Tuesday, May 9, 2006
Warner Brothers to use BitTorrent for Movie Downloads
Posted by Jason Dunn in "NEWS" @ 07:45 AM
"It used to be the enemy of Hollywood, now BitTorrent is to become its saviour but today, BitTorrent, the peer-to-peer technology that allows the quick distribution of large files has turned good. Warner Bros has today announced an agreement with BitTorrent to become the first major studio to provide legal video content via the BitTorrent publishing platform. Content published with BitTorrent will be available on the BitTorrent.com website and feature downloadable programming. The service is intended to launch in summer of 2006 and will initially feature more than 200 Warner Bros. new releases, catalogue favourites and television series."
It's easy to say that IP transfer protocols are content-neutral, but given that a huge bulk of BitTorrent traffic online is, ahem, somewhat shady, it has certainly earned its reputation as being the illegal packet mule. Given enough torrents, it's a fantastic system for pushing huge files around - most people with high-speed Internet connections have huge amounts of excess upstream bandwidth during idle times (or even active times if they're just downloading). The fact that Warner Brothers wants to use BitTorrent for their own purposes speaks to their understanding that BitTorrent is a neutral technology.
It's easy to say that IP transfer protocols are content-neutral, but given that a huge bulk of BitTorrent traffic online is, ahem, somewhat shady, it has certainly earned its reputation as being the illegal packet mule. Given enough torrents, it's a fantastic system for pushing huge files around - most people with high-speed Internet connections have huge amounts of excess upstream bandwidth during idle times (or even active times if they're just downloading). The fact that Warner Brothers wants to use BitTorrent for their own purposes speaks to their understanding that BitTorrent is a neutral technology.
