Studio to use file sharing network to sell films and TV shows in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

LONDON (Reuters) – Warner Bros. said Monday it would soon begin selling movies and television shows in Germany, Austria and Switzerland using a peer-to-peer network, embracing the very technology that has rattled the entertainment industry.

Starting in March, the new service called In2Movies will allow paying consumers to download a limited selection of Warner Bros. films and TV programs, including “Batman Begins” and “The O.C.,” from central servers and from other users who have the desired files.

Such networks, widely known as P2P, are blamed for rocking the music industry, as teenagers around the world easily swapped songs with each other using services like Napster (Research) and Kazaa.

As connection speeds have improved, other services such as BitTorrent and eDonkey have increasingly been used to illegally download copyrighted movies and TV shows, with P2P traffic using as much as 60 percent of the Internet’s total bandwidth, according to some estimates.

“One of the most effective weapons for defeating online piracy is providing legal, easy-to-use alternatives,” said Kevin Tsujihara, president of Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group.

In the first half of 2005, 1.7 million Internet users illegally downloaded 11.9 million movies in Germany, Warner Bros. said.

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