Is BitTorrent still relevant in the Modern Era?

BitTorrent has a new version now BitTorrent v2 you will see this in BitTorrent clients that support it like qBitTorrent in ways like info hash v2 its still getting better v1 and v2 are not inoperable because some of the changes can not work together but you can create hybrid torrents that can work in both. https://www.libtorrent.org/features-ref.html#bittorrent-v2 https://blog.libtorrent.org/2020/09/bittorrent-v2/

"Is email still relevant in the modern era?"

This seems like a dumb question, BitTorrent absolutely is still relevant and probably the most popular method of file sharing in the scene. Foss groups use it too for distributing ISO files for Operating systems, and it might even be used as the video hosting provider in future Fediverse YouTube alternatives (I've heard talk of a video hosting platform on Fedi which uses activitypub for everything else but hosts videos via BitTorrent) pretty cool stuff.

So yeah BitTorrent is still relevant, and it makes sense since if it isn't broken why fix it? Not to say that it couldn't be better, the biggest problem with it is the anonymity issue, but until someone makes something better BitTorrent will continue to be popular, and the ideal choice for decentralized file sharing, especially in the piracy scene.

I never used torrent as much as the last years

The article you linked answers most of your questions.

1. Relative global upstream traffic went down, but not due to other file-sharing protocols but entirely different applications
2. I2P is not mentioned anywhere in the article, nor any other sharing alternative
3. VPN is mentioned as a potential reason for not being able to identify torrent traffic; VPN has become much more prevalent and promoted in the scene
4. The article says, in piracy, streaming websites are much more popular now

It has not been surpassed by another protocol. The relative numbers don't say much about absolute numbers or usage.

And 10 % of global internet upload is certainly no irrelevancy.

Most piracy is either two ancient methods that work perfectly of Usenet or BitTorrent. There is nothing wrong with these methods.

I2P is not an alternative to bittorrent, but to IP networks. Essentially I2P is an overlay over the IP-based Internet.

bittorrent can work through I2P just like it can over IP or Tor.

What the what? More relevant than ever. How is this a legitimate question? I2p is great but adoption is extremely low.

I2p is not a more efficient file sharing protocol.

You may be thinking about ipfs, which is a file sharing protocol, but I wouldn't say that is more efficient than bittorrent afaik.

Yes it's very much alive and very important. A lot of industries (like their products: books, movies but also games) are getting restricted, taken away, taking down and removed from other platforms. Old ROM sites are taken down. And platforms like archive.org need to remove all their books.

The problem is, that there is nobody archiving anymore.. because it's not allowed due to "copyright infringement". In the end, all these products like books, movies and (old) games might be gone forever. Next generations will not be able to have access to it. This is what worries me the most. And Torrent might be the only way to fix/solve it. By distributing these kind of material. Especially older books, older movies and older games.

It's alive and well. My independent research shows that torrents of users are using it for large foss packages, as well as various media.

This duck in a hoodie shows how both technologies can function together. https://hackyourmom.com/en/pryvatnist/bittorrent-cherez-i2p-dlya-anonimnogo-obminu-fajlamy/

I use Torrent daily, I basically never stop seeding what I download to my Plex Server and I also use a Real Debrid account, which essentially caches the torrents to their servers for us to stream through different methods (like Kodi, Stremio, or more recently for me Plex thanks to Riven/Zurg).

A better question is, what would you improve over current way that torrents work.

Also your article just says streaming and cloud services are more popular with the masses. Where does it say torrenting is replaced by another piracy method

Just taught my ten year old how to.use bit torrent last week. It will live forever!

When I want to pirate, torrenting is my go to. I don't do it very often, so I'm not really up-to-date on more modern methods. For some movies, I know there are those websites like 123movies or whatever. And I've used those. But Idek what additional methods there are anymore.

That said, I've tried torrenting over I2P, but it's just slow. Not necessarily super slow, but obviously slower than doing it over the clearweb with a commercial VPN. Additionally it seems like there's less available content with torrenting over I2P. At least in the little experience I've had with it.

It is not anonymous and suffers network fragmentation. Yet the force of Bittorrent is its large community and mature performant tooling (compared to IPFS).

Eh, DDL links go dead all the time, torrents are alive even after years after a show last aired.

I always go to 🏴‍☠️ bay whenever I look for a tv show or movie.

There are things like torrentio now which lend BitTorrent piracy a more integrated UX, and that has definitely extended the lifespan of its usefulness to me. Torrents rarely max out my line speed these days, mostly because I have 1000X the bandwidth compared to when I first started torrenting 20 odd years ago. But it's still one of the fastest and simplest methods to get any file you want, so I think it's relevant

What? Yea

Yes.

I just don't trust anything written in java (i2p)