Genuine Movies for Free via BitTorrent?

Warner Brothers has announced that they will soon introduce downloading of their movies for a fees via the BitTorrent peer-to-peer network. You can read more about that from the following.

Warner Bros.’s video unit on Tuesday unveiled plans to sell movies and television shows to BitTorrent Inc. for legal downloads from the Web site that was once blamed for aiding the swapping of illegally copied films and programs.

The pact marks a big step for Hollywood as it increasingly makes digital files of movies and TV shows available on the Web because until last year, BitTorrent’s software and Web site were considered to be aiding piracy of major studio films.

But in November, BitTorrent agreed with the Motion Picture Association of America, which represents Hollywood’s major studios, to help stem illegal swapping of digital movies and TV shows by removing links to pirated copies.

Executives from Warner Bros. and BitTorrent said the MPAA pact and new digital rights management (DRM) software from BitTorrent were key elements in bringing the parties together.

Source: Reuters | Read More @ ExtremeTech

This was an expected move on Warner’s part, considering Apple is gearing up to sell movies via the iTunes music store. What I find more interesting is that Apple has plans to incorporate BitTorrent into iTunes, and let users seed downloaded content in exchange for rewards from iTMS :applause: . This is very much in line with what I have in mind.

Let’s say Warner goes ahead with it’s idea of using BitTorrent for their downloads. Now, instead of seeding these movies only on their servers, let’s say they let the downloader keep the movie for free if he/she seeds it with say a ratio of 10, which means that he uploads the movie 10 times. This will result in Warner saving a lot of money in bandwidth charges, and us getting movies for free! Is this feasible, you may ask? :eyebrow: It is and very much so. Maybe a share ratio of 10 wont do the job and it’ll need something more like 25, but it’s still very much possible. I am not very sure about the exact costs and savings and I would be very grateful if somebody figured it out, but as far I think, this is one cool idea! :tup: