illegal software???

Take it to ask the mods.

You can take your chances and ask your original question cause it seems like its not against the ToU, but its up to you. Best to ask a mod first.

I saw that thread.

I'd like to know as well, some people around here seem to be absurdly misinformed; bittorrent is merely a transfer protocol..Blizzard even uses it for their patching utility in World of Warcraft.

Granted, it is often associated with piracy and copyright violations, but the same can be said for any major file transfer protocol.

The place to ask would probably be "Ask the Mods," though.

I once got moderated because someone asked for a torrent program and i said the name of one, which is apprently supplying with with warez/romz.

Who knows, maybe if i say the name of a gun i'll be to blame because someone shot someone with that type of gun.

bittorrent utorrent bitcomet bitlord azureus

talk about smoking gun, i fired the machine gun :|

For the record: it wasn't a moderator that claimed BitTorrent was illegal, but another (severely misinformed) user.

As to whether it's a policy of Gamespot to lock BitTorrent-related topics: I guess we'll just have to wait for a reply in that Ask the Mods topic. I actually added a bit to the topic you posted over there, but I should've read the posting rules for that board first. Other users apparently aren't allowed to post in topics pertaining to another user's moderation :P. I was promptly moderated and my post was deleted, but I got off with just a warning.

My freaking campus filters torrents so its annoying to get them..even though they're entirely legal. :|Aidenfury19

Yeah, that's simply for reasons of network management. The BitTorrent protocol is extremely bandwidth intensive. Just a couple uncapped BitTorrent users could bring an extremely high bandwidth campus connection to its knees, and that's an issue when you have multiple students sharing a single connection.

For the same reason, many Cable Internet ISPs (namely, Comcast) forge packets to "manage" BitTorrent traffic. Comcast in particular spoofs packets to force peer disconnections on customers who use their connection to upload to peers via the BitTorrent protocol. Packet encryption (which most clients support) helps to combat this..but it isn't perfect.

Yeah, that's simply for reasons of network management. The BitTorrent protocol is extremely bandwidth intensive. Just a couple uncapped BitTorrent users could bring an extremely high bandwidth campus connection to its knees, and that's an issue when you have multiple students sharing a single connection.Velocitas8

The campus isn't particularly large (pop.) and we've got single-mode fiber connecting the different buildings with multi-mode fiber running inside them...bandwidth I wouldn't think would be an issue here. Besides I find means to download gigs of data despite it, perhaps through some of the methods you've mentioned and perhaps through other services.

No, I expect that the motives are different here. :|

The campus isn't particularly large (pop.) and we've got single-mode fiber connecting the different buildings with multi-mode fiber running inside them...bandwidth I wouldn't think would be an issue here.Aidenfury19

What kind of bandwidth are we talking here? And how is it divided up or managed?

Regardless, it's likely irrelevant. I've seen users manage to uncap their campus internet connections and nearly max them out. Screencaps of people seeding torrents at 11MB/s is quite amusing (with upload speeds of 250-500 kb/s across multiple peers.) I saw a couple of screenshots like this on /g/ just within the past week alone. A good way to piss the campus' IT guys off.

The torrent protocol is endlessly bandwidth hungry unless the user sets strict connection/transfer limitations. It's a huge drain on shared internet connections..which is why many campus networks throttle or outright ban the protocol. Even simple internet browsing can become problematic for other users of the connection with a torrent transfer in full-swing. It's even a drain on the networks of big-name Cable ISPs, which is why they actively throttle BitTorrent traffic. But it also doesn't help that these same Cable companies oversell their lines.

Edit: The bandwidth utilization of other protocols doesn't even begin to compare to BitTorrent. A single FTP connection transferring to your PC at 1MB/s uses far less bandwidth than the usually hundreds of connections BitTorrent establishes simultaneously to achieve the same transfer speed (with your client uploading packets of information to other peers to boot.)

I don't see why you got moderated for mentioning any torrent software. Its perfectly legal and alot of legal downloads come in the form of torrent files, especially large downloads.michael098

It has some fair uses, but as I said in the Ask the Mods forum the majority is not using it for legitimate purposes.