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Warner Releasing Content To BitTorrent: "It was always inevitable"
When Neo went to Machine City to partner up with The Source in order to defeat Smith in The Matrix, it formered a powerful alliance that won the day. It makes for a strong metaphor in a decision announced yesterday when Warner Bros (with one of the world's largest content library) said it would be actively start distributing TV and movie files through peer2peer BitTorrent pipelines. Neo (we good content users) partners with The Source (Warner) in order to defeat Smith (bad pirate content users), agreeing to use BitTorrent zen kung fu.
In a major turnaround from the Napster 1.0 days and going against the traditional grain of content owners (as well as their lobbyists), Warner Bros. has made a stunning concession acknowledging its digital reality, announcing yesterday it will stop its resistence to digital file sharing of its content and knowingly distribute movies and TV shows using peer-to-peer technology from BitTorrent.
This makes Warner Bros. the first major studio to actively contribute content to such a service, which has been largely used for underground music, video, movie and other audio/video file sharing and for digital pirates. Instead of disavowing peer2peer digital trading and sharing, Warner Bros seems to be giving their thumbs-up and going with the marketplace demand.
Apparently, the studio aims to head off pirating by offering what it presumes to be reasonably priced shows and movies. They plan to begin offering TV shows and movies by this summer. Finally, a simplier way to get Smallville when I miss the weekly broadcast! No official pricing has been set, but TV shows could go for around $1 and movies for the price of a DVD, the companies said. Sounds good to me.
Taking notice of the successful test model employed by ABC showing their TV shows online the night after its TV broadcast, expect more TV and movie houses to jump on board. Not only will it make their content more viewable, it will ensure a better quality of downloaded shows instead of the often poor resolution versions. Plus, it will bring revenue back to the broadcaster they haven't gone on after until now.
Warner Bros. estimates its movies could be downloaded in about ten minutes and TV shows in less than that.
BitTorrent is the global leader in peer2peer file sharing online, connecting users millions at a time. P2P tracker BigChampagne estimates more than 80 million consumers trade more than a billion files worldwide every year now. The digital genie was let out of the bottle a long time ago. Consumers want they content when they want it -- they don't want to wait. They want it playable on whatever device they choose. They want to get the content quick and easy -- no hurdles, no hassles. And now a major force in Big Media is stepping forward to participate. It's a huge victory for multi-media, multi-taskers.
The adage "when you can't beat them, join them" applies here. Also, when Neo says to Smith "You were right...It was always inevitable."
And now we'll be able to download The Matrix from Warner Bros. legally.
reference article here
posted by Unknown @ Wednesday, May 10, 2006,
