With over 70 million users worldwide, BitTorrent has become a controversial leader in peer-to-peer digital distribution of content, a lot of which clearly is pirated. Based in San Francisco, CA, the five year old company is currently on a mission to help content owners to remove copyright infringing content from its search results. What is more, BitTorrent has started to work with studios to provide a secure, legal venue for consumers. With integrated monetization for paid and ad-supported content, a forthcoming legal BitTorrent video service supported by Warner Bros. Home Entertainment is an interesting platform for the online distribution of popular video content.

DMW: Copyright owners are worried about BitTorrent's growing popularity because of piracy. How do you respond to that?
Ashwin Navin: BitTorrent is the most efficient way to delivery high-quality content over the Web. While the technology has been used to publish many different types of content, copyright owners are growing to recognize BitTorrent's value proposition and we are working together to implement legal purposes for our technology. As video files are increasingly becoming higher quality, peer-assisted delivery is going to be the only way to successfully deliver video over the Web.

You have said that P2P is the best thing to happen to the movie industry since the DVD. What will the business model look like that can make the studios DVD-like profits from P2P?
DVD offers higher quality than VHS with much lower manufacturing costs. Unfortunately you still need trucks and warehouses to distribute them across the country. P2P, similarly, is the most efficient and most sensible delivery model for high-quality video – it will do to DVD what DVD did to VHS. With almost a million movies being downloaded a day using P2P technologies, it underscores two things: one, many consumers are already accustomed to using the Internet to access video content and; two, if there is a way to convert even a percentage of those users to paying customers, the studios will find themselves enjoying a robust revenue stream. This can be achieved through various models including paid content with revenue-sharing or through advertising-supported distribution.

What is the strategy behind BitTorrent entering the consumer electronics market with these new licensing deals?
BitTorrent has become the standard for peer-assisted delivery of large files on the Web, and our strategy behind entering the CE market is to create a consumer experience for downloading content with BitTorrent away from the PC. With an increasing slate of BitTorrent-embedded hardware, users will have a more seamless way to discover, download and enjoy their digital content on a variety of platforms.

Can BitTorrent compete with giants like Apple and Microsoft for ownership of the digital living room with an ultimate device that you can hook up to the TV to watch content from the Internet?
We complement the investments Apple and Microsoft are making in this arena. They develop platforms, we offer delivery, Hollywood produces content, and in the end, the consumer wins – we hope our users will enjoy their favorite content in high quality no matter where they are. We are fellow travelers with Apple and Microsoft in most cases. BitTorrent offers the best-of-breed delivery platform and by marrying that with the best content and the leading partners along the entire value chain, we believe we'll be successful.

Last, what is your fave website?
Second to BitTorrrent? It is YouTube.

Joakim Baage