BitTorrent lays off 20% of workforce

Posted on 7 Aug 2008 at 14:27

BitTorrent is laying off 20% of its workforce, tacitly admitting that its efforts to convert from a purveyor of “piracy” software to a legitimate movie distributor have failed.

Valleywag reports that the company is ditching its sales and marketing staff after failing to sell the Torrent Entertainment Network to US retailer Best Buy.

Quite where that leaves the company is not clear. Chief executive Doug Walker, who replaced founder Bram Cohen last autumn, told Silicon Alley in March that the company was planning to “reposition” its store, suggesting that the business’s future may lie in supplying p2p distribution services to other companies.

“The two areas that we’re going to focus the business are the ‘DNA’ service, which is a service for the distribution of large rich media files in a secure, private network environment. The second is a new area for us which we call ‘BitTorrent Certified’ - an ability to use BitTorrent technology on new IP-enabled consumer devices. So routers, network attached storage devices, DVRs, television sets,” he said.

According to Valleywag, the DNA service would rely on convincing ISPs to prioritise the legal BitTorrent traffic, but the US Federal Communications Commission recently ruled that to be illegal: ISPs must treat all file sharing equally. That ruling, the website claims, was behind Best Buy’s decision to pull out of the proposed purchase.

Author: Simon Aughton

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