{"rid":"storage/internet-archive-bittorrents","card":{"rid":"storage/internet-archive-bittorrents","eid":"internet-archive-bittorrents","topic":"storage","slug":"internet-archive-bittorrents","provider":"Internet Archive BitTorrents (webseed swarm)","url":"https://archive.org/details/torrents","domain":"archive.org","category":"p2p","tier":null,"verdict":"qualifies-with-caveat","vorder":1,"grp":"usable","confidence":"reported","binding":"none","identity_kind":"email","identity_basis":"defaulted","needs_card":null,"needs_phone":null,"needs_id":null,"needs_institution":null,"country":null,"crypto":null,"interfaces":"rest,rclone","egress_metered":0,"per_object_bytes":null,"retention_days":null,"verified_at":"2026-10-21T00:00:00.000Z","verified_basis":"inherited","checked_on":"2026-10-21","stale_on":"2026-11-04","n_evidence":3,"usd_month":null,"usd_per_tb_month":null,"summary":"Free, unlimited distribution; ~1.4 million items already torrented, 'comprising almost a petabyte of public domain materials'. Egress is unbounded because th...","duplicate_of":null,"n_unknown":7},"record":{"topic":"storage","slug":"internet-archive-bittorrents","provider":"Internet Archive BitTorrents (webseed swarm)","url":"https://archive.org/details/torrents","category":"p2p","free_tier":{"stated":"Free, unlimited distribution; ~1.4 million items already torrented, 'comprising almost a petabyte of public domain materials'. Egress is unbounded because the swarm and webseeds share the load.","unit":"unlimited","metered_on":"unstated","source_url":"https://help.archive.org/help/archive-bittorrents/","read_on":"2026-10-21","notes":null},"per_object_cap":{"stated":"not stated","source_url":"https://help.archive.org/help/archive-bittorrents/","notes":"not stated"},"retention":{"stated":"not stated","source_url":"https://help.archive.org/help/archive-bittorrents/","notes":"not stated"},"egress":{"terms":"Free — 'our Torrents rely heavily on webseeding (download directly from our servers, when no peers have the files you are seeking)'. Peers carry the rest at zero cost to anyone.","metered":false},"interface":["rest","rclone"],"interface_detail":"rest","tooling":"Any BitTorrent client with Getright-style webseed support (qBittorrent, Transmission); IA generates the .torrent per item and runs trackers bt1.archive.org; rclone not involved","chaining":"Combine with #1: upload once via IAS3, then distribute via torrent so a 1TiB/day fetch load is carried by peers + webseed instead of a single HTTP stream. Torrent + webseed is also the only path that can exceed the ~1.7 MB/s per-connection shaping.","limits":[],"limits_note":"Torrent is generated server-side only (you do not choose the swarm); obsolete torrents break when the item changes (piece-hash mismatch); rTorrent does not support Getright-style webseeding and will not start; bt1 trackers are rate-limited per IP; ._____padding_file must be deselected.","identity_cost":{"kind":"email","detail":null,"country":null},"reliability_note":"Old torrents for a mutated item loop forever re-downloading mismatched pieces; seeder counts are cached ~5 minutes and include webseeds.","confidence":"reported","confidence_note":"One page read moves it to documented.","evidence":[{"url":"https://help.archive.org/help/archive-bittorrents/","date":"2026-10-21","proved":"(snapshot 2026-09-13) — 'over 1.4 million Archive Items are available via the BitTorrent protocol, comprising almost a petabyte'"},{"url":"https://help.archive.org/help/archive-bittorrents/","date":"2026-10-21","proved":"'Our Torrents rely heavily on webseeding ... rTorrent do not support Getright-style webseeding'"},{"url":"https://help.archive.org/help/archive-bittorrents/","date":"2026-10-21","proved":"torrents for changed items 'become obsolete ... files will fail to download completely'"}],"verdict":"qualifies-with-caveat","verified_at":"2026-10-21T00:00:00.000Z","notes":"Free, unlimited distribution; ~1.4 million items already torrented, 'comprising almost a petabyte of public domain materials'. Egress is unbounded because the swarm and webseeds share the load.","extras":{},"binding":"none","binding_note":"no constraint in the record binds at this scale; the record carries no limit of a kind the vocabulary names"},"claims":[{"path":"$.free_tier.stated","kind":"free-quota","num":null,"unit":null,"per":null,"currency":null,"usd":null,"fx_date":null,"parse":"unparsed"}],"unknown":[["$.free_tier.notes","process"],["$.identity_cost.detail","defaulted"],["$.identity_cost.kind","identity-defaulted"],["$.per_object_cap.notes","not-extracted"],["$.per_object_cap.stated","not-extracted"],["$.retention.notes","not-extracted"],["$.retention.stated","not-extracted"]],"history":[],"drift":[]}