First look: BitTorrent video download store

Found on Ars Technica on Tuesday, 27 February 2007
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BitTorrent joined the masses of legal video download services yesterday with offerings from five movie studios and a handful of TV networks.

When a user signs up for the service, he or she enters a credit card and billing information so that purchases can be made quickly and seamlessly. However, when I went to purchase a movie (my first selection was Lady in the Water), BitTorrent refused to believe that I lived in the US, despite the fact that my IP geolocates to the Chicago area.

Trying to ferret out why BitTorrent would not allow me to download movies in Chicago, I tried to use my Mac. Somehow, despite the fact that my IP was still the same (behind the same firewall), BitTorrent all of the sudden decided that I was in the right country. Although the files cannot be played on a Mac, BitTorrent was happy to accept my money anyway and reminded me that I would only be able to play my movie in Windows.

Due to DRM restrictions, BitTorrent specifies that the files require Windows Media Player 10 or higher in order to play the files. I tried to open my protected .wmv file in WMP11, and was met with a curiously vague error message saying that there was a "problem playing the file".

Attempts to open the file on another PC as well as upgrade WMP however I could were fruitless. This file was not opening. Determined to get something to open, I purchased another video from BitTorrent—this time, a TV episode.

Once I authorized, I thought I was on my way to video watching nirvana, but that was not the case. As it turns out, the file's usage rights were "not yet valid," according to WMP. Unfortunately, the file's properties were no more descriptive as to when the usage rights would become available.

Our initial experiences have been disappointing and frustrating, and guess what the culprit is once again? DRM. Why the DRM failed to work on 50% of our purchases is not clear, but whatever the cause, it's simply unacceptable.

The industry probably thinks this service will be happily accepted by the masses. But a failure rate of 50% is way too high; even 5% would be unacceptable. In the end, people will keep on downloading their shows and movies from less legal sources because they get what they want there: working movies in high quality without any registrations and without being forced to upgrade to a DRM infected player. And as always, the industry will use this chance point out that people do not want to pay and try to use the situation to push forward strict regulations.