Accordingto a press release, more than 20 million people are now accessing the filesharing service via theBitTorrent mainline and the µTorrent service. More than 400,000 clients aredownloaded now every day.
“This is an exciting day for ourteam. Our vision is to build a complete technology ecosystem comprised ofsoftware, content and devices, designed to connect modern content creators witha massive digital audience,” said Eric Klinker, CEO at BitTorrent. “Thismilestone highlights the size of our user base and the power of our software.”
Foundedin 2004, BitTorrent maintains the BitTorrent protocol, which is considered tobe most popular file sharing technology for large files in use today. The protocolhas consistently been named as one of the major consumers of Internet bandwidthwith estimates ranging from about 30% to 60%. Several carriers are said to haveestablished bandwidth throttling technology that especially targets BitTorrentand slows down file sharing processes.
Overthe past five years, BitTorrent users have been targeted by movie and musicindustry organizations for copyright violations. In 2010 alone, 20,000 userswere sued by the the U.S. Copyright Group, while the Recording IndustryAssociation of America is estimated to have sued a total of more than 30,000BitTorrent users.