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May 8, 2006 9:40 PM PDT
BitTorrent inks studio distribution deal
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Warner Bros. Entertainment Group has agreed to use BitTorrent's peer-to-peer system to distribute movies and television shows, including "Dukes of Hazzard" and "Babylon 5," beginning this summer, the companies are expected to announce Tuesday.
Warner Bros. is the first major entertainment company to embrace BitTorrent's distribution system, which has been widely used to illegally swap copies of copyright movies.
The agreement is also believed to be the first Hollywood distribution deal for any of the file-sharing technology companies, which include eDonkey or Kazaa. Financial terms were not disclosed.
In the past, San Francisco-based BitTorrent was falsely perceived to be the video equivalent of Napster, said Ashwin Navin, the company's president. BitTorrent never maintained a network to help people exchange copyright material and has gone to lengths to separate the company from law breakers, he said.
A clean record helped win credibility with studio chiefs, but the company has sold itself in Hollywood mostly on the strength of its technology, Navin said. Pricing for the content has not been announced, but Navin said TV shows might sell for as little as $1.
"There is a fascination with BitTorrent on a technical level," Navin said. That fascination helped him convince studio executives that "BitTorrent is useful as a distribution technology."
Developed in 2001, BitTorrent's open-source distribution system was designed to help transfer large files over the Internet.
BitTorrent allows a single file to be broken into small fragments that are distributed among computers. People then share pieces of the content with one other.
See more CNET content tagged:
BitTorrent,
Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.,
file-sharing,
Hollywood,
P2P
- Awesome
- Ah, this was inevitable! Does anyone know of other features already being legally distributed via bittorrent? The ones I've found so far are at www.cactusesmovie.com and www.starwreck.com. These are free, too, which I doubt Warner Bros' will be. How will they keep their torrented movies and shows private for paying customers?
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- doesn't add up
- i don't get why anyone would pay for a torrent. the whole idea of the BT model is that you give back to the community in the form of seeding. if i'm already paying for a file, what is the motivation to share my bandwidth?
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- finally people are getting it
- it took a long time, but some smart industry folks are finally starting to understand that file sharing is not the enemy. it's actually a great tool if you can integrate it into your distribution channels. nice to see a leader like WB finally using BitTorrent technology the way it was always intended to be used.
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- Does this mean....
- Does this mean that my cable company is going to stp "throttling" bit torrent traffic? I seriously doubt it! Thus making this a non-story and a stupid investment for WB!Boneheads....
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- File sharing is the only way!
- Video file is huge and requires lots of bandwidth especially for DVD picture quality or better. Let consumers do the heavy lifting i.e. store and distribute video is the only way to go so that any movie will be available at anytime anywhere! Peervision.com may have the right platform for DRM.
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