Ashwin Navin

World Screen Weekly, August 3, 2006

President, COO and Co-Founder

BitTorrent Inc.

Last week, Microsoft announced plans for a portable media player to rival the iPod. The news bodes well for platforms seeking to take on the iTunes Music Store’s dominance in the online download space. BitTorrent, the peer-to-peer file sharing technology that was once the bane of the movie studios and record labels, is among the companies angling for a slice of that pie. And with deals in place with the Warner Bros. Entertainment Group and several independent distributors in advance of the fall launch of its new content service, BitTorrent is anxious to take on Apple’s lead in the market.

“Clearly, Apple is doing a lot of things right,” says Ashwin Navin, the president, COO and co-founder of BitTorrent. “Apple was absolutely necessary to create this marketplace. They made it really easy to find, download and consume media. The way we view that experience is, it’s only as good as its weakest link—as soon as people want a piece of hardware other than an iPod, the whole experience is not as interesting as it was. We expect, over the next five years, for there to be a number of very good hardware products, delivery systems and content offerings that Apple may not be able to exploit. Content is going to get richer and higher in quality and the winner in the future will be the one who can cost-effectively distribute that content, and that’s why we think BitTorrent is uniquely able to win in this market.”

A lofty goal, perhaps, in an industry where consumers now have an array of sites where they can access television programming when and how they want it. But BitTorrent does have a certain cachet among savvy web surfers who have been using the company’s software for years to download user-generated content as well as music, movies and TV shows—albeit often illegally. The technology itself allows rapid download speeds for large files and offers a search engine that enables users to find content online. Since its creation in 2001 by programmer Bram Cohen, today the CEO of BitTorrent, “the software has been downloaded over 70 million times,” Navin claims.

The challenge for the company will be turning those users into paying customers, and it’s one that Navin welcomes. “If we’re not able to craft a product and a value proposition that competes effectively with piracy, we’re not going to win,” he says. “In some cases we’re not in complete agreement with the big studios and networks, but we have found common ground and a way for us to start experimenting and in a sense get them to dip their toes in the water.”

That experimentation on the part of the studios began earlier this year when Warner Bros. became the first Hollywood major to make its content available to BitTorrent. More than 200 television and film titles are set to launch on the site this fall for users to pay for and download. “That was a coup for us. It was the outcome of several months of dialogue. We [began talks] with the Motion Picture Association in the fall of last year and struck a formal arrangement in November, that opened the door for us to work with their member companies.”

Navin, however, is also looking beyond Hollywood, striking deals with independents such as Koch Media and the Image Entertainment subsidiary Egami Media. And BitTorrent will attend MIPCOM in October in order to further boost its catalogue. “We’re perhaps more interested in independent, foreign, niche content just because we’re uniquely able to distribute that,” he says.

Amassing a significant library to offer BitTorrent users is key, Navin says. “What we hope to launch in the fall is a catalogue of content that is second to none in its comprehensiveness. We are going to try to license as much content as possible between now and then.”

Another goal is international expansion and BitTorrent, like many media companies, has its eyes firmly planted on China. “BitTorrent is a household brand in China,” Navin says. “Any 15- to 25-year old male knows it, loves it. BitTorrent is the delivery mechanism for them to get what they want and in a lot of situations this is content that isn’t effectively distributed in this market. What we want to do in China is leverage our brand recognition and vast user base to create a service that consumers will love and obviously pay for.”

—By Mansha Daswani