BitTorrent recently announced that the company had open sourced uTP, the BitTorrent protocol powering the latest release of uTorrent. According to the company, they open sourced the code – available here, if you’re interested – in the hopes of extending its adoption within the BitTorrent ecosystem. As mentioned last fall, the new uTP platform is designed to be more network friendly, measuring the time a packet takes to get from peer A to peer B, detecting problems, then throttling speed (usually upload) to help compensate. Still, according to Torrent Freak, there are early hiccups, and users have “seen their speeds decrease dramatically” with the new protocol.

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LaCie has introduced their network based, RAID 0 or 1 Network Space MAX featuring up 4 terabytes of space divided between the two hard drives inside of the (now typical) LaCie black monolithic structure.

The Network Space MAX is designed for ultimate usability. LaCie Network Assistant software helps you set up the product within a few minutes. It provides the best user experience for quick detection and access to the Network Space MAX. LaCie’s user-friendly dashboard allows you to easily manage files, backups, private accounts, and download torrents.

Offering two large-capacity hard drives – with up to 4TB storage space – Network Space MAX can be configured in RAID 1, which automatically mirrors disks so that all your important files are redundantly backed up and secure.

It also includes LaCie’s well received widget based user interface for easy set-up and storage management.

The LaCie Network Space MAX starts in 2TB capacity through the LaCie Online Store, LaCie Corner and LaCie Reseller+ starting at $279.99. For more product information, visit LaCie.com.

The Pirate Bay crew had already essentially been disbanded, the site dissected, and its remnants sold to a somewhat dubious company that simply wants to turn the site’s visitors into little P2P cash cows.

So an announcement today over at the official Pirate Bay blog that they’re officially shutting down the site’s tracker probably surprises nobody. According to the site, they’re not shutting the site down however – they’ll still annoy the entertainment industry by going trackerless and using the Distributed Hash Table (DHT) for file distribution:

The development of DHT has reached a stage where a tracker is no longer needed to use a torrent. DHT (combined with PEX) is highly effective in finding peers without the need for a centralized service….

Now that the decentralized system for finding peers is so well developed, TPB has decided that there is no need to run a tracker anymore, so it will remain down! It’s the end of an era, but the era is no longer up2date.

According to the site, with the use of a more decentralized system of handling tracking (DHT+PEX) and distributions of torrent files (Magnet Links), downtime and outages should be less of a problem. According to a follow up report at Torrent Freak, the site owners are apparently trying to convince other BitTorrent portals to ditch torrents entirely and decentralize, perpetuating the entertainment industry’s game of whack a mole. Sweden’s The Legal has more on how this impacts the site founders’ court case.

Link to the original article…