UK Launches Attack Against Torrent Sites

From Torrent Freak:

The newly founded Intellectual Property Crime Unit of the City of London Police has scored its first victories. Several domain names of major torrent sites have been suspended by their registrars following an urgent request from the unit. SumoTorrent and MisterTorrent lost control over their domains and ExtraTorrent had its .com domain suspended. Not all registrars are caving in that easily though, as easyDNS is refusing to comply and sees the requests as abuse of power.

In the City of London, by the way, corporations are allowed to vote.  

BitTorrent: Secure Chat App on the Way?

From CNET:

The aftermath of the NSA spying revelations has people and companies scrambling for ways to create more secure communications, which has led BitTorrent to build a instant-message chat client that follows the torrenting principle of decentralized data transfer.

The first release of BitTorrent Chat is a private alpha, meaning you have to go to the BitTorrent Chat sign-up page to get an invite, which will take you to a download.  The client uses the concept of decentralized technology that's at the heart of torrents to run instant messages between people . . . 

BitTorrent Launches Livestreaming Platform

From TorrentFreak:

After years of development BitTorrent has now released its live streaming service to the public. BitTorrent inventor Bram Cohen is one of the main developers of the new protocol which he expects to revolutionize online streaming. BitTorrent Inc. sees its BitTorrent Live product as the ultimate tool for creators to reach an audience of millions with minimal bandwidth costs. . . .

After years of development BitTorrent Live launches to the public today, allowing people to stream content via BitTorrent with minimal delays. Unlike traditional live streams, reliability improves as more people tune in.