You join a group of people either seeding (uploading the complete file) or leeching (downloading the file while sharing the parts they already have).

Disclaimer: Ensure you have the legal right to download the content associated with any torrent file. Peer-to-peer sharing of copyrighted material without permission is illegal in many jurisdictions.

In the world of peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing, a file like 0000000.torrent isn’t actually the movie, game, or software you're looking for. Instead, it’s a tiny roadmap—a metadata file that tells your computer where to find the actual data.

Your computer doesn’t download the file from start to finish. It grabs random pieces from dozens of different users simultaneously, reassembling them at the end. 3. Why Use Torrents?