24 is traditionally one of the hit shows on BitTorrent. Together with Heroes, Lost and Prison Break, every episode is downloaded well over a million times. The show also has a reputation of leaking out, just before it premieres.

Similar to the unscheduled appearance of season 6, the first four episodes of the new season were uploaded onto several BitTorrent sites earlier today. The source appears to be a promo DVD sent out by the studios to several media outlets, TV editors and reviewers. According to early reports, the quality of the rip is mediocre, unlike the usual high quality scene rips usually posted on BitTorrent. Indeed, the leak appears to have bypassed The Scene altogether, leaking to P2P networks first.

It is often suggested that these leaks might be intentional, that broadcasters use them to hype the show just before the season starts. Although this is often impossible to confirm, it would not be the first time that this has happened.

In 2007, a Warner Bros executive admitted that he helped to leak the pilot of ‘Pushing Daisies’. The exec wanted to make sure the show “got out there,” and said his goal was to “help the cause.” He didn’t upload it himself though, but used his neighbor’s kid to do it instead.

The leak of these 24 episodes, whether intentional or not, is guaranteed to result in a surge of word of mouth promotion, and free promotion throughout the blogosphere. If anything it will help the show, rather than hurt it.

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

They will advertise with the popular slogan: “Have it your way”. However, it’s doubtful if DRM will be “an option”.

Earlier this year Fox and ABC started to offer TV streams, but that’s clearly not the solution. People demand high quality, cheap, DRM free content, whenever and wherever they want.

Selling downloadable TV-episodes is the first step in the transformation of TV. Offering the episodes for free, supported by micro-ads is the second.

Gillian Smith, media director at Burger King, said:

“We know our customers spend a lot of time on MySpace. The important thing for us as an advertiser was to make sure we were providing content that resembles entertainment more than advertising.”

The 24 downloads will be available on Myspace next week

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