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Title says it all.

I saw this question, and was thinking probably not.

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    I'm going to leave this to one of the more senior mods, but note that there is no way of knowing i) whether downloading copyrighted material is legal in the OP's country and ii) whether the torrent is even pointing to copyrighted material. There are perfectly valid and legal reasons to use torrents.
    – terdon Mod
    Commented Jun 23, 2016 at 11:32
  • @terdon Okay. IMHO, there isn't a good reason to torrent. Among other things, it opens ports on your router which is a security risk. Commented Jun 23, 2016 at 11:35
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    @muru not a dupe. This is about "local" sharing. Even is this is about a ripped movie it is NOT illegal since this is not about publishing to the world.
    – Rinzwind
    Commented Jun 23, 2016 at 11:39
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    @AndroidDev it doesn't open up ports on your router, at least not in the way I'm thinking. It just uses ports that aren't usually used. Torrenting can actually be good, because (for more popular torrents), it avoids the risk of a dead link: everyone who downloads the file becomes a source for it unless manually disabled. I've also noticed that torrents can download faster than the internet speed I'm paying for. Of course, if you are doing illegal stuff, torrenting can make you harder to track (or take attention away from you), and it's harder to shut down every seed for a torrent. Commented Jun 23, 2016 at 11:48
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    @AndroidDev I always use torrents to download Linux ISOs for example. That's 100% legal and usually faster than using http. There are many legal torrents. Whether you think it's a security risk or not is not relevant since you are asking about the legality. For example, asking how to disable all passwords is very risky and very silly but is still on topic.
    – terdon Mod
    Commented Jun 23, 2016 at 11:52
  • @Zacharee1 - You don't consider becoming a source to download the file from a security risk? Commented Jun 23, 2016 at 11:54
  • @AndroidDev I always stop the torrent so I'm not a seeder, but I don't really see there the risk is, or if it's any more risky than running a home web server. Commented Jun 23, 2016 at 12:19
  • @AndroidDev let's not discuss the technical side of things here. Take it to chat.
    – terdon Mod
    Commented Jun 23, 2016 at 12:19

1 Answer 1

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It isn't illegal to share a file with Bittorrent.

That's all that's happening here. It's a file called movie.mkv. It might a super-illegal leak of the next Star Wars film, it might be something the OP has created. Or something in between. My point is they could have full rights to do what they're doing.

More than that, they appear to be sending it to themselves. Even if it were Rogue One, personal copying of a file you already have is a long way from criminal redistribution.

That is all to say: Chill out. Answer the question on its technical merit.

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