BitTorrent distances itself from piracy

When you hear the words torrent, BitTorrent or uTorrent, the first thing that comes to your mind will probably be piracy. According to Torrent Freak, BitTorrent is apparently trying to distance itself from piracy. The company has launched a website that attempts to answer the question of whether or not BitTorrent equals piracy.

“We hear this question all the time,” BitTorrent Inc. CEO Eric Klinker explains. “We hear we’ve killed film, the radio star, and the content industry. We hear we’re the web’s dark matter, and the Internet’s seedy underbelly. We are not.”

BitTorrent had originally started the technology in an attempt to make sharing files over the Internet easier. According to the company, the technology itself is neutral and is good for content creators.

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The website shows how good BitTorrent is for the Internet

“We are scientists, engineers, developers and designers committed to building a better Internet. We are photographers, musicians, writers and gamers. We came to work here because we wanted to change the way the Internet works for us. How it works for all of us.”

“We do not endorse piracy. We do not encourage it. We don’t point to piracy sites. We don’t host any infringing content,” the CEO says.

Blaming BitTorrent itself for the concept of piracy seems like a logical fallacy, as it is a lot like blaming a knife for the work of a knife-wielding psychopath. Calls to shut down the company and its technology, would, in this analogy, be like banning knives.

While some things can be used maliciously, it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have other more practical uses. BitTorrent is helpful for getting large files, and is one of the major ways things like Linux distributions are distributed. BitTorrent has also proven useful for indie artists and film makers to get more exposure.

Back in September, BitTorrent had released the beta version of the uTorrent app for Android devices. This was the first official uTorrent app for mobile devices released by the uTorrent team. You can find, download, subscribe to RSS feeds and play videos directly from your Android device through the app. The uTorrent Beta release is available on Google Play completely free of charge.

Before this, Android users could only control the uTorrent PC client remotely via uTorrent Remote. Although the app is widely-used, a native client for Android opens up an entire realm of possibilities. It came to light in February this year that BitTorrent Inc. was working on a mobile version of the client for Android devices, but no concrete details were mentioned at that time.

Unfortunately for iOS users, a uTorrent app for Apple’s platform is not coming anytime soon. BitTorrent Inc. apparently told TorrentFreak the company was currently “focusing on growing our Android clients". However, a uTorrent remote app for iOS is available on the App Store. BitTorrent Inc. has also been working on a Linux client, which was suspended for a while as the main uTorrent branch for Windows took on some major changes. Few companies want to be connected to BitTorrent in any way as the easy content distribution facilities it offers leads to software piracy.