The illegal file sharing leader, BitTorrent is now preparing to go legitimate with their ‘BitTorrent Entertainment Network’ which is scheduled to launch today. The online media store will legally sell/rent over 3000 new and classic movies, TV episodes and scores of PC games and music videos. They’ve hooked up with Hollywood studios like Twentieth Century Fox, Paramount, Warner Brothers, MTV and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to provide the content.
BitTorrent Entertainment will sell TV episodes $1.99 for each episode. The store won’t sell movies, but will only rent them. New releases like ‘Superman Returns’ rents for $3.99 whereas old titles rents at $1.99. The content requires Windows Media Player 11 to play and once the movie has been downloaded to the PC, they will expire after 30 days or 24 hours after viewing. It’s also protected with Microsoft’s antipiracy software which prevents you from viewing the rented movie more than once or sending the movie over Internet. Since all movies rented on the network have Microsoft DRM, they will only play on Windows Machine, killing customers on other platform.
I think they will have a huge problem trying to attract customers because we have the option to choose between BitTorrent Entertainment Network which sell/rents movies with DRM or download the same movie over the same network without paying any price. So far, BitTorrent was thriving only due to the piracy factor. What next?
News Source: New York Times
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