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BitTorrent buys up uTorrent
Author: Wil HarrisPublished: 8th December 2006
Can uTorrent survive the commercial acquisition?
Bram Cohen, legendary creator of the protocol, announced yesterday the company's acquisition of uTorrent, one of the most popular clients around.
uTorrent is famed for being very small in terms of file size and memory footprint - the XP client can operate in just 4MB.
BitTorrent is attempting to go legit, and says that it bought up the small client because the company wants to get smaller devices - such as embedded set top boxes and handhelds - going on the Torrent bandwagon.
The reaction on the uTorrent forum has been pretty negative, with fans posting that "This sucks", "Absolute disgrace", "It's curtains" and the slightly more optimistic "Hopefully you don't ruin this".
The userbase also offered a word of warning, with senorjuarez perhaps putting it best:
just remember, the only reason utorrent is popular is because it is small, lightweight, and you can use it to steal music, movies, and software. if you change anything about, someone else will write a client that does just what the current build does, and then you wont have anything but pile of trash that no one uses.
As for improvements, Bram had this to say by way of an official FAQ about the deal:
"Although uTorrent is lightweight, it is missing the patented innovations BitTorrent has made at the protocol level. It is also lacking an implementation for Mac and Linux. We will improve uTorrent in these arenas."
In recent days, BitTorrent has been striking deals with venture capitalists and content providers, leading to fears that the 'underground' is giving way to another Hollywood monopoly.
Have you been using the client? What do you expect to happen now? Let us know your thoughts over in the forums.
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Comments (21)Stats: 0.033 seconds
I think it's a good thing that bittorrent is going mainstream. It shifts its image from a tool solely for pirates to something that has commercial and legal potential. Personally I'd love to be able to download movies and TV shows legally via my set-top box.
Blizzard have been using thier own BT client to distribute WoW patches since the game came out, I'd say thats a rather large legitamate use already.
I'd hate to see this turn into something like Kazaa, uTorrent is an amazing program, I'd hate to see it (and BT in general) fail now.
What good alternative? All the rest are rubbish in comparison, especially that hunking pile of badly coded crap called azureus.
uTorrent is by far the best client out there. Thankfully, even if they ruin it there's no reason users can't just continue to use the versions they've already got. That should work for a good few years from now.
I don't really have any faith that the official client won't be ruined. It'll probably get fat, and pretty to look at for the noobs it's designed to sell to. Not to mention they'll probably stick adverts and some form of DRM in it within a few years.
Also specofdust, the reason why BitTorrent bought uTorrent was because it's tiny, so why would they go making it 'fat'?
They'd make it fat to make it pretty. Just because they like the code doesn't mean they aren't going to ruin it. uTorrent may be perfectly understandable to people with a small ammount of understanding of computers, but to total noobs it would be far too complicated. Since movie studios are going to want to make things as easily used as possible, they'll want uTorrent to be made easier to use by noobs, and probaby over time prettier. That'll make it fat.
Movie studios want to make noobs use bittorrent?
I musta missed something...
You clearly have. Why do you think the movie studios have been getting into bed with Bittorrent inc.? They havn't been doing it just for a giggle. What the movie studios want to do is get bit-torrent being used as a distribution system, which makes sense. They'll need a complete system to offer consumers though that includes an easy to use client. Not just "here's some .torrent files, off you go". This will no doubt include a heavily controlled and very noob-friendly client. They want to exploit a market, they've recognised a good piece of software. They've bought it, they'll make it fatter, less usefull and easier for total noobs to use - then they'll start exploiting the market with downloadable content to people who'll pay them money.
Jeez, feel like I have to spell everything out in this thread.
Don't forget it helps them avoid hefty bandwidth bills by getting the users to distribute files for them ;)
<short tempered grumpy dude>
Well if that's not obvious frankly the person should back away from the dull beige box and go and play with a red ball.
</short tempered grumpy dude>
psuedoedit: :D
that makes sense to you???
movie studios want their movies distributed online, instead of seen for much higher profit in theaters or sold as dvd?
also, as someone mentioned, there already ARE distribution systems (like WoW , the Apple online store and EA's), so not really any reason for studios to get in bed with bittorrent...
and you know the only appeal of downloading a 1-10gig movie is that it's free...
If you think they won't charge just as much as DVD's cost you're mistaken. They do want to take over the online market(take it away from piarcy) though, and bittorrent is a great way of doing that for them.
WoW uses bittorrent to distribute patches. The Itunes store means they have to play along with Apple, which the movie studios do not like doing. They hate it, but right now they sell through apple because apple have the market share. Movie studios would like nothing more in the online world then to cut out the Apple middleman. Currently connection speeds are fairly low, but with say, 20Mbit connections becoming likely in many places(and already in some) within 5-10 years it makes sense for them to develop Bittorrent as a distribution method. If you consider all the factors, it makes perfect sense :)