After grossing over $2 billion in theaters, Star Wars: The Force Awakens has made its long awaited debut... on the piracy scene. The movie is scheduled for release via download until April 1st, and the Blu-ray arrives April 5th, but now that the disc...
If you want to watch the original, unaltered version of Star Wars from 1977 legally your options are essentially nonexistent. George Lucas has infamously disowned the original theatrical releases, standing by his CGI-filled Special Editions from the...
For the fourth year in a row, Game of Thrones has won the dubious honor of being the world's most pirated TV show. The annual study, carried out by TorrentFreak, reveals that an estimated 14.4 million people snaffled HBO's opus this year. By comparis...
As part of its efforts to leverage its peer-to-peer protocol in more legitimate and profitable ways, BitTorrent is developing a web browser that will be more secure, stable and open. Currently under the name Project Maelstrom, the web browser works like a torrent client, turning web surfers into web servers.
But don’t get too excited yet. Project Maelstrom can only apply its defining feature on websites created with peer-to-peer networking in mind. Instead of storing their data in a single server, those websites will be hosted in pieces in different computers. When you visit such a site, you’ll also host parts of the website, in the same way that a torrent client allows you to simultaneously share the very files you’re downloading.
Despite its current incompatibility with HTTP – the current protocol used by the World Wide Web – the benefits of a peer-to-peer web are compelling enough to consider adopting. For website owners and hosting services, it would mean saving money and energy because they’d need fewer servers to host their data. For consumers, it would mean faster loading and more reliable websites. The technology will also be a boon for security and free speech, because a distributed website would be nearly impossible to take down. With no central server to attack, your peer-to-peer website will remain online as long as there’s one seeder supporting it. And if a website is popular, you can bet that there will be hundreds, if not thousands of seeders and leechers online at any given time.
Project Maelstrom is currently in open beta for Windows. You can download the beta from BitTorrent’s website. The browser is based on Chromium, Google’s open source browser, so it should work with the web you know and love. And although there are only a handful of peer-to-peer websites to test it on, Project Maelstrom is actually a torrent client itself, so you can use it to – legally! – download files and stream videos that use peer-to-peer.
If you’re worried that BitTorrent will somehow screw up its project, don’t worry. Geek commenter nofish pointed out ZeroNet, another browser in development that works much like Project Maelstrom but is open source.
If you’re an avid movie watcher, you might have heard of Popcorn Time. Released earlier this year, the infamous software allowed you to watch movie or TV shows on your computer via peer-to-peer technology. Aside from its user friendly interface, what makes Popcorn Time so great was that instead of waiting for the whole video to be downloaded as with most torrent clients, it let you stream the movie immediately. A new app called TorrenTV does just that, but through Apple TV and Roku devices.
TorrenTV is available for Mac, Linux and Windows computers. To use the program, install it on a computer that’s on the same network as your Apple TV and then drag a torrent or a magnet link to its window. Roku users on the other hand will need to add the TorrenTV channel before they can stream. The developer behind TorrenTV says he’s working on adding support for Chromecast soon. You can learn more about the app from the developer’s Medium post.
Today, BitTorrent announced it's building a private instant messaging client for our post-PRISM world. The firm told CNETthat BitTorrent Chat should function like the company's other peer-to-peer services, using a form of torrenting's decentralized technology-approach that's been adapted for real-time communications. And while compatibility with other IM protocols is expected in the future, for now it's exclusive to BitTorrent account holders. You can even apply for an invite into the pre-alpha at the BitTorrent Labs site -- if you're so inclined, that is.
Cloud storage services like Dropbox are great not just for backing up data but for sharing files with other people as well. BitTorrent is developing a similar service, with two notable exceptions: it’s completely free, and there is no centralized “cloud” storage. It’s called BitTorrent Sync, and it uses the revolutionary peer-to-peer (P2P) protocol to sync folders across multiple devices.
If you’ve already tried a cloud file storage service, you won’t have a problem using BitTorrent Sync. First, download the BitTorrent Sync program. It has Windows, Mac and Linux versions, with mobile apps coming soon. Then open the program and use it to generate an access key for each folder that you want to sync. The key is just a random bunch of characters. BitTorrent calls the key a “secret”.
I’m sure you get the idea: if you want another computer to sync a folder from your computer, simply install BitTorrent Sync on that computer and then enter that folder’s secret to authorize the sync:
You can also generate read-only folder keys (other computers can copy files from that folder, but they can’t add or remove files) as well as one-time use keys. Here’s a short discussion about BitTorrent Sync from a recent Tekzilla show:
You can download and use BitTorrent Sync for free. I think this is a much better use of P2P compared to BitTorrent Bundle. It’s a great alternative to cloud storage because it’s completely free, even if you intend to synchronize or share terabytes of data on a daily basis. If you’re creeped out at the thought of leaving copies of your data on a remote server, then BitTorrent Sync is a great backup solution as well.
Many people associate BitTorrent with piracy, and with good reason. But the revolutionary protocol can also be used for legal purposes. For instance, it’s a cheap way to host and distribute large files. Now the company behind the protocol and the first ever torrent client is also pushing for BitTorrent to become a way for artists to hawk their products. It’s called BitTorrent Bundle, and it is weird.
The idea behind BitTorrent Bundle is for artists to release free content – say, songs, movie clips or chapters from a book – that we can download using a BitTorrent client. When you go to the download page, it will show you additional content that you have the option to “unlock” – either by paying or entering an email address. Sounds neat right? Here’s a promo video for BitTorrent Bundle:
You can check out the download page for Kaskade’s freebies right now. At first glance, it seems like a good idea – give people legitimate freebies and hope that they’ll like it enough to buy the rest of your work. However, I don’t think the protocol is uniquely equipped to fill this otherwise honest marketing tactic.
What I mean is, it doesn’t incentivize the act of either leeching or seeding – the two activities central to BitTorrent. Neither does it leverage the number of seeders and leechers as a way for torrent users to see which content is popular. If you go to a torrent site, you can infer what pirates like to download because they are the files with the most number of seeders or leechers, or both. But BitTorrent Bundle seems to have no such ranking or ladder for people to view.
I think that from an artist’s perspective, having a potential customer learn how to use a BitTorrent client is not worth it. It would be a different ball game if BitTorrent Bundle awarded points to devout seeders, which they can then use to unlock premium content from the store. What can BitTorrent Bundle do for musicians and consumers that existing services like Bandcamp can’t accomplish? If I’m a budding filmmaker and I’m giving away a video for free, why don’t I just post it on YouTube or Vimeo so people can watch it instantly – or whenever they want! – instead of making them fiddle with a torrent client?
I keep thinking I’m missing something here, but right now I just don’t see the killer application of BitTorrent Bundle. I guess at the very least it’s an attempt at erasing the stigma behind the protocol. You can also read a bit more about BitTorrent Bundle on TorrentFreak.
Despite a recent effort to move its servers to the cloud, Pirate Bay will be moving its base out of Sweden thanks to recent legal pressure. The Swedish Pirate Party that hosted the torrent site has been feeling heat from the film and music industry-backed Swedish Rights Alliance, which gave it until today to cut ties in order to avoid a lawsuit. As a result, the site has moved its operations to servers in Spain and Norway hosted by Pirate Parties there, saying it's had a contingency plan in place for awhile to do so. Anway, if the embattled site has to keep criss-crossing the seas while fighting legalbattles to stay afloat, it might make for another good documentary.
BitTorrent has announced that it's working on its very own file-synchronization app -- and it's already looking for a limited number of test subjects for its pre-Alpha stage. So far, the premise is to offer identical copies of your files on all machines, all sounding pretty similar to how you use iCloud, Skydrive or Dropbox, although there would be no cloud-caching. According to GigaOM, files will be protected by 256-bit encryption, with native test apps for Mac, Windows and Linux (alongside NAS integration) already in testing. There's no mobile version just yet, but BitTorrent has stated that it's "committed to mobile across the board," and, well, it's still pre-Alpha. If you're up for trying another file sync service, the company is recruiting willing participants over at the source.
After grossing over $2 billion in theaters, Star Wars: The Force Awakens has made its long awaited debut... on the piracy scene. The movie is scheduled for release via download until April 1st, and the Blu-ray arrives April 5th, but now that the disc...
If you want to watch the original, unaltered version of Star Wars from 1977 legally your options are essentially nonexistent. George Lucas has infamously disowned the original theatrical releases, standing by his CGI-filled Special Editions from the...
For the fourth year in a row, Game of Thrones has won the dubious honor of being the world's most pirated TV show. The annual study, carried out by TorrentFreak, reveals that an estimated 14.4 million people snaffled HBO's opus this year. By comparis...
