Great Places to Find Free, Legal Bittorrent Downloads

Downloading via bittorrent has taken a bad rap lately, mainly because it is the preferred way of many people to download illegal movies, music, software and games. In addition, many of the recent lawsuits filed by the RIAA and MPAA have been initiated because those organizations have monitored bittorrent (and other file sharing) downloads, which have given bittorrent a black eye. But bittorrent is only a technology, and therefore runs the risk of being abused. But not all bittorrent sites are illegal. Below is a list of some of the best legit sites on the web.

http://bt.etree.org - This site has tons of music available from artists who have agreed to allow their music to be distributed by fans. Everyone from Phish to the Grateful Dead to John Mayer can be found here. Warning to downloaders: the music found here is typically encoded as either FLAC or SHN, which means that you may be looking at close to one gigabyte of download, since the music is CD quality.

http://www.legaltorrents.com/ - As the website says, this site "is a collection of Creative Commons-licensed, legally downloadable, freely distributable creator-approved films." Lots of interesting stuff on this site, including a documentary about the scifi show/movie Firefly/Serenity, which you can also purchase on DVD if interested.

http://www.publicdomaintorrents.com/ - Lots of stuff for fans of golden oldies on this site. Buster Keaton, Baby Huey, Laurel & Hardy, Flash Gordon, Superman TV episodes. Everything on the site, as the name would suggest, is in the public domain, and therefore freely distributable.

http://2007.sxsw.com/toolbox/ - Only one torrent on this site, but it's a big one. Weighing in at over 3.1 gigabytes, the single torrent offered at this site (which is put up by the South by Southwest music festival in Austin, Texas), has 795 mp3 files from performers scheduled to appear. In addition, there are podcasts available for your downloading pleasure.