BitTorrent teams up with Warner Bros. to sell movies, TV

BitTorrent, the internet file-sharingsite once blamed for helping people pirate movies and TV shows, has partnered with Warner Bros. to sell the studio's content.

Starting in the summer, the BitTorrent website will offer for sale more than 200 movies and TV shows from the Warner Bros. catalogue.

Available titles will include new films such as Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Tim Burton's Corpse Bride and The Dukes of Hazzard, as well as selections from the studio's library, including The Matrix, Dog Day Afternoon and the sci-fi TV series Babylon 5.

Customers will be able to download the content to their computer drives using the BitTorrent technology.

However, they will not be able to copy files to another computer or burn them onto a DVD.

Released on same day in stores and online

New content is scheduled to be available on the site on the same day as new DVDs are offered in retail stores.

Prices have not yet been finalized, but the company expects to price TV shows at around $1 USper episode and movies at the price of a new release on DVD.

"We have just been embraced by the largest movie studio that is owned by largest media company," said BitTorrent co-founder Ashwin Navin, according to Reuters. "We expect to see more deals and to push the envelope."

Created by computer programmer Bram Cohen, BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer file distribution application. The application allows a large file for instance, a movie or TV show to be broken into smaller parts, so that a person downloading the file can also begin sharing it with another person. This allows for faster downloads because the bandwidth is shared.

However, the term BitTorrenthas also come to describe the file-sharing protocol itself in other words, the particular system of swapping files.

In 2004, the Motion Picture Association of America began actively pursuing legal action against websites around the world that facilitated file sharing using the BitTorrent technology.

Last year, Cohen formed an agreement with the motion picture association to help stem unauthorized swapping of pirated movies and TV shows on his official BitTorrent website.