James Delahunty
26 Feb 2007 7:16
BitTorrent Inc. has finally launched its legal download store, the BitTorrent Entertainment Network (BEN). The company that creates software that was once scorned by Hollywood will now offer content from 20th Century Fox News Corp, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment, Lionsgate Entertainment Corp, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc., Paramount Pictures and Paramount's sister company, MTV Networks.
This puts BitTorrent in direct competition with services from Amazon and Wal-Mart, but BitTorrent thinks it has a shot at beating the competition because of its massive user base and its determination to stay away from the stale look of "just another online retailer". President and co-founder of the company, Ashwin Navin, said that BitTorrent will offer not only Movie and TV show download, but music, videos and games.
"The last thing we could afford to do was launch another sterile retail site," Navin said, called the community building aspect of the network, "our heart and soul." The BitTorrent Entertainment Network also plans to offer the community the ability to post their own videos for others to download, giving independent filmmakers somewhere to promote and/or sell their content.
However, the launch of the store doesn't change the fact that BitTorrent software is used widely for piracy and will remain one of the most popular ways to download illegally. Also, the included DRM software does not give much incentive for a long time BitTorrent pirate to buy content instead of downloading DRM-less free content. Nevertheless, BitTorrent's entry into the market emphasizes how the underlying technology of P2P software can be put to legitimate use.
The test is now on BitTorrent and considering its advantages in distribution speed and reliability and the community spirit behind it, it should be an immediate success.
Source:
Reuters