TorrentFreak

Two weeks ago OpenBitTorrent and PublicBitTorrent, the two largest BitTorrent trackers on the Internet, went on strike. The trackers protested BitTorrent Inc.’s unresponsiveness to a protocol improvement proposed by Pirate Bay co-founder Fredrik Neij. Soon after the news broke the BitTorrent developer team sprung into action to address the issue, and as a result the tracker operators have confirmed to TorrentFreak that they will restart their services within a week.

BitTorrent Inc., the parent company of the popular BitTorrent client uTorrent, starts a new series of experiments today in which it will help artists monetize the BitTorrent ecosystem. The company has partnered with the legendary DJ Shadow who agreed to give away exclusive content to BitTorrent users. The free content bundle includes software from advertisers, allowing the artist and BitTorrent to generate revenue from users who opt to install it.

OpenBitTorrent and PublicBitTorrent, the two largest BitTorrent trackers on the Internet, are on strike. Both trackers are going offline to protest the unresponsiveness of the makers of uTorrent who were asked to introduce a simple protocol enhancement that would save the non-profit trackers thousands of dollars. As a result of the protest, many people are having trouble downloading files on BitTorrent.

BitTorrent Inc., the people behind the popular BitTorrent client uTorrent, have just unveiled a new project that turns web browsers into fully fledged file-sharing hubs. “Torque” uses the new Btapp.js library and enables developers to code a wide variety of browser-based file-sharing apps. To show what it’s capable of, BitTorrent released a torrent client for Chrome and a browser-based file-sharing app.

BitTorrent client FrostWire is striking back at “rogue” websites that abuse the company’s brand for commercial gain. The company has filed several WIPO domain disputes and recently scored its first victory against the domain name frostwirereview.com. The WIPO panel concluded that the domain was registered in bad faith, and ordered it transferred to FrostWire.

Installous, currently resident on millions of jailbroken iPhones and other iDevices, has undergone an interesting upgrade. This piece of software, which is designed to allow the installation of cracked apps, has until now relied on users pulling those apps from cyberlockers. Now, thanks to some nifty coding, Installous can now pull packages from torrent swarms by utilizing magnet links.

When the latest alpha version of uTorrent was released earlier this week several users spotted something unusual in the ‘about’ window. For years the uTorrent client belonged to BitTorrent Inc., but all of a sudden ownership was being credited to an unknown company named Gyre Inc. The uTorrent team was quick to fix this ‘coding mistake,’ but they couldn’t wipe out a trail of evidence suggesting that BitTorrent might rebrand itself in the near future.