Someone told me to beware of "trackers"when I am using bittorrent software to download a peer to peer file sharing network file…why did they tell me to watch out for the FBI and how can I watch out for them anyways?? Am I doing something wrong if I try to watch a tv episode using Bittorrent?
illegality depends on which country u live in. some places it’s legal to download and share anything, but most places sharing copyrighted material is not legal.
simple the use of a bittorrent client is not illegal. there are many legal uses for bittorrent (such as sharing linux distros). and of course there is illegal use also (such as sharing copyrighted movies).
often various copyright groups will monitor illegal sharing and obtain the ip addresses of computers which are sharing content illegally. using the ip address they can trace the person (or computer) doing the sharing. of course if the computer is using a proxy, then it’s not possible. but most people seem to not be using proxies.
there is nothing illegal about watching a tv episode online. the problem than u run into is that while u are downloading that episode, it is automatically being uploaded (shared) to various other downloaders. this consititutes illegal sharing. if u used a streaming service to watch your tv episode, such as hulu.com or guba.com, then u would not be sharing, only viewing…therefore that would be legal.
now as to "trackers"…those are sites that manage the tiny files that your bittorrent client downloads to enable it to locate the real file u wish to obtain. some tracker sites can log ip addresses of people who download the tiny .torrent files. again, a proxy would gain a person anonymity from this. but most tracker sites do not do this.