BitTorrent is probably the world"s favorite file-sharing platform and for those of you using it for legitimate purposes the platform just got better. BitTorrent has developed a new format called BitTorrent Bundle that allows content owners to charge money for some of the data in the file.
Until now torrent files were limited to just delivering data while payments or interactions with said data always had to happen indirectly via a website. But with BitTorrent Bundle part of the data may be free while other parts may be purchasable all within the same file.
Here"s an example to better illustrate this point: let"s say you"re an independent film creator and you want to publish your new movie via BitTorrent but you don"t want to give it away completely free. You can easily set things up so the movie is delivered for free to anyone, but passionate folks can purchase additional behind the scenes material directly from inside the torrent file. You can also set things so that users only need to add an e-mail address or maybe spread the word about your movie via social networks and then they can also download the additional material.
In fact this is exactly what BitTorrent is doing right now with the first collection that uses this new technology: Kaskade"s Freaks of Nature tour. You can download half of the content for free while the other half becomes available when you add your e-mail address.
The new Bundle format only works with the BitTorrent and uTorrent clients right now and it"s still in its alpha stage but you can be sure this type of file will start appearing everywhere in the near future.
Source: BitTorrent Blog | Image via BitTorrent