What's a torrent and how to use them?

A torrent is information about a file available from a kind of peer to peer network.

In order to get the file you need software. The Opera web browser can download files from a torrent. I’ve also used bittorrent and uTorrent and both seem good.

One thing to keep in mind is when you run this software your computer becomes part of the peer-to-peer network. The files you download can also be downloaded from your computer. If you download illegal copyrighted material this way than you could be guilty of both using and distributing this material.

The music industry has been very agressive sueing and prosecuring individuals who share copyrighted music. AFAIK there really hasn’t been a problem with people downloading TV shows. It too is a violation of copyright but I’ve never heard of anyone getting in trouble for downloading a TV show they want to watch.

Lots of non-copyrighted data is also available on torrents. The nice thing about P2P networks is that no large server is required. Once the file is on the P2P network everyone shares so there is no single server to be a bottleneck.