BitTorrent to offer movies legally, using Microsoft's DRM

BitTorrent will launch a download service offering movies, music, TV programmes and games tomorrow (Monday), according to the New York Times.

The programming comes from studios, including Twentieth Century Fox, Paramount and Warner Brothers, that previously announced their intention to work with BitTorrent. There is also a new partner: the 83-year-old Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, which will take part by making 100 films available on the site from its 4,000-movie library.

The story says:

The BitTorrent store will work slightly differently than rival digital media offerings like the iTunes Store of Apple and the Xbox Live service of Microsoft. BitTorrent will commingle free downloads of users' own video uploads with sales of professional fare. And while it will sell digital copies of shows like "24" and "Bones" for $1.99 an episode, it will only rent movies. Once the films are on the PC, they expire within 30 days of their purchase or 24 hours after the buyer begins to watch them.

New releases like "Superman Returns" cost $3.99, while classics like "Reservoir Dogs" cost $2.99. The studio's content plays in Microsoft's Windows Media Player 11. It is secured by Microsoft's antipiracy software, which blocks users from watching rented movies on more than one PC or sending them to others over the Internet.

So now you'll be able to use the same system to download a movie for free and keep it forever, or download it for $3.99 and have it expire a day later. Yeah, that'll fly....