Torrents killing IPODs?

[chomz78]

quick question...

I am into trading bootleg concerts and use sites like dimeshare.org and genesis-movement.org which feature torrents. I was told by a genius at the ipod store that torrent downloading screws up the hard drive. Is this true? Seems like this is their way of scaring people out of "stealing" music. I purchase the music i listen to, and i love live concerts of that music, and not just one show.

Anyway around this?

Rich

[RatherPlayHalo]

Absolutely not. That's just an outright lie.

[kornchild2002]

Torrent downloads may be illegal (unless the artist authorizes the recording and distributing of live shows) but they definately won't ruin your iPod. Now, keep in mind that you can inadvertently download a virus in a corrupted file that may infect your computer, but they definately won't break your iPod.

[jhollington]

The only exception to the above is that many audio files downloaded from P2P sites do not have the cleanest tags in place, and may even suffer other corruption within the MP3 file itself.

This can cause your iPod to lockup or freeze or display other odd behaviour when playing the file, but it certainly won't ruin the iPod or shorten it's life. A simple reset (hold down CENTRE+MENU) will usually fix any such problems.

Basically, it's just a result of the iPod firmware finding data in the file that it doesn't expect to be there, and not knowing how to respond to that data. Software engineers can't account for every possibility in terms of how a piece of software responds to data within a file, particularly when they're expecting to be playing an audio stream.

Again, however, there is no evidence that this kind of corruption can permanently damage your iPod, and it would be based on the file being damaged or otherwise out-of-spec somehow.

[wolfpacker]

Certainly no danger to the iPod itself.

I suppose keeping the torrent open on your computer would effect the life of your computers
hardfile because it would be read often while you serve up pieces to other downloaders. Maybe that is what he meant?

BTW, in response to the above post, the concert boot trading is almost always in
Shorten (.shn) or FLAC lossless formats. Since you have to go thru the process of
converting SHN/FLAC->WAV->MP3/AAC, you aren't going to have issues.

[bdb]

Some "genius". :shake:

[mrdantownsend]

he obviously does not deserve the title 'genius' in any arena of technology whatsoever

[chuckley]

if u believe that u got serious problems.

[TheJosher]

The only way a torrent could damage your iPod is if you used it as a removable disk to download/seed all your torrents. :P (wear out the HD)

But nope, music from torrents won't hurt the iPod or any other mp3 player.

This is the second time I've heard reports of Apple employees saying that to people though (the other time it was p2p software). Weird.

[thejaundicedeye]

im totally anti drm but i can think of another way a torrent might harm an ipod. this is just a guess mind you...potentially if the torrent is not fully downloaded and the song is corrupt and you attempt to play many corrupt songs and never address the root issue -just skip the song, i would figure in time the ipod would need formatting quickly and would eventually damage the machine.

sort of a hunch....but overall, its either hype or a lie.

[paranoidxe]

No way, even corrupted songs would do nothing more than ruin your ears/phones..to the hard drive its all the same..corrupted songs just wouldn't play or they'd be incoherent.