Download at your risk with µTorrent

MUMBAI, INDIA: Recently, the Crime Branch and Mumbai Police's Cyber cell concluded the investigation of child pornography on the Internet case involving an Indian Army personnel, Lt Col Jagmohan Balbir Singh.

During the probe, Lt Col Singh admitted of indulging in child pornography and was found addicted to children's obscene clips. Further the probe revealed that the Colonel was downloading child obscene videos using the software µTorrent, but was unaware how the software application uploaded the same clips back on the Internet.

The Colonel's ignorance on the technology cost him dearly as he could face five years imprisonment or fine up to Rs 10 lakh under the section 67 B of Information Technology Act. Once again this case raised a debate around µTorrent — the fast and efficient downloading as well as file and content distribution application.

Going back into the history of µTorrent (µT), or uTorrent (uT) as it is called commonly, it was in 2005 when Ludvig Strigeus developed the program code first using C++ language and later, US-based BitTorrent Inc. acquired the program code in 2007.

Subsequently, BitTorrent became a protocol as the company developed consumer products such as BitTorrent Mainline and µTorrent, which gained huge popularity and wider use among the users for fast and efficient file transfers.

It is believed that there are over 75 millions users of BitTorrent across the world; however, out of the huge user base, how many users are aware or understand the technicality of this software remains to be checked.

According to Mumbai-based Paramatrix Technologies' CTO Raghu Prasad, the BitTorrent protocol is used for peer-to-peer (P2P) sharing or exchange or distribution of files and other content without the need of servers or data centers.

Using the protocol, the clients such as µTorrent or BitTorrent Mainline convert the files or content into small chunks or bytes called Torrent files which actually check meta data for validating those data.

Once Torrent files are created it is uploaded on to the trackers that publish it on websites such as http://thepiratebay.org and others from where those files are downloaded by users via the BitTorrent clients.

“Trackers check the users' IP address for downloading and distribution of Torrent files, so if any user is downloading a particular file and same file is also been downloaded by other users, then the file is actually transferred or shared from the user's personal computer directly without getting downloaded or hosted on to servers,” Prasad explains.

In simple terms, if 'A' user downloads a file and the same file is getting a download request from 'B' user, then the same file gets uploaded back on the Internet from user A's computer.

However, he points out that the most users downloading Torrent files — whether it be audio, video, data or any other kind of content — are unaware whether the downloaded content is actually licensed or pirated.

“While sites such as thepiratebay.org and others easily allow access and downloading of Torrent files for any content, the users will have to face charges of copyright violations since they are unaware of the legality of the content they are downloading,” he stresses.

Further, he informs that these websites are hosted in European region as there are some political groups which support it. “Filmmakers in Bollywood and Hollywood can incur huge loss of revenues due to such portals which provide illegal content to users,” he adds.

Moreover, Prasad opines that there is lack of education and technical understanding among most users about Torrent files and its clients. “One needs to educate the people and make them aware about it so they don't breach cyber and copyright laws,” he observes.