Bittorrent is a free P2P file-sharing protocol (BitTorrent) - it is thought that it is responsible for a significant amount of traffic on the web. You need a client to use the protocol - I use Azureus. Here is a Wikipedia link. It is an incredible tool for passing around large data files and/or large amounts of data. You are not anonymous when you use a client unless you go through an anonymizer - the 2nd video is the one I am pointing you to - tracking.

BIT torrent is illegal in the united states of america if you use it you are breaking the law.

I don't think we live in the same United States of America:

Adoption

A growing number of individuals and organizations are using BitTorrent to distribute their own or licensed material. Independent adopters report[5] that without using BitTorrent technology, and its dramatically reduced demands on networking hardware and bandwidth, they could not afford to distribute their files.

Film, video and music

* BitTorrent Inc. has amassed a number of licenses from Hollywood studios for distributing popular content at the company's website.
* Sub Pop Records releases tracks and videos via BitTorrent Inc.[6] to distribute its 1000+ albums. The band Ween uses the website Browntracker.net[7] to distribute free audio and video recordings of live shows. Furthermore, Babyshambles and The Libertines (both bands associated with Pete Doherty) have extensively used torrents to distribute hundreds of demos and live videos.
* Podcasting software is starting to integrate BitTorrent to help podcasters deal with the download demands of their MP3 "radio" programs. Specifically, Juice and Miro (formerly known as Democracy Player) support automatic processing of .torrent files from RSS feeds. Similarly, some BitTorrent clients, such as µTorrent, are able to process web feeds and automatically download content found within them.

Personal material

* The Amazon S3 "Simple Storage Service" is a scalable Internet-based storage service with a simple web service interface, equipped with built-in BitTorrent support.
* Blog Torrent offers a simplified BitTorrent tracker to enable bloggers and non-technical users to host a tracker on their site. Blog Torrent also allows visitors to download a "stub" loader, which acts as a BitTorrent client to download the desired file, allowing users without BitTorrent software to use the protocol.[8] This is similar to the concept of a self-extracting archive.

Bittorrent is NOT ilegal in america. it has many legal uses like downloading large files which would otherwise cost the hoster loads in bandwidth e.g disk images of linux (which its legal to copy and share)

If I have to find a quote from the government I will but I know for a fact they made it illegal!

no its just illegal if you use it for downloading music

Oh, Okay sorry I did not know that I thought the whole site had been made illegal. Thank you for clearing up that confusion.

no its not illegal unless you do illegal things with it, like i said, it has many legal uses. just dont go downloading music, films, windows etc....

BitTorrent is a network protocol that can be used and abused, just like most other protocols such as HTTP, FTP, Gnutella. Whether it's abused more or less than other protocols doesn't affect the legality of the actual protocol.