Articles about BitTorrent

If I were a realist I would assume you use BitTorrent to download Game of Thrones episodes and other illegal media, but I am a trusting soul, and so I expect you use the protocol as a way of getting your hands on legitimate content -- and there's honestly plenty of it available. Heck, every Friday the company makes legal media available to users, such as these free concerts.

Now the developer announces that 25 million users are getting their torrents through the mobile app versions of BitTorrent and µTorrent.

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One of the big advantages of cloud storage is that most services make it easy to use themselves as a tool for effortless syncing of data between computers. Update a file on one device, and it quickly becomes available to everyone else.

The problem with syncing via the cloud is that you usually have to pay for any meaningful amount of storage space, and that’s before you consider the potential implications of having a copy of your sensitive data stored in the cloud. However tight your cloud provider’s security is, there is always the nagging doubt that your files could be accessed by someone else.

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Back in January, I was fortunate enough to get an invitation to test the alpha version of the new BitTorrent Sync app -- an opportunity that excited me, given that I had recently learned my beloved Live Mesh would go away, thanks to Microsoft's own version of "Spring Cleaning". This left me in the market for a replacement.

Now BitTorrent announces that private testing is done and, while the app is still alpha, the company is ready to unleash it on the public. "We’re really excited about opening up this Alpha. The feedback has been universally positive. Those in the closed Alpha have already synced more than 200TB since we started the program on January 24", says BiTorrent's Christian Averill.

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The glory days of Torch, a Chrome-based web browser known for its built-in Torrent capabilities, may be short-lived because similar functionality is headed your way right in the web browser you are probably using right now. Surf, the plugin announced back in January, rolls into full beta release today.

The company announces that "BitTorrent Surf started out as a little Chrome experiment: a way to make BitTorrent simpler. Basically, Surf transforms your browser into a BitTorrent client; with discovery and downloading built in". The experiment apparently went well because the browser plugin hits beta mode for not only Chrome, but also Firefox as well.

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Back in January I had the opportunity to test out BitTorrent Sync. I did not find the product to be completely ready for prime time, but I also did not find it to be terrible. I couldn't call BitTorrent Sync ready to replace my dearly departed Live Mesh, but I saw some promise, just lacking a bit of polish around the edges.

The company steadily improved the service since those early days and now is ready to roll out a more public version of what is still considered Alpha software.

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Remember how last year the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) managed to persuade the UK High Court to order ISPs to block the Pirate Bay, in order to completely eradicate piracy and save the music industry?

Well as it turns out, that didn’t quite do the trick, so the BPI has returned to the High Court and this time it’s Kickass Torrents, H33T and Fenopy which are being blocked. A move which, of course, will definitely stop piracy this time. A bit like how, when Jessops went bust in the UK, no one was able to buy cameras any more.

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Who said that pirates don't embrace the future? In a blog post, Swedish BitTorrent tracker The Pirate Bay announced that it's moving the entire operation to the cloud. How's that for a change?

The trackers, torrents and servers are "ditched" and the controversial BitTorrent tracker has moved its data, in "deeply" encrypted forms, in "thousands of clouds," according to the announcement made yesterday. There is also a fail-safe system used to reboot the nodes that "transform" the data into a deadlock. So what's the point of all this? Surely it is not to embrace modern data storage solutions. The Pirate Bay has had problems with the law in the not so distant past, and moving sensitive data to the cloud looks like a move designed to protect the men behind it from various allegations.

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This week, the loosely connected online activist and hacking community Anonymous began a new "operation": attacking the Ukrainian government.

In retaliation to Ukraine's take down of popular BitTorrent tracking site Demonoid, Anonymous is seeking "revenge against all criminals responsible" in the country's government.

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