Web content delivery startup BitTorrent ended perhaps its best week ever with an announcement Friday that it scored $20 million in its second round of funding, which it plans to use to raise its profile as a leading brand in the content distribution market.

On Wednesday, two-year-old BitTorrent said it had signed Internet distribution deals with about eight film studios and TV networks, and was on its way to establishing itself as a service that drives other web sites that frequently move large files, à la “Intel Inside” (see BitTorrent Hooks Big Studios).

Accel Partners, which led the new round, will join Doll Capital Management, BitTorrent’s original investor, which bankrolled the company to the tune of $8.75 million more than a year ago (see BitTorrent Gets $8.75M).

“When I created BitTorrent in 2001, my mission was to solve the problem every web site has when distributing large, popular files,” BitTorrent CEO Bram Cohen said in a statement.

More than 50 law enforcement officials raided 10 locations, confiscating the computers and detaining three people.

ThePirateBay.org had described itself to be the largest search index for BitTorrent, a system used for sharing large files across the internet.

The entertainment industry welcomed the action against a site it argued was a major source of music and film piracy.

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StreamCast sues eBay, Sharman sues P2Pnet, Creative sues Apple, and the MPAA sues TorrentSpy. In an online world turned upside down, what other bizarre combinations can occur? Reminiscent of the Millennium Falcon taking the offensive against an imperial Star Destroyer, TorrentSpy has filed a lawsuit against the MPAA. Read more »

Just when you thought you’d seen everything P2P is useful for. A recently discovered Internet worm, “Nugache-A” is spreading widely via AIM as ell as MSN Messenger.

In and of themselves, new internet worms pop up too frequently to be news anymore. What is significant about this worm is the way in which it can be remotely controlled, via P2P.

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BitTornado is a BitTorrent client. It is the successor of Shad0w’s Experimental Client, and is programmed by the same person. It is programmed using Python, for platform independence.

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