Normally, it is quite common to hear about the music or movie industry shutting down websites that assist in helping to distribute copyrighted works.  However when it comes to BitTorrent, the most popular tool for distributing and downloading pirated movies, Hollywood has negotiated an agreement with the BitTorrent Software creator and designer, Bram Cohen that requires him to prevent his website, BitTorrent.com from finding pirated popular movies in an aim to frustrate consumers who try looking for pirated copies.

This agreement is not only welcomed by the entertainment industry, but also shows Cohen's reaction towards piracy and that the movie studios are more likely to make deals with him relating to movie downloading, such as to develop commercial tools for efficiently distributing movies without the current issues of BitTorrent.  Unfortunately, this move will not prevent consumers from using other websites to find pirated content.  Thanks to BKF for letting us know about this news on this forum thread.

As the author of BitTorrent never intended its software to be used for illegal file sharing, but instead as an efficient method of distributing large files without servers, it is not all that surprising to see him now trying to curb piracy, at least from his website.  Then again, for him this is better than effectively appearing to support it, not to mention what the movie industry would have done otherwise.  On the other hand, this will not be the end of BitTorrent either, since like eMule, if one tracker site is shutdown or agrees to block pirated content, one can use another.  However, for those who rely on the authors search engine to scan tracker sites, this will mean having to find an alternative or search each tracker site individually for what they are looking for. 

Source: Washington Post