uTorrent Adds "Featured Torrents" Ads — With No Opt Out (Yet) 399
wrekkuh writes "BitTorrent, Inc, the company who owns the freeware (but closed-source) BitTorrent client uTorrent, has announced that it will be updating its popular client with 'Featured Torrents.' In a post on uTorrent's forum, the company explained, 'This featured torrent space will be used to offer a variety of different types of content. We are working towards bringing you offers that are relevant to you. This means films, games, music, software ... basically anything that you will find interesting.' In the Q&A portion of their announcement, the company adds 'There is no way to turn in-client offers off.* We will pay attention to feedback, and may change this in the future.' (*The Plus version of the BitTorrent client does not include these ads)."
What's available for Bitttorrent clients nowadays? (Score:5, Interesting)
I dropped Azererus and Ares like a ton of bricks when they pulled this. Sad, because uTorrent was always awesome.
What alternatives do you suggest?
Showing ads to thieves (Score:3, Interesting)
Interesting business model.
Re:What's available for Bitttorrent clients nowada (Score:4, Interesting)
have they fixed the RSS feed filtering? because uTorrent was the ultimate killer for that one feature for ever.
I can point at an RSS feed and give it a list of filters to match, then it only downloads those in the filter stream PLUS checks to see if it already downloaded that file and skips it if it did.
Re:Not surprised (Score:4, Interesting)
I love Slashdot, but all the comments below are pretty standard bashing we've come to expect. My first thought was actually another direction: This could actually provide more legitimacy to the protocol. Any company showing you can use the medium for legal, profit-generating activities is a Good Thing in my book. Doubly so if if it's the founders.
Re:It is always the same story (Score:3, Interesting)
Sometimes the developers want to move out the the parents basement, sometime the parents want them out. They have devoted a considerable amount of time developing a product and so attempt to monetize it. Seems reasonable to me.
The lazy will stay, those willing to pay will stay and although you don't want extra services that have to be paid for the existing services are quite poor and so success in that market is quite possible and those that want that will stay.
I'm thinking they might not miss you when you go.
ps. I left long since, but it doesn't preclude understanding.
Re:Surprise (Score:5, Interesting)
I had an odd experience on the uTorrent forums recently.
I uploaded my own books to some torrent sites, and posted links to them. From the people on Demonoid, Pirate Bay, ISOHunt, and 4Chan, I got friendly and encouraging replies.
When I finally got around to uploading my Creative Commons licensed book to usenet, and then noted this on a popular usenet index, it was also deleted as spam.
Apparently, this was because it was a dupe. Sure enough I did a search and there it was. The previous poster beat me to it by several weeks. The best part was that the copy that was already uploaded was better than mine. It included additional information and metadata (including a blurb!) that made it more useful to import into ebook libraries.
Fucking pirates, and their continually superior products.