BitTorrent goes legit

Tomorrow BitTorrent will finally launch their much discussed play for the legit download market. BitTorrent.com will become a download store offering around 3000 movies and thousands or games, tv shows and music videos.

From the interviews I’ve read it sounds like Ashwin Navin, the CEO, has been backed into a corner. After the movie studios dictated high prices for BitTorrent to sell films he decided to rent them instead – for between $3 and $4. Of course the rentals are stacked full of DRM (digital rights management) so they are non-shareable and expire 30 days after download or 24 hours after watching them. Oh, boy – that’s some straitjacket style restriction.

The one advantage BitTorrent do have is the advantage they’ve always had – their incredible technology. Their download store will be based on the same per-to-per system that lets people share illegal content so easily that it allegedly accounts for 55% of all internet traffic (although claims vary). This should mean dramatically faster downloads than most other stores: a writer from the NY Times downloaded X-Men 3 in 2 hours on BitTorrent compared to 3 from WalMart.com.

Mathew Ingram has an interesting perspective on the launch over here.

And Gizmodo make a couple of interesting points:

The real question is: “Can BitTorrent compete against itself?” The BT network already offers a vastly superior catalog of content without restrictions (or cost), albeit not so legally. Something else to consider: since they’re using your bandwidth to distribute content users pay for, why aren’t purchases subsidized according to how much someone uploads?

I completely agree with point number two. If I’m helping them make money by seeding their content then I expect a discount, or some kind of incentive.

1 Comment

• Would you take a job at BitTorrent? « SCHOOLBOY ERROR February 25, 2007 at 11:18 pm

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