Legal Torrents

ClearBits is a website that hosts Creative Commons material for download through torrents. Have a look thought their stuff because they do have some interesting material.

An Odd Way Of Downloading Torrents

By way of Gameology.org I read about Torrent Raiders which is an XNA project (all bits to run the project are included in the installer) that is part game and part BitTorrent client.

Once you start Torrent Raiders up you are asked to provide a torrent file. Torrent Raiders will then download that torrent's target files to the same folder as the torrent, but you get to play a game as it does it. In the game you have a view of the earth and people who you are connected to show up as spots on the earth. Your job (as somekind of cyber mercenary) is to shoot data packets, collect evidence and bomb the people you are transferring to/from for money.

The project is obviously a comment on digital intellectual property theft and as a game it lacks verity, but I have never seen transfer statistics used in a more creative way. Even the little packets of data in the game look like flying trucks with the name of the BitTorrent Client that the truck came from is Written On The Side.