AfterDawn: News

BitTorrent launches BitTorrent Entertainment Network

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

Written by: James Delahunty @ 26 Feb 2007 7:16

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• 9 comments

• ofolion

  I can't see this being successful...you will be able to get the same stuff faster than using BitTorrent probably, so i don't see why people would choose this over other services. Plus if they know how to use torrents then why would they be willing to pay for it all of a sudden when they could just as easily download it for free?

  26.2.2007 07:46 #1

• duckNrun

  I believe that a lot of people WOULD be willing to pay a FAIR price for a product based upon the RESTRICTIONS placed upon their use of the product that they have paid for.
  
  What is the fair price to place upon a digital COPY of a work with less resolution than the original, less functionability than the original, less freedom to use as the original, none of the packaging/artwork/even physical media of the original etc etc?
  
  So far the media companies have felt that the price whould be about the same as the DVD and CD. We all know a download of a complete CD of music costs $10. At $1.99 and episode a season of TV costs about the same as the season on DVD.
  
  OBVIOSLY until a fair price IS reached there will people who either opt for illegal downloading or who stick with the traditional media that retains full functionality.
  
  btw... a FAIR MARKET price could be deemed as the price at which MOST illegal downloads are converted to legal purchases. If we really worked under a free market society the prices of downloads would continue to drop so as to 'compete' with these downloads. I bet when you end up with a high quality, DRM free download of say (10 cents for a song like at AllofMP3.com) and maybe 99 cents for a high quality download of a movie that illegal downloading all but dries up!

  26.2.2007 10:30 #2

• MightyOne

  i would stop downloading tv shows if they were offered for $1 an episode.
  
  The companies must ask themselves...would they rather $1 or $0
  The choice is theirs.

  26.2.2007 11:31 #3

• BludRayne

  DRM kills sales. Remove it and they will make millions.

  26.2.2007 11:48 #4

• hughjars

  So long as the quality is good and the price fair and reasonable people will support this.
  
  There'll always be (and always has been) some sort of 'pirating', get over it.
  
  But most people when offered an excellent quality product at a fair and reasonable price will be happy with that.

  26.2.2007 12:10 #5

• PeaInAPod

  I checked it out it isnt that bad really. I mean theres some stuff I personally would change, but this is a step in the right direction. And they offer some stuff for free, like I just got a iPod ready Night of the Living Dead by George (?) Romero for free in like 15 min. and I didn't have to bother searching all over the net. I'll be interested to see how the store turns out.
  
  **UPDATE** I downloaded the torrent and started it in uTorrent, but it refused to let me download it. Whether this a restriction being used by the BitTorrent site or not is unknown to me, but its a bad sign.

  26.2.2007 12:21 #6

• ZippyDSM

  Originally posted by PeaInAPod:I checked it out it isnt that bad really. I mean theres some stuff I personally would change, but this is a step in the right direction. And they offer some stuff for free, like I just got a iPod ready Night of the Living Dead by George (?) Romero for free in like 15 min. and I didn't have to bother searching all over the net. I'll be interested to see how the store turns out.
  
  **UPDATE** I downloaded the torrent and started it in uTorrent, but it refused to let me download it. Whether this a restriction being used by the BitTorrent site or not is unknown to me, but its a bad sign.thier going to have some problems to hash out I guess,anyone know what kind of password setup they are using,because one could buy some torrents then release that info to the net.
  even if its 2 or 3 people downloading it,this dose not make allot of sense to me...

  26.2.2007 16:15 #7

• georgeluv

  are they going to call the Bittorrent Entertainment Network "BET" for short?

  27.2.2007 05:49 #8

• tetrakis

  well good, if there are more "legitimate" uses for bittorrent, then isp's won't be able to claim that they are allowed to throttle speeds to users who are using bittorrent.

  1.3.2007 04:17 #9