Is it legal to download torrents?

[PedroP]

I read somewhere about a year ago that 50% of internet traffic is torrents and I read no people getting arrested for it.

I assume it is legal.

[MikeFS]

FBI is busy catching real criminals. if any one would be arrested it would be the creator of the program.

[DisplayName]

yes... but it gives you a s*** load of viruses...

[HiP]

It's both
If it's something that was open source and distributed it's legal.
If you download a product that is paid for and get it free through torrents it's illegal.

So be careful on what you download through torrents.

[Stelios]

em it is legal but its virus

[Kensuke]

It is legal to download torrent files as it in no way contains someone's copyrighted material.

Some files made available through torrents however are illegally distributed.

Who would you persecute for piracy?
The tracker?
The people who leech and seed them?
The individual who first puts it up for grabs in the internet?
I believe that it's also difficult to sue someone for copyright infringement if he from a different country.

It is legal to download torrent files sometimes hosted by the tracker's website.
However, it is not legal to download copyrighted files without buying a license or the rights to own a copy.

[FigNewton]

It's legal if you're downloading non-copyrighted materials. If you're downloading copyrighted movies, games and music it's illegal. From time to time they come after people and slap them with huge fines. Really huge fines. They do this to send a message. Evidently you didn't get that message.

Even if you don't know the law it's not an excuse. You can still be punished. There's a risk, even if it's small, that you could be arrested and prosecuted.

[iFreedom]

The torrents are legal, but the contents inside may or may not.
Ex. Downloading a game for free inside a torrent is illegal, because stores do sell games.
Ex. Downloading pictures inside a torrent is legal, unless the owner puts copyrights.

[DemonlMask]

Torrents are perfectly legal, all they do is establish a peer-to-peer connection. There is nothing at all wrong with that. It is the files often transferred by torrents that can be illegal.

[frank]

Nobody in the United States has been criminally prosecuted for downloading small numbers of torrents. The criminal copyright laws mostly cover large-scale violations, and the DMCA makes it a crime to break the technical copy protection that protects a work.

However, downloading even one torrent without permission from the copyright holder opens you up for civil liability, and the RIAA has been successfully suing people.

People make up all kinds of excuses for why it is OK to take someone's work without paying, but many of them have gotten ugly surprises from the RIAA.