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Warner Initiates The Swarm To P2P

Other Media Companies Will Find That Working With BitTorrent Makes Sense
by Brian Haven

May 10, 2006

Warner Bros. Entertainment has announced that it will make legal video content available for sale as downloads through the BitTorrent peer-to-peer (P2P) publishing platform — a platform known mostly for pirate content until now. By this summer, Warner Bros. intends to make available recent releases such as Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, older titles such as The Matrix, and TV programs such as Babylon 5 in conjunction with the release of the same content on DVD. We expect media companies, broadband operators, and OS vendors like Apple to take advantage of P2P solutions eventually. Content delivery networks (CDNs) like Akamai will remain important partners in rich media content delivery, but they will have to address the growing costs associated with distributing content from central locations.

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