11 August,2016 08:16 AM IST | | Hassan M Kamal
Recently, two major torrent sources — KickAssTorrents and Torrentz.eu shut shop, following a crackdown by US authorities on illegal downloads or online piracy. Hassan M Kamal has compiled a list of torrent sources that offer free, open source content
Everything
Archive.org
From Popeye and Superman cartoons to movies from the silent era or videos of events from archives around the world, The Internet Archive, a non-profit library, offers unlimited to access to millions of free books, movies, software, music and websites. The library aims to offer permanent access for researchers, historians, scholars, people with disabilities, and the general public to historical collections that exist in digital format. Download files directly or use torrents that are available on the website.
Vodo.net
A crossmedia distributor for film, games, books and music, Vodo.net is a great source for curated Indie content from around the world.
Gaming
Tasvideos.org
Download gameplay videos of some of the most popular games through history, right from Mario Bros to Sonic.
Also try, Now.bt.co (a source of free music and video bundles from BitTorrent), and Vuze.com for legal downloads of TV shows, movie trailers and news clips.
Gameupdates.org
This community-based site allows you to upload and download patches, demos and mods for the latest games.
Books
baen.dominikbodi.de
If you are into science fiction and fantasy, you would love the works published by Baen Books. Started by Jim Baen, the publishing house offers free download of its books on the ebook store, Baen.com. Baen.dominikbodi.de is an official source of the CDs and ISO images of Baen books that have been released over time.
librivox.org
The volunteer-driven platform records readings of books in the public domain and then makes them available for free download. Some items that caught our eye included audiobooks of works of Charles Dickens, Mahatma Gandhi, Albert Einstein and more. It recently completed 10,000 projects.
Design and publishing
Mediahistoryproject.org
This non-profit digitises and makes collections of classic media periodicals that belong in the public domain for full public access. The list includes periodicals like Billboard, Broadcasting, The Screen Writer and more.
Music
Panda.cd
The website is a good source for free, legally distributed music from recording artistes. You need to sign up to download free music.
Sxswtorrent.com
Not the official source of SXSW, but the website makes music from the last nine years of the SXSW festival available for download.
Jamtothis.com
An audio/video trading community, the website offers lossless license-free material to upload and download. Commercially available music is pulled out immediately.
