Maybe my parsing skills aren’t up to par, but hell if I can figure out what’s illegal about photo editing as described in this thread. Anybody want to clue me in on what the problem is?
Read post #6 again. The OP says they’ll just get a torrent of Photoshop.
Okay, so it’s my reading skills that aren’t up to par; I’d completely missed that line.
So did I at first. Just going by the OP and the warning, I had hoped that Photoshopping cats into other pictures was illegal. It should be.
Yesterday, I read that thread and wondered what Frank’s damage was. There was nothing illegal mentioned, right?
I read the thread again, confirmed that it was a bad closing, and jumped over to the Pit to see if there was a thread on it. Nope, no thread, so I composed one. I read the original thread a third time just to make sure I had all the details correct.
I finished my pit thread, clicked the link to the offending closure (just to make sure the link was working ok), and immediately saw the “torrent of PS” line that I missed the first three times.
Duh on me. Sorry for nearly pitting you, Frank.
Alternately, “sorry for not giving you another pitting you can use in the mod contests, Frank”.
What does “torrent” mean in this context? Or should I ask that in GQ?
Short for BitTorrent. In essence, a peer to peer system for distributing stuff, in this case, most often used to illegally distribute software and evade copyright and software licensing in the process.
Bear in mind the distribution process may be used for legitimate purposes, however, ordinary discussions too often center around illegal uses of it. That’s why the mods nip such threads in the bud when it comes up.
It’s a way of download something using peer-to-peer connections, kind of like Napster in the old days. Instead of downloading a file from one source, the load is distributed over multiple users, and you get pieces of the file from all over the place. After you get a piece of it, someone may download it from you, and so on.
In this case, the OP was using it for nefarious purposes, obviously, but there are more and more sites out there that use it legitimately. Blizzard distributed their patches using torrents last time I played World of Warcraft.
Another example! The answer to your question has been distributed over multiple dopers. 
Ah. Thanks for the edification.