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BitTorrent Partners with TV and Movie Companies
An anonymous reader writes "BitTorrent Inc just announced that they teamed up with several TV and Movie companies. The new list of partners includes 20th Century Fox, Paramount PicturesG4, Kadokawa Pictures USA, Lionsgate, MTV Networks (Comedy Central, MTV and more), Palm Pictures and Starz Media.
These deals will add a great deal of content to the BitTorrent video store, including popular movies like Mission: Impossible III and X-Men The Last Stand and popular TV-show such as "Prison Break" and "South Park""
"If the videos are in Linux friendly and non-DRM'd-to-hell format I will be a customer."
;)
Then I guess you won't be a customer, then.
The entertainment studios have already laid down the rules. "We're cool with this as long as the consumer is limited as possible". On the Xbox 360, you can buy TV shows -- for only that Xbox. You can rent HD movies -- for only a couple of days. Even the iTunes store is getting slowly backed into a wall (the restrictions on movies and television shows are a lot more onerous than music). The only thing that Bittorrent changes is the distribution method.
Personally, I don't really care if the files are DRM'd or not. What I listen to on my iPod is different than what I watch on my television versus what I watch on my computer. I bought a copy of The Incredibles on iTunes because I only plan to watch it on my laptop. I bought an episode of Venture Bros for the Xbox 360 the other day, even though it's offered on the iTunes store. People seem to think we're going to buy multiple copies of the same show -- not on my watch.
And I mean, hell, it's $2 for a TV show. I spend more on that for my morning coffee. As long as it stays advertisement-free (entertainment industry, you listening?) I have no problem plopping down a few bucks. Other people will fight to download it off Pirate Bay I supposed (personally, it's always taken far less time for me to download from one of these services than Pirate Bay; my time is worth more than $2).
Because BitTorrent has also partnered with CacheLogic which provides Internet Caching solutions. You pay your subscriptions to legally access the content and you can now use BitTorrent not only to download from your peers but from strategically placed caches.
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This substantially reduces the cost on a content provider that would otherwise need to provision expensive hardware and bandwidth to deliver content via FTP/HTTP. Now they can use the resources of the downloaders and use CacheLogic's infrastructure to provide service even better than the one current BitTorrent networks have and perhaps even better than they could possibly afford to provide by using FTP-like central servers.
Users are motivated to pay BitTorrent and content providers, and not download for free, simply because BitTorrent combined with in-network caching gives a better service than plain BitTorrent. Users that don't pay cannot access Cachelogic's infrastructure. If their pricing is reasonable, I can see this scheme taking off rapidly. I know i would pay 5-10$ to download a movie i want to see now in a couple of hours or less, instead of waiting 2-3 days, while using all my uplink and slowing down my browsing speeds. From the article: "In a joint announcement made today by CacheLogic and BitTorrent, a global network of cache servers has been organized under the name "VelociX". VelociX is the network protocol that governs the actions of a theoretical global community of cache servers. With potentially thousands of networked cache servers at the disposal of the end user, network costs are cut and download speeds are increased significantly.
For example, let's take a look at a CDP enabled client on the prowl for a specific 4.5 gig file. The CDP looks for the closest geographical area for a VelociX swarm, in addition to conventional peers. The VelociX swarm provides the bulk of the file sought after, greatly reducing the reliance on peers. This equates to greatly accelerated download speeds, and since this takes place largely on dedicated servers and not peers, the ISPs costs are reduced.
Unless you plan on downloading authorized content, the network probably isn't for you. In the CacheLogic press release, VelociX will allow "legal content (infringing content is not accelerated) to be inexpensively delivered in minutes instead of hours." Content that is authorized to function on the VelociX network must be manually published via specific hash codes to a central data base."