Dmitriy Spichak

qBittorrent is a native application written in C++. It uses Boost, Qt 5 toolkit, and the libtorrent-rasterbar library (for the torrent back-end). Its optional search engine is written in Python.

A screenshot of qBittorrent v4.3.9 running on Arch Linux

qBittorrent was originally developed in March 2006 by Christophe Dumez. It is currently developed by contributors worldwide and is funded through donations, led by Sledgehammer999 from Greece, who became project maintainer in June 2013.

Along with the 4.0.0 release a new logo for the project was unveiled.

Some of the features present in qBittorrent include:

• Bandwidth scheduler
• Bind all traffic to a specific interface
• Control over torrents, trackers, and peers (Torrents queueing and prioritizing and Torrent content selection and prioritizing
• DHT, PEX, encrypted connections, LPD, UPnP, NAT-PMP port forwarding support, uTP, magnet links, private torrents
• IP filtering: file types eMule dat, or PeerGuardian
• IPv6 support
• Integrated RSS feed reader (with advanced download filters) and downloader
• Integrated torrent search engine (Simultaneous search in many Torrent search sites and Category-specific search requests (e.g. Books, Music, Software))
• Remote control through Secure Web User Interface
• Sequential downloading (Download in order)
• Super-seeding option
• Torrent creation tool
• Torrent queuing, filtering, and prioritizing
• Unicode support, available in about 70 languages

qBittorrent is cross-platform, available on many operating systems, including: FreeBSD, Linux, macOS, OS/2 (including ArcaOS and eComStation), Windows.

As of July 2017, SourceForge statistics indicate that the most popular qBittorrent version of all supported platforms, 81% of downloads were for Windows computers.

As of May 2020, FossHub statistics indicate qBittorrent as the second most downloaded software with over 75 million downloads.

Packages for different Linux distributions are available, though most are provided through official channels via various distributions.

In 2012, Ghacks suggested qBittorrent as a great alternative to uTorrent, for anybody put off by recent controversial ad and bundleware changes made to uTorrent.

Vuze is written in Java, and uses the Azureus Engine. In addition to downloading data linked to .torrent files, Azureus allows users to view, publish and share original DVD and HD quality video content. Content is presented through channels and categories containing TV shows, music videos, movies, video games, series and others. Additionally, if users prefer to publish their original content, they may earn money from it.

Azureus was first released in June 2003 at SourceForge.net, mostly to experiment with the Standard Widget Toolkit from Eclipse. It later became one of the most popular BitTorrent clients. The Azureus software was released under the GNU General Public License, and remains as a free software application. It was among the most popular BitTorrent clients. However, the Vuze software added in more recent versions is proprietary and users are required to accept these more restrictive license terms.

Vuze (classic UI) statistics page

Vuze is the only client that makes clearnet torrents available on I2P and vice versa. It has a plugin that connects to the I2P network. If the user adds a torrent from I2P, it will be seeded on both I2P and the clearnet, and if a user adds a torrent from the clearnet, it will be seeded on both the clearnet and I2P. For this reason, torrents previously published only on I2P are made available to the entire Internet, and users of I2P can download any torrent on the Internet while maintaining the anonymity of I2P.

Azureus was first released in June 2003 at SourceForge.net. The blue poison dart frog (Dendrobates azureus) was chosen as the logo and name of the brand by co-creator Tyler Pitchford. This choice was due to Latin names of poison dart frogs being used as codenames for his development projects.

In 2006 Vuze was released as an attempt to transform the client into a "social" client by a group of the original developers forming Azureus Inc., shortly to be renamed Vuze, Inc. A Vuze-free version of Azureus was released along with Vuze during the beta period. The releases used version numbers 3.0, while the Vuze-free versions continued with the 2.5 release numbers. In addition, some developers voiced opposition to the idea of completely transforming the client.[citation needed] Starting with an unknown version, Vuze was coupled with Azureus. Soon after, "NoVuze" modified versions were released on The Pirate Bay, and as of September 15, 2008, are available for versions up to 3.1.1.0. On June 16, 2008, the developers of Azureus/Vuze decided to stop releasing versions named Azureus, and complete the name change with the release of version 3.1. The client engine however, remains unchanged as Azureus.

Azureus

Up to version 2.5.0.4, Azureus was distributed under the GNU General Public License (GPL); beginning with the version 3 distribution, the license presented upon installation changed. While it still states that the "Azureus Application" is available under the GPL, completing installation requires the user to agree to the terms of the "Vuze Platform," which include restrictions on use, reverse-engineering, and sublicensing. As with many similar licenses, the Azureus licence includes a prohibition on use of the software by people "under the age of 18." Allegedly, the TOS only applies to the website, vuze.com, and not the software, however the actual TOS include the application as part of the platforms.

Vuze was acquired by Spigot Inc in December 2010.

The pace of development slowed in early 2017. As of July 2021, the latest entry in the development blog is dated April 2017 and the latest code change is dated February 2018.

Vuze is categorized as adware by Softpedia, due to its inclusion of a Vuze Toolbar for web browsers. Vuze changes or offers to change home page and search and to install a promotional component not necessary for the program to function. However, all adware can be declined by using a custom installation. In February 2010, What.CD and Waffles.fm, two large music sharing sites at the time, decided to ban the use of Vuze.

However, Vuze cites its Softpedia Editor's pick award, having received an editor score of 4 out of 5 from two reviews: One on 23 November 2005 and another on 7 February 2012.

Vuze includes built-in support for Tor, an anonymity network. The onion routers are run by volunteers using their own bandwidth at their own cost. Due to the high bandwidth usage caused by the BitTorrent protocol, it is considered impolite and inappropriate by Tor community members to use the Tor network for BitTorrent transfers. By default, the Tor exit policy blocks the standard BitTorrent ports.

It also includes I2P support via an official plugin. In contrast to Tor, I2P is built for P2P traffic and encourages its use.

The BitComet program is a multi-threaded multi-protocol hybrid download manager and BitTorrent peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing application. It supports simultaneous download tasks. To complete a particular download, it can draw parts of files from many sources across different P2P and client–server protocols.

BitComet's main features include an embedded Internet Explorer window to let users search for torrents. Along with the features typical of contemporary BitTorrent clients, it supports UPnP gateway configuration, bandwidth scheduling, Webseeding, selecting only certain files for download inside a torrent package, NAT traversal (removed in v.1.03), Peer Exchange (in older versions, using a proprietary protocol and starting with v.1.19 also by using the Extension Protocol, implementing a PEX mechanism compatible with μTorrent / Mainline PEX), Initial-Seeding (Super-Seeding) and support for Magnet Links.

When downloading, BitComet provides the option to prioritize the first and last portions of media files so that files may be previewed before they are completely downloaded.

It also has a "Preview Download Mode" in which all pieces of the torrent will be, basically, downloaded sequentially thus allowing the user to play a media file while downloading (provided that the downloading speed and piece availability stay ahead of playing bitrate).

BitComet also allows users to share their .torrent files, on a searchable P2P network, with other BitComet users through the torrent sharing feature, named "Torrent Share" in previous versions and renamed to "Torrent Exchange" since v.1.17.[9] BitComet uses the Kademlia (mainline) DHT to operate even when the tracker is offline. BitComet is capable of downloading files over HTTP and FTP as well as bittorrent, and it includes download plugins for Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Maxthon.

BitComet FLV Player version 1.3

An optional plugin is available to connect to the eD2K network. The plugin is a modified version of the GPL eMule program. When installed, it connects automatically to a server.

The software includes an application to play Flash Video files (.flv and .swf files).

In February 2011, BitComet launched an anonymous downloading feature to its VIP customers. Using this feature, downloads will be handled by BitComet VIP servers and the real IP address of the user will be hidden.

BitComet.com offers a BitTorrent tracker available for download from the official site. The FLV player program can also be downloaded separately and used independently of the BitComet software.

The search site is google.atcomet.com

Since version 0.86 BitComet includes discussion and stat-tracking features which send information about torrents to the Bitcomet.com servers, including the torrent hash.

During version 0.60, BitComet received bad publicity because its implementation of the DHT feature, which was new at the time, could be exploited to ignore the private flag of a tracker. This allowed users to avoid download and upload ratio restrictions, which are common on private trackers. Some private trackers responded to this by blacklisting version 0.60. BitComet developer RnySmile reverted the client back to version 0.59 in response to the blacklisting.

The DHT exploit was fixed in version 0.61.

Starting with version 0.85 (from early 2007), BitComet added a non-standard option to its torrent maker that ensures that no two data files in a multi-file torrent occupy the same BitTorrent "piece." To accomplish this, BitComet includes in the torrent a collection of empty "padding" files which houses the remainder of each file's last "piece". While these files are transparent to BitComet users, they damage the performance of other clients, because peers must devote resources and bandwidth to the padding files, with no benefit to the non-BitComet users. These files can constitute up to 10% of the total data transferred, creating a substantial drain on the swarm. BitComet developers added this feature to allow support of a feature called Long-Term Seeding in which the BitComet client can download files from other BitComet clients who have an identical file but not from the same torrent. It also allows the downloading of individual files from other non torrent sources like ED2K links. The addition of the padding file ensures that a complete version of the file can be obtained rather than being unable to complete the relevant file or last "piece"

Creation of padding files has been enabled by default since version 0.85, and as of version 1.36 is still enabled by default.

The download site FileHippo ceased carrying new versions of BitComet in April 2008, with this announcement.

As of April 2008 FileHippo will no longer be updating BitComet. As they have copied the FileHippo site text, files, images and update checker and are passing it off as original work. We recommend you use a different more reputable torrent client such as uTorrent.

This occurred after FileHippo reportedly noticed that the design and code of the AppHit.com site was very similar with the one FileHippo used, copying not only icons, but text from FileHippo's website and FileHippo's own original update checking software.

Because AppHit and BitComet were contractual partners, FileHippo decided to stop carrying BitComet. BitComet has since terminated the partnership, by 2015 FileHippo made BitComet available once more.

According to the official BitTorrent specification, 'All strings in a .torrent file that contains text must be UTF-8 encoded'. When generating torrents on non-Latin character systems such as Chinese or Japanese, BitComet versions prior to 1.20 encoded the files' names and paths using the Windows Chinese/Japanese code page, and stored a UTF-8 version in a non-standard attribute. Starting with the March 2010 release of version 1.20, BitComet's torrent format now conforms to the standard.

Deluge uses a front and back end architecture where libtorrent, a software library written in C++ which provides the application's networking logic, is connected to one of various front ends including a text console, the web interface and a graphical desktop interface using GTK through the project's own Python bindings.

Deluge is released under the terms of the GPL-3.0-or-later license.

Deluge aims to be a lightweight, secure, and feature-rich client. To help achieve this, most of its features are part of plugin modules which were written by various developers.

Starting with version 1.0, Deluge separated its core from its interface, running it instead in a daemon (server/service), allowing users to remotely manage the application over the web. Deluge has supported magnet links since version 1.1.0 released on January 2009.

Deluge was started by two members of ubuntuforums.org, Zach Tibbitts and Alon Zakai, who previously hosted and maintained the project at Google Code, but who subsequently moved it to its own website.

Older version of Deluge

In its first stages, Deluge was originally titled gTorrent, to reflect that it was targeted for the GNOME desktop environment. When the first version was released on September 25, 2006, it was renamed to Deluge due to an existing project named gtorrent on SourceForge, in addition to the fact that it was finally coded to work not only on GNOME but on any platform which could support GTK.

The 0.5.x release marked a complete rewrite from the 0.4.x code branch. The 0.5.x branch added support for encryption, peer exchange, binary prefix, and UPnP.

Nearing the time of the 0.5.1 release, the two original developers effectively left the project, leaving Rory Mobley and Andrew "andar" Resch to continue Deluge's development.

Version 0.5.4.1 saw support for both Mac OS X (via MacPorts) and Windows being introduced.

Around this time, Deluge became notable for its resistance to Comcast's bandwidth throttling without a change in code, while clients like Vuze (Azureus) and μTorrent had to borrow the method implemented by Deluge.

From version 1.1.1 through version 1.1.3, Windows installers were unavailable due to the Windows packager leaving the project. Windows installers again have become and remain unavailable since the move to GTK3 in 2019.

Following 1.1.3, packages for all non-Windows operating systems are no longer provided by the developers; instead, source tars and community provided packages were released.

In 1999, the group claimed to have released over 6,000 titles a year. RNS occasionally used the tagline "Rabid Neurosis - Spread The Epidemic." RNS were best known for releasing highly anticipated albums by hip hop, pop, rock and dance artists weeks and sometimes months before their official release date. RNS is known to have greatly contributed to the mp3 scene.

Their last release was Fall Out Boy's Infinity on High on January 19, 2007.

On September 9, 2009, four members of the defunct group were indicted by the United States Department of Justice for conspiracy to commit copyright infringement. They included Adil R. Cassim (who used the handle 'Kali' and later 'Blazini'), Matthew D. Chow ('rl'), Bennie L. Glover ('adeg') and Edward L. Mohan II ('MistaEd'). Adil Cassim took over leadership of the group in 2000 after the departure of the former leader 'Al_Capone', and had previously been a member of other mp3 warez groups HNA and RPB before they merged with RNS.

On March 19, 2010, Matthew Chow, identified as a member of the group, was found not guilty of conspiracy to commit criminal infringement. Federal authorities charged Chow with a single count of conspiracy to commit copyright infringement, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Of the five other members of RNS, Adil Cassim of California was also found not guilty. Four other RNS members pleaded guilty to copyright infringement.

Kelu Chao (Chinese: 趙克露) is a Taiwanese American journalist at the Voice of America (VOA). She is acting interim CEO of the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), appointed on January 20, 2021.

Kelu Chao was born in Taiwan and studied in Zhongshan Girls' High School (Chinese: 中山女高) there. Her father, Chao Ting-chun, was vice president of one of Taiwan's oldest newspapers, the Central Daily News.

She moved to the U.S. after graduating from the Journalism Department of National Chengchi University in 1975.

She has a master's degree from Kent State University in the United States.

Chao has worked for more than 40 years at VOA.

She was the VOA's first Language Programming Director from 2001 to 2007. She also worked as a VOA editor, VOA's Mandarin Service Chief, VOA's East Asia Division Director, VOA's Hong Kong Bureau Chief, a field reporter and radio announcer.

As a field reporter she reported for VOA on the period leading to the Tiananmen Square incident in Beijing in 1989.

Chao has received more than 30 awards as a VOA programmer, including from the New York Radio Festival and the Asian Broadcasting Union.

She was appointed on January 20, 2021 by President Joe Biden to lead the USAGM as interim CEO, replacing the Trump appointee Michael Pack. She is the first woman to hold the top position at USAGM.

The BBG was formed in 1994 with the passing of the International Broadcasting Act. The act established a bipartisan board that consisted of nine voting members, eight of whom were to be appointed by the President for a three–year term. The ninth was the Secretary of State, also a political appointee, who would serve as an ex officio board member for the duration of his or her term as secretary. At this point, BBG was considered a part of the U.S. Information Agency.

The first voting members of the BBG, confirmed on August 11, 1995, were David W. Burke, Ted Kaufman, Tom C. Korologos, Bette Bao Lord, Alberto J. Mora, Cheryl Halpern, Marc Nathanson, and Carl Spielvogel.

On October 1, 1999, the BBG was established as an independent agency by the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act. Despite this change, the act required that the BBG would remain under the supervision of the Inspector General of the State Department and the Foreign Service.

Since the formation of BBG, U.S. international broadcasting expanded greatly, particularly in the post 9/11 foreign policy focus on the Middle East. In 2002, BBG launched Radio Sawa, a 24/7 Arabic language radio network that broadcasts news and a mix of Western and Arabic music in the Middle East. According to the BBG website, Radio Sawa is "one of the most popular radio stations" where it's available on FM radio.

In 2004, Alhurra TV was created as a televised sister network to Radio Sawa and began broadcasting throughout the Middle East. Since its founding, it has established programs such as Al Youm (Today in English), a daily three-hour news program broadcast from five countries on three different continents; and Musawat (Equality in English), a program that focuses on women's issues and rights in the Arab world.

In 2005, the Middle East Broadcasting Network, Inc (MBN) was initiated to oversee Arabic broadcasts. Under MBN, Arabic broadcasting had expanded, including the 2009 establishment of the groundbreaking program Al Youm, expanding programming in Egypt, and covering the Iraq War, the first Egyptian democratic elections, Arab viewpoints on U.S. elections, and more.

Other networks were also expanded under the BBG. Voice of America worked with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty to launch Radio Farda, a Persian-language radio program targeting youth. In 2006, VOA initiated TV Ashna, a one-hour televised news broadcast, and Radio Deewa, a daily radio program of sports, music, and local and international news.

In a January 2015 interview with The New York Times, the then newly appointed CEO of the BBG, Andrew Lack, said "We are facing a number of challenges from entities like Russia Today which is out there pushing a point of view, the Islamic State in the Middle East and groups like Boko Haram." State Department Spokeswoman Jen Psaki clarified Lack's statement in her January 23 press briefing, saying "would the U.S. Government put those three in the same category? No, we wouldn’t. However, there are concerns...that Russia’s own independent media space is shrinking and the Kremlin continues to apply pressure on the few remaining outlets."

According to a 2016 fact-sheet, BBG had a weekly, unduplicated audience of 226 million people through television, radio, and internet media. BBG networks broadcast in 100 countries and 61 languages.

In 2018, the BBG changed its name to the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM).

Further information: Michael Pack § Tenure

On January 20, 2021, Taiwanese journalist Kelu Chao was appointed acting CEO of the USAGM.

USAGM is led by a single Chief Executive Officer appointed by the President of the United States and confirmed by the U.S. Senate. Until 2016, it was headed by a bi-partisan board with nine members; eight were appointed by the President with Senate confirmation, and the ninth member ex officio was the Secretary of State. By law, no more than four members could be from the same political party, in an effort to limit partisanship. The president designated one member (other than the Secretary of State) to serve as Chairman. The Board served as a "firewall" against political interference in the journalistic product.

But, upon the enactment of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017 on 23 December 2016 the agency was placed under the direction of a single CEO. The board, officially renamed as the International Broadcasting Advisory Board, was reduced to five members appointed by the President to serve in an advisory role. (Previously appointed board members in excess of five could continue to serve, but would not be replaced when their term expired.) Under the 2016 reform legislation, any new agency CEO is to be nominated by the U.S. president and confirmed by the U.S. Senate with authority to select key agency personnel. Former USAGM CEO John F. Lansing, who had been selected and approved in 2015 by the BBG Board holding a Democratic majority during the Obama administration, was not nominated by President Obama nor confirmed by the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate, as this was not required under previous legislation.

In June 2018, President Trump announced his intention to nominate documentary film producer Michael Pack to head the agency. He was confirmed by the Senate two years later, and served from June 5, 2020 until his resignation on January 20, 2021 at the request of newly-inaugurated President Joe Biden.

In October 2021, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) published a report about USAGM’s organization.

• Voice of America
• Current Time TV
• Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
• Radio Free Asia
• Middle East Broadcasting Networks
• Alhurra
• Radio Sawa
• Office of Cuba Broadcasting (Radio y Televisión Martí)

Newsroom at the Middle East Broadcasting Networks, Inc., a BBG grantee

The BBG solicited annual funding from Congress via a proposed budget summary, which can be found on the BBG website. The Board submitted an annual budget submission in which they lay out specific initiatives. Initiatives in 2011 included improving the global satellite distribution capacity, creating Radio Free Asia video programming and improving distribution of Voice of America content.

Announced in April 2011, the BBG received $10 million from Congress for the purpose of fighting Internet censorship. During the federal funding dispute for the fiscal year 2011, President Barack Obama sided with the BBG agreeing to language that the organization would "expand unrestricted access to information on the Internet." This work includes anti-censorship campaigns in China and other countries.

Their operating budget for fiscal year 2016 was US$752 million.

The agency has $2 million earmarked to the 2019–20 Hong Kong protests through the Open Technology Fund. This funding was frozen in June 2020 as China was preparing to introduce a new national security law for Hong Kong.

In February 2010, BBG Executive Director Jeff Trimble collaborated with the National Security Council to publish a VOA statement about Iran's jamming of international satellites. In an email to Foreign Policy magazine, BBG's Public Affairs Director responded to the controversy, stating "the BBG 'firewall' served to protect the integrity and credibility of our journalistic products. An official policy statement by a senior management official of the agency is not a journalistic product."

Later that year, Senator Tom Coburn held up the Obama administration's appointments of Michael P. Meehan and Dana Perino to the board, with the aim of drawing attention to the organization's perceived ineffectiveness, stating in an interview with Foreign Policy magazine: "The BBG is the most worthless organization in the federal government. It's full of people who know nothing about media or foreign policy." Senator Jim DeMint also attempted to use the nominations to force a hearing on the BBG after frustrations with a perceived lack of congressional oversight over the organization. Coburn had written an open letter to then–Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in August 2010 citing "longstanding concerns regarding transparency and effectiveness of our taxpayer funded international broadcasting agencies under the purview of the Broadcasting Board of Governors." Though a report on BBG was eventually given to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Coburn was ultimately unsuccessful in trying to block the appointments to the board.

In July 2016, the chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, Jeff Shell, was denied entry into Russia. Matt Novak, writing for the tech blog Gizmodo, referred to the BBG as the "propaganda arm" of the U.S. government and speculated that its alleged role in propagating propaganda on behalf of the U.S. government was a reason for the denied entry of Jeff Shell into Russia.

In 2018, The New York Times reported that the Agency had targeted Americans with Facebook ads for one of its outlets, which would violate the Smith–Mundt Act, a law "to protect Americans from domestic propaganda".

Fraunhofer l3enc was the first public software able to encode pulse-code modulation (PCM) .wav files to the MP3 format. The first public version was released on July 13, 1994. This commandline tool was shareware and limited to 112 kbit/s. It was available for MS-DOS, Linux, Solaris, SunOS, NeXTstep and IRIX. A licence that allowed full use (encoding up to 320 kbit/s) cost 350 Deutsche Mark, or about $250 (US).

Since the release in September 1995 of Fraunhofer WinPlay3, the first real-time MP3 software player, people were able to store and play back MP3 files on PCs. For full playback quality (stereo) one would have needed to meet the minimum requirements of a 486DX4/100 processor.

By the end of 1997 l3enc stopped being developed in favour of its successor MP3enc. Development of MP3enc stopped in late 1998 to favour development of a parallel branch FhG had been developing for some time, called Fastenc. None of these programs are still marketed. An mp3 Surround encoder and mp3HD codec and Software Tools are now promoted on the Fraunhofer MP3 website.