To no one's surprise, it's being reported that BitTorrent, Inc.'s new BEN (BitTorrent Entertainment Network) is experiencing trouble on the DRM front. DRM (Digital Rights Management) by its very nature is troublesome, as it's inherently designed to cause grief, inconvenience, and mischief with the end user. Janko Roettgers, the editor of P2P Blog, spelled out his recent adventure with the BEN which caused enough headaches to solidify anyone's distrust of DRM products.

Janko paid $1.99 to download the Fox TV show “30 days”. According to Janko, his laptop met with the BEN's minimum requirements. Although the file acquired the necessary license, it would not play on the Windows Media Player (forget about using VLC Player). All that was displayed was a blank screen. Janko's BEN DRM adventure continued when the "upgrade video card" advice BitTorrent's troubleshooting guide provided didn't apply to his no-longer-supported video card. Just when Janko was about to throw in the towel, BEN's tech support returned his email and pointed him to a DriverHeaven.net .

"I had the same issue you had and used this tool to update my laptop's graphics card," a tech representative told Janko.

Overclockers aside, for those who would never touch a third party driver, it would take nerves of steel and great deal of courage to take this step. Inconveniences such as this only galvanize resistance against DRM and makes alternatives such as The Pirate Bay much more attractive.

Janko isn't the only one experiencing problems with the BEN. Ars Technica recently published a story on the misadventures of trying to download various forms of media. Two media files were able to download, however after "$5 and too many hours lost, I was media-less and frustrated...", as a Nirvana track and Nacho Libre were not successfully downloaded.

Aside from posing a significant nuisance and an encouragement to engage in unauthorized distribution, DRM's presence on the BEN does present its fair share of benefits. BitTorrent's president Ashwin Navin has stated in the past that he feels DRM doesn't have much of a future. Could these events be precipitating this vision?

With the omnipresence of BitTorrent, and the negative press that its new store has received, DRM's imprisonment of the consumer is only further pushed into the spotlight. The worse the news is, and the more meddlesome its implementation is exposed, BitTorrent, Inc. may realize its dream of a DRM-free future much sooner than anticipated. Serendipitous or brilliant marketing?

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BitTorrent :: BitTorrent Inc.

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