BitTorrent, the outfit that brought you the world’s most popular way to share large files and tears to the eye of musicians and film studios everywhere, hopes to take the evolution of the decentralized Web a step further with today’s release of a new platform for app developers.
BitTorrent Sync Beta API builds on the early success of the BitTorrent Sync app. The app, which the company says has reached 1 million users who have transferred more than 30 petabytes of data in the past 30 days, lets you easily send videos, photos and any other files to others. BitTorrent Sync places no cap on the size or number of the files you can transfer because it’s all done peer-to-peer (from device to device). Unlike cloud services like Dropbox, no central servers do the legwork.
In addition to the lack of limits on file transfers, BitTorrent Sync’s other big selling point is its security. You can choose to encrypt your files using an automatically generated key or a QR code. By combining peer-to-peer file transfers with encryption, BitTorrent Sync makes it all but impossible for anyone, from your tech-savvy neighbor to the NSA, to access your files.
BitTorrent Sync is currently available for every major platform, including Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, and iOS. Today, the company released BitTorrent Sync client version 1.2, which claims to boost transfer speeds (up to 90MB/s of a local network), includes an iPad-specific version of the app and improvements to the iOS version.
With the release of the BitTorrent Sync API, the company is turning BitTorrent Sync into a platform through which developers can create any number of applications, from websites to social networks to messaging and more; all of which could be completely private, decentralized, and encrypted.
BitTorrent, which is staunchly anti-NSA, believes that the BitTorrent Sync API will “enable developers to build an alternative way for the Internet to work – one that does not rely on centralized servers.”
“This is something we’ve been working on as a matter of course, because we believe a decentralized Internet is a better Internet,” said a BitTorrent spokesman.
To help move toward this goal, BitTorrent will work directly with developers through its Acceleration Program, which will provide app builders with access to support.
If BitTorrent Sync API takes off, it would mean the NSA, law enforcement, or hackers would not be able to access your activity, personal information, and other data through companies like Google, Apple, or Yahoo because they would never have it in the first place; a prospect that may seem like a breath of fresh air for many these days.
BitTorrent Sync API is available now. You can get it here. For those of you who don’t develop, grab a download link for the BitTorrent Sync client here.
[Image via igor kisselev/Shutterstock]