Boxopus pushes torrent downloads directly to your Dropbox, skips desktop clients

A new service called Boxopus has come up with an interesting way of bridging the worlds of BitTorrent and cloud storage, offering a way for people to cue up torrent downloads and have them automatically added to their Dropbox folders, all without even needing to install a torrent client on your computer.


Boxopus uses the Dropbox API, which means you can link both services using your Dropbox credentials, without fear of giving access to other files stored in your account. Once that step is done you can add as many torrents as you like through the Boxopus website and the latter will then take care of the downloading. All files are automatically sent to a special folder within your Dropbox account and synced across devices.

Of course, if you don’t want the same file downloaded on multiple computers, you can use Dropbox’s selective sync feature to leave torrent downloads in the cloud, accessing or downloading them as needed.

One of the main benefits to users is that they can add torrents to their Dropbox from work, school or on the road.TorrentFreak also notes that these downloads are anonymous, as Boxopus takes care of the downloading, although you are still required to enter your email when registering to the service.
Another thing worth highlighting is that the service aims to make torrent downloads easier for novice users with a one-click Boxopus download button that can be integrated into websites. TorrentReactor, Fulldls.com, Vertor.com, and Torrentzap.com have already added this option, according to TorrentFreak.
But of course there are several downsides as well, starting with the fact that free Dropbox users only get 2GB of space out of the box — you can bump that to over 10GB without spending a dime but there’s some work involved. Downloading generally takes a bit longer too because Dropbox sync speeds are limited. And of course there’s the question of whether Dropbox will block the service when pressed over piracy concerns.
Boxopus is completely free and unlimited during beta testing stage but the company plans to rollout paid subscriptions at some point in the future, imposing limits on free subscriptions.
Source : http://techspot.com

BitTorrent launches free personal file-swapping service

BitTorrent just released a new cloud storage and file-sharing service that's set to rival YouSendIt, MegaUpload and the like. Simply called "Share", the new service combines BitTorrent peer-to-peer technology with Amazon's EC2 and S3 to store any type of file in the cloud and share it with a private group of people -- as opposed to creating a .torrent file for the public in general -- without size restrictions or fees.

For now the service is still an early Alpha phase, but the company has already released a stand-alone Share client for Windows and integrated it into the non-stable build of uTorrent for the Mac. To share files users are required to fill out "to" and "from" email addresses, and drag files or folders to the app to start uploading. Your recipients will then receive an email notifying them that they have files available to download. You can also connect with Facebook and create a sharing group based on your friend lists at the social network.

According to GigaOM, files are initially uploaded to Amazon's servers to provide caching, but they are also shared via a peer-to-peer connection as long as someone with the full file is online. As soon as a file is sufficiently shared by peers it is taken off the cloud, relying only on BitTorrent to cut hosting costs.

Here are some key features as detailed by BitTorrent in a recent blog post:

No Limits: With no limits on number of sends, file size/quality, or number of recipients, users may send HD videos, high-res photo collections, and other oversized files – with no fees.

Ultra Fast Downloads: Share is built on top of an innovative file-sharing technology that is already used by over 100m people every month. Friends may now download the biggest files without the endless wait.

Private: Choose exactly who may access shared files. Set up groups to share with friends, family and co-workers, or just send a file to one person.

Social and Fun: Friends may comment on the files in real-time.

The new service will be integrated into all BitTorrent and µTorrent software clients after its alpha testing phase.

Some facts about BitTorrent

Torrenting is perhaps one of the favorite ways for internet users to download copyrighted material for free. It involves downloading a .torrent file and loading it into a torrent program, which then finds users around the internet (thanks to "trackers") who have the necessary files stored on their computers. These "peers" then serve the files to the downloaders without a middle-man server, hence the term peer-to-peer networking.

While they can be used legitimately, torrents are largely used for piracy. As of the time of writing, popular torrent search engine IsoHunt has indexed 8.25 million torrents with a combined size of 13,635 TB (or 13.6 petabytes). With 33.58 million connected peers, this gives a rough average of 4 peers per torrent. This also means the average size of a torrent indexed on IsoHunt is 1.64 GB.

Note: When talking about torrent file sizes, we're not referring to the actual .torrent file size, which is usually a few kilobytes, but rather to the size of the files the torrent enables you do download from peers.

Here's where it starts to get interesting. Public torrent aggregator Torrentz is currently indexing a larger 11.70 million torrents (without duplicates) across 33 domains, which provides for a good statistical base.

Just 9% of US Internet users were P2P music pirates in Q4 2010

In late October 2010, LimeWire closed down its file sharing services, months after a federal judge sided with the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and found the P2P service liable for copyright infringement. The NPD Group believes this is one of the primary factors responsible for a recent decline in P2P use for pirating music, based on 5,549 January 2011 surveys completed by US consumers.

The percentage of the US Internet population using a P2P file-sharing service to download music fell from a high of 16 percent in Q4 2007 to just 9 percent in Q4 2010, which is when LimeWire ceased its file-sharing operations. The average number of music files downloaded from P2P networks also declined from 35 tracks per person in Q4 2007 to just 18 tracks in Q4 2010. Nevertheless, the number of downloads still range from just one or two tracks to hundreds. NPD estimates there were 28 million P2P users downloading music in Q4 2007, compared to just 16 million in Q4 2010.

Limewire was used by 56 percent of those using P2P services to download music in Q3 2010, but fell to just 32 percent in Q4 2010, since the P2P service was only available through October, according to NPD's Music Acquisition Monitor. At the same time, other P2P service usage rose. FrostWire, a popular alternative to LimeWire, was used by just 10 percent of those sharing music files via P2P in Q3 2010, but this number increased to 21 percent in Q4 2010. The BitTorrent client µTorrent increased from 8 percent usage to 12 percent in the same time period.

"Limewire was so popular for music file trading, and for so long, that its closure has had a powerful and immediate effect on the number of people downloading music files from peer-to-peer services and curtailed the amount being swapped," Russ Crupnick, entertainment industry analyst for NPD, said in a statement. "In the past, we've noted that hard-core peer-to-peer users would quickly move to other Web sites that offered illegal music file sharing. It will be interesting to see if services like FrostWire and BitTorrent take up the slack left by LimeWire, or if peer-to-peer music downloaders instead move on to other modes of acquiring or listening to music."