Running torrents off of your website is a good way to run into legal trouble.
Even though you aren’t hosting the illegal content, hosting the torrent can be bad enough if you’re up against Disney and the MPAA. It’s a really bad idea to make yourself a target like that, in my opinion. And I thought it was a funny Leia misquote.
New people like to complain about how decentralized things are around here. Some people complain because they’re too lazy to figure it out. Others make the reasonable claim that it drives people to places like Ebay.
It’s a reasonable claim that having things a bit decentralized thwarts some of the less technically inclined and probably drives them to ebay. And that having higher visibility (apparently more than a very obvious facebook page) would prevent some of those sales. Others would still buy because they are either lazy or don’t have the internet connection or ability to burn BD-R and make pretty cases.
But I would argue that besides the problems that A) some jackasses are profitting and B) some dumbasses are losing money, the major issue with the ebay sales is their extreme visibility. And when we get newcomers saying that we need to just have a website such as “SWdespecialized.info” or such, with a big red button to download the film, they’re asking for “us” (whomever) to take on that visible and risky role. Drawing too much attention to it all is a bad thing, in my opinion, regardless of whether there’s the extra aspect of profit or not.
I’m sure some people disagree, and will say that we’ve somehow managed to survive despite many articles about these projects in the press. But I don’t think that’s something to take for granted. We’re fortunate that things have been as light-hearted as they have been. If they decide at some point to take the approach of, say, Nintendo (or better yet, Disney with their animated properties in years past), and treat us like complete trash, things are going to change drastically.