Hollywood, BitTorrent creator strike deal

Hollywood studios announced an agreement with Bram Cohen, the creator of the popular BitTorrent file-swapping technology, that will keep him from helping users find pirated copies of movies online.

Cohen had launched a service on his Web site last May that searched the Internet for file downloads that use his BitTorrent technology. While many of these are legal files, such as open-source software packages, inevitably the search engine also found feature films.

In an event held at the American Film Institute in Los Angeles, Cohen and executives from the Motion Picture Association of America said they were united in thwarting piracy.

"BitTorrent Inc. discourages the use of its technology for distributing films without a license to do so," Cohen said in a statement. "As such, we are pleased to work with the film industry to remove unauthorized content from BitTorrent.com's search engine."

Cohen has occupied a unique space in the peer-to-peer world for several years. Although he is the creator of a technology that is widely used for illegal distribution of films, software and music, he and his company have not maintained a network to help connect users in the way that Kazaa or eDonkey technologies do.

As a result, he has not been the target of lawsuits, although individual BitTorrent users have been sued for uploading movie files to others.

"We are glad that Bram Cohen and his company are working with us to limit access to infringing files on the BitTorrent.com Web site," MPAA Chief Executive Officer Dan Glickman said in a statement. "They are leading the way for other companies by their example."

Cohen's engine was far from the only tool used to find pirated BitTorrent files online, however. A handful of other online engines can search BitTorrent-specific sites, and ordinary search engines can also be used to find BitTorrent files.

[gamebittk]

ToorentSpy

What about torrentspy.com - thats the most poular torrent engine - and its packed with illegal movies. (not that ive ever downloaded them ;)

[bdanky]

shhhhh!!!

shhhhhhh!!!

[cyberblatt]

Garbage from Hollywood? Who needs it?

None of my friends are watching even movies on TV never mind going to movies! We watch TV news only and local issues. The rest of the news we get faster online... BBC World, DW etc.

[alucinor]

What about the film ~directors~?

How can we keep the movie industry from pirated millions from them? Ever hear how much New Line screwed over Peter Jackson after he basically saved their company? Greedy.

With BitTorrent, don't steal, just download share-friendly films and music -- it's obvious that's the wave of the future, anyhow -- and circumvent all this Hollywood mafia booliwugging.

[SeizeCTRL]

Same old story...

You would think the movie industry would have learned something from the music industry's battle with MP3s and how well iTunes is doing. They should have been the first to jump on digital distrobution. I do tend to side more with the movie people than the music people. Something wrong about being able to buy a DVD for $14 but going to the mall and CDs are like $18. CDs should all be under $10. Wasn't that what the RIAA promised many years ago?

[peashooter56]

Brian Cohen

This is bulshit. Get any bitorrent client (azureus etc.)and you get more stuff than you have time to watch or hard drive space for.
Regito