When people think of “BitTorrent” most of them think of the peer-to-peer file sharing program that they use to pirate movies, games, music, and software. Not very many of them know that “BitTorrent” is also the name of the company that made the program and the name of the protocol that the program uses. Since the name “BitTorrent” has become synonymous with piracy, the San Francisco-based company is universally hated in the entertainment industry. However, the company just released a new torrent format, called BitTorrent Bundle, in an attempt to legitimize the format. Matt Mason,…

Google’s war against torrents is being kept quiet. No announcements. No press releases. You will only find the story in blogs that are carefully watching. In essence, Google is removing keywords from their Suggest and Instant results so that they are no longer recommended when people start typing them. If you continue all the way through on a term such as “BitTorrent,” Google will offer the results. Reluctantly. They won’t help you out at all, even if you type all the way to the “n.” Try typing in “BitTorren” without the last “t” into Google. Apparently, they have no idea what you’re talking about….

Dependent entirely on how you feel about piracy, it will either tickle you previously undefined shades of pink or break your heart to learn that BitTorrent has reported that its tools BitTorrent, Mainline and µTorrent now have an active userbase of 100 million per month. It seems like only yesterday we were forced a peek at Bram Cohen’s attractive* face as he panhandled for donations every time we closed the original BT client. Flash forward and 20 million are logging on per day from 220 nations to share files. Legally, of course. What makes these figures ever-more impressive is that they don’t…

Many have tried but all have failed to get an app approved that works with BitTorrent. All have failed, that is, until now. IS Drive by Derek Kepner likely made it through the screening process because it didn’t use the no-no word: “Torrent”. Instead, its description on the AppStore page is very innocent: This app allows you to check and manage the downloads in your ImageShack Drive account. For downloaded videos, you can even view thumbnails (if ImageShack is able to provide them). Reading between the lines, the idea is that it has capabilities that some people may use for illegal purposes, but…

The series finale of the hit show LOST has achieved a dubious honor. It is officially the most pirated torrent file of all time. Because the show aired in the US up to 72 hours before airing in other countries, a record number of torrent site users opted to download the file online rather than wait for the show to air in their region. The BitTorrent file was shared over 1 million times in less than 24 hours, with over 100,000 people seeding the file at any one time. The show finale was aired in 59 countries simultaneously in an attempt to cut down on pirating, but clearly some users were not willing to wait…

While it’s true that there are legitimate uses for Bittorrent, let’s be honest: most of us use it solely for downloading movies or the latest episode of Grey’s Anato– erm, I mean, Mad Men.  And it seems that point hasn’t been lost on a U.S. judge,  who has ordered that popular Bittorrent search site Isohunt remove any access to content that might infringe on copyright. The site, which tells your Bittorrent software where to find all those files, gets about 30 million site views a month. But with all infringing content banished, this move means that Isohunt has effectively been shut down, joining…