Nov 23, 2005, 22:51 GMT
San Francisco - The major Hollywood studios have signed a deal with the inventor of the BitTorrent website to reduce the number of pirated films shared on the popular downloading network, according to an announcement Wednesday.
Under the terms of the deal, BitTorrent.com must remove any links to pirated films made by seven Hollywood movie studios. But the move has more symbolic than real value in combating piracy since it leaves users of the peer-to-peer system free to search other sites that use the BitTorrent technology to share files.
BitTorrent is popular for the distribution of large files since it splits the files into small pieces and downloads them to users' computers from a large number of sources.
'BitTorrent Inc. discourages the use of its technology for distributing films without a license to do so,' said Bram Cohen who invented the BitTorrent technology. 'The content-owner companies and content-delivery companies should be working together. This is the first step. We are working toward deals in which BitTorrent will deliver MPAA content online.'
Cohen's agreement with the Motion Picture Association of America comes as he has reportedly raised 8.75 million dollars in financing to turn the BitTorrent technology and the associated website into a commercial download service.
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