BitTorrent

History

2022: VPN Provider Blocking TorGuard

VPN-provider blocked the BitTorrent after complaints of copyright holders on. piracy This became known on March 14, 2022.

TorGuard intends to use methods to block traffic BitTorrent on its servers USA own in using. firewall

The VPN provider TorGuard managed to resolve the dispute with two dozen film studios that sued him in 2021 for facilitating piracy and copyright violations. As part of the agreement, TorGuard must now block BitTorrent traffic to its users.

According to court documents, the company TorGuard intends to "use commercially reasonable ways to block BitTorrent traffic on its servers in the United States using firewall technologies."

In October 2021, a similar agreement was signed between the same plaintiffs and VPN.ht, which also agreed to block torrents to its users. Film studios have also sued a number of other VPN companies, including Surfshark, VPN Unlimited, Zenmate, PIA and ExpressVPN.

From June until the end of 2021, TorGuard rented servers and IP addresses from the hosting provider QuadraNet. Some of these servers were used to provide SOCKS5 proxy users. The company also provided detailed instructions for configuring them to work with existing BitTorrent clients.

Unlike VPN, traffic routed through SOCKS5 proxies is not encrypted by default, so intermediate hosting providers can see it if desired.

As the records of the film studios show, they sent QuadraNet 97,640 copyright infringement complaints related to SOCKS5 IP addresses assigned to TorGuard.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs provided an Excel spreadsheet indicating 250,000 "dates of confirmed violations." Of these records, about 40% of copyright infringement cases were associated with only one SOCKS5 IP address provided by TorGuard.

In turn, the company TorGuard accused QuadraNet of untimely sending her complaints of copyright violations.

TorGuard appreciates intellectual property rights of other persons as it is specified in public politicians of TorGuard. If QuadraNet sent these notifications to our DMCA agent, it would be common business practice TorGuard it would be to immediately take measures to stop further piracy, the company told[1].

2018

Sale

Tron, a cryptocurrency startup, officially acquired Bittorrent, the developer of the p2p Internet protocol for peer-to-peer file sharing. A message about this in July 2018 was posted on Twitter by Justin Sun, founder and chief executive officer of Tron, as well as on the blogs of the parties to the deal. According to Sang, the combined company will be able to put into practice the idea of ​ ​ a decentralized Internet^[2]

"With the acquisition of Bittorrent, Tron seeks to free the Internet from the dominance of large corporations, return people's right to access data and return to the vision of a free, transparent and decentralized network that connects the whole world, because the Internet belongs to people," the Tron Foundation said in a press release.

The value of the transaction was not disclosed. However, according to the online publication Techcrunch, it amounted to about $126 million. From the post on the Bittorrent blog, it follows that the company's full staff will soon move to the Tron office, located in San Francisco.

Information that Tron is interested in acquiring Bittorrent began circulating on the Web at the end of May 2018. Bittorrent then confirmed the fact of negotiating a potential deal, and Justin Sun declined to comment.

Products BitTorrent

According to information for July 2018, such popular torrent customers as BitTorrent and μTorrent BitTorrent created on the basis of the protocol. With them, millions of users around the world share files.

In addition to these two most popular products, the company has a Sync application for file synchronization, Shoot for file exchange between mobile devices, Bleep for secure instant messaging and the Bundle platform for paid downloads of licensed content.

Bittorrent is developing and developing the p2p (peer-to-peer - "equal-to-equal") protocol, which allows you to exchange files without intermediaries, directly between two or more peers on the network.

The protocol was created in 2001 and became the first decentralized Internet protocol to become so widespread. Today, Bittorrent retains the status of the most popular decentralized protocol in the world - it accounts for about 40% of global daily Internet traffic and over 100 million unique users.

In addition to the protocol, the company owns the program of the same name, as well as one of the most popular bittorrent customers in the world - uTorrent, which it acquired in December 2006.

In the past, the company experienced serious financial difficulties due to an unsuccessful attempt to build an entertainment business based on the p2p direction. As a result, Bittorrent was forced to dismiss some of its employees and recapitalize.

2016: Advertising network

As of February 2016, the advertising network BitTorrent Media Network is one of the main sources of revenue for the company. According to official data, this network covers about 170 million users per month or 45 million users per day. Most of these users are male (89%). The main demographic group of BitTorrent users is men aged 18 to 24 years.

Notes