Congratulation to BitTorrent - they have managed to develop a business model around BitTorrent P2P technology which until now has been almost synonymous to Internet piracy. They have today launched a commercial video download store, which offers movies and TV-series and is backed by major movie studios. At launch they have more than 3000 titles from Warner Brothers, Paramount, MTV, MGM, 20th Century Fox, Lionsgate and so on. Pricing seems somewhat fair, being $2.99-$3.99 per movie, but it comes with nasty restrictions - movies can only be stored for 30 days and Windows Media Player is required for playback. D'oh!

New releases will include films such as Superman Returns and featured TV shows will include 24 and Prison Break.

Once downloaded the TV shows available via the service can be kept indefinitely but movies can only be stored for up to 30 days. Anyone signing up must also use Windows Media Player to watch or listen to anything they download.

BitTorrent also hopes to encourage the creation of a community around the entertainment site where customers will be able to post videos they have made for others to download.

Sources: BitTorrent, BBC