Here's an article I just found regarding BitTorrent being "coerced" by some business/entertainment entities into going "legit" a la Napster...

Peer-to-Peer Movie Service Goes Legit
BitTorrent has signed new deals with Fox, Paramount, MTV, and more.

Say goodbye to one of the last, if not biggest, of the remaining ways to get free digital content… BitTorrent has announced that they are going to try to avoid recent copyright infringement allegation by going legit.

If you listen really close, you can hear people shutting down their computers all over the globe.

The popular peer-to-peer file-sharing service has signed deals with a number or studios and networks, including MTV, Paramount, Lionsgate, Fox and Palm Pictures. They currently have other deals with Warner Bros. and a few others.

BitTorrent’s millions of current users account for an estimated as much as 40 percent of all worldwide Internet traffic.

A new and probably not-as-popular pay service is scheduled to launch in February 2007. Pricing details will be announced closer to the launch.

-Nov. 30, 2006 — by Rachel Cericola

...Let's all hope this isn't true, or the start of a trend.

Well it would help if you posted a link.

Bad news if it's true.

But I'm sure someone will create a substitute network. Remember what happened after Napster went legit? A bunch of computer programmers decided to create several different p2p file sharing applications. Remember Morpheus, Kazaa and Audiogalaxy? They arrived after Napster went legit and although these apps are either paid or no longer exist today, they were superseded again by even more p2p programs with their own networks.

So I don't believe that this is the end of Torrent file sharing (if what's written above is true).

Sorry - here's that link. My bad.

http://www.electronichouse.com/artic...goes_legit/C91

Well that's an interesting note,
I congratulate the BitTorrent developer as this is a major deal!
imagine inventing something as bold as BitTorrent and then having it blow up,
the way I see it maybe it will still be around and someone will modify the code
to allow different type of download access the same way they did with most
P2P applications now a days...

Torrents are quite amazing really,
and what better way to not get sued?

Join them