University Name: Digital Media and Torrents Analysis Report

This report provides an analysis of torrents, starting with an overview of their function as Peer-to-Peer (P2P) file-sharing systems and their reliance on Bit-Torrent protocols. The report explores both legal and illegal uses of torrents. Legally, torrents are used for rapid data transfer by social media companies and for media streaming. Illegally, torrents facilitate digital piracy, enabling access to movies, software, and other content without payment, leading to financial losses for content creators and the spread of malicious content. The report references several academic papers that discuss the technical aspects, social relationships, and impact of torrents. Overall, the report offers a comprehensive overview of torrents, highlighting their dual nature and implications within the digital media landscape.

Running head: TORRENTS
Torrents
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TORRENTS
About Torrents
Wang et al. (2013), says torrents are Peer-to-Peer (P2P) compatible files that are used
to share data in such network environments. It is necessary to install certain specific P2P
software to run torrents. Bit-Torrent is one of the most popular torrent protocols that assist
millions around the globe to transfer heavy chunks of data. Each torrent file consists of the
metadata of the files being shared and their trackers. Seeders and leechers are one of the main
governing factors behind the efficiency and agility of downloads. More seeders speed up the
download whereas leechers do just the opposite.
Uses of Torrents
Research figures reveal that torrent downloads account to over 50% of the net annual
internet traffic all over. All that is needed is a Bit-Torrent client like uTorrent, Vuze and so
on, that would manage the downloads. Torrents are used worldwide to download music, TV
shows, games, movies and what not, free. However, questions are raised about whether using
torrents is actually legal. There are both legal and illegal uses of torrents.
Legal Uses
Legal uses of this technology is found in the largest social media companies of the
world that is Facebook and Twitter. They use the torrents way to when there is need to send
huge amount of data fast, internally (Wang et al. 2013). Moreover, several companies are
adapting the torrents way to enhance media streaming (Nurminen et al. 2013).
Illegal Uses
Torrents are the primary source of digital piracy in the world. People are getting
access to movies, software and all such stuffs without having to pay a single penny. This
sometimes result the stakeholder organizations to face massive monetary loss (Danaher,

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Smith and Telang 2015). Moreover, cybercriminals use this to spread malicious virus and
illegal web content widely.

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References
Danaher, B., Smith, M.D. and Telang, R., 2015. The effect of piracy website blocking on
consumer behavior.
Nurminen, J.K., Meyn, A.J., Jalonen, E., Raivio, Y. and Marrero, R.G., 2013, April. P2P
media streaming with HTML5 and WebRTC. In Computer Communications Workshops
(INFOCOM WKSHPS), 2013 IEEE Conference on (pp. 63-64). IEEE.
Wang, H., Wang, F., Liu, J., Lin, C., Xu, K. and Wang, C., 2013. Accelerating peer-to-peer
file sharing with social relations. IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, 31(9),
pp.66-74.
Wang, H., Wang, F., Liu, J., Xu, K. and Wu, D., 2013. Torrents on twitter: Explore long-term
social relationships in peer-to-peer systems. IEEE Transactions on Network and Service
Management, 10(1), pp.95-104.