Calach - I looked at the list you provided and was scared off by the fact that they all ask for credit card details, all claiming they won't charge you but I'm very hesitate to provide details, just in case they do, or worse use the details for other purposes. Secondly, I found one I thought was ok and it sent me to a page that looked like a DOS screen, made repeated loud siren noises, demanding I telephoned a number and wouldn't let me leave until I shut the computer. I had to wipe cookies (to stop it keep redirecting me!) and run a full scan. I'm still not convinced that I'm completely free of it but so far I've had no further issues. Finally, does anyone have a stupids guide to torrents? I tried and tried, and I can't fathom how to make them work right consistently.
Ew. Sorry about that. Yeah, I don't know anything about legal downloading in China.
Re torrents - basically, what Cruisemonkey said. It used to be that effective torrenting required arcane knowledge and "tweaks", but these days a decent client will do all the tweaking for you. All you need is the client and an open port.
Clients: uTorrent and Vuze are the popular choices. A while back uTorrent went ad-supported which I found annoying so I switched to Vuze. Vuze always was bloated and full of settings to play with, but it worked for me. I forget what annoyed me about it now, some obvious performance hit on my whole computer maybe, but for a while there I was looking for new client software. There are all sorts, like Deluge or the original BitTorrent, or the one I've started liking:
TixatiOpen Ports: these are what the torrents go through to get to and from your machine. They can be blocked by your ISP, your router, or shut by your computer itself. Your chosen client software will have some setting somewhere like
Settings > Network/Downloads > Ports/Connections/Something
And the "port" will be some number, probably in the range 49152-65534. Doesn't matter which number you choose, so long as it's "open". Either your client software will include a port tester or you can check it online (Google "open port" and lots of port testing sites show up.) If you can't find any "port" number that checks out as "open", you may have to do an arcane operation called "port forwarding". That is a whole other post (and not really something I understand because usually ports are open.)
Nb: probably the default port the client starts with will work fine.
Torrenting: you've got your client, you've directed it at an open port, you've visited Kickass, you've downloaded a .torrent file, your torrent client has picked up that tiny .torrent file and has begun to do things. The download will start slow and pick up speed, ideally using up to about 70% of your download capacity. (Most modern torrent clients will discover for themselves what this is.) The downloading operation is not 1-to-1. The client software is collecting many pieces of your target file from many sources and putting them together on your machine. Eventually, it will conclude and the file or collection of files will be "downloaded". At this point, you can shut down your torrent client and do whatever you like, but the worldwide system of torrent file sharing generally relies on people leaving their torrent clients running. Your client and the downloaded torrent will then serve as a piece source for other downloaders. It's normally understood you'll leave your client running until the file you downloaded has been shared again up to 1.5 times the total file size. If you don't do this, the client system may take automatic umbrage and you future download speeds will suffer. You can also change this uploading behaviour, choosing to share more or less, and it'll work away in the background, but getting your download-to-uploads ration at least to 1 can sometimes take a while. I leave my machines always running, and the torrent client always on.
Tip: if you want to test out your client, download a Linux distro. For instance, choose some
Ubuntu torrent. You don't have to keep it or even like Linux, but the latest distro torrents are usually very active and will give you a good idea of whether or not your client is working right.