Through the copyright wars, BitTorrent gave the World Wide Web new capabilities to make file sharing easier, whether legally or illegally. Although “BitTorrent” is a word often associated with piracy, BitTorrent has cleared all legal requirements that would prevent the company from involving in illegal distribution of contents. Moreover, BitTorrent can focus on how to deliver the best file-sharing technology.
Both BitTorrent and μTorrent, which is another peer-to-peer sharing protocol owned by BitTorrent Inc., have active users reaching as many as 150 million per month. Despite the shutdown of BT Junkie, a fellow torrent search engine, BitTorrent is expected to keep on growing, especially that new markets are opening for the company. Among the ventures BitTorrent is exploring include “cloud storage” and content live streaming.
According to Shahi Ghanem, BitTorrent’s Chief Strategy Officer, the company is going through lengths just to make sure that it abides by the law in all respects. Legislation may be passed in regard to protection of intellectual property rights but BitTiorrent is not fazed at all. BitTorrent believes that legislations have little effect or no effect at all on the company since it is a technology company.
A huge portion of BitTorrent’s revenue comes from licensing its software. Other revenues come from advertising. Since moving into the business of content distribution in the mid-2000s, BitTorrent has become one of the world’s largest licensees of Hollywood content. In fact, BitTorrent almost looked like a media company than a technology company.
BitTorrent soon realized that distributing contents was not viable for the company. By 2008, BitTorrent left the distribution business and focused on the development of the BitTorrent protocol. BitTorrent protocol is currently accounting for 20% of the total internet bandwidth usage. In terms of users, BitTorrent and μTorrent account for 80% of the market share.