The Canadian Radio, Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) is currently looking into the traffic management practices of Canadian ISPs. Several hearings were held to examine the Internet traffic management practices being used, and check that they are in accordance with the Telecommunications Act.

Although not invited to the hearings itself, BitTorrent Inc. filed a late submission (pdf) to the CRTC this week, standing up for Net Neutrality.

“The hearings have clearly exposed some highly discriminatory traffic management targeting the BitTorrent protocol, which is no surprise to our users in Canada,” Simon Morris, BitTorrent’s VP of Product Management told TorrentFreak. “We really hope the regulators will act in the interests of citizens, innovation and free speech, rather than in the narrow interests of monopolies,” he added.

Last year, the company was also actively involved in FCC’s investigation into Comcast’s BitTorrent traffic shaping. Not only are such network management practices a direct threat to BitTorrent’s business model, it also hurts individual users and other businesses.

“Economically, P2P enables a very cost effective means to reach an audience. Fewer computers to buy or provision means that media distribution is no longer the domain of those with deep pockets. P2P allows small Canadian companies, as well as individuals, to distribute their works through the Internet to a global audience at relatively little cost,” BitTorrent writes in its filing to the CRTC.

One other group of victims are independent artists, who publish their work on BitTorrent in increasing numbers. In the hearings the CRTC was already told that blocking or restricting BitTorrent traffic could mean that independent filmmakers are unable to publish their work.

But large companies are in the same boat. “P2P is not just the domain of the independent artists, even major media companies are coming to the realization that P2P technology provides a faster, more efficient, more reliable way to distribute mass media,” BitTorrent writes.

In their filing BitTorrent Inc. mentions CNN’s P2P powered stream of Obama’s inauguration as one example how P2P can benefit large companies. Canadian public TV broadcaster CBC also got a mention, as they used Mininova’s services to distribute

If ISPs have to manage their networks, they shouldn’t target any specific applications or transfer protocols. Discriminating against BitTorrent would hamper innovation and potentially impair freedom of expression, the company told the CRTC.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

On the one hand this offers newcomers to BitTorrent a familiar interface to find all sorts of torrent files directly from the uTorrent homepage. The search engine uses Google’s search algorithms to find .torrent files on sites such as The Pirate Bay and isoHunt. BitTorrent Inc. profits from this through search based ads that Google adds to the search results.

This seems to be a win-win situation for everyone but for reasons unknown, Google no longer allows uTorrent to use the custom search program. When entering a keyword into the search box on the website the following error is returned (see picture). BitTorrent Inc. has now removed the search box but they have no clue why they have this problem with Google.

Simon Morris, BitTorrent’s VP of Product Management told TorrentFreak that there is indeed a problem but that they yet have to find out the details. At this stage we can only guess at the reasoning behind the lack of functionality. Most BitTorrent sites are not allowed to serve Google ads because they link to copyrighted content, but since uTorrent was only linking to these sites indirectly through Google’s own search engine, this seems less likely.

Yet there are more BitTorrent oriented sites that have faced similar problems. The Pirate Google, another website that uses Google’s custom search had similar problems recently.

uTorrent’s search has been down for around 5 days now, so one could expect a technical issue to be resolved by now, but until we hear back from Google the actual cause is open to speculation. The net effect is the same though – uTorrent’s revenue from this source isn’t rising as planned.

Update: We heard from “The Pirate Google” admin that Google did indeed block inbound queries from his site. He found a temporary workaround but this proves that Google is actively blocking (these) torrent related sites. Don’t be evil?

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

In the tough economic climate, which already caused several layoffs at the company, BitTorrent Inc. decided that it was best to close their video store completely. Simon Morris, BitTorrent’s VP of Product Management told TorrentFreak: “After a great deal of soul searching we decided to close down the Torrent Entertainment Network content store.”

“Its about focus and economics,” Morris added. “We want to focus on core technology rather than merchandising and given the harsh economic environment, we can’t afford to continue to invest in endeavors that don’t come close to break-even.”

Together with the closure of their entertainment network, the company reintroduced its search portal for BitTorrent users. Unlike before, there are no torrents indexed or tracked by the companies servers. Instead, it uses a branded version of the Ask.com search engine, where BitTorrent sites are prioritized in the search results.

When BitTorrent Inc. had its own search engine, the company had an agreement with the MPAA to filter search results. According to Morris this is no longer needed now. “We agreed to filter search results when we were in the business of torrent search, but that work is also discontinued. This is Ask’s search engine, not ours.”

“The decision to work with Ask is simply an effort to provide people who come to download the client with a place to go next,” Morris added. While the search engine will generate some income, most future revenue is expected to come from content publishers that use BitTorrent’s DNA, and deals with device manufacturers.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Valleywag reports that the company has now decided to lay off its sales and marketing department, due to failing attempts to sell the entertainment store to Best Buy. This means that the development of uTorrent, specifically the long awaited Mac version, is not in danger.

The BitTorrent entertainment network was launched February 2007 and offers movie rentals starting at starting at $2.99. Before the store launched, BitTorrent Inc’s co-founder Ashwin Navin said that the store was going to compete with BitTorrent sites like The Pirate Bay and mininova, as he said, “If we’re not competing effectively with piracy, we’re not going to win.”

There never was any real competition however, mainly because the movies are infected with Windows DRM. The company never wanted to use DRM. In fact, Bram Cohen told TorrentFreak in an interview that the DRM issue is causing an awful lot of headaches, but that most of their content partners are insisting on it.

BitTorrent’s Ashwin Navin was a bit more outspoken about it. He said that DRM is “a time bomb waiting to happen,” and that it will inspire people to pirate content. One thing we can be sure of, it didn’t help to convert illegal downloaders to go legal.

If online video stores want to compete with their pirate counterparts, the pricing should be reasonable, the catalogue extensive, and all without DRM. The BitTorrent store failed to meet these standards, and unfortunately, 12 people lost their job because of it.

Update: In a comment received after publication of the article, Ashwin Navin told TorrentFreak that the layoffs are not related to the failing entertainment store.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Why would the company open source uTorrent?
There are many reasons for them to do so. One of the many advantages would be to get it quickly and easily ported to other platforms such as OS X and Linux, a task the company has promised to get done. “[uTorrent is] lacking an implementation for Mac and Linux. We will improve uTorrent in these arenas,” said Ludvig Strigeus, the developer of uTorrent in an interview that followed the announcement. Until now he has refused to release non-Windows versions of the client. Also, if uTorrent were made Open Source it would be a lot less likely for its development to stagnate or slow down, there would always be someone ready to maintain and improve upon it.

Reasons not to open source uTorrent
The motivation behind BitTorrent Inc’s acquisition of uTorrent could very well be to have a client that can be customised and morphed to integrate with the upcoming BitTorrent Video Store. If the company were to open source uTorrent, it would not be able to stop users from creating a “clean” version of it, ie. without any Video Store-specific features. This “enhancing” of uTorrent is something users of the client are dreading. A reader of TorrentFreak posted a comment in reaction to the acquisition announcement, “R.I.P. uTorrent!” In a discussion here at TorrentFreak, we came to the conclusion that adding a content store to the client won’t affect most users’ decision to use the program or not. iTunes is a good example of people using a program because of its features, not the openness of its source code. After all, even Azureus will soon have a bundled content store.

By acquiring uTorrent, BitTorrent Inc now has almost 50% of all BitTorrent users in its grasp. They’ve probably paid a hefty price for the client and it’s only fair if they choose not to make it Open Source. The company said in an IRC discussion that followed the announcement that the source code of uTorrent will remain closed for now, but gave no clues as to what their future plans might look like.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Windows DRM has been completely left behind in the portable media player market. The iPod can’t play content restricted (read: infected) by Microsoft’s little virus, and neither can Microsoft’s very own Zune! So, the only consumers who’ll be able to watch videos they have purchased from the BitTorrent Video Store away from their computers will be those who own Creative, Dell, Archos or any one of the other compatible devices. This is, assuming the content from the store will be protected with Janus, Microsoft’s Windows DRM for portable devices. If it isn’t, it won’t play on any portable device at all.

In September of this year Ashwin Navin, the co-founder of BitTorrent Inc said that his company foresees a future without DRM. Although, even then, the company had said that they would use DRM, Navin also made it clear that it would only be in the early stages. Let’s hope the POA hasn’t changed.

Navin made his standpoint on DRM quite clear when he said that “the bottom line is that DRM is bad for the content provider and it’s bad for the consumer.” About foreseeing a future without DRM, he said that he thinks “the future will not be marked by digital rights management. It will be marked by advertising-supported content that’s clear of DRM.” The inventor of BitTorrent, Bram Cohen too says that the company is “very concerned about the usability problems DRM introduces,” and that they are “educating [their] content partners about the lost commercial opportunity.”

To be fair, BitTorrent Inc is only walking down the path of limiting consumers’ rights because it is being forced to. The company is clearly against DRM. According to Cohen, it is the only way they have been able to strike deals with content creators. He says this is “at the insistence of [their] content partners.”

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.