torrents

There's an abundance of peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing clients these days, each boasting a combination of features designed to distinguish itself by making the bit torrent downloading experience easier or more complex, depending on how much control each user needs. Goforshare's Torrent Monster takes the more complex approach, offering a plethora of features and settings that give users an unusual degree of power and control over the searching and downloading processes on Gnutella, the largest P2P network. Its connection optimizer matches your download speed to your Internet connection bandwidth. Torrent Monster also has a sophisticated library manager and features … Read more

Bit torrent technology has revolutionized file sharing and downloading, making it possible for individuals to share and swap huge files quickly and with little hassle. The biggest problem may be just finding the files you want among all the torrents on all the various bit torrent sites. Torrent Junction from JustVB can help. It's a free search utility in Visual Basic that quickly scours available bit torrent sites individually or collectively and displays its results within the program's interface. You can view pages in the torrent search engine or download them directly from the application since it also … Read more

Foxmediatools' uTorrent Turbo Booster is a plug-in download accelerator for uTorrent, one of the most popular BitTorrent peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing clients. Like most download accelerators, it offers to speed up your file transfers by maximizing your Internet connection's bandwidth and by minimizing the overall impact on system resources, either from your downloading activity or from Turbo Booster itself, which boasts an ability to run in the background, unattended and unnoticed.

Turbo Booster also claims an efficient, intuitive, and attractive interface, and that's certainly no stretch; the simple dialog is functionally appealing, even elegant, with a few controls, a … Read more

Portable applications give so much and take so little; they pack powerful, useful programs in compact, efficient packages that are totally portable and self initializing. You can carry a bunch of them around in your pocket like a total software tool kit on a USB drive. They're quick and efficient operators, and they're often free, too. PortableApps' uTorrent is just such a program. It's a free, portable BitTorrent client that nevertheless includes most features common to peer-to-peer utilities, such as bandwidth prioritization, scheduling options, autodownloading of RSS feeds, and decentralized tracking through Mainline DHT. It typically uses … Read more

Months after Verizon Communications began issuing warnings to accused file sharers, the company has acknowledged that multiple offenses could result in a service interruption.

"We've cut some people off," Verizon Online spokeswoman Bobbi Henson told CNET. "We do reserve the right to discontinue service. But we don't throttle bandwidth like Comcast was doing. Verizon does not have bandwidth caps."

What this means is that Verizon, one of the country's biggest broadband providers, appears to have adopted an approach to illegal file sharing that sounds very similar to one promoted and pushed heavily by … Read more

As we close the book on 2009 and ready for 2010, a legal settlement takes us back to 2007 and 2008, when Comcast got into trouble with customers and the feds for throttling peer-to-peer traffic on its network.

Comcast has agreed to pay $16 million to end to a class action lawsuit alleging the broadband provider promised and advertised certain download and upload speeds, but blocked peer-to-peer traffic on its high-speed Internet network.

"Comcast denies these claims, but has revised its management of P2P and is settling to avoid the burden and cost of further litigation," according to … Read more

The PortableApps Suite is a storehouse and management system for "portable" versions of some of the most popular freeware around. That collection used to be limited only to open-source programs. But on Wednesday it started making portable versions of closed-source freeware to users. The first batch of portable freeware includes Web browser Google Chrome, VoIP client Skype, BitTorrent client uTorrent, antispyware tool SpyDLLRemover, and three others at the time of writing. The new portable versions of these programs work both independently and in tandem with the PortableApps suite.

In a statement published on its Web site, PortableApps.com … Read more

Movie Torrent is a basic peer-to-peer file-sharing client that lets users download a variety of different media types. Although the program works just fine, expect to seek additional instruction if you're not already familiar with torrents.

The program's interface is basic, with buttons and drop-down menus at the top that allow access to the program's features. Things aren't particularly intuitive, and users who are new to torrent downloading will likely be confused. In fact, although the program's Web site states that users can search for torrents, we couldn't locate the search feature, leaving us … Read more

File-sharing sites haven't had a great year, especially in court, but on Wednesday they received a smidgen of good news.

The Motion Picture Association of America asked a federal court to rule that Isohunt was liable for copyright violations committed by its users, but the judge in the case was unconvinced. In his order, U.S. District Court Judge Stephen Wilson said the studios had yet to prove that the Isohunt's users had broken U.S. law.

Lawyers for the MPAA, the trade group representing the six major Hollywood film studios, are trying to convince the judge that … Read more