Vuze (formerly know as Azureus)Follow

I recently got a new laptop as my old acer died. It's been a difficult time. Anyway, in the course of reinstalling everything I noticed Azureus has been messed around with:

http://azureus.sourceforge.net/

and now has a youtube-esque feel to it with the option to watch (not just download), easy uploading access, and it tells you the IP of the person seeding, even their country with a plug in, has its own directory of torrents (though you can still use other sites to search for them) and big letters saying things like "no hardcore" and stuff. It basically functions exactly the same but feels a bit more clumsy than Azureus, due to all the other stuff tagged on. You even have a network of friends and share bandwith with them.

I promptly uninstalled and looked up alternatives.

Then I thought about it. Maybe this is the future. Maybe I, with this easy interface, could become an upstanding netizen hosting original and interesting torrents. Maybe I'd stop putting it to uses of dubious legality. Maybe I could have e-torrent-buddies and try downloading yoga instruction videos, and everything would work out.

Has anyone tried it? How is it?

Now the actual question, the real point of this post:

are they watching me?

If so, does anyone have any other programs they'd recommend?

where else am I supposed to **********?

Edited, Jun 25th 2008 9:30pm by Youshutup

Thanks, will investigate.

If that's what you meant, then I hereby revoke my "shut up" and replace it with a more light hearted "where else am I supposed to **********?"

The whole legality issue is pretty confusing. BitTorrent Inc says on its wiki it's "partnered" with people like 20th Century Fox, so presumably they at least pay lip service to the idea of copyright protection, and Azureus talks about it in the user agreement, yet the software is used almost exclusively for breaching copyright.

I guess it depends on how they collect data on you, or doesn't really make any difference whatever you use if the info is so easy to access. In the UK they won't sue you anyway. Yet.

I have had torrents refusing BitTorrent, UTorrent (or μTorrent), and only accepting Azureus.
So I got it and uninstalled everything else. Do you think it's better to keep both Azureus and UTorrent?

Edited, Jun 26th 2008 9:17am by danieldakkak

So I got it and uninstalled everything else. Do you think it's better to keep both Azureus and UTorrent?

"Better" is pretty subjective. BT clients are just that, clients. None of them are any better or worse at preventing someone from noticing you're downloading illegally. Some use less resources, have interfaces you might prefer, etc. I haven't used any windows client in years, but were I going to, I'd probably use Utorrent because it's small and easy. As it stands now, I use a modified Azureus 2.5 linux client.

Haha