Legal BitTorrent Communities for Class Presentation?

OnBeyondBeing asks: "A few of my friends and I are taking a class at a local university called 'Internet and Society' and we have to do a 'Technology Tour' on innovations that have social aspects or uses (like Google Maps, Kiko (an Internet-based calendar), LiveJournal and Frappr). We chose to do our presentation on BitTorrent. As part of our presentation, we have to do a lab in which the students and teachers use BitTorrent in some way. I was thinking of having people join some BitTorrent community that interests them and join a torrent, but most of these communities contain material that is not suited for an academic presentation. Aside from places like CommonBits and Etree (and others that were mentioned in a previous Slashdot post), what sites have you found that use BitTorrent as the basis of a community that are clean and legal enough for a class presentation? Alternatively, what other interesting, legal uses of BitTorrent have you found?"

Linux Torrents

There are always Linux Torrents [linuxtracker.org]

We have a winner.

Demonstrate bittorrent without infringing on copyrights, and show people FOSS at the same time. Not really much more needs to be said.

Re:We have a winner.

But at the same time looking for a bittorrent "community" with no illegal downloading is like finding a job to fit a tool. The approach to the problem is completely wrong. He should be showing that bittorrent is a tool. It is only a tool. It can be used for legal and illegal things. It just so happens that many illegal downloads' needs are fullfilled by this tool. He should be showing how it can be used any place where large frequently accessed files are in use to save bandwidth, since that is all it really does.

Re:We have a winner.

http://www.legaltorrents.com/index.htm [legaltorrents.com]

Re:We have a winner.

All that link provided was a redirect to a snopes page.

Ibiblio

Ibiblio [ibiblio.org] has torrents [ibiblio.org] for a lot of their content. The seeds are some of the main servers and therefore are fast, plus the added client bandwidth probably helps a lot too.

Cringely's NerdTV

Cringely offers NerdTV [pbs.org] as a bittorrent download. As it is legal there's usually a ton of seeds on each download - nothing better to demonstrate the speed possible with bittorrent.

Plus it's educational!

And interesting too.

Anime

Animesuki.com Fansubs of a good deal of asian programming that has never been licensed in North America (and therefore legal)

Re:Anime

Not legal, but the companies look the other way because they recognize the advertising value.

Re:Anime

Thanks - interesting article. But the last line reads: "In the end, regardless of ethics, or motive, fansubs are technicaly illegal." - that doesn't seem to support your argument, or have I misunderstood?

Re:Anime

Wow, did you even read the article you linked to? Let me post the conclusion for you:

Conclusion

Legally, there is no difference between "fansubs" and "bootlegs". In the eyes of the law, both could be seen as damaging to the market. Regardless of whether or not a title has been technicaly licensed in North America, it is illegal. Lack of enforsement of copyright laws in terms of unlicensed fansubs maybe the result of several different factors. Some companies may believe that the early introduction of the title to North America is beneficial. Others may simply tolerate a "fan-activity" as long as it does not become too damaging to sales. And yet other companies may not want to or be able to invest the time and money necessary to prosecute foreign violations of their copyright.

In the end, regardless of ethics, or motive, fansubs are technicaly illegal.

Re:Anime

Them not being licensed to an american distributor DOES NOT MAKE THEM LEGAL. They are still protected by international copyright law. Use some common sense.

Re:Anime

There's nothing technical about it. It "is" copyright infringment. I'm not saying I disagree with the fact that the Anime industry overlooks it. Whether it tracks licensed or not, it is not an example of legal torrent downloads, they are still illegal.

Re:Anime

the owning companies have never expressed any desire to ban fansubs

That's not quite true: Anime company Media Factory ('Kimi Ga Nozomu Eien', 'Akane Maniax') asked [animesuki.com] animesuki to stop listing fansubs of their works, even though there were no US-licenced

Re:Anime

the owning companies have never expressed any desire to ban fansubs

Yes they have. Media Factory is one that has actually threatened litigation, but think about it. All the creators speak Japanese and live in Japan. International litigation is expens

Re:Anime

(2) "most don't seem to know this is going on anyway"

Are you sure? I'm no expert on this kind of stuff (only started downloading anime recently, although been buying it for a while), but it was my understanding that the whole fansubs thing was difficul

Re:Anime

It's not legal. It's less unethical.

(From my bookmark list)

http://www.legaltorrents.com [legaltorrents.com]

ETree - Legal Bootleg Torrents [etree.org]

Open Source Torrents [filesoup.com]

Re:(From my bookmark list)

filesoup has moved to filesoup.co.uk. But I wouldn't recommend that for an educational setting (especially if the OP intends for the teachers/students to join as a member of the community). IIRC, they even have a red light district.

Legal Torrents

Legal Torrents [legaltorrents.com] is quite good. Creative Commons-licensed music, movies, books, and such.

electric sheep has novel use of torrents

The Electric Sheep [electricsheep.org] server uses BitTorrent to distribute results of aesthetic evolution. Get the torrents of the RSS feed of torrents here [sheepserver.net]. It's currently delivering about 150GB daily by torrent.

World of Warcraft

Let them install World of Warcraft on their computers as Blizzard use BitTorrent to distribute patches. Then if they are good studens you can let them play abit afterwards. :-)

Re:World of Warcraft

Blizzard's servers buckle under the strain of just keeping the game running; I imagine if they actually had to provide direct downloads to all however many million subscribers, then several serverfarms across the country would spontaneously explode on patc

ETree

I like ETree for all my music needs. http://bt.etree.org/ [etree.org] is a free tracker for free music. The bands, who's music appears on this site, allow and encourage people to make tapes of their live shows and share them with their friends. It is this general phil

Re:ETree

http://www.dimeadozen.org/ [dimeadozen.org]
http://www.thetradersden.org/ [thetradersden.org]
http://www.cotapers.org/ [cotapers.org]

Re:ETree

Dimeadozen: not legal (although they do have standards, i.e. no official releases/commercial material).

Tradersden: similar to dimeadozen

COTapers: Now we're getting somewhere! Legal, but (mostly) limited to Colorado shows. Very tiny compared to Etree. Th

Re:ETree

Why is dimeadozen "not legal" and etree & cotapers legal? They all seem to follow the same standards (nothing commercial, bands must be taper friendly, etc). From the dimeadozen FAQ:

• No torrent may distribute any official material. This includes:

Pure Pwnage

Pure Pwnage uses BitTorrent to distribute their shows. That's legal and it has a cult-following of nerds to boot.

here, let me do your homework for you...

Legal Torrents [legaltorrents.com].
Note that you could have used Google for that one. :)

And if you want to call SXSW a community, here [citizenpod.com] is a link to their free MP3 archive torrent for 2006. There's a 2005 you can Google for, too.

Damn!

When I was in school I had to do research for papers by my self.

But then again, we had Gopher, not Google, so I'll shut up.

Anyway, off the top of my head, Democracy player [getdemocracy.com] is a combination video player, RSS reader and torrent client that hooks up a community of legal (well, most of it) video distribution.

It was also announced this week that Steven Soderbergh will be releasing a short through BitTorrent. (I'll let you find the link, you hard working student.)

xandros/suse

Xandros and Suse both had torrent downloads.. I'm sure others do to but I only got those.

Re:xandros/suse

Ubuntuu, Mandriva are some extras. I've gotten Ubuntuu, Mandriva, and Suse all via Torrent.

Open Office

OpenOffice.org distributes their software via BitTorrent in order to help save bandwidth. You can get it other traditional ways but this is an example of where P2P can be used legitimately.

Fandom

I've found a bunch of fan movies on BT. Star Wars: Revelations is one, and I believe it's unofficially smiled upon by LucasFilms. Star Wreck: In The Pirkinning is another. Star Trek: The New Voyages. I suspect the Blender/Maya/3d-animation communities also have torrentable media available, as do various machinima communities. Another possibility is backup. Bittorrent is a semi-decent protocol for moving a shitload of stuff from one computer to another; in that case, you're not taking advantage of a swarm, you're just taking advantage of the fact that resumability, NAT traversal, etc., are made simpler (if you don't want to deal with, or have access to, something like rsync). I've moved my iTunes library that way a few times.

promotion of music

www.djmixes2k.com [djmixes2k.com]

Gutenberg?

You could find a Project Gutenberg torrent.

Red vs. Blue

Don't forget the redvsblue episodes available on the net.

Songfight

We used Bittorrent to host some of the larger Songfight [songfight.org] weeks. (Songfight is a semi-weekly music competition where artists / bands / etc compose a song based on a title chosen by the "Fightmaster". The following week, all the compositions are posted and vo

Re:Songfight

Songfight is a semi-weekly music competition where artists / bands / etc compose a song based on a title chosen by the "Fightmaster". The following week, all the compositions are posted and voted-on.

How did you make sure that none of your entrants subc

Re:Songfight

How did you make sure that none of your entrants subconsciously copied an existing work that they had heard 10 years ago on the radio? (See Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music, the "My Sweet Lord" case.) If you required all artists to warrant that they

Independant musicians and labels

http://www.jamendo.com/en/ [jamendo.com]

Public Domain Torrents

Public Domain Torrents [publicdomaintorrents.com] has torrents of movies in the public domain in various formats. Some hidden gems in there, though I don't know how much of a "community" you could say they have.

AMPFEA.ORG

We use Torrents on AMPFEA.ORG [ampfea.org], which is a community made for people who want a way to put their original-content (only) material online free of charge.

If its free to the world, its free to use AMPFEA.ORG .. we discourage mis-use and abuse by active communi

Copying by accident?

If its free to the world, its free to use AMPFEA.ORG .. we discourage mis-use and abuse by active community audits

Once your audit turns up a work that a user claims to have created and believes in good faith that he has created but turns out to be subs

NASA

Don't forget NASA - http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=nasa+bittorre nt [google.com] ...now must be that time of year to be giving presentations, I just gave one on Bittorrent a few weeks ago...

This Week In Tech

TWiT [www.twit.tv] distributes their shows through bittorrent. Sometimes they even have video.

Revision3 [revision3.com] also distributes their shows on bittorrent.

Humorous Juxtaposition

Compare the number of comments in the "Related Story", Legal Torrent Sites Help Legitimize BitTorrent, with this story--actually asking for legal torrent sites.

what's the difference if it's legal or not?

If your presentation is about the impact of bittorrent in society, what difference does it make if the use is legal or not? There are a lot of things that shape society that aren't legal.. For example, I'm sure any history class will teach you about the bl

New 'Group Torrents' system

Over at mitosis.com we're about to launch a custom 'groups' system which gives users their own blog, user management tools, etc. etc. The interesting part is that we're also introducing a fully integrated torrents section along with it.

An average visit