'Academic' Torrent Client Hopes to Shake up the Entertainment Industry - TorrentFreak

Researchers at Delft University of Technology have secured another €3.3 million in funding for academic research into the ‘Internet-of-Trust’. The money will in large part be used to continue development on the Tribler BitTorrent client. Professor Johan Pouwelse, who leads the Tribler lab, hopes that the software and underlying technology will shake up the entertainment industry by shifting the balance of power.
— Read on torrentfreak.com/academic-torrent-client-hopes-to-shake-up-the-entertainment-industry-200110/

If you've ever attended or listened to one of my talks on the "dark nets", I mention Tribler every time. I've encountered it in investigations of child abuse and terrorist content. Nearly every time, someone asks, "What is this Tribler? I've never heard of it."

Tribler is a decentralized BitTorrent client. It's also an academic research project. It works. It has lots of users. It's an easy point and click interface for people to use a decentralized BitTorrent network. It's free to download and use. What I'm really investigation during these encounters with Tribler is the BitTorrent sharing of images, documents, and movies. Tribler just happens to be the interface recommended by those sharing content or providing guides on how to get the content.