BitTorrent Launches Entertainment Network - Months Late by John Neely Published on Feb 27, 2007 9:29 AM

February 27, 2007 - Nearly a year after announcing plans to collaborate with Hollywood in bringing legal torrents to users, BitTorrent quietly launched its Entertainment Network service today.  The company first gained widespread notoriety when it emerged as an alternative to other peer-to-peer file sharing services like Kazaa and Limewire, drawing the ire of Hollywood and the music industry for giving Internet users another way to get movies and music for free. 

Last May, BitTorrent and Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group announced a deal to publish legal film and television content using the BitTorrent network.  The service was originally slated to go live last summer, but the company delayed launching the legal service repeatedly.  Since the initial announcement, BitTorrent continued to ink deals with major film, video, and music distributors including Hart Sharp Video, Egami Media (a subsidiary of Image Entertainment), Koch Entertainment and The Orchard in July, and Century Fox, G4, Kadokawa, Lionsgate, MTV Networks, Palm Pictures, Paramount and Starz Media in November.

In aggregate, the partnerships BitTorrent has lined up to date give the company’s Entertainment Network a library of about 5000 titles.  The belated launch of the BitTorrent Entertainment Network comes hard on the heels of last week’s announcement that Joost will distribute Viacom content online, and instantly establishes another major player in online video distribution.

Unlike the iTunes Store, which sells content to consumers, BitTorrent’s service is based on a rental model where users can watch content during the one month rental period.  However, once a user has started to watch a rented title, they must finish viewing it within 24 hours.  This rental model would seem unwieldy compared to the buy-it-own-it iTunes model, and the company appears to be banking on the quality of its content to give it an edge over competitors. BitTorrent’s library currently includes both recently released films like Oscar winner "Little Miss Sunshine," and classics like the original "Rocky" at prices ranging from $2.99 to $3.99.