Should companies have torrent links to download their software?

If the company lets you download their software through torrents, than it wouldn't be illegal (as long as you pay for it), but if I owned a company, I wouldn't let my software be downloaded through torrents, because I think that it would make my company look bad.

NO! Piracy of Software is Illegal!! Report the Torrent Site & Companies!!!

"... civil copyright infringement, the penalty is up to $100,000 per title infringed. If charged with a criminal violation, the fine is up to $250,000 per title infringed and up to five years imprisonment ..."

Some companies do use the bit torrent protocol for distributing software. The biggest name that comes to mind is Blizzard. The blizzard downloader is actually a very tiny customized torrent client.

If the company has free software that they give out for no charge then yes they should have some sort of torrent setup. That is only if their software is free. If it is paid then they should have an download link on their own servers.

Yeah, that would be awesome.

I am sure some companies out there do this. And if not, they really should be!

Personally, I think they should use some sort of filehosting site such as the likes of rapidshare/megaupload/etc. They have dedicated servers which can reach you maximum bandwidth without needing anyone other than the client and the server. If they controlled the site or had some sort of contract, they could easily protect their files from malicious piracy.

I believe that if it's open-source or free in any way, it should use Torrents. And for companies, they should have little store applets that act as Torrent clients, but with checkout as well. It should be like iTunes, Vuze, and the Blizzard Store all had a retard baby.

with the cs5 collection you can just torrent a copy and not use the crack but use your serial, same with most programs. you dont have to download the thing from them with cs you can just download a trial form anywhere andput in your serial

Many think that torrents and torrent sites are illegal, they are NOT, but the content in them are! Torrents are just a faster way of transferring stuff. As some said that you could install a program from a torrent site, but then you could use your own legitimate serial key - that's not basically illegal because the company would still get his money and distribution.

Torrents are in no way illegal. Torrent is a protocol, just because it can be used for piracy, does not mean it is illegal. You wouldn't believe how many sites allow you to download pirated content through FTP, does that make FTP illegal?

Many sites use torrents openly to allow people to download unmodified expensive software.

For example these links have been on many forums run by microsoft, with no problem

Download windows vista (all versions) http://www.mydigitallife.info/2007/02/05/download-windows-vista-ultimate-full-retail-dvd-media-image-32-bit-and-64-bit-all-editions/

Download windows 7 (all versions http://www.mydigitallife.info/2009/07/25/download-32-bit-64-bit-windows-7-rtm-build-7600-16385-original-untouched-msdntechnet-leaked-retail-dvd-iso/

Download windows server 2008 http://www.mydigitallife.info/2009/04/28/download-windows-server-2008-and-vista-sp2-rtm-600218005/

Download windows XP (all versions) http://www.tipandtrick.net/2008/download-unmodified-original-windows-xp-with-sp3-integrated-full-retail-and-vl-install-cd-iso-image-from-msdntechnet-plus-via-http-or-torrent/

Microsoft has no problem because their copy protection is not being circumvented, WGA is not broken and no serials are given so the user still needs to have purchased a legit serial number.

Many companies when short on cash will use torrents. for example, revision 3 used to use torrents for their content. and public radio international (this American life) considered it because they currently pay around $100,000 a year on bandwidth, they were able to avoid it by adding sponsors.

With the torrent network, a single user with a standard internet connection can distribute close to a petabyte of data in a single day (if you want to see examples of this, check out the anime communities that share anime torrents and post the tracker stats)

bittorrent was created because it is a cost effective way to send the same data to a large number of people, and in a ideal network environment where everyone has the same download and upload with no caps, 1 user can upload at a single speed and everyone in the torrent swarm can download the same file at the same speed regardless of how many users are in the swarm

torrent networks are also more reliable than any other king of network for transferring files, as anyone on the network can send the data so the main server can go down and people will still be able to download, as long as there is 1 or more users with the parts being requested.

overall, the torrent network uses less bandwidth on the main host as everyone who downloads will share the bandwidth load of serving the content. The content on the torrent network will have a high level of redundancy so there almost a 0% chance of downtime.

The only reason why large companies are not widely using it is because many novice computer users know how to download a torrent