In September last year there appeared to be a light at the end of the tunnel when software slipped through, but just days later the dream was over when Apple said the apps had been approved “by mistake“.

The reasons Apple can exercise this kind of control are wrapped up in two issues. First, their absolute control over the content of the App Store and second, the restrictive DRM present in every single iDevice be it an iPod, iPhone or iPad.

Thankfully there is a way around this with a technique called jailbreaking, an act which through software removes Apple’s control and allows third party software to run unhindered. Just this week the geniuses of the Evad3rs dev team released their latest jailbreak for iOS6 and what better way to celebrate the freedom it provides than installing a new torrent client?

The software, which is based on the open source Transmission, is called iTransmission 3. It is the much needed upgrade to iTransmission 2, a tool from Beecher Adams that received its latest release in the middle of 2012.

Installation

First your device needs to be upgraded to iOS6 or iOS6.1 and the jailbreak installed. Version 1.1 of the jailbreak is out now implementing a couple of fixes.

With the jailbreak comes Cydia, the alternative to Apple’s app store. Simply click the icon on your iDevice and it will load. Click the ‘Search’ button, type in ‘iTransmission 3′ when prompted and click ‘install’ followed by ‘Confirm’. The software will download, install, and place a launch icon on your device – we’re using an iPhone for our demo.

Quick Setup

Having a quick look under the hood before diving into a torrent never hurts, so clicking the little ‘cog’ icon on the bottom right of the interface gets us into iTransmission 3′s settings page.

Options include turning on and configuring the client’s web interface and allowing iTransmission 3 to use WiFi and/or cellular communications, a useful feature for keeping those data bills down.

The ‘dial’ icon on iTransmission 3′s main screen calls up settings for speed. These include limiting the number of connections overall and connections per torrent. Setting any of these too high could cause your iPhone or iPad to become unstable, so a little trial and error is required to get the optimum setting.

In most cases on an established torrent the settings shown below should do the trick. So as not to saturate your download or upload bandwidth there are features to restrict either, should you so require.

Adding a torrent to download

Users have two options to add a torrent. The first (‘web’) launches a web browser which is far from ideal (no pinch/zoom) but functions adequately. We browsed to ThePirateBay.se, and grabbed a release with just a few seeds so the site gave us a .torrent file instead of the default magnet link. The torrent added the download to iTransmission 3′s queue immediately.

The second option, adding a torrent via a magnet link, was just as painless. Magnets can be added directly by clicking on them from the web browser. If you have the magnet link in your iPhone’s clipboard or can remember it, that can be entered into the ‘magnet’ input box directly.

Once a torrent or magnet link is added simply navigate back to iTransmission 3′s main page and a full status report for active transfers is displayed. Highlighting any torrent reveals new controls which allow the user to stop, pause, resume or delete a transfer.

Other details available include the current download and upload speeds, the hash of the torrent and which client created it, where a torrent was downloaded from and whether it’s private or not, plus details of the downloaded files and where they will be stored in your iDevice.

Overall, iTransmission 3 is a decent client that is simple to use and functions as advertised. The app works on iPad but does not yet take advantage of the larger display, something that should be addressed in a future update.

Available from the the repo at ModMyi, iTransmission 3 is completely free and currently only for iOS6.x.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

The first is Apptrakr, a web-based index of cracked apps. The second, Installous, is a piece of software resident on millions of jailbroken Apple devices which allows the installation of software found via Apptrakr and elsewhere.

Due to the nature of Installous these tend to be cracked versions of commercial pay software usually found on the official App Store. However, free versions of software can also be found (like the Dictionary app used as a demo below), not to mention long-since abandoned software unavailable anywhere official.

The downloading and installation process is simple. Utilizing the various indexes and categories within the software, users of Installous choose which app they want to download. They are then given a list of various sources for the chosen app, which usually come in the form of links to various cyberlocker file-hosting sites. With the latest version of Installous, things have changed a little.

In addition to cyberlocker links, Installous 5 now supports peer-to-peer downloading. As can be seen from the screenshots below (illustration purposes only), in addition to filehost links there is now a BitTorrent download option.

“Installous uses magnet links, a decentralized way of obtaining torrent metadata. As a result, we don’t host any .torrent files. We also use peer exchange (PEX), otherwise known as trackerless torrents,” explains Hackulous admin Dissident.

“Both of these features make the entire process completely decentralized and uninterruptable. Demagnetization may be slow in some cases (especially for obscure apps), but we’ll be working hard to speed up that process.”

One of the big problems with the free services provided by most cyberlockers is the inability to pause and resume downloads. Indeed, longer downloads can simply fail part way through and have to be started again from the beginning. Additionally, most filehosts place a limit on download speeds for free users. The use of BitTorrent means that these limitations are overcome.

Of course, while filehost traffic is one way (download only), BitTorrent adds upload to the mix. However, the coders at Hackulous have implemented some restrictions.

“Installous will seed from the device only while the download is ongoing, and only if you’re on WiFi. When the download finishes, it will stop seeding, Dissident concludes.

This use of BitTorrent is not the first sharing innovation from Hackulous. In 2010 they added a a feature to Installous which allowed users to share their apps with others.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

“In our ever-connected world, users want the ability to control their torrents on the go anytime, anywhere. So, in a continued effort to make our products more accessible we are introducing µTorrent Web for iPhone,” says Simon Morris, BitTorrent’s VP of Product Management.

“While µTorrent Web is currently only available as part of our experimental Project Falcon software, we continue to fill out the feature set prior to a large-scale rollout,”
Morris added in a recent blog post. Although we haven’t been able to confirm it, we assume that uTorrent web is supported on the iPad as well.

The Falcon release of uTorrent is key component of the client’s future. It is very similar to the standard uTorrent application but has several added features including support for the web interface and video streaming. Together with Griffin and Pheon, the Falcon project is part of the recently announced uTorrent Labs which give users early access to beta projects.

In order to use the web interface at web.utorrent.com users will have to download and install the latest Falcon release. After an encryption swipe and logging in, users will see the iPhone compatible interface that gives them all the controls they are familiar with in their regular PC client.

For those wondering why there are no BitTorrent-related apps in the App Store, it is because Apple notoriously bans all applications that have anything to do with BitTorrent. “Because this category of applications is often used for the purpose of infringing third party rights. We have chosen to not publish this type of application to the App Store,” is Apple’s official explanation.

Despite its desire to control every aspect of its business, Apple is not censoring the websites that people access on their phones just yet, so the uTorrent web-interface can be reached through the Safari browser. Fingers crossed.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

This year the book industry may see the definite breakthrough for eBooks, and again an Apple device is expected to play a facilitating role. Having watched the changes in the music industry where piracy is often portrayed as a huge threat, some book publishers already fear the worst.

The million dollar question is whether or not these fears are justified. How big of a threat is eBook piracy for the book industry? Is there a noticeable iPad effect? We have some interesting numbers to share.

To determine if Apple’s iPad has had en affect on eBook piracy we looked at the number of downloaded titles before and after its introduction. We decided to focus our research on the 10 best selling eBooks on Amazon which seemed to be a good starting point. The problem, however, is that none of these books are available on public BitTorrent, nor could we find them on file-hosting services or Usenet.

This in itself is quite an interesting observation, and clearly a signal that eBook piracy is not (yet) as widespread as that of music and movies. In order to come up with some comparison material we decided to change our sample to the 10 best selling paperback books in the business category, which should also fit well with the demographics of iPad buyers.

From this list 6 of the 10 books were available on BitTorrent. Although we have to note that BitTorrent may not be the only source of eBook piracy, it should give us a good indication of the iPad effect, if there is any. To do so, we tracked the download numbers from Saturday till Thursday, a week before the iPad launch and the days after.

By comparing the data from these two samples we found that the number of unauthorized eBook downloads on BitTorrent grew by 78% on average, a significant increase. It is worth noting that all of the six eBooks had more downloads after the iPad launch than before.

David Allen’s productivity guide ‘Getting Things Done’ was by far the most downloaded eBook with an average of 435 downloads a day, up from 277 before the introduction of the iPad. However, this 57% increase is relatively small compared to some of the other titles we tracked.

‘Freakonomics’, another classic in the business section, saw a 104% increase in downloads, going from 187 to 381. ‘How We Decide’ saw an even bigger surge in downloads – 140% – as downloads went from 56 to 134.

The three remaining books from the list that we tracked on BitTorrent are ‘The Tipping Point’, ‘How Women Decide’ and ‘The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People’. These three titles all saw an increase in downloads, 21%, 47% and 71% respectively, with absolute download numbers after the iPad launch of 192, 52 and 82.

Interesting data, but what can we conclude from the statistics?

First of all, there seems to be a significant iPad effect if we assume that the increase in downloads is in part related to the iPad introduction. On the other hand it is clear that the absolute download numbers are relatively small compared to those of music and films, where popular releases can have more than a million downloads in one week.

This low piracy figure can in part be explained by the fact that the number of people with an iPad or other eBook reader is still relatively low. Another key factor is that most books are simply not available in a pirated version, so buying a book through an online store is far more convenient and faster than trying to find an unauthorized copy.

The convenience factor and the overall user experience are going to be the key advantages for the book industry. When the iPod was launched there were no digital download stores, making file-sharing networks the only option to get music easily.

As a final note we have to stress that piracy does not equal lost sales. In the academic publications that looked into the link between piracy and (music) sales, there is still no consensus on this topic. For now, the book industry is best off putting all their efforts into making a great product for consumers and we’re sure that the iPad can be of assistance there.

In the months to come we will keep en eye on how eBook piracy evolves.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.