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BitTorrent gets cash infusion
Author: Brett ThomasPublished: 4th December 2006
"Now with added money" - BitTorrent has received another $20m from a new investor, as well as new content.
Along with the large chunk of cashola, the network had another chunk of news. The site has now signed distribution deals with Twentieth Century Fox, G4, Lionsgate and the entire line of MTV networks (including Comedy Central), just to name a few. Keep in mind, this is in addition to previous contracts with Warner Brothers and a few other smaller studios. The deals put BitTorrent in the running to be one of the largest legal video distributors online.
Bram Cohen, co-founder of the service, made a statement on the news:
"When I created BitTorrent in 2001, my mission was to solve the problem every website has when distributing large, popular files. This mission is still what drives BitTorrent today and couldn't be more relevant as the Web grows into a channel for consuming large, high-value entertainment and information content. This financing is a clear testament to the strength of our technology and potential growth, and I look forward to spearheading the continued development of BitTorrent."
You'll be able to purchase the content right on BitTorrent's website, with options varying depending on type. Movies will be able to be purchased per-view or on a DTO (download-to-own) basis. Television shows like "24" will also be available, but only on a DTO basis - no per-view option will be available. Prices have so far not yet been released, but one could expect them to be within the market's going rates.
And therein lies the rub for many - it is doubtful that the service will provide any price break for consumers, despite the fact that the content will undoubtedly contain stringent DRM (unlike distributor iTunes, BitTorrent doesn't carry much weight in the industry yet and so can't control this feature). On top of that, it will still be the P2P philosophy, which means content will take longer depending on availability and those who bought it will foot the bandwidth bill rather than the movie companies.
All of this adds up to one crucial question - will BitTorrent survive as a legitimate media distribution model?
Let us know your thoughts in our forums.
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Comments (8)Stats: 0.056 seconds
Whoever it was at... I think Disney... had the right idea. Piracy is a competitor. Give customers a reason not to pirate. While Bit-torrent certainly can exist as a legitimate business model, there's no denying that it's primarily used for piracy (or so the top 100 on TBP and other popular trackers would indicate).
If this forks BT into a legit section and an illegal section.. well, that's inevitable. But by it's very nature, P2P means I'm paying their bandwidth bills (well, Babson is at the moment, though if they could stay a step ahead of me they wouldn't). If that means that I can get content cheaper and of a higher quality by indirectly footing some of their bill, I'm okay with it. But for me, that means quality without restriction. HDTV rips get posted online within minutes (literally) of them being aired, and those are usually very high quality, commercial-free, and cost-free (beyond bandwidth and extra hard drives).
Basically, if they want this to work, they have to compete with piracy, not iTunes. Sell me a DRM-free, commercial-free 1080p show (that will play on any platform... so xvid or something, not WMV) for a buck and I'll seed that legit copy to 100%. Sell it cheaper and I'll seed more. Hell, I'll seed to 500% or more if you want to give it to me - I'm paying their bandwidth costs, so it's probably still profitable for them since most people wouldn't do that.
While I can continue to get rips at 720p (or better) without commercials or playback restrictions for free, they can't expect me to pay. I want to support good content producers, but they have to be reasonable in their expectations. Especially if they expect me to foot a good chunk of their bandwidth bill. If they treat me like a criminal by only allowing me to get copy-protected content, then I'll make sure they're justified (and end up with a better quality product to boot).
In essence, they could do great things like this. But chances are they'll really screw it up. If they use the allofmp3 model (or what it used to be), it'll do quite well. At least until ISPs really start screwing with traffic throttling and packet shaping and all the other "don't use the bandwidth you're paying for you barstewards!" things.
Got to quote that
no.
I pay
Them
to use
My bandwidth
to send other people films?
Seems kinda...backwards, no?
(plus of course with the UK using ADSL and people uploading at 25% the speed they download, the bittorrent model really doesn't work well anyway :( )
-ed out
ladies and gents we have our weiner
1) there will be other companies that want to do this so it will start to get big and helping the other people downloading pirate torrents harder to find.
and
2) hoping ISP's will stop block torrents List HERE