Torrenting instructions for teens

V1

The steps you take depend on your country of residence for what measures the state & your ISP take to try to crack down on it. Hence the 'local' part.

If you're in Australia, I can give you good advice. If not, start here and look for more info.

You need to visit a listing site (such as thepiratebay dot org, kat dot cr or yts dot mx) but not through a regular web browser. These domains change frequently and there are many impersonators -- don't believe any that try to make you download and run software to access, it'll be virus-laden. You should access these only through a VPN. The Tor browser is a free way to do so. I recommend YTS/YIFY (there are a few names, yts dot mx is the domain at time of writing) for having a really well organised catalogue of movies in high quality. If you want other things, you'll have to browse the more general listing sites.

Then you either download .torrent files, or copy 'magnet links' which are basically the same but a special URI instead (depends on the listing site). These are basically instructions for how to connect to other people who have the files you want in a decentralised manner.

Now depending on your location you may need to download torrent data over a VPN or may be able to do so in the clear (my own situation). You'll require a torrent client. There are many, Transmission is good for Mac, uTorrent is a popular cross-platform one. You can also install them on a NAS to download without your computer being active.

If you need a VPN in your location, it'll cost a little money, but less than streaming services, and you won't lose access to your data if you stop paying for it. There are a bazillion reviews and comparisons online of good ones.

You should be able to find instructions online to set up your VPN and get your torrent client going through it (usually it's just a matter of switching it on for your whole computer, then opening the torrent client and leaving it to work overnight, then closing both in the morning). Remember it's not illegal to use torrents, torrent clients, or VPNs, or to teach others how to use them in general. They're a popular and fast way to download linux OS releases :) What's illegal is using them to download copyrighted media, which is what we mostly want to do (and to tell others how to specifically achieve that). So just keep that legal line in mind. Legal doesn't necessarily mean feasibly punishable though, so we're operating between those lines.

Once you have your torrent app set up, You then add magnet links or .torrent files by copy pasting or dragging onto the app. Then the app will contact the trackers and find 'peers', other people who have the file and are downloading and/or 'seeding' (uploading). It will then start downloading chunks of the files from them.

One thing I do to keep attention from my ISP at minimum while torrenting in the clear, is to set a maximum download and upload speed in the client settings, about a fifth of my maximum usable download speed. Be aware the difference between MB/s and Mbps - one is bytes (B) and one is bits (b). I.e., 1MB/s = 8Mbps.

When your torrent files are downloaded, it's polite to leave them to seed for a while. Clients let you set a percentage or amount of time you'd like them to seed for. I think it's reasonable to set these to 100% and 24 hours respectively.

When they've finished downloading and seeding, I move, rename and tidy my files into my video library managed by Plex, which lets me watch them all on my devices, web, and airplay/chromecast TVs. It also lets me share my library with friends. This requires a server or NAS device to run on, but it's perfectly fine to just carry around the files on a hard drive and play them with VLC.

A note: there's a lot of confusing acronyms and language around video and audio formats used in torrenting. Here's a super quick glossary, but you can find out more by internet search.

Glossary

Happy torrenting!