For transferring large files over the Internet, nothing beats BitTorrent. And BitTorrent clients remain hugely popular—despite years of litigation by copyright holders.

Finding new content has always been a bit of a pickle, however. One easy way is to run a Google search and tack on the word "torrent" at the end. The problem is that when faced with a blank search box, it’s all too tempting to think of things that would (ahem) normally cost money. That means BitTorrent clients, as always, can be used for both legal and more nefarious purposes—even if the clients and protocol themselves are within the law.

Don’t ever expect us to encourage that sort of behavior, of course.

In fact, there are plenty of legal sources for torrents. One is the aptly named www.legaltorrents.com, which has plenty of music, movies, and games. Other legal sites include LegitTorrents.info, which offers a search box interface; Linuxtracker.org for open-source software fans; and the newer YouTorrent.com, which is still in beta but currently offers torrent files across a broad range of categories such as video, TV, games, and software. You can find a comprehensive, categorized list of legal torrent sites at azureuswiki.com/index.php/Legal_torrent_sites.

In addition, many people torrent legitimate copies of major artist releases. For example, Trent Reznor (of Nine Inch Nails) has made lossless-encoded copies of his free album, The Slip, available on BitTorrent sites. Those files take up hundreds of megabytes; the resulting crash of fans downloading them at the album’s release would strain just about any regular Web server, but it’s no problem for BitTorrent. If you’re looking for live recordings, bt.etree.org is a good place to start—it catalogs music from trade-friendly artists like Govt Mule, String Cheese Incident, and even Grateful Dead.

In addition, BitTorrent also…

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