After helping thousands of internet users to download illegal copies of music, movies, and software over the last few years, BitTorrent is going legit. The BitTorent Entertainment Network launches Monday, with official support from content producers including Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox, MTV, Paramount, MGM, and Lions Gate.

The store will feature about 3,000 movies at launch, and several thousand television episodes. There'll also be about 1,000 video games, and 1,000 music videos.

TV shows will sell for $1.99 per episode, which seems to be the going rate. You'll be able to rent movies, but not buy them, with new releases, including Superman Returns renting for $3.99, and older titles costing $2.99. Apparently BitTorrent has permission to sell feature length films, but decided against it after seeing how much the studios wanted to charge users for those films.

The videos will play in Windows Media Player 11 and include Microsoft DRM. That poses a few problems for the new service. First, it means that videos will only be available on Windows computers. Second, while companies like Amazon or Apple are well known companies that have begun offering consumers a chance to download videos in the last few years, BitTorrent is only really a big name among those who are used to using the technology to download videos for free.

If you have a choice of using the BitTorrent Entertainment Network to download a video that you can only watch on one Windows-based PC for a limited time, and you have to pay $3.99 for it, or turning to an alternative torrent network that will allow you to download the same video for free and without any DRM, which would you choose? Because I don't think it's fair to say that BitTorrent is in the same league as Amazon, Microsoft, or Apple at this point. I think the company's main competition will be piracy.

Hollywood and the MPAA are pretty serious about stopping the spread of pirated movies via Bittorrent and other P2P clients. Unfortunately, it appears they're losing the battle through a hole their first line of defense: Public Perception. According to a new research study, most Americans see downloading movies rather than buying them as tantamount to a "minor parking violation."

Only 40 percent of Americans polled called downloading copyright protected movies without paying for them a "very serious offense," a condition which Kaan Yigit of Solutions Research Group attributes to the Robin Hood effect. Simply put, most people see Hollywood and its stars as being too wealthy already, thus viewing a little personal piracy as an easy way to take from the rich and give to the poor, a pseudo-altruistic view that tends to break down when exposed to the light of day.

It's obvious that a sue 'em all and let god sort 'em out approach like that employed by the RIAA only further solidifies internet users in their Robin Hood philosophy but, what's the answer? Cheaper DVDs? Inexpensive DRM-laden downloads? How would Download Squad's readership stop the bleeding and start the healing?