Culture

BitTorrent to open online store for digital media

by Actual News Geezer | February 26, 2007 at 07:26 am

611 views | 5 Recommendations | 2 comments

Please tell me I am wrong: I thought Bittorrent was a champion of the Open Source Gift Economy - you know, one of those radical enterprises but was going to "stick it to the world," as a current Vonage ad has it.

But no, apparently. The former P2P file sharing protocol has gone capitalist. Someone please explain.

BitTorrent rolled out a paid music and movie download service on Monday, leveraging its fast distribution system infamous for the massive piracy it facilitated when it debuted in 2001.

The BitTorrent Entertainment Network — launched with movies such as “Superman Returns,” TV shows including “24” and PC games — will be a new entrant challenging other download services such as Apple’s iTunes Store and Amazon.com’s Unbox. BitTorrent’s service is stocked with 5,000 movies, TV shows, PC games and music.

BitTorrent, based in San Francisco, has reached agreements with more than 35 entertainment companies including 20th Century Fox, Viacom’s MTV Networks and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios to offer their content using its P-to-P (peer-to-peer) technology.

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Kaitlin

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 09:36 on February 26th, 2007

I'd be willing to shell out a bit of cashola for the service if it meant BitTorrent worked better...there's a ton of access to great media out there, but BitTorrent is completely unreliable...I've started downloading things, waited 14+ hours for them to finish, and then found the file to be corrupted. If it works better, then sign me up!

Jordan Yerman

at 09:53 on February 26th, 2007

I reckon capitalism was always their intent, but their marketing genius was to get "BitTorrent" synonymous with "downloading" when it comes to large files. Azureus is faster, but hey.

I think, in terms of the Gift Economy, people are indeed willing to pay for something if they think they are not being ripped off. Pirated music is so popular because of all the DRM and crippleware attached to digital music files when one goes through "legit" channels. However, people want to buy music, not lease it. That's why I don't buy Sony CDs; I don't trust them not to bundle malware onto their disks, and I don't want to support them.

This all goes back to BitTorrent in that people will (ostensibly) be paying for a product that they can rip onto a machine-playable DVD, so as not to squint at their screen for the latest episode of DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES or whatever.

However, if such files are not rippable, then there would be no reason for a consumer to leave the Gift Economy, as they'd be going back to leasing the product they supposedly bought...