Bit Torrent sells legit files
This is either good news or bad news depending on your take....
Bit Torrent, the software used by millions for illegally downloading film and television files, has gone legit.
It is now offering copyright-approved films and tv content for a fee. TV episodes are $1.99US, new films $3.99US and older $2.99US. They are available for a 24hr viewing period.
The files will also download at much faster speeds than pirate sites.
The move is seen as a way for movie studios to embrace the software for legitimate purchases, in much the same way as the music industry finally approved iTunes.
So far there is no word on the future of pirate sites, still offering free peer-to-peer content.
2 comments:
David, I heard on Radio National the other day that TV shows have no copyright as they were originally shown on Free To Air, therefore can be downloaded legally. The movies however are another story.
*puts on nerd hat*
This will have no effect on illegal tv/movie/whatever downloading with BitTorrent as the protocol is open source and available for anyone to implement in their own program.
It *may* effect using the official BitTorrent program to download illegal files (but probably not), but since nobody uses that anyway (Azureus, uTorrent etc are much more popular), it doesn't matter.
More importantly, are they going to let US download TV shows with this legitimately? Or will it be for USA-ians only?
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