Will a commercial BitTorrent lead to more piracy?

It very well might, even though the newly commercial site has done all that film studios, music companies and games publishers wanted by wrapping their wares in digital rights management (DRM) to protect them while offering them for download.

Bittorrent is best known for illicit use: it's the download protocol of choice for more than 80m savvy net users to get legal files (such as Linux distributions) and, far more frequently, copyrighted ones (such as feature films).

This week it morphed into a commercial service - BitTorrent (bittorrent.com) - offering new films such as Superman Returns and favourites such as Chinatown, as well as music, TV and games for to download. (Only US users can buy from it at present.)

The problem for the content companies is, some of the music and other content on BitTorrent is free - helping to acquaint people who'd not otherwise understand how to use the protocol with the process of getting torrent files legally. ISPs will also now be unable to rely on Bittorrent content being illicit - which some use to throttle its bandwidth. How now can they distinguish Bittorrent transfers that have the approval of the content owners, and those that do not? Illicit Bittorrent use could explode: "You can even search for torrents by putting in what you're looking for, then adding 'torrent' in any search engine," the site says helpfully. That'll surely turn up a lot of illicit material if you don't like the prices the film studios have made BitTorrent charge.

Interestingly, in a post on his own blog in September, BitTorrent's chief executive Ashwin Navin said: "I now know that a lot of people in the entertainment industry agree when we say: DRM is bad for artists, and it's bad for consumers. Period. There will be a day however when entertainment executives will see DRM as a risk to their business." They might find that the risk has already been run