It’s basically like a room full of people with USB sticks. If you are just taking all of their USB sticks to download data off of, but you don’t put your data back on the USB sticks to share them with others, you’ll get kicked out of the part for being a jerk. It’s the same with torrents.

They are not the classic client-server thing that the web usually is. There isn’t a big server you are downloading from, it’s just other people that are seeding the torrent. So it’s common courtesy to do the same to allow more people to download it.

That’s the beauty of torrents. With servers, you just have to tell the owner to take the file down. With torrents, you’ll have to find every person that currently has the file and seeds it to take it fully offline. So yes, this exposes you to some risks. If you are downloading pirated content and live in a country where these laws are enforced, you’ll want to use a VPN to torrent. But with seeding, you’re giving back to the community that you’re taking from.