txtor

What's txtor?

txtor is a service that offers the possibility of downloading a torrent file that's available publicly on the internet as if it were a text file. Nothing more, nothing less. We don't host or offer any torrents itself.

Why?

Some ISPs and university campus networks force their users in using a proxy server for all http traffic. In some weird, perverted attempt to stop the distribution of "illegal material" over their networks, some of these proxies are configured to filter all torrent files. That is, the torrent files itself, not the files distributed using the bittorrent protocol.

For a number of reasons, we oppose to these practices:

The technical solution is at most mediocre. Blocking content based on file extension, that's not very web 2.0.
Bittorrent is a great distribution mechanism for lots of perfectly legal content. Even more so, content that is especially interesting for students, like Linux distributions.
Crippled internet access sucks. This is the information age! Information wants to be free as in freedom and people should take responsibility for their own actions. Etc.
It remains to be seen how illegal the "illegal material", or rather, the "illegal distribution of copyrighted material" is.
We think it's stupid in a general kind of way.

But, luckily, for most people in the civilized world, downloading torrents is no problem. If you don't have a problem, this is not for you. Happy sharing!

How does it work?

From a user's perspective, it's very simple: you paste the URL of a torrent file in the text box above and click the download button. The resulting text file gets downloaded, you rename the ".txt" extension to ".torrent" and fire it up in your favourite bittorent client. Good bye, stupid filtering proxies.

From a technical point of view, it's also no rocket surgery: we download the torrent file by using the URL provided by you, we rename the file and offer it to your browser with a different mime type (a technique to identify the file type without looking at the file extension). This way, any in-between proxy servers can't recognise the file as being a torrent file anymore and just allow you to download it.

Does this help against any torrent traffic filtering?

Sadly, no. If the actual torrent traffic gets filtered by your network provider, txtor won't do you any good. You can try to use different ports in your client or encrypt the traffic. Much has been written about this, Google is your friend.

Does it work with any torrent?

txtor should work with any torrents that are publicly accessible, like stuff from isohunt, torrentspy or mininova. It doesn't help you out for private sites (i.e., where you need to login to download a torrent), because we'd have to relay your credentials and we doubt you'd want us to give your username and password. If we're wrong on that, please mail us, it's easily implementable.

If you find a public torrentsite that somehow doesn't play nice with txtor, please let us know, we will investigate.

Aren't you guys stealing torrents?

Skipping on the wrong use of the word stealing (we're not taking anything, downloading never is stealing), no. We just offer an alternative way of downloading torrents, we're not increasing or decreasing data traffic or ad revenues of any site in any way. If anything, we're helping the originating torrent sites to get more peers for their torrents. Sharing is the whole idea behind bittorrent, anyway.

Future improvements

All we can think of right now in terms if additions or improvements is providing a bookmarktlet. You know, a little button on your bookmark bar where you can drop a link to a torrent to get it downloaded as text file. Any suggestions are welcome, though.

Who are you?

Yes.