BitTorrent Threatens DVD Profits !

A radical new technology threatens to do to Hollywood what Napster did to the music industry.

It's called BitTorrent and is much faster than other file-swapping software used to exchange movies and music over the Internet. In fact, BitTorrent can transfer a feature-length film in about two hours — a fraction of the 12 hours it typically takes with file-sharing services like Kazaa.

As BitTorrent becomes mainstream, it imperils the movie studios' most lucrative source of revenue — the $17.5 billion the industry reaped last year from DVD sales and rentals.

Hollywood has yet to find a way to thwart BitTorrent's distribution of bootlegged copies of new films like "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow," or the latest episode of hot cable television shows like "Nip/Tuck."

Movies aren't the only large files that can be found on BitTorrent distribution Web sites like www.torrentreactor.net or www.suprnova.org. For instance, on Sept. 27, Torrentreactor offered copies of the Doom 3 video game and Apple's OS X operating system for Macintosh computers as well as dozens of other software titles.

With BitTorrent, a digital file — be it a movie like "Resident Evil," a bootlegged Grateful Dead concert or a software operating system — is chopped into digestible bits to accelerate the exchange. The more people downloading a particular file, the faster everyone gets it, for free.

Once a download is completed, the network disconnects and disappears without a trace. The ephemeral nature of BitTorrent exchanges creates a detection nightmare for companies like Loudeye, which are hired by the movie studios to disrupt online piracy.
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Source : SNL