Warner Bros and BitTorrent

I enjoyed reading this case, but I didn't really find any questions to answer at the end. I was a bit surprised that BitTorrent was able to establish an agreement with Warner Brothers, given the issues that have surrounded peer-to-peer networks in the past. I would think that Warner Brothers will move forward very carefully with this partnership to ensure that all their content remains protected by BitTorrent. There are always people out there who are looking to get something for nothing. However, I do have to give Warner Brothers credit as they are taking all the risk of being a first mover in this new industry. I think they recognized that, like the music industry, they were missing out on a lot of online consumers who would pay for their product. If successful, Warner Brothers stand to make quite a bit of money by being the only one in the market with the electronic distribution system.

One thing I do believe Warner Brothers needs to monitor moving forward is the sharing of illegal movie files online. If the movie industry is going to be successful in online content distribution, they are going to have to go after people who illegally distribute their product. The music industry had to do this same thing when they went after the top downloaders of illegal music files. The motion picture industry may be forced to bring lawsuits against hackers and illegal file sharers as well. It will be interesting to see if the security settings that BitTorrent has put in place will be strong enough to keep the content safe.

If the BitTorrent and Warner Brothers partnership is successful, I would expect BitTorrent to solicit other movie studios for online access to their content as well. Warner Brothers has taken the first step. It is up to the rest of the movie industry to follow them. That is the direction the movie industry needs to go as consumers begin to demand more online video content. I'm not sure whether that will be through P2P networks or some other vehicle.