Opera to support BitTorrent

From AP: Web browser Opera will support file downloads under the BitTorrent peer-to-peer distribution tool in its next version. Unlike traditional downloads, where clients retrieve files directly from a central server, BitTorrent shares the load. It breaks files into chunks, allowing clients to pass the bits among themselves, resulting in greater reliability, lower bandwidth costs to the originating server and often faster downloads.

Peer-to-peer distribution networks got a bad rap in traditional media as much of the traffic on them is in copyrighted music and video. But BitTorrent is often used for legitimate distrubution of software programs. Indeed, Opera reps told the AP that the Norwegian company decided to incorporate BitTorrent after Opera's servers were jammed with users trying to download the previous version of the Web browser.