BitTorrent Says No To Hollywood

Bram Cohen is saying “NO” to Hollywood. And by “NO” I mean an agreement has been reached between the seven major Hollywood studios and Cohen, the creator of popular P2P utility BitTorrent, to prevent popular Hollywood movies appearing on the Torrent search list.

The agreement represents the latest effort by the entertainment industry to discourage illegal internet downloads. It also demonstrates Cohen’s sensitivity toward Hollywood’s piracy problems, making him potentially more attractive to studios for future deals related to movie downloads.

Cohen revealed that back in September his company had raised US$8.75 million in venture funding to develop commercial distribution tools for media companies.

The BitTorrent technology pioneered by Cohen – used by an estimated 45 million people – assembles digital movies and other computer files from separate bits (hence the name) of data downloaded from other computer users across the internet. Its decentralized nature makes downloading more efficient but also frustrates the entertainment industry’s efforts to find and identify movie pirates.

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