LegalTorrents relaunches

Author: Gareth Halfacree
Published: 2nd April 2008
Comments (6) Stumble
LegalTorrents relaunches

LegalTorrents aims to be a one-stop shop for legitimately distributed files - and not a lawsuit in sight.

If you've been reading all the recent news stories about every ISP and trade body in the known universe piling on P2P as though it were the spawn of Satan and you've been asking yourself “just what possible legitimate use for BitTorrent is there anyway?”, then LegalTorrents may have the answer for you. Sort of, anyway.

The site originally hit the scene way back in 2003 to much general apathy, but has just re-launched itself with a cleaned-out cache of completely legitimate torrents. The only files available via the site are those that have been licensed for distribution – mostly under some variant of the Creative Commons license.

The rebuild of the site is currently in beta, but already it looks like pretty much every BitTorrent search engine out there. The exception is in the content: you'll find no episodes of Lost on here, just the South-African open source advocacy show Go_Open; no Prince or Timbaland either, but a copy of the Creative Commons CD released by Wired Magazine.

The content is pretty sparse at the moment at just 44 files, including a whopping three PC games, nine songs, and nine films. Equally, things you would expect to find redistributed by a legal BitTorrent site such as Linux distributions and binary builds of popular freeware are notably absent, but the site makes it clear that it's looking to host Creative Commons materials rather than end up yet another software mirror.

An interesting feature is the ability to pledge donations to a particular torrent: the idea is, if you like a file you can send the original creator and license holder some dosh. It's a good idea, although the site does skim fifteen percent of your donations for running costs.

The major drawback with the beta build of the site isn't the downloading of the files – the .torrent files work perfectly, and considering the small number of seeds some of the packages have the speeds are great – but in finding them. It would appear that the team forgot the search aspect of a BitTorrent search engine when building the site. This isn't so much of a problem with just forty-some files to choose from, but the site is going to get unmanageable pretty darn quickly unless the team add the feature in sharpish.

The beta version of the site allows files to be downloaded without membership, but if you want to create your own torrents of freely licensed material you'll have to sign up.

Do you applaud with LegalTorrents is trying to do, or is it just another download mirror in a world overflowing with ways to snag open-source goodies? Share your thoughts over in the forums.
Quote OleJ 2nd April 2008, 11:08
The idea and initiative is great but without letting in all the open and free software I'm not seeing who would use it.
And they need to get some content on there. The present amount is laughable. They could at least spend a couple of days getting some start up content on there.

And no search?!

All in all it pretty much looks like it's one man with a little spare time and some basic html skills...
Quote Firehed 2nd April 2008, 14:34
They forgot the search?



...n00bs
Quote TreeDude 2nd April 2008, 14:49
There is a ton of free software out there. They could easily get a good amount of content just from creating torrents for what is already out there. Might not be the best way to do it, but 44 files? That is pretty low. They need a way to submit content requests.
Quote HourBeforeDawn 2nd April 2008, 20:58
well it is a beta maybe search isnt added yet and with the ability to create your own torrents does that mean a lot of their time will be wasted to see if the torrent is legal? and also is this USA legal or world wide legal? Like I know right now sadly that Japan is trying to pass a law to prevent the downloading of un-lic. anime from being downloaded outside of Japan which I hope doesnt happen or else my ISP will have something to bitch about >_<
Quote LordPyrinc 3rd April 2008, 00:33
Great idea, poor initial implementation from the sound of it. Then again, it is a beta.
Quote cpemma 3rd April 2008, 17:21
Quote:
“just what possible legitimate use for BitTorrent is there anyway?”, then LegalTorrents may have the answer for you. Sort of, anyway.

The site originally hit the scene way back in 2003 to much general apathy...
I think that answers the question of P2P's association with piracy... :|
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