BitTorrent Inc. just announced that it will soon release a brand new BitTorrent client that integrates search, downloads and playback on multiple devices. With the new project BitTorrent Inc. is following in the footsteps of its main competitor Vuze and their already established all-in-one application.

The new application is part of project Chrysalis and a new ecosystem of BitTorrent certified products. Through the application users can search for files that are shared on BitTorrent, download these files, and play them directly on their computers, TV or mobiles devices. Everything is bundled into one system and downloaders don’t have to worry about conversion, codecs or file-formats.

“Today’s generation of consumer electronics devices are more powerful than ever before, but they still lack cohesiveness and ease of use for content playback,” BitTorrent’s chief strategist Shahi Ghanem said. “Consumers shouldn’t need to differentiate between codecs, file formats, bit rates, and other technology jargon. Content playback should just work – regardless of content type or source.”

The new application is expected to go live towards the end of the first quarter of 2011 and will replace the mainline BitTorrent client. uTorrent, the flagship of BitTorrent Inc and the source of the current mainline client, keeps its minimal footprint and will continue to be developed separately.

The Chrysalis project is an effort to keep more users on board than is currently the case. BitTorrent Inc. revealed earlier this week that uTorrent and the mainline client are downloaded 400,000 times a day, but a relatively small percentage of these new downloads result in recurring users due to the perceived complexity of the applications.

In addition to launching the all-in-one client, BitTorrent Inc. will start partnerships with makers of consumer electronics such as TVs, tablets and mobile phones to display a “BitTorrent Certified” logo. For this task the company signed up with Taiwan’s Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) who previously helped DivX with their certification program.

“Partnering with BitTorrent to create the standards for a new generation of BitTorrent Certified chips, designs and devices fits perfectly with ITRI’s mission of accelerating the development of industry-enabling strategies and will certainly drive growth for Taiwan’s domestic technology industry,” ITRI’s Vice President Cheng-Wen Wu said.

TorrentFreak was assured that all the new software and standards will be fully compatible with the .torrent format as we know it now. For existing users little will change, but with the new system BitTorrent hopes to further expand the user base of its software while making it easier for existing users to play downloaded files on different devices.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

Like most file-hosting services, RapidShare hosts a wide range of movies, music and software files that are distributed without the consent of the rightsholders. This situation has caused the company to be dragged to court on multiple occasions, but the file-hoster has often come out the winner.

In May last year a US court already ruled that RapidShare is not guilty of copyright infringement, and in the same month a German court ruled that company could not be held liable for acts of copyright infringement committed by its users.

Today, RapidShare booked another major win against a copyright holder. In the appeal of their case against game distributor Atari, the Higher Regional Court of Düsseldorf acknowledged that RapidShare already takes sufficient measures against copyright infringement.

Atari had asked for additional tools to prevent their game “Alone in the Dark” from being downloaded from RapidShare. One of the suggestions they made was a filtering mechanism that would search RapidShare’s database for keywords and delete files that would match.

The Court sided with RapidShare’s stance that such a measure would be unreasonable, since it would create a risk of also deleting legal files that match the same keywords. Other measures such as manual verification of ‘suspect’ files and the removal of links on third party search engines were also deemed to be impossible, unreasonable or pointless.

RapidShare’s lawyer and spokesman Daniel Raimer is pleased with the Court’s decision and said: “The ruling demonstrates once again that RapidShare is operating a fully legal range and has taken measures against the misuse of its service which go beyond the level that is legally required. We are confident that copyright holders will gradually come to accept this conclusion.“

The successes of RapidShare in Germany and abroad set a favorable precedent for other cyberlocker sites and file-sharing platforms, including BitTorrent sites. Together with RapidShare’s lobbying efforts in Washington the verdicts add to the legitimacy of such online file-sharing services.

Article from: TorrentFreak.