Warner Brothers to sell TV and films on the Internet
May 19, 2006 8:00 AM, Strategic Content Management e-newsletter
Warner Brothers will make hundreds of television shows and movies available for purchase over the Internet using BitTorrent software, which is widely used to download movies and other copyrighted material illegally.
The agreement between Warner and BitTorrent is an unusual deal between a major Hollywood studio and a company whose file-sharing technology has raised the ire of the movie industry, the
The studio contends it is trying to stem the piracy of movies on the Internet by offering consumers an easy and fast way to download movies legally. “We've been struggling with peer-to-peer technology and trying to figure out a way to harness the good in all that the technology allows us to do,” Kevin Tsujihara, president of Warner Brothers Home Entertainment Group, told the New York Times.
The service will begin sometime this summer, with prices beginning at about $1 for some television programs and increasing to about the price of a DVD or video rental for full-length movies, the newspaper said.
In the ultimate compliment to its former foe, Tsujihara said Warner chose BitTorrent because its technology is “elegantly and efficiently designed for the delivery of large files like TV programs and films.”
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