Update: Well, that didn't take long. Dropbox has banned Boxopus over piracy concerns.
A new service called Boxopus has come up with an interesting way of bridging the worlds of BitTorrent and cloud storage, offering a way for people to cue up torrent downloads and have them automatically added to their Dropbox folders, all without even needing to install a torrent client on your computer.
Boxopus uses the Dropbox API, which means you can link both services using your Dropbox credentials, without fear of giving access to other files stored in your account. Once that step is done you can add as many torrents as you like through the Boxopus website and the latter will then take care of the downloading. All files are automatically sent to a special folder within your Dropbox account and synced across devices.
Of course, if you don’t want the same file downloaded on multiple computers, you can use Dropbox’s selective sync feature to leave torrent downloads in the cloud, accessing or downloading them as needed.
One of the main benefits to users is that they can add torrents to their Dropbox from work, school or on the road. TorrentFreak also notes that these downloads are anonymous, as Boxopus takes care of the downloading, although you are still required to enter your email when registering to the service.
Another thing worth highlighting is that the service aims to make torrent downloads easier for novice users with a one-click Boxopus download button that can be integrated into websites. TorrentReactor, Fulldls.com, Vertor.com, and Torrentzap.com have already added this option, according to TorrentFreak.
But of course there are several downsides as well, starting with the fact that free Dropbox users only get 2GB of space out of the box — you can bump that to over 10GB without spending a dime but there’s some work involved. Downloading generally takes a bit longer too because Dropbox sync speeds are limited. And of course there’s the question of whether Dropbox will block the service when pressed over piracy concerns.
Boxopus is completely free and unlimited during beta testing stage but the company plans to rollout paid subscriptions at some point in the future, imposing limits on free subscriptions.
