Web site LegalTorrents is a BitTorrent search engine designed to distribute Creative Commons-licensed content. Each torrent submitted to LegalTorrents is reviewed by moderators for the proper licensing and then posted to the site. Additionally, LegalTorrents hosts a high-speed seed for each torrent, guaranteeing that you should always be able to get fairly high-speed transfers; in my tests the downloads were indeed very fast (downloading over 400 KB/s). As is the case with many Creative Commons distribution sites, LegalTorrent's biggest hurdle is populating the site with content people want—but as more artists embrace BitTorrent as a distribution platform, LegalTorrents might be worth keeping an eye on (and may help you avoid getting caught downloading copyrighted material). Then again, if you don't feel like sticking to sites like LegalTorrents, there are other ways to protect your downloading privacy.

Ever wish you didn't have to click through two or three pages to do an "Advanced search" at photo sharing site Flickr, and then click around further to find the right size and photo options? Compfight, an AJAX-powered search site utilising Flickr's API, is a super-streamlined interface for finding search terms in either tags or descriptions, choosing between Creative Commons and more traditional licenses, and popping up original sizes or choosing to head to a photo's default photo/comments page. Better still, mouse over a photo with a blue bottom border, and you'll see what size the original is available in. We've seen specialised search tools for Flickr before, but Compfight simply takes Flickr's built-in search tools and puts all the results on one super-thumbnailed page.

If you're wondering where we find many of the purty images that accompany Lifehacker posts, it's over at Everystockphoto, a treasure trove of stock and Creative Commons-licensed images that you can reuse on your blog, presentation or brochure. Yes, we've already mentioned Everystockphoto, but yesterday the site got an extreme makeover plus an injection of more photos from Wikimedia and NASA. Everystockphoto aggregates images from several sources, like Flickr, imageafter, and stock.xchng so you don't have to search each place individually. Plus, membership and photo downloads are free. See also six ways to find reusable media.