BitTorrent, also referred to as simply torrent, is a communication protocol for peer-to-peer file sharing (P2P), which enables users to distribute data and electronic files over the Internet in a decentralized manner. The protocol is developed and maintained by Rainberry, Inc., and was first released in 2001.
MediaDefender, Inc. was a company that fought copyright infringement that offered services designed to prevent alleged copyright infringement using peer-to-peer distribution. They used unusual tactics such as flooding peer-to-peer networks with decoy files that tie up users' computers and bandwidth. MediaDefender was based in Los Angeles, California in the United States. As of March 2007, the company had approximately 60 employees and used 2,000 servers hosted in California with contracts for 9 Gbit/s of bandwidth.
The Bescherming Rechten Entertainment Industrie Nederland is a stichting in which the recording industry and movie studios of the Netherlands participate.
PeerGuardian is a free and open source program developed by Phoenix Labs (software). It is capable of blocking incoming and outgoing connections based on IP blacklists. The aim of its use was to block peers on the same torrent download from any visibility of your own peer connection using IP lists. The system is also capable of blocking custom ranges, depending upon user preferences.
The Pirate Bay is an online index of digital content of entertainment media and software. Founded in 2003 by Swedish think tank Piratbyrån, The Pirate Bay allows visitors to search, download, and contribute magnet links and torrent files, which facilitate peer-to-peer, file sharing among users of the BitTorrent protocol.
Slyck.com was a website that produced unique original file sharing news stories, shared aggregated technology news stories from the World Wide Web, and had a user forum.
This is a timeline of events in the history of networked file sharing.
isoHunt was an online torrent files index and repository, where visitors could browse, search, download or upload torrents of various digital content of mostly entertainment nature. The website was taken down in October 2013 as a result of a legal action from the MPAA; by the end of October 2013 however, two sites with content presumably mirrored from isohunt.com were reported in media. One of them – isohunt.to – became a de facto replacement of the original site. It is not associated in any way with the old staff or owners of the site, and is to be understood as a separate continuation.
Rainberry, Inc., formerly known as BitTorrent, Inc., is an American company responsible for μTorrent and BitTorrent Mainline. The company was founded on September 22, 2004 by Bram Cohen and Ashwin Navin. It was successful during the Great Recession under the leadership of CEO Eric Klinker. In 2018, the company was acquired by cryptocurrency startup TRON, and Bram Cohen left the company. In March 2022, the SEC charged Rainberry with fraud for selling cryptocurrencies Tronix (TRX) and BitTorrent (BTT) as unregistered securities.
Suprnova.org was a Slovenia-based website that distributed BitTorrent trackers for various music and video files, computer programs and games. Started in late 2002 by Andrej Preston and for a while considered the most popular BitTorrent search engine, Suprnova.org closed in late 2004 after legal threats. The site operators supported the development of the eXeem BitTorrent client software, deeming a fixed website too difficult to operate in the present legal climate. On 2 August 2007, the domain name was donated to The Pirate Bay, which relaunched the site on 21 August 2007.
ShareConnector was a popular index site for files on the eDonkey network. ShareConnector does not host any files; instead, the links it contains are accessible through an eDonkey (ed2k) network. It was taken down by an anti-piracy foundation on December 14, 2004 due to the suspicion of breach of copyright and trademark laws. The site came back online, on December 19, 2006. The mainpage was used from a backup taken on November 23, 2004 shortly before it was shut down. The forum userbase was restored from a backup taken on November 20 2004, however the posts database was started from scratch due a recent backup not being available.
Demonoid is a BitTorrent tracker and website founded in 2003 to facilitate file-sharing related discussion and provide a searchable index of torrent files. The site underwent intermittent periods of extended downtime in its history due to the occasional need to move the server, generally caused by cancellation of ISP service due to local political pressure.
The use of the BitTorrent protocol for the unauthorized sharing of copyrighted content generated a variety of novel legal issues. While the technology and related platforms are legal in many jurisdictions, law enforcement and prosecutorial agencies are attempting to address this avenue of copyright infringement. Notably, the use of BitTorrent in connection with copyrighted material may make the issuers of the BitTorrent file, link or metadata liable as an infringing party under some copyright laws. Similarly, the use of BitTorrent to procure illegal materials could potentially create liability for end users as an accomplice.
What.CD was a private, invitation-only music BitTorrent tracker and community launched in 2007. The site was shut down on 17 November 2016, after French authorities seized the site's servers.
The US Copyright Group (UCSG) is a business registered by the law firm Dunlap, Grubb & Weaver that also operates under the name SaveCinema.org. It is engaged in suing people in the U.S. who have allegedly used the P2P file sharing protocol BitTorrent to download certain movies.
Torrent poisoning is intentionally sharing corrupt data or data with misleading file names using the BitTorrent protocol. This practice of uploading fake torrents is sometimes carried out by anti-infringement organisations as an attempt to prevent the peer-to-peer (P2P) sharing of copyrighted content, and to gather the IP addresses of downloaders.
μTorrent, or uTorrent, is a proprietary adware BitTorrent client owned and developed by Rainberry, Inc. The "μ" in its name comes from the SI prefix "micro-", referring to the program's small memory footprint: the program was designed to use minimal computer resources while offering functionality comparable to larger BitTorrent clients such as Vuze or BitComet. μTorrent became controversial in 2015 when many users unknowingly accepted a default option during installation which also installed a cryptocurrency miner.
Twister is a decentralized, experimental peer-to-peer microblogging program which uses end-to-end encryption to safeguard communications. Based on BitTorrent- and Bitcoin-like protocols, it has been likened to a distributed version of Twitter.
YggTorrent is a French semi-private torrent directory and BitTorrent tracker created in 2017.
