I think that all of the content distributors will have to offer bittorrent in order to remain competitive. BT drastically reduces distribution costs and once the end user catches on, it will virtually eliminate them, at least for popular podcasts. Less popular podcasts will be more expensive to distribute. This is a disturbing truth, IMO.
BitTorrent to offer movies legally, using Microsoft’s DRM from Guardian Unlimited: Technology:
The programming comes from studios, including Twentieth Century Fox, Paramount and Warner Brothers, that previously announced their intention to work with BitTorrent. There is also a new partner: the 83-year-old Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, which will take part by making 100 films available on the site from its 4,000-movie library.
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Argh another service segregated by geography – I cant seem to buy any of the content from the UK.
I think there are still a few big hurdles with p2p stuff.
Firstly a critical mass of users is required to make the service fast enough – right now most users I know will avoid p2p because it is so slow compared to downloads from a good webserver. From the users point of view there is no advantage to getting the thing via p2p rather than from a server, so a really great p2p implementation with a decent app needs to come along.
Secondly this stuff just pases the bandwidth bill elsewhere. Here in the UK many broadband conenctions are capped, the ISPs go mad at users who p2p too much – the continuous use of user upload bandwidth is not compatible with the infrastructure & cost models of the ISPs. Some services are experimenting with traffic shaping. Some commentary about Joost has made reference to the high use of bandwidth, and the likely implications of this.
But as so many of the major players seem to have been looking seriously at various p2p distribution technologies for a few years now, Im not trying to write off p2p as a deadend, just remain skeptical and still waiting for a p2p experience that lives up to the hype.