UTorrent and the MPAA
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I'm a bit worried about this news. One of the torrent sites I visit has officially banned utorrent 1.7 or higher. I use 1.6 only now. I've heard rumors that the new client is designed to send download info directly to the MPAA.
Maybe the owners of this site should look into this and consider banning utorrent client 1.7 or higher.hXXp://libcom.org/forums/news/utorrent-bought-mpaa
Quote:
Los Angeles - - BitTorrent Founder and CEO Bram Cohen and Motion Picture Association of America, Inc. (MPAA) Chairman and CEO Dan Glickman announced today that the motion picture industry and BitTorrent, Inc. are collaborating with the goal of inhibiting film piracy. Bram Cohen developed a revolutionary technology for websites to make large content files available on the Web and that technology is often used by others illegally to distribute movies and television shows. Today Cohen confirmed BitTorrent, Inc.s commitment to removing links that direct users to copies of pirated content owned by MPAA companies from its search engine at BitTorrent.com. The announcement today is historic in that two major forces in the technology and film industries have agreed to work together and proactively identify ways to l and to promote constructive innovation in this area.
QUOTE
This is Bram Cohen, the creator of the BitTorrent protocol, and Ludvig (Ludde) Strigeus, the writer of µTorrent.Together, we are pleased to announce that BitTorrent, Inc. and µTorrent AB have decided to join forces. BitTorrent has acquired µTorrent as it recognized the merits of µTorrent's exceptionally well-written codebase and robust user community. Bringing together µTorrent's efficient implementation and compelling UI with BitTorrent's expertise in networking protocols will significantly benefit the community with what we envision will be the best BitTorrent client.
/edit mgr: live links removed
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I remember hearing about that over a year ago. From what I recall, the situation was that the BitTorrent company cooperated with the MPAA by only removing certain links from their website.
I remember the panic set off by the sell of uTorrent for many different reasons and everyone said to switch to older version 1.6 because the new version might contain some tracking.
uTorrent version v1.7 and v1.7.1 were banned from many private trackers because of issues reported that those versions did not report stats correctly to trackers. Those issues have all been cleared up.
As far as I know uTorrent is safe to use. :hmmm:
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The 1.7 thing was based on users having no idea what they're talking about. Apparently the "naughty feature" is used to discovery other clients in a LAN.
BitTorrent.com's tracker doesn't allow copyrighted files, never have afaik (not sure really, never used it).
I've read elsewhere that their co-operation is supposed to produce a way to distro movies/tv on demand. (Can't find the source atm)
If you're really paranoid, don't use any BT-client unless you've written it yourself. -
The 1.70.xxx to 1.71.xxx version didn't properly do a hash check while downloading. This caused people's ratios to falsely go up, because it only correctly hash checked the uploads. In other words, free or nearly free downloads.
There are rumors that 1.72.xxx sends data to the MPAA, but to date no one has proved anything.
Here's an article by TorrentFreak that says they can't reproduce the results;
hXXp://torrentfreak.com/utorrent-relaunched-as-official-bittorrent-client/
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"Mainline" is the official new name of the original BT client made by Bram Cohen. It does include many of the features found in uTorrent. At this time, there are no plans to merge the 2 clients {Mainline and uTorrent}.
Mainline will be used by the Movie Industry as part of their attempt to get into the direct download market. So, YES, Mainline will report directly to the MPAA, at least while you are doing a "direct" download from a movie studio.
Azureus also has a separate client "Vuze" that will be used by the movie industry, for the same reason as with Mainline.
So, to recap;
Avoid Mainline and Vuze, as if your life depended on it.
