Thinking of Hallowe'en or have you been watching Pirates of the Caribbean? :)
Torrents are certainly used for piracy, but they have other uses as well. Unlike
downloading clients such as gwget a torrent allows users to upload as well as
download which shares the wealth (file sharing) better among users as you are
giving as well as taking. Using a torrent potentially improves download speeds
as it: downloads partial files from users who are farther along than you are,
provides a broader base of download sites which is especially important if a
site has limited access (common in ftp sites) or its servers are being maxed
out, and is a good way for small developers who cannot afford to maintain a
server to get their product out. In addition, it has the advantage of a
downloader in that it can be paused and resumed. For someone on dialup, a
torrent or a downloading program is the only way to go because the file can be
resumed later and you can control both download and upload bandwidth. When I was
on dialup, nothing was more
frustrating that to go to bed with a large file downloading over night, only to
find that it stopped before completion and the only option was to start all over
again.
Torrents aren't always longer than http or ftp. It depends on many things
including the number of users, the bandwidth of the people sharing, and the time
of day. I have got some things dramatically faster with bittorrent clients such
as Transmission or Deluge (my perferred client). It just depends on too much to
make a blanket statement.
BTW, some distros are only distributed via torrents. Some distros use both
torrents and http/ftp as it will save them bandwidth and they are on a budget.
Most major distros also offer torrents simply because it is just one more way to
distribute their product. A couple will offer http for paid users and torrents
to the rest of us.