uTorrent Relaunched as Official BitTorrent Client

Written by Ernesto on July 27, 2007 

BitTorrent Inc launched their rebranded version of uTorrent as BitTorrent 6.0. The good news is that uTorrent and its community will not be replaced. Not now, and not in the future.

bittorrent utorrentThe rebranded version of uTorrent looks just like the original uTorrent client, however, it now includes BitTorrent DNA. Another significant change is the absence of the built in search for sites like Mininova, Torrentz and The PirateBay. However, you can easily add those under options –> preferences.

Last year, when BitTorrent Inc acquired uTorrent, it was said that the client will continue to have its own website and community for a while. Many expected that the launch of the rebranded uTorrent client as the mainline BitTorrent client would be the end of uTorrent, but this is not the case. When we asked BitTorrent Inc CEO Ashwin Navin about the future of uTorrent and the uTorrent community he told us:

“utorrent.com and uTorrent community will exist indefinitely. It’s vibrant and growing, and we value the feedback provided in the forums a lot. It is not our plan to fold utorrent.com into bittorrent.com, but foster growth for both independently.”

Great news, but some (former) uTorrent users will always have their doubts. Ever since BitTorrent Inc took over, a lot of rumors started popping up, and uTorrent was even banned from several private BitTorrent trackers.

Most people were afraid that uTorrent was sending data to the MPAA or other anti-piracy outfits. These rumors were fueled by the fact that one of the uTorrent Beta releases was marked as a trojan by some anti-virus applications. Here at TorrentFreak we looked into the suspicious behavior reported by some of our readers, but up until now we did not find any hard evidence to support these claims. With Wireshark we tried to replicate the findings reported by some users several times, both on virtual machines and in use systems, but we didn’t find anything suspicious.

But I’m sure this won’t comfort the really paranoid people among us.

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Previously: BitTorrent Sites Shut Down, Admins Arrested

Next: The Pirate Bay Goes Simpsons

47 Responses (Add yours or TrackBack)

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1 Jul 27, 2007 at 19:45 by ZeroNex

Bad and very sad news, anyway µTorrent 1.6 (build 474) was the last version before RIAA & Mr.Bram Cohen affair and is available here:

http://kppfree.altervista.org/#uTorrent

2 Jul 27, 2007 at 19:52 by Martin

So the new uTorrent + BitTorrent DNA (BitTorrent 6.0) will be faster than the utorrent 1.7.2?

If it’s faster can we use BitTorrent 6.0 to download from public torrent sites? It’s dangerous to use BiTorrent’s new client for public torrents?

3 Jul 27, 2007 at 21:07 by jono

I’m not really worried about it (yet).
I’m sure very soon after an update that IS malicious, someone much smarter than I will discover it and you guys will diligently report it before I even realize there’s an update : )

4 Jul 27, 2007 at 21:45 by feedbacker

The problem is that uTorrent prefers when connecting with other clients

so utorrent with utorrent connection is a breez but ….

5 Jul 27, 2007 at 22:42 by casey

f**k them, what they gunna do send a 3,000$ bill to every user running a utorrent version with malicious code? then lil miss Del Cid’s case would represent every user who got that bill.

6 Jul 27, 2007 at 22:56 by Yatti

Im sure Bit Torrent will wrap there features in to the new official BT client… Hopefully utorrent will continue to be updated and improved etc (without spyware and any official BT stuff stay out of utorrent…) I guess it has to though if Bit Torrent is to keep adding new features etc…

7 Jul 27, 2007 at 23:25 by dil

Will this mean that utorrent will finally go open source so that someone can take their code and make another good light program?

8 Jul 28, 2007 at 03:00 by 8

I Have Utorrent 1.6.1 installed on my computer.

I like it because it is pretty small but is there a better one i could be using. Is azereus better? I heard that utorrent was the most targeted by MPAA etc after Bittorrent.

9 Jul 28, 2007 at 03:28 by Nicholai

Thats why I downloaded uTorrent 1.4 from oldversion.com.

10 Jul 28, 2007 at 03:35 by LIONDJ

Be aware PB bann everyone who try to cheat on ratios because they are the TORRENTGODS OMFG…
They can do everything with you guys, they can benn everyone with no reason because hey ours is the number1 torrent site!

11 Jul 28, 2007 at 03:43 by Adam

[quote comment="138242"]I Have Utorrent 1.6.1 installed on my computer.

I like it because it is pretty small but is there a better one i could be using. Is azereus better? I heard that utorrent was the most targeted by MPAA etc after Bittorrent.[/quote]

There is this client that’s quite a bit better you might want to try. It’s called “uTorrent 1.7.2″. It works quite well, and I’m really happy with it. Best of all, it doesn’t report any private information, so it’s safe to use!

12 Jul 28, 2007 at 04:46 by David Harrison

I used wireshark downloading files from just about everywhere, and I was unable to find anything malicious coming from uTorrent. Yes, it uses peer discovery, talks to the DHT, talks to the trackers listed in the .torrent file, … all the things that a good BitTorrent client is supposed to do.

Furthermore, it still seems to use less than 3% of the CPU on my machine when downloading at around 3Mbps. Azureus and the Python mainline client use roughly 30-50% of my CPU.

13 Jul 28, 2007 at 04:59 by Manno

I beg to differ about µTorrent surprassing feature-richness of Azureus. This is just two features I would miss on a daily basis in µTorrent that still doesn’t have

1. Filtering torrents
2. Automatically remove dead torrents

14 Jul 28, 2007 at 08:09 by oni

Azureus is a complete resource hog, and despite whatever features it might have, it’s annoying as hell.

15 Jul 28, 2007 at 10:03 by BLS

I used Azureus for a year and then found how crappy it was when it started taking forever to load and all the resources it required.

I’ve been using uTorrent since then and not had a complaint. That is if it stays the way it is with no spyware.

16 Jul 28, 2007 at 10:26 by nate

Will the new version of utorrent available on mac? I’m using transmission but it’s not quite on par with the speed and feature of utorrent

17 Jul 28, 2007 at 10:57 by Hamster

Now it’s official that utorrent/BitTorrent Inc. are merely surveillance-bitches for the MAFIAA. Fuck’em.

18 Jul 28, 2007 at 14:12 by rick

I use the newest version on ZoneAlarm and it of course has the feature where it tells you if a program is trying to send info out that you didn’t approve of. Well, there’s been a half dozen times where I came in the room while utorrent is running, and ZoneAlarm has a warning saying that utorrent is trying to send out an email message. I blcok it and nothing bad happens, but wtf is it sending them and to who?!

19 Jul 28, 2007 at 16:04 by someone

[quote comment="138487"]Well, there’s been a half dozen times where I came in the room while utorrent is running, and ZoneAlarm has a warning saying that utorrent is trying to send out an email message. I blcok it and nothing bad happens, but wtf is it sending them and to who?![/quote]
http://utorrent.com/faq.php#Help.21_.C2.B5Torrent_is_sending_e-mails.2Faccessing_the_web.2Fetc.21
-.-

20 Jul 28, 2007 at 18:13 by Hellmark

I hope that they release the source to it.

21 Jul 28, 2007 at 18:57 by 21

U torrent 1.6.1 FTW

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