BitTorrent, the company behind the software technology for efficient delivery
of large files over the Internet,
launched on Monday the BitTorrent Entertainment Network, a paid download
site featuring thousands of content items from major providers such as MGM,
Viacom, Warner Bros., Lion's Gate, and Fox, plus indie and user-contributed
content. Movies are available for rent, while other content is available
for permanent download. Major-studio items are protected with Windows
Media DRM, while the network uses Macrovision's TryMedia DRM for games.
The business model of the BitTorrent Entertainment Network is similar to that
of other peer-to-peer networks that have featured indie content without DRM and
brand-name content that may (or may not) have DRM. BitTorrent brings two
things to the table that others with similar models, such as
GUBA and
Wippit, don't.
First is its "swarming" technology for slicing up large files (such as digitized
feature films) into pieces and routing them separately over the Internet,
thereby making delivery more efficient.
Second is its notoriety among Hollywood studios. BitTorrent itself has
developed open-source software that others have used to create file-sharing
networks that often traffic in unauthorized copyrighted material. But the
technology itself (and its developer, Bram Cohen) have avoided litigation and
have been increasingly cooperating with the media industry to figure out a way
to use the technology in copyright-respecting ways.
It is mainly the notoriety and major-studio cooperation that could help the
BitTorrent Entertainment Network rise above the noise of so many similar models
-- because otherwise, the site isn't all that much different from the others.
It offers fewer major-studio feature films than existing movie download sites (CinemaNow,
Movielink, Amazon
Unbox, and
Wal-Mart) and a negligible sampling of indie music. It does not offer
the download-to-own option that many of the latter sites do, much less the
download-to-DVD-burn
that a couple of them are starting to offer.
What it does presumably offer is a solution to the very real problem of
extremely long download times for feature-length movies. Our test (over a
3 Mbps DSL connection) was somewhat faster than other services without
BitTorrent's swarming architecture, and the architecture enables performance to
improve as more users join the network. At the same time, Wurld Media's
Peer Impact service already offers swarming technology with a similar
magnitude of brand-name video content, though with a "walled garden"
architecture that only includes DRM-protected files.
In other words, as was the case with Napster, BitTorrent's primary value is
that the notoriety of its name guarantees it a certain amount of press coverage.
The innovation of its offerings, which must carry the day once the free
publicity runs out, is questionable.
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