Every day, the Sony Pictures hack gets weirder and weirder.
On Friday, Obama boldly announced that Sony had made “a mistake” in pulling the film but said it was the private company’s right to do so. In an interview earlier this morning, the Commander in Chief clarified that he saw the attacks as an act of “cybervandalism” as opposed to terrorism, and that this was not an act of war.
That’s all fine and good, but there is still one question that remains. What the hell is going to happen to The Interview? We are now 4 days away from the film’s original Christmas debut, and Sony is still unsure on how it will eventually release the film. The studio has announced that it is actively pursuing “alternatives” to releasing the film on a “different platform.” This sentiment was reiterated on Sunday when a Sony lawyer said the company would release the film. They just didn’t know how yet. BitTorrent wants to be that platform.
In an interview with VentureBeat, BitTorrent Inc says that Sony could set the price of the film using the BitTorrent Bundle service, similar to how Thom Yorke distributed his new album earlier this year. The company mentions that it’s not encouraging that Sony post to illegal pirate sites using torrent technology but through a controlled manner through BitTorrent.
This is could all one big advertisement for BitTorrent, which just wants to get its name in the conversation, but it places The Interview as a kind of test run for the future of film distribution, which is historically a pretty slow-moving beast when it comes to technology. Sony will most likely blow past the Christmas deadline as it tries to figure out the best way to release the film, but whatever service the company goes with, Hollywood will most likely be forever changed by the decision. [VentureBeat via TorrentFreak]