If BitTorrent Inc really plans to compete with the pirates, the pricing of the content should be reasonable, the catalogue extensive, and all without DRM. If they can meet these ends they might have a good chance to convert some of the present BitTorrent users. Navin says that he hopes that BitTorrent users, all of whom he calls “members”, find the BitTorrent store a better experience than piracy.

The BitTorrent store will be launched next month, and videos will be ‘protected’ by Windows DRM. Ironically, Navin said on a panel at the international Consumer Electronics Show (CES) that DRM inspires people to pirate content. So they have to find a way to convince their media partners to remove the DRM first, if they really want to compete with piracy. Bram Cohen, the inventor of BitTorrent and co-founder of BitTorrent Inc, told us last week, “Right now most of our content partners are insisting on DRM for the content we’re making available. It’s causing an awful lot of headaches, but we’re trying to minimize the impact on user experience and support”

The BitTorrent Video Store will be filled with movies and TV shows from Warner Bros, 20th Century Fox, Paramount Pictures, G4, Kadokawa Pictures USA, Lionsgate, MTV Networks (Comedy Central, MTV etc.), Palm Pictures and many other mainstream and independent content providers. In total there will be over 10,000 titles listed in their store, from classic TV shows to the latest blockbusters. According to Navin, this will make the BitTorrent store the biggest online video store on the Internet.

Ashwin Navin on the Netgear Entertainment Box, and the upcoming video store.

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Windows DRM has been completely left behind in the portable media player market. The iPod can’t play content restricted (read: infected) by Microsoft’s little virus, and neither can Microsoft’s very own Zune! So, the only consumers who’ll be able to watch videos they have purchased from the BitTorrent Video Store away from their computers will be those who own Creative, Dell, Archos or any one of the other compatible devices. This is, assuming the content from the store will be protected with Janus, Microsoft’s Windows DRM for portable devices. If it isn’t, it won’t play on any portable device at all.

In September of this year Ashwin Navin, the co-founder of BitTorrent Inc said that his company foresees a future without DRM. Although, even then, the company had said that they would use DRM, Navin also made it clear that it would only be in the early stages. Let’s hope the POA hasn’t changed.

Navin made his standpoint on DRM quite clear when he said that “the bottom line is that DRM is bad for the content provider and it’s bad for the consumer.” About foreseeing a future without DRM, he said that he thinks “the future will not be marked by digital rights management. It will be marked by advertising-supported content that’s clear of DRM.” The inventor of BitTorrent, Bram Cohen too says that the company is “very concerned about the usability problems DRM introduces,” and that they are “educating [their] content partners about the lost commercial opportunity.”

To be fair, BitTorrent Inc is only walking down the path of limiting consumers’ rights because it is being forced to. The company is clearly against DRM. According to Cohen, it is the only way they have been able to strike deals with content creators. He says this is “at the insistence of [their] content partners.”

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.