BitTorrent encoding error

What does this type of error mean?

This error means that the torrent contained something that seemed to violate the standard torrent format, or something that your system may have trouble with. Most probably torrent was created using for file names national charaters at different Windows language version then yours one is. Windows method, of code pages, makes that the same value can represent entirely different character on yours Windows language version, one code page, and on different language version, another code page, where torrent was created with client which use Windows file naming method. This problem is fixed in Shareaza because it use Unicode, and Shareaza file system considering national characters hence is universal, so using unique values for unique characters and independent from Windows code pages. This problems are not visible in English. Problems starts with national characters in other languages, because of Windows philosophy of coding them, which can lead to such conflicts. Usually Shareaza deals with these problems automatically, but you may notice that the torrented files have odd names when completed. It's also possible that these torrents won't work on all clients.

If you get a message about an encoding error, you may have trouble reseeding the torrent with Shareaza.

Try changing the advanced setting BitTorrent.TorrentIgnoreErrors to TRUE to force Shareaza to seed the torrent.

Also, if you have trouble seeding, look in the incomplete folder to make sure there is already no incomplete file for the torrent accidently left there by the program. If there is, delete it, and try reseeding again.

Is this a bug?

It's not a bug. It is just the truth - uTorrent (and several other BitTorrent clients) produces .torrent files with trigger the encoding error warning, as they use a non-unicode codepage when creating file names inside the .torrent files. So for example a torrent created on a Japanese Windows with hiragana symbols in the file name will NOT be saved properly on a Greek copy of Windows.

Torrents can usually be 'repaired' be running them through a good torrent creation application, like MakeTorrent2, which will fix any errors in it. But this will usually change the torrent's infohash, meaning the tracker and other torrenters who were uploading or downloading the previous torrent will not connect to you. So this is not really useful as a method of reseeding.

In order to avoid such problems with your own torrents, please use the Shareaza Torrent Wizard, as it produces correctly encoded torrents.