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Journalism of Courage
Warner Brothers have plans to make hundreds of movies and television shows available for purchase over the Internet using BitTorrent software, which is widely used to download movies and other copyrighted material illegally.
The agreement between Warner Brothers and BitTorrent is an unusual deal between a major Hollywood studio and a company whose file-sharing technology has raised the ire of the movie industry.
For its part, Warner Brothers says it is trying to stem the piracy of movies on the Internet by offering consumers an easy and fast way to download movies legally. ‘‘We’ve been struggling with peer-to-peer technology and trying to figure out a way to harness the good in all that the technology allows us to do,’’ said Kevin Tsujihara, the president of Warner Brothers Home Entertainment Group. ‘‘If we can convert 5, 10 or 15 per cent of the illegal downloaders into consumers of our product, that is significant,’’ he added.
A spokeswoman for Warner Brothers declined to disclose the terms of the deal. The service will begin sometime this summer, with prices beginning at about $1 for some television programs and increasing to about the price of a DVD or video rental for full-length movies.
