Excerpt of interest from "How to download everything you ever wanted" from the Mail & Guardian (Ian Fraser), 16 March 2005

Bit torrents are another way to get files and goodies. For this, you need an application to download the "torrents", as well as a method of searching for the files you want. There is a range of different applications you can use, and everyone has their own favourite.

Firstly, be advised that there's a serious online war between the Motion Picture Association of America and all the free-stuff-loving people of the entire Earth, so the following sites are at complete odds with the corporate view that everything must be paid for.

So, purely for educational purposes -- and I should stress here that I'm not advocating piracy in any way at all, but simply demonstrating how widespread the problem is -- have a look, for instance, at Torrent Reactor. For a Torrent site that tends to focus on British TV material, see Digital Distractions. Here is another British Torrent site. For a forum-based Torrent site (you'll need to register), go to File Soup. You name it, there's a torrent site dedicated to it. For instance, Anime-Specific Torrents. Or, as I'm a fan of improvisational comedy, here's a site for Whose Line Is It Anyway? Torrents. Torrents also have their own search engines. One of the more comprehensive ones, which searches many torrent sites as well as IRC, is Iso Hunt. Another, to find that rare or interesting content you've been looking for (although you might need to register), is Torrent Search.

Now that you've seen just what torrents can provide (in both legal and illegal content), you will need a torrent client. Here are a few of the more popular torrent clients available: ABC (which stands for Another BitTorrent Client), Bit Tornado and Bit Comet. You might want to listen to (or download) a radio talk on movie technology and piracy, here.