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Opera to offer BitTorrent to users

The Opera web browser will soon support BitTorrent. Christen Krogh, vice president of engineering at Opera Software in Oslo, Norway, said the decision was driven partly by Opera`s own distribution woes, its servers were jammed when it launched a new version of the browser in April. Opera is used by just 2% of all U.S. web browser surfers.

Mr Krogh said Opera was not trying to encourage piracy but considers the tool, BitTorrent, more efficient for transferring large, legitimate files such as Linux, and now Opera, software.

BitTorrent works by assembling a complete file from multiple users who are sharing it. As you finish downloading one chunk, your copy becomes immediately available to others looking for the same chunk. This system reduces load on a central server and ultimately means speedier downloads.