Torrent downloads and BitTorrent have been an the essential part Internet community. Several organizations rely on the services provided by BitTorrent to share downloads with other users by making use of the peer-to-peer protocol. As with any other service, or rather more than its fair share, BitTorrent also has a big and bad face for being the ‘host’ of piracy in the online world.

Until now, torrents needed a dedicated desktop client to be accessed and shared between different users (or a dedicated browser plug-in). In a move that could revolutionize the torrent world, BitTorrent has introduced ‘BitTorrent Torque’ which  is a JavaScript interface that acts as a medium for the users to access torrents. In other words, with BitTorrent Torque you can download and share torrents from within your web browser (any modern web browser that supports JavaScript, presumably), without the need to download a desktop program or browser plug-in.

BitTorrent Torque is expected to not only help users get independent of dedicated desktop clients for torrents but also to help developers to build web apps. Torque Labs has already built two web apps to demonstrate its ability; ‘Paddle Over‘ helps users to share files between different computers by just dragging and dropping, while ‘OneClick‘ helps in turning torrent downloads into normal web downloads.

BitTorrent Torque is currently just in the Alpha stages; but the ramifications of this are obviously huge. Feel free to reflect in the comments below.

[via BitTorrent]