TorrentFreak

With more than a billion downloads since its first release, VLC is one of the most popular media players around. It’s free, open source, and can play virtually every video file available. In the near future it could also become the first mainstream media player with the ability to download and stream torrent files. A group of VLC supporters has put up a $10,000 bounty for the developer who can deliver the right code.

BitTorrent Inc. has released a new application that allows users to securely sync folders to multiple devices using the BitTorrent protocol. The free application has no storage limits and can serve both as a public backup system and a shared drive. BitTorrent Sync is especially efficient for groups who need to share many large files over the Internet,.

A brand new Chrome extension from the makers of uTorrent turns the popular browser into an easy-to -use BitTorrent client with just a couple of clicks. BitTorrent Inc. say they have been working on the software for the last six months and inform TorrentFreak that the development came about for the same reasons that Bram Cohen first invented BitTorrent – to move large, rich media files easily across the Internet.

BitTorrent Inc., the company behind the popular file-sharing clients uTorrent and BitTorrent, is distancing itself from online piracy. BitTorrent Inc. emphasizes that their software has a wide range of legal uses and that the company doesn’t support those who use their tools to pirate. “We do not endorse piracy. We do not encourage it. We don’t point to piracy sites,” BitTorrent CEO Eric Klinker says.

This week uTorrent 3.2.2 was released to the public and one of the release highlights are the new advertisements present in the client. BitTorrent Inc. hopes that these ads will bring in extra revenue so the company can continue to invest in the future of distributed technology. When the advertising initiative was first announced no opt-out was offered, but thanks to user feedback there now is an advanced feature to disable the ads.

A backlash among Reddit users has seen BitTorrent Inc. criticized over the way revenue-generating addons were presented in parallel with uTorrent client downloads. The company informs TorrentFreak that it always considers feedback, aims to provide a good customer experience, and will introduce changes soon. But whatever they are, is it really possible to please all of the people all of the time, especially ones whose requirements are “no-strings free” at all times?

Downloading files via BitTorrent is about as public as file-sharing gets, and it’s safe to say that most popular BitTorrent swarms are being monitored one way or the other. To protect the privacy of its users BitTorrent Inc. therefore decided to randomize the peer-id uTorrent users display to other peers and the tracker. While the new feature makes it more difficult to track the download habits of individual users, IP-addresses still remain public and trackable.