I never know how to feel about torrent (in this case, management) applications. On the one hand, torrenting is a brilliant and efficient way to share information in a collective and low-cost (read: free) fashion. On the other, it's the single largest gateway to piracy in existence. And it could kill you.

But it's clear torrenting applications are very much legal. So why has Google removed a popular torrent management application, Transdroid, from the Android Market? There's a number of such apps on the Market, and Transdroid's competitors are still standing. TorrentFreak thinks they know what's up.

Transdroid's developer page featured a screenshot showing an obvious example of copyright infringement in action, seen below:

This could easily be seen as encouraging illegal behavior, which definitely violates the Android Market Developer Program Policies:

Illegal Activities: Keep it legal. Don't engage in unlawful activities on this product.

Presumably, Transdroid just needs to switch out screenshots of the illicit behavior in question, and they'll be good to go again. If that doesn't turn out to be the problem, I'd be surprised, as anything else would probably have some pretty wide implications for other torrent or torrent management apps. We'll keep a close watch on how this all unfolds - but I'd expect Transdroid will be returning to the Market pretty quickly.

You can still get Transdroid from the developer's website, Transdroid.org, while it's on hiatus.

TorrentFreak