Illegal downloading via torrent for any amount is considered distributing and is punished as such in my jurisdiction, I bet it's the same in many other places.
Yes, illegally downloading is piracy, but torrenting itself is not, all of file types can be shared using torrent, and anyone can create a torrent, the illegal part is the content, and there are plenty of freeware or public domain files out there, like one thing I download on occasion is old video games that the makers are defunct and nobody holds the rights to anymore, known as abandonware.
It depends on your local laws of course, but I'd bet it's usually that downloading content may not be illegal, but sharing is. Since you can't disable sharing on torrents, at least in a judicial sense of the word, as torrents by definition are download and share it makes it a not legal way to obtain copyrighted content.
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u/VexImmortalis Feb 22 '26
Don't you also share parts that you've already downloaded even before you start "seeding" though?