hold file name data or links to trackers used by the torrent. You can check out the entry on Wikipedia for a more detailed technical description.

 

With magnet links, BitTorrent indexers don't have to store any file at all, just a few snippets of data leaving the individual client apps to do all the heavy lifting. In fact, magnet links can be copy-pasted as plain text by users and shared via email, IM or any other medium. [color:brown]For the indexer sites, the allure is clear, using magnet links makes it harder for them to be accused of any wrong-doing in court.[/color] Theoretically, magnet links should not have any disadvantages for the users over .torrent files either. It would also potentially make downloads faster as it would enable the clients to download from peers which have identical files but with different names, for example.

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Works fine for me, and I would guess that by their nature, if could be difficult to prove you are down loading what you are downloading.

 

I guess "they" could get a hold of the hash value of the torrent and attempt to show you'd got that too, to prove you had intent to download something.

 

But if it's all encrypted data, it might be a lot of work.

 

I've always wondered how they can prove you've downloaded something from a peer to peer network, it being distributed and all.

 

They could easily prove you've got the torrent, but the whole file?

 

 

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True, but that seed would only provide parts of the file.

 

Consider: if a glassmaker makes fine crystal wine glasses and these glasses could be "stolen", by a process of duplicating their structure, from granules of silica that are found everywhere, then the thing that is "stolen" is the information or knowledge of the structure, not the silica molecules themselves.

 

If you have received a strillion grains of silica, from disparate sources, and they are assembled into crystal wine glasses, that look identical to the ones that were allegedly "stolen", how can can anyone prove that the knowledge has been received or used. That is, without direct proof the knowledge has been downloaded.

 

Interesting stuff this.

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But if you can see me receiving 20 bricks for a project that requires 40 bricks, how can you prove I got the other 20 bricks even If I purport to have them?

 

If I say I am Jack the Ripper is this true?

 

Seeding starts on incomplete files.

 

And if you can't accurately (without coming to my house and looking) know what files I have, how do you know I've got something? and how do you know I didn't get it legally?

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:)

 

I still want to see how to intercept a stream of data and work out what I've got from that stream.

 

I take your point about seeding, but effectively, you're feeding bits of the file back before and after you've completed you download.

 

And then we get into what's on the end of the wires at my i.p. address.

 

Is it me, my daughter, the neighbour, or one of Google's trucks stealing my data?

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