This was a great year for uTorrent, an increasingly popular, lightweight BitTorrent client. The software's user-base has climbed to 52 million uniques per month from 28 million last November, which is contrary to some frequently cited numbers floating around the Web, according to TorrentFreak.

Reports earlier this year suggested that of all Internet traffic, the portion consumed by P2P has declined, indicating the slow "death" of BitTorrent, but that might not be right. TorrentFreak and others say that when looked at more closely, P2P activity has risen -- though, streaming sites like YouTube and Hulu are growing a little faster.

Despite legal troubles faced by sites like The Pirate Bay, Mininova, and isoHunt, torrent outfits across the board have seen an increase in visitors over the past months. Simon Morris, BitTorrent's VP of Product Management said this growth is reflected in the usage stats of uTorrent.

"We see no evidence whatever that BitTorrent clients are any less popular," Morris said. BitTorrent Mainline, another client, rose from 5 million users at the start of 2009 to 10 million in November -- a similar growth rate to uTorrent.