The Magnet URI scheme is a de facto standard (instead of an open standard) defining a URI scheme for Magnet links, which mainly refer to resources available for download via peer-to-peer networks. Such a link typically identifies a file not by location, but by content -- more precisely, by the content's cryptographic hash value.
Since it specifies a file based on content or metadata, rather than by location, a Magnet link can be considered a kind of Uniform Resource Name, rather than the more common Uniform Resource Locators. Although it could be used for other applications, it is particularly useful in a peer-to-peer context, because it allows resources to be referred to without the need for a continuously available host.
Read more about Magnet URI Scheme: History, Use of Content Hashes, Design, Features and Clients
Famous quotes containing the words magnet and/or scheme:
“A healthy soul stands united with the Just and the True, as the magnet arranges itself with the pole, so that he stands to all beholders like a transparent object betwixt them and the sun, and whoso journeys towards the sun, journeys towards that person. He is thus the medium of the highest influence to all who are not on the same level.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“We are all bound to the throne of the Supreme Being by a flexible chain which restrains without enslaving us. The most wonderful aspect of the universal scheme of things is the action of free beings under divine guidance.”
—Joseph De Maistre (1753–1821)