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Pirates prove Kanye's new album isn't really Tidal-exclusive
Kanye West's anticipated album had a bizarre launch, but once the album was finally released early Sunday morning, we hoped the drama would be over. We were wrong. Shortly after putting up The Life of Pablo as a Tidal streaming exclusive that you could also buy outright, West decided to pull the album from standard sales entirely. In one of his increasingly-commonplace Twitter rants, West practically begged followers to sign up to Tidal and proclaimed The Life of Pablo will "never never never be on Apple" and would never be for sale.
uTorrent offers ad-free option for $5 a year
uTorrent recently opted to monetize with ads, but it turns out that pirates hate those as much as paying for content. Now, parent BitTorrent is trying something else -- offering a subscription to eliminate ads for $5 per year. That may not seem like much, but uTorrent has over 150 million users, so even if a small chunk of them opted to pay, it could generate millions in cash. (To be fair, torrents can be used for legal purposes, like streaming US election coverage.)
BitTorrent comes to Apple TV through a live news app
BitTorrent just came to the new Apple TV... though not in the way you might have expected. OnAir Live Developers has released OTT News, an app for Apple TV (Android and iOS too) that uses BitTorrent Live's peer-to-peer streaming to cover the US election both in real-time and through pre-recorded clips. It's not as lavishly produced as the coverage from big TV networks, but that's part of the point -- the technology lets a small outfit stream to your devices without expensive servers and bandwidth. It opens the door to live living room video from more than just the usual suspects.
BitTorrent Sync adds ability to make encrypted folders
BitTorrent has released a new version of its Sync peer-to-peer app, and its biggest feature is the encrypted folder. Any data you keep in one will be encrypted, whether you choose to place it on cloud storage or on a networked storage device (NAS). Plus, your files are always encrypted while they're being transferred.
Yet again, 'Game of Thrones' is the world's most pirated TV show
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 comparison, only 6.9 million people wanted to watch second-placed The Walking Dead and 4.4 million catching The Big Bang Theory. The easy explanation for all of this is that HBO is a pricey pay-cable channel where access is expensive, while AMC and CBS are far easier to access.
Hollywood studios begin suing Popcorn Time users
Popcorn Time may have won an army of fans with its "Netflix for Torrenting" service, but its rapid rise in popularity has also caught the attention of Hollywood and its legal teams. The Wall Street Journal reports that the studio behind The Expendables movies is suing 16 users of the Popcorn Time service, after they were allegedly found to have illegally downloaded and shared copies of straight-to-DVD Pierce Brosnan film Survivor.
BitTorrent makes offline messages on Bleep more secure
The biggest thing BitTorrent's Bleep messaging app can offer users is privacy, so it's rightly beefing up that feature even more. In BT's latest engineering blog post, senior software engineer Steven Siloti explains how his team has improved the security of asynchronous offline messages. The feature, which made its way to the app in December 2014, allows a recipient to receive offline messages even if the sender hasn't connected to the internet yet. Previously, both users had to be online for messages to be exchanged -- remember that Bleep doesn't have servers, so that update was a big deal. Anyway, BT's engineers were apparently not content with the security level of offline messages, because if someone manages to steal a user's "offline key," he could unlock every offline message he intercepted from the same user in the past.
BitTorrent Shoot shares photos and videos between platforms
It's not that hard to exchange pics and videos these days -- you can just attach them to emails or forward them via messaging apps. BitTorrent is hoping you'd still be willing to pay for an app designed to send and receive media files though, because it's just released one called "Shoot." The application is based on BT's Sync technology, and it can send and receive messages between platforms. It works quite differently from what you might be used to: clicking Send opens up your gallery, where you can choose multiple images and videos. The app will then generate a QR code that any user who clicks Receive can scan to download your files.
There's now a Popcorn Time clone for porn
Using Bittorrent to pirate brand-new movies and TV is nothing new, but Popcorn Time's genius was to wrap the activity in an easy-to-use, Netflix-esque bundle. Naturally, it was only a matter of time before someone used the system's freely available technology to build the exact same system, but, you know, for porn. The unimaginatively named Porn Time does exactly what you think it does, letting you pull down high-resolution grot and push them to your TV via a Chromecast or Airplay device. We would test it, but a) this is an AOL-owned computer and we don't want to be fired, and b) the creators should have, surely, called it PopPorn Time. Right? [Image Credit: Getty]
Popcorn Time-like pirate movie streaming comes to the web (update: poof)
Popcorn Time's less-than-legit movie streaming has been available on lots of devices, but the web? Not so much. However, some enterprising developers have seen fit to make that happen in an unofficial capacity. Meet Popcorn in Your Browser, a simple torrent-based video service you can use in any web browser. As with above-board subscription services like Netflix, all you do is search for the title you want and start watching.
BitTorrent's messaging service goes wide, adds ephemeral options
Last we heard of BitTorrent's chat client, Bleep, it was just debuting. Today the news is that the secure messaging client is moving from open alpha to a release aimed at the general Android and iOS owning public. With it comes peer-to-peer messaging with the ability to communicate -- even sending messages to friends who are offline -- no servers required, which theoretically means no threat of hacking. Perhaps the biggest new feature is an ephemeral option called "whispers" for evaporating messages. Unlike Snapchat, though, you can choose on a message by message basis which texts or photos you send will evaporate after 25 seconds. It isn't an all or nothing affair here. And to further distance itself from the ghostly messaging service, you can even send these from a computer. BitTorrent says with whispers you can swap back and forth between them and normal messages seamlessly without breaking the flow of conversation too.
Movie streaming service Popcorn Time blocked by UK court
Popcorn Time has painted a rather large target on its back with its movie-streaming service. Due to its questionable legality, movie studios have sought to block the service, but a shift to Bittorrent-based distribution has allowed it to continue operating while Hollywood scrambles a response. One place the studios have been able to deal a blow, however, is in the UK, where they've managed to restrict access to the original Popcorn Time client.
BitTorrent reportedly laid off dozens of employees
According to Buzzfeed, BitTorrent drastically reduced its US workforce on Thursday. Multiple anonymous sources reportedly confirmed that about 40 of the company's 150 domestic employees were sacked yesterday morning. BitTorrent has struggled to turn a profit over the last couple of years. Despite its ubiquitous name recognition and multiple profit-sharing partnerships with major musical acts, the company never quite shook the "pirated media" stigma with mainstream consumers. It also offered a string of peer-to-peer based products that never really went anywhere. I mean, do you remember Bleep, BitTorrent's P2P messaging app? No, of course you don't. BitTorrent reportedly made the cuts in order to streamline its business and focus on Sync, a cloud storage system based on it's peer-to-peer file sharing system. Update: Bittorrent PR has issued a comment on the reported firings. We've recently realigned resources based on a regular evaluation of the business. Regrettably, this did include some employee departures. The business however, remains healthy, profitable and growing.
BitTorrent's secure web browser one step closer to release
Last we heard of BitTorrent's Project Maelstrom it was going into alpha. Well, the peer-to-peer outfit's browser has made its way to the next logical step: beta. New additions include stability improvements, support for auto-updates and, for the first time, tools for its some 10,000 web developers to "leverage the efficiency of BitTorrent technology in their content and interactive experiences." For a peek at exactly what that means, the open beta for Windows users is available at the links below.
Movie piracy app Popcorn Time thinks it can thwart a shutdown
About a year after Popcorn Time's death and resurrection show, comes news that the app is taking even more of the legwork out of watching pirated movies online. To further stretch the meaning of "legal," the service is moving to a peer-to-peer streaming system so that its userbase (which is apparently growing by 100,000 downloads per day) hosts the requisite data, according to Wired. "Making all our data available via P2P will mean that Popcorn Time will no longer rely on domains and centralized servers, but only on its user base," an anonymous software engineer said. "After everything we went through, this will be our sweetest revenge and our biggest victory." So there's that.
Popular torrent client can steal your CPU cycles to mine bitcoins
If you recently installed or updated uTorrent on your PC, you may have have picked up an unwanted passenger: a bitcoin miner called Epic Scale. If you don't pay attention, that piece of code can be inadvertently installed with the latest uTorrent build (version 3.4.2). It can then use your computer as part of a bitcoin farm (Litecoin, to be exact) to generate revenue for third parties. Users first reported the situation on uTorrent's forums, and it was quickly confirmed by a senior support manager. He said that the app "cannot be installed without permission," but one user claimed that there was "never a warning about it," even though he opted out of other bundled software.
Bittorrent Sync Pro lets employees share folders from their PCs
Bittorrent's done beta testing its cloud-alternative Sync tool, so it's now releasing not just the stable version, but also a Pro one for businesses. Sync 2.0 still lets you share folders saved on your computer using web links, but it also comes with an assortment of new features. These include the ability to link all your devices (PCs, phones and tablets) using a single private account, the power to share folders from any of those linked devices, and being able to grant a person access to your folders just once (he can access them instantly later on), among many other improvements.
BitTorrent Sync gives you the flexibility to sync anything
Several months ago I started replacing Dropbox with BitTorrent Sync ("BTS" for short) for my file-syncing needs, and I couldn't be happier with the results. One study showed BTS was up to 16 times faster than syncing to the cloud. Let me walk you through some of the features and some of the reason why I've grown to prefer it. OS X comes with some standard folders which I had not been able to use since I started using Dropbox; for example, my ~/Documents/ folder went unused because I had to use ~/Dropbox/Documents/, and I couldn't use ~/Pictures/ because if I wanted to sync them they needed to go into ~/Dropbox/Photos/. Now I can sync whichever folders I want, wherever I want, and call them whatever I want. Granted, Dropbox does have a few advantages over BTS, which means that I won't be getting rid of Dropbox entirely. Advantage number one is that files synced to Dropbox are always available, whereas BTS files are only available if at least one computer is on and connected to the Internet. Number two is that there are a great many iOS apps (and some Mac apps) which are designed to sync with Dropbox. Don't worry though, you can use them both together, which is especially useful if you have an "always on" Mac. The BitTorrent protocol is incredibly efficient, which means things like LAN sync between different computers are very fast. Having my ~/Downloads/ folder sync'd makes it easier to update non-Mac App Store apps across my computers. As soon as something is downloaded on one Mac, it is available on others. Now if I store a file on my Desktop, it will be copied to all my Mac's Desktop folders. Keep it one place, it is kept everywhere, or delete it somewhere and it is deleted everywhere. Something like this is exactly what I've been wanting for a long time now. Folders can be anywhere, but some of them aren't suitable for syncing. One example is ~/Library/Safari/Extensions/ which will sync, but Safari will not recognize extensions added directly to that folder, presumably as a security precaution against malware adding extensions without explicit user intervention. Resist the urge to try to sync your ~/Library/Preferences/ or ~/Library/Applications Support/ folders either; it won't end well. As for integration with iOS and Mac apps, I will keep a free Dropbox account to sync those apps which can use it, and I will run Dropbox on one "always on" Mac, but then I will also sync those folders to my other Macs using BTS instead of Dropbox. Like Dropbox, BTS can be paused temporarily if needed (I wish it was possible to pause syncing on a per-folder basis, but alas). Linking computers can be done from the "Share" menu inside the app, and can be shared with others via URL, QR code, or copying the keys. The shared folders can be read/write or read-only, the URLs created for sharing them can be set to expire after a certain number of uses or a certain number of days. Having the code means that you can disconnect and reconnect a synced folder anytime by copying the code, saving it in a safe place, and then reconnecting it later. Even though a selective, per-folder sync would be more convenient, this is a decent work-around for now. Finally, BTS has given me a more flexible sync option than Dropbox, which syncs faster and has no limits except for available hard drive space. If you have wanted to move away from Dropbox, or if you have files that you want to sync and keep completely private, BTS is a great option. Start with one folder (Downloads or Desktop are good options) and see if it helps. Help for getting starting is available at the BitTorrent Sync forums.
The Pirate Bay comes back weeks after a police raid
We're starting to wonder if it's nigh-on impossible to keep The Pirate Bay down. Just weeks after Swedish police raided the bootleg file site and knocked it offline, it's back -- TorrentFreak reports that almost everything is up and running once again, complete with a phoenix graphic (above) to taunt authorities. With that said, it's not quite the same experience that many veteran users would remember. While the pre-raid content remains intact, many of the original staffers are locked out of this version. They're planning to create their own version of the Bay that supposedly restores the community spirit of the original. It's not clear if that'll work, but it sounds like cops and copyright holders may have created more problems for themselves in trying to take down one of the best-known pirate havens.
'Game of Thrones' crowned as 'most pirated' show for third-year running
Interactive apps, multiple theme-tune remixes, constant recommendations, memes or trans-Atlantic and server-collapsing debuts are but mild indicators of Game of Thrones' public success. What's the real measure of a show's popularity? It's how many people pilfer it from the internet. In this regard, our friends in Westeros have no need for a drawbridge, an army or one single drop of wildfire -- its crown as the "most pirated" program continues for the third year running. Torrentfreak estimates the show peaked at over 8 million downloads, nearly double that of the second place series: The Walking Dead. Despite increasing ways to legitimately watch TV online, the number of shows being downloaded suggests there's still an appetite for free -- or an unwillingness to wait for shows to legitimately arrive in your territory. We've got a hunch that waiting isn't something GoT fans are particularly good at.
