BitTorrent, Inc. Acquires µTorrent

[Deadfire]

There's little doubt that BitTorrent - both the protocol and the company - are quickly becoming the most important Internet event since the arrival of the World Wide Web. In many ways it already has supplanted the importance of the web, as it's responsible for utilizing a majority of the Internet's bandwidth and is the definitive distribution method for millions.

The road towards creating an Internet phenomenon has not been easy for file-sharing and P2P developers. In fact it has been a road filled with legal obstacles since the concept went mainstream with Napster. To date, the only successful P2P protocol seemingly capable in traversing from the legally questionable to outright legitimate is BitTorrent.

With a massive userbase and highly advanced protocol capable of transferring large files with ease, the entertainment industry has taken a much softer stance on the BitTorrent issue. Both mainstream and independent studios are gradually using the BitTorrent protocol to distribute their work and take advantage of the massive user potential.

As BitTorrent, Inc. continues to exist unmolested in the P2P fray, it has slowly built up its reputation as a pro-artist and legitimate avenue for online distribution. Its understanding between the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) in November of 2005 helped solidify this fact, as well as its continued expansion of entertainment on BitTorrent.com.

Now it appears BitTorrent, Inc. has taken the next step - the acquisition of µTorrent (microTorrent.) In an joint announcement made today (http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?id=17278), the two firms have publicly solidified the merger.

"Together, we are pleased to announce that BitTorrent, Inc. and µTorrent AB have decided to join forces," a forum post on uTorrent states. "BitTorrent has acquired µTorrent as it recognized the merits of µTorrent's exceptionally well-written codebase and robust user community. Bringing together µTorrent's efficient implementation and compelling UI with BitTorrent's expertise in networking protocols will significantly benefit the community with what we envision will be the best BitTorrent client."

Since µTorrent's arrival in 2004, it quickly became the BitTorrent client of choice for a significant amount of users. It's small memory footprint, single executable, and diminutive size (~1 megabyte) has simplified BitTorrent for millions of users. Often considered one of the last heroes of file-sharing, today's news will no doubt spell concern for the µTorrent faithful.

However in attempt to thwart this inevitable concern, both BitTorrent and µTorrent have been adament that the user experience will remain unchanged. In fact, BitTorrent, Inc. assures its users this event will only benefit the end user.

"Following the acquisition, patented content delivery innovations made by BitTorrent, Inc. will be integrated in the µTorrent client in a manner that will remain seamless to the community of users. Ultimately, the integration of best-of-breed BitTorrent technology will result in an improved client and an enhanced user experience. It will also accelerate BitTorrent's plans to provide high-performance content delivery services that power websites seeking the most efficient platform for distributing large, high-quality files. Lastly, the incorporation of µTorrent's lightweight codebase strengthens the adoption of BitTorrent technology in embedded systems, including televisions, mobile phones and other non-PC platforms."

For now, both BitTorrent, Inc. and µTorrent will remain visually independent. There's a lot of action going on behind the scenes, and the integration of the two clients will evolve as time progresses. BitTorrent, Inc. saw a great client with the loyal following of millions, and today's event is likely just the beginning of the great BitTorrent consolidation. The details of the acquisition are currently not being made public.


I didn't see this comming... thoughts anyone?

[Kraco]

The first comment in the announcement thread: "this sucks".

And the rest follow the example... Lollerskaters.

Like DF, I certainly didn't see this coming. But it doesn't really mean much to me as long as utorrent remains what it is (and develops normally), and any nasty business "features" stay away from it. I don't want to see some bloody movie flash advert every time I launch the program.

Well, time will tell what happens.

[Board of Command]

This sucks. I hope they don't implement some anti-piracy stuff into the client.

[Lucifus]

"This sucks. I hope they don't implement some anti-piracy stuff into the client"
I'm sorry to anyone thats glad to hear this, but I think this sucks ass. As BoC mentioned, implementing Anti-Piracy into em is the biggest concern for me now. Even if there isn't a shred of it, things are fine as they are now.

But hell, they might surprise us with some super awesome program. I'm totally cereal....

[Super5]

Well people don't have to use micro-torrent... I use Azureus and I hope business interests, and the MPAA especially, keep their dirty paws off it. However, I'm worried that as BitTorrent becomes more mainstream, the industry will change its opinion and that memo of understanding will go right out the window. Torrent databases are already under attack (Pirate Bay, Torrentspy, isohunt, and probably more). My biggest fear is that BitTorrent will be forced to incorporate some kind of anti-piracy measures into the torrent protocol itself. Then torrents will die, and it will be a sad day indeed.

[Kraco]

My biggest fear is that BitTorrent will be forced to incorporate some kind of anti-piracy measures into the torrent protocol itself. Then torrents will die, and it will be a sad day indeed.

I'd guess that would lead into a divergence producing a commercial torrent format with the anti-piracy shit, and then the normal torrent protocol used by independent clients and the kind of sites we use. After all, if the anime sites (and equivalent) and clients automatically implemented that kind of new protocol, they would kill themselves.

I don't know if the maker of utorrent lost all control over the program, but I suppose he made a sum of money out of this and considered it worth it, even if it eventually leads to the death of his creation.

[masamuneehs]

all good things come to an end. uTorrent is the best client out there imho, but this joining with a corporation reeks of promises of reform and seeking legitimacy. An ominous sign for pirates... i'll keep with the u until they stop being awesome, but i have no doubt when that time comes another good client will be available, it's just the way the web works

[complich8]

Anti-commercialism and anti-corporatism run rampant here ... now all we need is a drum circle, some tie-dyed shirts and some hash and we're all set. >_>

If you read just a little bit about what happened and how it happened, the creator hasn't lost control of the app. It's just that he's agreed to let utorrent be used in commercial contexts, and help develop for that. So, stuff like embedded systems.

Now, personally, I don't see torrenting to embedded systems as a sane thing at the moment, but ... who knows what the future holds. I also still don't view video ipods as viable :p.

More to the point, the structure they're talking about is basically taking the good things in utorrent and porting them to other places, not taking other places' demands and adding them to utorrent. The nice thing about everyone's favorite torrent client is that it's very complete and very clean -- there's not a whole lot that you could reasonably add to enhance the experience, and there's not a whole lot that you could reasonably take away without damaging it. I think Bram recognized both that and the fact that his own python-based client (mainline) doesn't do most of what utorrent does and isn't getting sane implementations of most of those features any time soon. It's probably easier to acquire utorrent than it is to hire on the programming expertise to write a comparable client.

Azureus is a fairly feature-rich alternative, but the memory overhead of running the jre and running an SWT app on top of it is pretty prohibitive, and I don't really see it as a viable alternative. But there is a lot of work being done on libtorrent, and the way I see it if there were some deep functional flaw with utorrent, the community would pull together another very reasonable functional client within a couple weeks.

Lastly, don't be so alarmist. If things go sour, things go sour and you switch to something else. If they don't, they don't. The future's up in the air, and your ability to download stolen stuff from the internet has never been a certainty. It may be that this is our golden age and that golden age will pass... who knows?

[Board of Command]

The golden age will never pass. They may sink our vessels but they can't drain the sea.

[Lucifus]

The golden age will never pass. They may sink our vessels but they can't drain the sea.
Keeping that quote till I die. Viva la resistance!

I never tried uTorrent. It really that good?

[Kraco]

I never tried uTorrent. It really that good?

It's the best client right now. It has an UI and functionality at least as good as Azureus and BitComet, yet takes only a small fraction of the memory and CPU time those programs need.

[Board of Command]

uTorrent is the pinnacle of programming efficiency.

[ChaosK]

Keeping that quote till I die. Viva la resistance!

I never tried uTorrent. It really that good?

What are you using?

[BioAlien]

Keeping that quote till I die. Viva la resistance!

I never tried uTorrent. It really that good?

utorrent use really low place on the HD and even if you are downloading at 200kb/s you won't lag(if you do, it is still less than other popular torrent client like azureus.)
and also use most of the time less then 8 000 ko memory.


I just hope they won't ruin this awesome torrent client.

[Super5]

It's the best client right now. It has an UI and functionality at least as good as Azureus and BitComet, yet takes only a small fraction of the memory and CPU time those programs need.
Hmmm... if utorrent is that good, I may have to try it. I will admit Azureus does have a lot of overhead - I just don't notice it that much because my computer is fast enough to handle it. There were glitches in earlier versions were it would take 99% of your CPU time no matter what it was doing, but they fixed that.

About the pirated vs. legit usage of torrents - most of the stuff I download is stuff that doesn't exist in commercial form in the US. Pretty much all fansubs fit into this category. The raw form exists in Japan and the rights are held by a Japanese company, but they won't release the version fans in the US want because they wouldn't make enough money off it to be profitable (at least in their view). So personally I see nothing wrong with downloading this stuff, the company has essentially said that you're not causing them to lose money. Copyright protection software and protocols screw this system up completely - so that's why I'm against it.