Well. Interesting week. Google and Verizon claimed to have solved the Net Neutrality debate. But on whose behalf?

True, these two iconic Internet brands deserve a seat at the table in determining the health and regulations of our global network’s backbone. Yet ultimately any compromises must be struck by the industry at large – with the best interest of the consumer first and foremost, as defined by the consumer (not shareholders).

Most of the key points of this proposal have been thoroughly hashed out and the media has done an excellent job at analyzing the good, the bad and the ugly. Today, there’s one factor I’d like to highlight: the fines.

No matter how the agreements, laws or regulations surrounding Net Neutrality are resolved, they must be enforceable. Bad behavior by either the ISPs or Web services cannot result in a slap on the wrist, lest the entire Internet infrastructure becomes a pay-to-play system. If the fine for throttling Skype or BitTorrent traffic is a mere $2 million but saves $10 million (and you may not even get caught), then where’s the incentive to play by the rules? Does the FCC have resources and technologies to monitor and enforce in real-time?

At BitTorrent, we are tireless advocates for Net Neutrality. The Internet belongs to everyone, wired and wireless, and therefore the only solution is for an open and transparent network that doesn’t bias toward specific types of traffic. (While we do agree that ISPs must be able to make money off their network investments, let us not forget that many of those networks relied upon taxpayer contributions, public lands and, in the case of wireless, public spectrum leased to the ISP.)

Of course network operators need the tools to “manage” their networks, but there needs to be a neutral framework within which this management takes place, there must be transparency over what is happening, and there must be real penalties to prevent practices under the guide of network management from turning into simple “choosing of the winners.”

And what is the price of complacency or appeasement here? The next wave of Internet companies must have the freedom to innovate or technology will quickly stagnate. We don’t believe either backroom deals between major corporations, or government intervention will offer a full and lasting solution. Continuous, fast-paced, open and transparent innovation is the only answer.

Yes, with media and cloud services exploding in demand, networks are being taxed. This is why we developed µTP (Micro Transport Protocol) – an intelligent delivery protocol capable of sensing traffic congestion ahead and can reroute data on a smoother path. It’s one example of the types of innovations we all need to cooperate around to ensure a healthy Internet with opportunities for all.

While Google and Verizon took things into their own hands this week, it’s important to note that Net Neutrality is certainly not yet decided. There is much more to this drama still to run and the stakes are high for everyone – stay tuned.

- Eric -

What is the right business model on the Internet? For the most part, organizations are still trying to find the balance between how to create value for consumers and a sustainable business model.

In case you haven’t noticed, media scarcity has for all intents and purposes disappeared. The Internet is essentially a giant copy machine that makes distribution of content frictionless. So, when you think about the web in these terms, then it makes it easy to understand why pay walls on the Internet do not work.

For example, take The Times of London, which recently implemented a pay wall. Last week, The Guardian reported that since instituting the pay wall The Times had lost 90 percent of its online traffic. The fact is the news that they are reporting is no longer scarce. Readers can easily find something similar (or even identical) on another competing website, or better they can find it on Twitter or a blog. The Times has created a model based on metering access, and in the process has lost eyeballs, which will almost certainly result in lost ad revenue.

As distribution costs reach effectively zero, we believe that there is value to be derived not in just access, but in creating an experience for users. In the future rich media will not have to be held under a lock and key to make money, which could result in a very different business model.

So, creators and organizations that are serious about making a business work on the Internet are looking to alternative media models – many of which fall under an umbrella you might loosely label freemium. The fact is that even with the shift from physical to digital media, the simple Economics 101 notion that consumers will pay for what is valuable and scarce still rings true.

We are partnering with various creators from filmmakers to gamers to software vendors – to enable relationships that bring value to the consumer, but allow the creator to build a business that works. These business models are largely based on this concept of freemium, where they leverage consumer adoption of values freely given to drive an opportunity for value to be captured later. We are still early in this process, but early results look very promising.

If you are interested in learning more about how freemium can be used as part of a business, I will be participating in a webinar with Mike Masnick of the popular blog Techdirt and Phil Libin, CEO of Evernote tomorrow at 11 a.m. PT/2 p.m. ET on the topic. Get the details here.

- Simon -

Today, Pioneer One, an original made for BitTorrent series, will debut on VODO.net (a BitTorrent Inc. partner). For those who are using Apps for µTorrent (or Project Griffin), the show can be downloaded from within the client via the VODO app. Also, for a limited time starting today, the pilot will be available with all fresh downloads of the µTorrent client.

Its creators, Josh Bernhard and Bracey Smith, are interested in making quality entertainment for large audiences outside the traditional network media business model. To accomplish this goal they are leveraging proven distribution channels on the Internet like BitTorrent to connect them with viewers. Such a release is significant because it highlights a shift in how content creators and publishers are reaching their audiences. At a time when the Internet has essentially driven media distribution costs to zero, BitTorrent provides an effective and flexible way to reach a large audience and can easily scale to meet demand.

This is part of the broader story of empowerment provided by the Internet to content creators. It is an example of creative new approaches where making money from rich media will not rely so heavily on holding media under lock and key. Content creators and publishers developing business models that are native to the digital domain are finding ways to build value that take advantage of all the strengths of the Internet. BitTorrent Inc. is working with partners like VODO to allow independent filmmakers to tune into the distribution potential of BitTorrent to reach millions of people within communities that might otherwise be inaccessible.

We are excited about the potential of new media models, and the opportunities they can generate for content creators and publishers who are looking to reach the masses. We believe that our work with partners like VODO will help broaden how content creators look at distribution and revenue models. We look forward to working with new partners, and are already working with a range of other organizations in ways that promise to contribute to their own digital native business models.

- Simon -

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. 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. With today’s introduction, users can now control their torrents from any computer or iPhone via their web browser.

In essence, µTorrent Web for iPhone is a mobile website that allows users to remotely access and control the µTorrent client that is installed on their computer. Before users can employ it on their iPhones they will need to make sure that they have the latest µTorrent client from Project Falcon installed on their computers, which can be found here: https://web.utorrent.com/. (The site also provides detailed instructions about how to download the client and setup remote access.)

After installing the software on a laptop or desktop computer and enabling µTorrent Web remote access, users should point their iPhone web browser to http://web.utorrent.com. At that point, they will be prompted to input their username and password and choose if they want to bookmark the application and add it to their home screen. In doing so, they will add an icon to their iPhone similar to if they had downloaded an app from the App Store. In addition to bookmarking the page, it is also recommended that users check “stay signed in” to ensure quick and easy accessibility in the future.

It is also worth noting that the mobile version offers the same privacy and zero-configuration secure web-access to uTorrent that users would get if you were signing on remotely via a PC. So, users can rest assured that no information about their µTorrent usage is ever exposed to BitTorrent Inc. or any third parties. (Read more about our privacy architecture.)

We are very excited about giving users remote access via their iPhones, and believe this is an important function to continue to make the µTorrent user experience even better.

- Simon -

This year, the uTorrent development team has made more visible improvements than ever before. In an attempt to be more than just a standard BitTorrent client several new projects were started.

Together with Griffin and Pheon, the Falcon project is part of the recently announced uTorrent Labs. With Labs the development team is giving users early access to their latest projects, hoping to get useful feedback from the community.

The Falcon release is one of the main pillars for uTorrent’s future. Among other things, it allows users to access their downloads from anywhere through a secure web interface. Another new feature is that it allows users to stream videos so they can start watching before the download has fully finished,

The web interface of the Falcon project has been invite only since the start of the year, but today BitTorrent Inc. decided that the time was right to open it up to the public. Users can create an account and try it out, privacy and security guaranteed by BitTorrent Inc.

Aside from the features that are currently implemented, uTorrent has other big plans still in the pipeline for the new client and the web interface. Among other things, the Falcon release is expected to make it easier for users to find torrents.

The uTorrent team didn’t want to comment on how such torrent search capabilities will be integrated, but Simon Morris has stated that they are working on “better ability for torrent sites to promote content or search within the client.”

When we asked if this means that uTorrent will come with a built-in torrent search engine, Morris said that they are more interested in “APIs rather than bloating the uTorrent user experience.” We’ll see what this means in the months to come.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

Today, we are very excited to unveil Apps for µTorrent as part of a new project codenamed Griffin. Apps for µTorrent is a brand new web-based extensions framework that makes it easy for users to get more and do more with µTorrent without compromising the client’s renowned lightness and speed. Moreover, it also makes it easy for publishers to incorporate content and services into a simple user experience that integrates seamlessly with the client.

With Apps, users can browse and download content without ever leaving the client, while also having the option to add powerful extended features like virus scanning or browser-based control. The best part is that Apps for µTorrent opens up the platform for 3rd party developers to add popular and useful features that can be built with standard web technologies and distributed as simple downloadable files, which can be added or removed from µTorrent as easily as a torrent file can be.

Working closely with partners we have already developed several free apps that are available to users to try immediately. These include:

- VirusGuard for BitTorrent – A free virus scanner powered by BitDefender that provides a critical layer of protection without wasting resources on a full disk scan;
- Raptr Free Games –  Easy browsing and downloading of the world’s most popular free-to-play games;
- VODO – Discover great, free movies from creators who WANT to share their work;
- µGadget – Monitor and control torrent downloads more easily from your browser and add torrents with one click.

This project was born out of a desire to extend the client’s features while keeping it as lean as possible. Apps are a new type of file with a .btapp suffix that consists entirely of HTML and Javascript and can be added to the client and displayed using an embedded browser window, so very little extra code is needed. Additionally, the web-based extensions framework allows for easy extensibility by 3rd party developers through a simple API, so they can access all the functionality of the client and offer a simple and more integrated way for consumers to find and download different types of content as well as integrate with external programs that add new functionality.

The Griffin Project is being launched as part of our larger portfolio of projects that we are calling µTorrent Labs, which exposes users to very early versions of new projects we are working on. µTorrent Labs is also a way for us to include users in our research and development process by giving them a voice to tell us what they like and what features that they would like see in future iterations. Remember, these products are experimental so there may be some bumps along the way. Enjoy, and we look forward to your feedback!

-Simon-

To get a better view on how the peer-to-peer scene is evolving with respect to what file sharing software people prefer to download, we keep you posted weekly with the latest numbers. So here’s a list with last week's top ten most downloaded p2p file sharing programs – the chart is based on figures published by Download.cnet.com and it refers to the number of times a p2p client was downloaded from their site (click on the names for download):

Week ended April 11

(http://download.cnet.com/windows/)

One of the most significant changes in the new uTorrent is uTP, the ‘micro transfer protocol’. UTP is a new and improved implementation of the BitTorrent protocol which is designed to be more network-friendly than its predecessor.

With uTP, uTorrent has become more network aware as it will throttle itself if congestion is detected in the network. The uTorrent teams hopes this improvement will eliminate the need for ISPs to throttle BitTorrent traffic, while its users should see less interference with other local applications.

The effectiveness of uTP is still being debated, but some people in the BitTorrent community have noticed another issue. According to some owners of private BitTorrent trackers, uTorrent is no longer playing fair. Since uTorrent users are the only ones using the new protocol, uTorrent favors its own kind over other clients.

This means that when connecting to other clients, uTorrent users will give preference to other uTorrent users, behavior that some have characterized as unfair. As a result, several private BitTorrent trackers have refused to put the newer uTorrent releases on their whitelists, effectively banning the client and forcing their users to stick with the older versions.

Simon Morris, BitTorrent’s VP of Product Management admits that the tracker owners have a point, but says that it is very hard to innovate without having to face such technical downsides. “This is part of the challenge of innovation… but hopefully a challenge we’ll overcome,” Morris told TorrentFreak.

“We’re well aware of these discussions and have been very receptive to the feedback we have received. uTP is being constantly tuned and like any advanced technology on the internet there are edge cases where there’s room for improvement,” Morris adds.

BitTorrent Inc. has opened up the specifications of the uTP protocol and hosted a conference in their San Fransisco offices a few weeks ago to discuss uTP in detail with developers of some of the most popular Bittorrent clients. According to Morris, other popular client developers have shown interest in implementing uTP into their own applications.

Widespread support for the new protocol would of course be the easiest way to get rid of the unfairness allegations, but uTorrent’s major competitor Vuze has no plans to support uTP in the short term. On the other hand, Vuze doesn’t believe the unfairness will result in a noticeable disadvantage for its users.

“In terms of speed, we do not buy-in to the ‘threat’ cited by some, claiming that uTP can result in slower downloads for non-uTP clients due to uTP clients favoring each other during the torrent cold start phase,” Olivier Chalouhi, CTO told TorrentFreak.

Vuze is keeping a close eye on how uTP evolves and will consider adding it to their own client as the technology matures. For now Vuze will continue to work on their own congestion solutions and speed improvements. They have already added UDP transfer support, but not as the primary protocol.

“Vuze added support for UDP transport a few years ago, as a fallback for when TCP connection attempts fail. To date, Vuze chose not to implement UDP as a first-class protocol, as we consciously wanted to avoid claims of a Vuze-specific protocol bias, which we do not believe serves the BitTorrent community at large,” Chalouhi said.

Whether uTorrent’s choice to push uTP forward results in any significant disadvantages for users of other clients is still open for debate. BitTorrent Inc. is, however, committed to play fair and will make the necessary adjustments where needed.

Thus far, only a few private trackers have decided to ban uTorrent and there are currently no signs that it will spread out to more.

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

How to: run uTorrent in Linux

Here’s a brief tutorial that was requested in our forum. uTorrent is a very lightweight and easy to use bittorrent client, that unfortunately is unmatched by some of the Linux clients out there today. You can still have functioning WebUI and Automated RSS Downloading with uTorrent running in Ubuntu Linux, so if let’s get started!

Install Wine (Windows Emulator) in Ubuntu Linux

Wine is an open source software that allows you to run Windows software under different operating systems. With Wine you can run Windows software applications in Linux similar to how you would run them in Windows.

Provided you are running Ubuntu Linux; Open up a terminal and run the following commands:

sudo apt-get install wine

This will install Wine from Ubuntu’s software repositories along with all of the packages required to run it.

Download uTorrent (uTorrent.exe)

Since installing Wine in Ubuntu Linux may take a few minutes, in the meantime you can grab a copy of uTorrent (for windows), I’d recommend a stable release, (at the time of writing this the newest stable release is 2.0).

Open up another terminal and enter the following commands:

cd ~

This should bring you to your home directory (if you aren’t already there).

sudo mkdir utorrrent

This creates a /utorrent/ directory

cd utorrent

Change into the uTorrent directory

sudo wget http://download.utorrent.com/2.0/utorrent.exe

This begins downloads the utorrent.exe file into the new directory you just created, you should see the progress bar on the download.

Run uTorrent using Wine under Linux

By now Wine should be fully installed, we’re going to create a launcher and then run uTorrent using it. On your desktop right click and goto Create Launcher…

A new window will popup asking you to fill in the details for your new launcher, fill in the fields as follows:

Type: Application
Name: uTorrent
Command: wine “/home/USERNAME/utorrent/utorrent.exe /NOINSTALL”

** NOTE **
Where it says USERNAME fill in your Linux username!
Where it says /NOINSTALL is because you don’t want to install uTorrent in Linux, you don’t need to! It still saves your settings

And that’s it! You should now have a new launcher for uTorrent on your desktop!

Need a uTorrent Icon for Your Shortcut?

Yep, we think of everything open up a Terminal again and jump to your ~/utorrent/ directory:

cd ~/utorrent

And download this image:

sudo wget http://tipst3r.com/download_images/utorrent_icon.png

Next just goto Properties for the Launcher shortcut you made and click on the current icon, and browse your way to the utorrent_icon.png and use this as your new icon.

Now it looks all pretty on your desktop.

Follow-up Configurations: Beef up your new uTorrent Linux Install!

Learn how to setup uTorrent WebUI and access your Torrents Anywhere!
Learn how to setup Automated RSS Downloading

No Seeders? Not Always the Case! How to Revive a “Dead” Torrent

Just because that hard to find torrent can’t seem to find any seeds to download from, does not necessarily mean that there are 0 seeders available in the entire world!

Seeders are very important users to you, as they are the users with a complete version of the file you are seeking. So it makes sense in desperate times to search additional trackers when you are having a hard time tracking down some seeders!

Here’s where adding trackers from our Tracker List come in handy. What this allows you to do is check other trackers (that were not included in your .torrent file) to see if anyone else has the same file to download.

This is a huge benefit as it can help you:

• Track down and increase seeder counts for a file that had none, so that you can begin downloading it
• Add to your current amount of seeders to increase overall download speeds

You must keep in mind, that this situation will arise pretty rarely and may not always work, but if you do find yourself having a tough time finding seeders it’s definitely worth a shot.

Here’s How!

Bittorrent / uTorrent

For Bittorrent 6.4 and uTorrent 2.0 alike you can click on the torrent you are downloading and then select the Trackers tab at the bottom, right-click and select Add Tracker.

As you can see by the image above, we are having a bit of a hard time finding seeds for our torrent…
In the next window, just add the trackers you want to add into the the trackers box and be sure to keep them separated by a line.

Hit OK, and you should see them added into your Trackers tab now, and your client should begin searching them.

And would you look at that! We’ve found some Seeders!

Deluge

In Delgue, once the torrent is loaded right-click on it and goto Edit Trackers. Once inside you are given the option to Add trackers. After you have added all the trackers you desire, right-click again on the torrent and select Update Tracker.

You can find a long list of trackers on our Tracker List page.
Happy Hunting! ?

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