by SEO Consultant
S. Inarejos
S. Inarejos
BitTorrent, the pioneers of peer-to-peer file sharing technology, have just launched an online video, TV and movie store. The content offered by this new store marks a U-turn from the company's previous business model, as content available on the site is now licensed and users will have to pay a small fee for every download. By legalising their service, BitTorrent, widely used by web pirates around the globe in the past, have taken action to prevent any further lawsuits against the company from copyright owners.BitTorrent opened its doors in 2001 with an innovative peer-to-peer file distribution protocol, designed and created by Bram Cohen, a US programmer based in San Francisco. Cohen unveiled his idea of file sharing technology during a CodeCon conference in April 2001. Since then, the site has been up and running, with its popularity and user base rising dramatically to its present level of nearly 135 million subscribers.
The change in the service comes after BitTorrent's 2005 agreement with the Motion Picture Association of America, through which the popular site made a compromise to remove links to illegal content.
The new BitTorrent service allows users to download TV episodes and music videos for $1.99 each, as well as providing 24-hour new movie rentals for $3.99 and old movie rentals for $2.99. While many users will certainly be disappointed to find out that the service they could previously use for free now has a price tag, BitTorrent will still offer more than 1000 files for free download, including videos, movies, music and games. What's more, BitTorrent will allow users to upload and share video of their own making, the very tool which made leading online video service, YouTube, so popular.
The new online store will help BitTorrent avoid accusations of copyright infringement, which had the power to shut down hugely popular websites, such as Napster, in the past. More recently, there have been numerous lawsuits against companies like Google, who now own youTube, over the uploading of illegal content on Google Video or YouTube. For example, the film 'The World According to Bush' had been downloaded 43,000 times on Google Video before the search engine giant received a legal complaint from the movie's French producers.
The movement towards charging users for legal downloads now seems to be the primary way forward for video websites planning long term goals. Companies like Google, however, are still maintaining free video downloads for users by investing heavily in technology which is able to recognise whether or not uploaded content is restricted by copyright.
