Month: October 2018

Back in February, uTorrent owner BitTorrent Inc. quietly rolled out a brand new product. Leveraging the hugely popular brand identity of its flagship product, uTorrent Web provided new ways to consume torrents online.

The premise is simple. Rather than rely on a completely stand-alone torrent client, uTorrent Web allows users to download and even stream torrents, directly in their web browser. A piece of software does have to be installed (Windows only currently) but the rest of the action takes place in Chrome, Firefox, or compatible browsers.

Early September, with rather more fanfare, BitTorrent Inc. announced that uTorrent Web had exited beta. The company said that the product’s focus is on simplicity and quick playability.

“With a simple download to play experience as the focal point of µTorrent Web, we see more users successfully downloading and playing torrents than with any other product in BitTorrent’s history,” the company said.

While it will be a long time before uTorrent Web eclipses the 100+ million active users of uTorrent desktop and mobile, BitTorrent Inc. says that uTorrent Web has just reached a significant milestone

Celebrating its first month out of beta, the browser-based torrent client now has one million daily active users.

“Our users have already downloaded our licensed content, which features both top-tier and emerging content creators, well over 100 million times,” says Jordy Berson, Chief Product Officer and COO at BitTorrent Inc.

“While the growth in our daily active users is a great validation of product market fit, we are equally proud to see that µTorrent Web drives dramatically more user engagement and playback than any product in BitTorrent’s history, which is a huge win for our 30,000+ licensed content creators.”

With uTorrent Web clearly on a roll, the product could be in for some additional upgrades before the year is out. A feature to stream files stored on a home computer to an Android device is the first to be announced.

uTorrent Web was first teased last year by BitTorrent inventor Bran Cohen, who said that browser-based torrenting is “just a nicer experience.” It’s also more accessible to a generation of content consumers who have grown up with the explosion of web-based streaming.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.

Am Rand der Klippe, das Smartphone vor dem Gesicht, lächeln - und jetzt nur noch einen Schritt zurück für die ideale Position: Forscher haben untersucht, wie Menschen bei der Aufnahme von Selbstporträts zu Tode kommen. Besonders gefährlich sind Wasser, große Höhen und Verkehr. (Foto, Studie)

Netflix use now accounts for 15% of all Internet downstream traffic, as video streaming now dominate Internet traffic globally, according to a new report by Sandvine.

58 percent of all Internet traffic can now be linked to some kind of video streaming application, and Netflix is clearly the most dominant player in the industry. During peak times, Netflix traffic can account for 40% of all traffic across selected network operators in the Americas.

Netflix's closest competitor is now Amazon Prime, but it only ranks 4th in terms of downstream traffic in the Americas, behind generic HTTP media streaming and raw MPEG-TS streaming. Amazon Prime now tops YouTube for download traffic use.

The increasing popularity of 4K video has contributed to the growing use of bandwidth, with an hour of Netflix's 4K streaming using up 7GB of data on average.

And it's not just download traffic that has seen Netflix use up, Netflix now uses considerable upload traffic as well. While Sandvine found that BitTorrent Uploads were still more popular, using up some 9.21% of all upstream traffic in the Americas, Netflix was the next most popular application, accounting for 5.13% of upstream usage. The upstream usage is due to the way the Netflix app keeps track of user actions in order to store playback data, trigger the playback of content previews and other user interface features.

The latest Sandvine report also examined other types of traffic, such as gaming where in found 'Fortnite' to be the biggest bandwidth user in the Americas (33.47%); and in music, where Spotify's dominance continues (now accounting for 33.07% of global traffic).

[via Sandvine]

KYMCO hat mit Ionex Commercial eine Lösung für kleine Unternehmen vorgestellt, die einen Teil ihrer innerstädtischen Lieferungen mit Elektrofahrzeugen realisieren wollen oder müssen. Die Akkus sind austauschbar, die Ladestation ist dabei. (Elektromobilität, Technologie)

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Amazon’s new Fire HD 8 tablet went up for pre-order about a month ago and started shipping today… and of course the first thing some folks did was try to figure out if you could install the Google Play Store on the tablet. You can. While Amazon’s tablets ship with an operating system called Fire […]

The post Lilbits 341: You can still install Google Play on the latest Fire Tablets appeared first on Liliputing.

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There can be little doubt that Russia has some of the most agressive anti-piracy policies in the world.

After it became a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2012, the country made several promises to protect creators’ rights and take action against infringing websites.

In the years that followed, processes for website takedown policies were streamlined, and more recently Russia’s telecoms watchdog Roscomnadzor issued ISP blockades against thousands of pirate sites.

To ensure that it wouldn’t be easy to circumvent these blockades, Russia’s Government also implemented a law that outlaws all VPNs and anonymizers that bypass site blocking measures. Companies which violate this, risk a $12,000 fine.

To tighten things up even further, search engines are also prohibited from linking to blocked pirate sites and unauthorized VPNs and anonymizers.

These are rather tough measures, especially compared to the United States where site blocking is still a no-go. Still, a coalition of prominent rightsholder groups, including the RIAA and MPAA, is still not happy.

The groups are united in the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) which asked to testify during today’s US Trade Representative hearing on the implementation of Russia’s WTO Commitments.

In its application, IIPA recognizes the progress made thus far, but these recent changes are not enough. The rightsholder groups tell the US Government that they would like Russia’s actions to have an impact on Americans as well.

“Unfortunately, in recent years, these new procedures and processes have been directed only at online piracy by users within Russia. The result has been a substantial and persistent international copyright piracy problem of illegal sites and services accessed by users outside of Russia,” the IIPA writes.

“The Russian Government needs to engage in enforcement targeting illegal sites and streaming services that operate in Russia, even if the users are abroad.”

While Russian interference over the Internet is not always appreciated, in this case, it would be welcomed. And since the Russian Government can’t force US ISPs to start blocking, they will have to go after thousands of sites directly.

The IIPA would like to see more criminal investigations and prosecutions of pirate site operators, mentioning Rapidgator, Rutracker, vKontakte, and Sci-Hub as persistent offenders.

“In short, more enforcement is needed, targeting these and the myriad of other infringing websites. Proper enforcement actions would include steps to keep infringing sites down and taking criminal enforcement actions against the owners and operators of these sites that are causing significant economic harm to rights holders,” the IIPA writes.

There is no denying that there are pirate sites operating from Russia. However, considering Russia’s recent progress, it would be no surprise if Putin and his comrades pointed the finger right back at the US.

They only have to use The Pirate Bay as an example. The world’s most ‘notorious’ pirate site has been operating freely from a US-controlled .org domain, using the caching services of the US company Cloudflare, while earning most of its revenue from entirely unblocked American visitors.

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A copy of the IIPA’s full letter, sent to the Office of the United States Trade Representative, is available here (pdf).

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and more. We also have VPN reviews, discounts, offers and coupons.