Manage Your BitTorrent Downloads on Facebook
Written by Ernesto on May 22, 2008A recently launched Facebook application for uTorrent makes it easy to manage your torrents when you’re away from your desktop computer. In addition, the application can also search your favorite BitTorrent sites from Facebook, and allows you to add new torrents remotely.
The Facebook application uses uTorrent’s WebUI. The WebUI makes it possible to interact with and control uTorrent over the Internet. This opened up a world of possibilities for creative uTorrent users to build custom add-ons, and the Facebook app is one of them.
Previously, we have reported on other WebUI tools, such as uTorrent widgets, a mobile version of uTorrent, and even an iPhone compatible WebUI. The Facebook application for uTorrent is another example of how the WebUI can be used to integrate uTorrent into other applications.
The uFacebook home page lists all the torrents that are loaded in uTorrent, including statistics such as the current upload and download speed of each file. Once the application is installed, you can remotely start, stop, delete, add, and even search torrents, no matter where you are. That is, if your PC is turned on with uTorrent running.
uFacebook is developed and maintained by the same people who run the BitTorrent meta-search engine Morrent. In addition to this app, the Morrent team has also developed a uTorrent WebUI for the iPhone, and a gadget for the Windows sidebar.
If you want to give it a try, make sure you have enabled the WebUI. To do so, go to Options ,> Preferences ,> Advanced ,> WebUI, and enter you details there. Detailed instructions on how to install the Facebook application, and how to configure the WebUI can be found here.
While you’re at it, feel free to join the TorrentFreak page on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter.
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45 Responses
eventually we will hear facebook being sued/threatened by the anti-pirates…hmmmm???
nice
How is this not just an iframe with the utorrent webui loading inside it?
Thats a really shite idea.
Advertise your personal business to the world…to a company that stores data indefinately.
Would you post all your emails up on facebook? Your s*x life? Your entire web history?
No..my 10 cents
@4, is all your s*x life in your bittorrent downloads?. How sad…
Facebook hidden beacons, tracking my name, my photo, AND my torrent history?. At first I thought this was a joke, but the world is made of cynicism…
Nice to see my icon there :D
http://cyberchaos05.deviantart.com/art/uTorrent-Icon-1-31067716
I have a question about webui’s
If you were in a (for example) university on a university lan, and you had your computer with a non password protected bittorrent webui for anyone on the lan to use ……
Would this give you plausible deniabilty if the riaa came knocking on your door? You could just say it was someone else using the webui, couldnt you?
Similarly, if you were at home and had an open wifi network and a webui, surely this would give you plausible deniability too.
this is rediculas, not only do face book keep all your personal data, but your going to need utorrent open and running on your computer anyway for this to work – in addition you’ll need to enable it from within the UT gui anyway – so why the hell would you use this?
this is total bull crap!
Great. Now facebook can tell if I’m downloading pirated music and movies.
This is bollocks, I say! If you know what’s good for you, don’t use facebook. Their privacy record is stained, and they have about as much credibility as a Bush Administration White House press secretary.
I think it’s a great idea for independent artists and musicians to show off their real time seeds and leeches; but other than that it’s a bad idea especially if your stealing music from the RIAA with it.
My understanding is that Facebook does not store third party app info… That the user has installed the app: yes, but the data that app controls: no… Can you can set the privacy of the Facebook app so that only you can see it if you don’t want to broadcast your activity to your friends / networks… This is definitly very useful for some people – i.e. control your torrents on your PC from work…
http://www.freethescene.net
but you can do it without routing it through facebook. it’s just an unnecessary and nosy middleman.
Its neat but i refuse to go anywhere near facebook…
http://www.MyBitTorrentSiteSucks.net
Neat for when i am checking out free stuff like NIN’s music… not so neat when i am checking out the latest hottest flick like “Indiana Jones” (not that I or anyone here would ever do something like that… even though a decent copy is floating around on nearly every site.. bit(caugh)soup.org … ilove(caugh)torrents.com (caugh…caugh) damn; must be something in the air for me to be caughing so much)…
The question on everyones mind right now is… whats the security like on this thing? can things be private? (i.e just me controlling things from afar)
Things are pretty risky as is without adding an extra “middle men” imho… but thats just me.
cheers!
http://www.ezee.se/
Um me again… just had an (old)idea; if all you wanted to do was see how your downloads were going and if needed control your app (no matter if its utorrent or whatever client you use) why not use a remote admin program like remotely anywhere or something similar?
Much more secure… totally private, again… imho.
Cheers!
http://www.ezee.se/
I must say that I have to agree with the majority of posters. Why would I want facebook to save my download history, when I can just use the webui from any computer?
Since Facebook never ever ever deletes personal data, even if you delete your account, it’s just the best tool ever for riaa and other mafia-organisation to get a history of what people do.
I’m amazed people use facebook anyway.
lame
“..it’s a bad idea especially if your stealing music from the RIAA with it”
You can’t steal music from the RIAA, even if they owned it. Sharing is no more a crime than radio taping or buying bootleg LPs. Because it’s done without their permission doesn’t make it so either.
terrible idea
Great, and I’m sure the next big step will be a remote desktop sharing app for Facebook too.
Facebook + BT = Industry rape.
this is very.. interesting.. just a way to show everyone what you have stolen.
http://www.pretome.net community open for you! :)
This should be succesful, great idea, great stuff i would use it.
Facebook does not store third party app info, it’s all stored by the third party, and likely all they store is the URL to your web ui, all your torrent data is probably still only stored by you.
Now if we could only do this without facebook… Oh wait.
first rate torrents….
http://galacticcentral.org/
first rate site….
http://galacticcentral.org/
This is a good idea, And bad in one, as someone said, It is great for independent artists which want have they music shared over the internet via the BitTorrent protocol… But other then that, Its a bad idea, Having FaceBook holding peoples personal details, And then knowing they are downloading?… A fair percent of people use torrents for downloading illegal content. So this is a real bad idea the the people who are using it for such reasons…
One can only hope that more independent artists will start to use this, And show to the world that the BitTorrent protocol isnt only used for piracy, And if a fair percent of independent artists do use it to promote themselfs… With abit of hope if alot of independent artists do use it, this can be used as a weapon to fight anti piracy groups which want to force ISP’s into trottling/blocking BitTorrent
Fingers crossed that this will help the Bittorrent protocol to become more widely used and accepted.
Shane
do you really want facebook to keep tabs on this? i don’t think so … the feds will be getting more that what college you go to when they get your info off of it.
Fantastic! Another place the anti-piracy mob to start their witch-hunts from, all easily cross indexed for easy tracing of groups of pirates!
This is such a bad idea – doesn’t Facebook have enough of your information already, without them needing to know what torrents you’re downloading?
This app is cool, but as several commenters mentioned, you still need to setup your utorrent webinterface.
So you have to do the portforwarding, dyndns thing. If you’ve allready done this, you might aswell just use the webinterface in my opinion.
I have another facebook app that can be used to start torrents.
Blocked sites:
Well, at work I can’t access the beloved bay, since the admin blocked those from the network, so when I want to have the new Ubuntu iso on release day I’m screwed.
BUT : I can access Facebook at work , and that’s where this little app comes in.
I can find the torrent of my choice on TPB using the search function of the app, I click the icon next to the torrent I want and the torrent gets added to my personal torrentfeed.
Meanwhile at home, my pc is running my torrent client, it automagically connects to the app and downloads the torrentfiles I selected, then it starts leeching the files.
Scriptlet:
I’ve also created a scriptlet, which is a link you can drag on your links folder in firefox or IE. If you click on this button when you are on a torrentdetails page on tpb, the torrent will be added to your feed, from then on your software will automagically do the rest.
Demo video : http://mytorrent.doplr.com/facebook/scriplet
The procedure is pretty straightforward, it only takes 1 click to start downloading. (vs. click link / file dialog menu / wait for btclient to start / hit ok to start dl’ing on bt client)
Configure Azureus or configure uTorrent to work with the app can be done in a minute, easy step-by-step documentation is included. Other rss enabled torrentclients work also. NO special firewall, NAT or network tricks needed.
The application can be found at: http://apps.facebook.com/mytorrent/
At the moment the app is pretty new and not much used.
I’d like more people to try it out and let me know what they think.
PRIVACY: I understand your concern.
The facebook people have no access to your torrents, because those are stored on my server and database.
The app has to keep trace on who downloaded what, so that data is stored on my server. No personal data accept your facebook id is stored on my server.
Legality :
- It’s not illegal to download or store .torrent files.
- If you have downloaded a torrent, that doesn’t prove you’ve downloaded the files linked by that torrentfile.
- It certainly doesn’t prove you’ve uploaded copyrighted works.
I used the facebook platform for two reasons:
- Ease of use: you can start right away, without setting up user management or templating.
- Popularity: It seemed an easy way to get lots of users since the biggest hurdle (setting up an account at yet another site) has allready been taken. (Didn’t work )
Basicly it was a quick way of getting up and running, and getting user feedback.
If people like the app, I’m going to set up a way to use it without a FB account.
If you are worried about your privacy, set up an facebook account, using a fake name and a disposable mailaddress.
You don’t even have to use facebook, just log in to facebook once to get your browserbutton.
Hi webmaster!
Erm. I do not understand. Why do you need to browse your BT UI via Facebook? Can’t you just log on directly?
And to whoever said that FB are gonna get sued for piracy – hell no! The opposite! They’re gonna sue you for piracy after they they become FaceBookAA
this is a great idea, well done
That’s pretty cool, hopefully it’s not as buggy and slow as the other Facebook applications I’ve used.
Make sure you add the RIAA.
And the MPAA as your friends.
After you install this.
Crap. You use WebUI to control your torrents remotely with the features advertised anyway, why the hell would you run it through facebook?! Oh right so life is easier for the mpaa to put a face on the connection :P
Bad idea much? Last thing we need is a site that has a list of everything we downloaded with utorrent.
If you’re going to have to set up port forwarding and the rest anywayz, why not just use Remote Desktop? I use it at work to access my home computer and dl all the illegal shit I can get my hands on!
we all agree that everybody uses bittorrent and there’s nothing anyone can do about it – but is it really such a good idea to leave it all out there?
I’d like to know if there is a danger of incriminating oneself by using a facebook app for managing bittorrent because the user agreement by facebook mentions that everything you do on facebook eg pictures, comments, etc. belongs to facebook. does that include actions that you make through the apps?
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