Freeman: wants to provide movie downloads. Photograph: Douglas C. Pizac/AP
A week or so on from Grokster v MGM and there seem to be some positive moves on the filesharing front: Intel has linked up with the studio owned by Morgan Freeman to work on a movie download service, while Opera's looking at BitTorrent.
Morgan Freeman - who's previously been something of an anti-piracy poster boy (if you can call a 68 year old man such a thing) - is the face of the new Intel joint venture, named ClickStar. CNet quotes the company's new CEO, Nizar Allibhoy:
"Our view is that making content available on the Internet is not an option -it is an imperative for the industry, given piracy and consumer demands for flexibility. Our motto is, 'Anytime, anyplace, on any device.'"
Meanwhile, Opera's announced in-browser support for file-sharing protocol BitTorrent.
Opera today launched a technical preview of the Opera browser for Windows, Linux and Mac that includes support for BitTorrent. Integrating this popular file-downloading technology in the Opera browser offers the end user a faster download process by utilizing full bandwidth and reducing the chance of in-transfer delay when multiple users download the same file.
I haven't had a chance to try it out yet, but the preview - and remember, it is just a preview - is here.
