Unlikely Bedfellows - BitTorrent and Movie Studios Partner Up

BitTorrent. The name alone brings images of teens huddled over a glowing computer screen, frantically downloading the latest pirated movies and games. But starting Monday, BitTorrent will reinvent itself as the legal partner of MGM, Twentieth Century Fox, Paramount, Warner Brothers, and other studios.

The BitTorrent Entertainment Network, available from BitTorrent.com, will offer television show purchases and movie rentals, as well as thousands of PC games and music videos. To some, this may seem an odd partnership, the staid movie studios and the hip software company whose only reason for existing prior to this, in the eyes of the entertainment industry, at least, was to steal their copyrighted material.

"Somebody once said you have to embrace your enemy," said Doug Lee, the executive vice president of MGM's new-media division. "We like the idea that they have millions of users worldwide. That is potentially fertile, legitimate ground for us."

According to estimates, there are currently more than 125 million BitTorrent users, and according to movie studios, they are illegally trading more than one million movies each and every day.

So why the partnership? Simple. The studios are hoping the easy and legal availability of premium content will put some kind of dent in the illegal trade now flourishing. According to internal studies by BitTorrent executives, roughly a third of all BitTorrent users would be willing to pay for content if available.

"The vast majority of our audience just loves digital content," Ashwin Navin, president and co-founder of BitTorrent, told the Associated Press. "Now we have to program for that audience and create a better experience for that content so the audience converts to the service that makes the studios money."

The BitTorrent Entertainment Network will face stiff competition from players already in the pay-for-digital-download game. Names such WalMart, Microsoft, Amazon.com, stand in BitTorrent's way, not to mention the behemoth of the online content industry - Apple - which has sold more than one billion dollars worth of content.