An article from CNET describes a couple of new protocols for fast file sharing, including BitTorrent.

At the very end of the article is a comment from the MPAA in which they describe the technologies as "a continuing threat".

I don't understand what is next for them. Perhaps they would like to ban all file transfer on the Internet unless it is Microsoft Palladium certified content showing that the poster and the owner are the same?

Quite seriously, if you look at the BitTorrent technology it is a server-based technology with no search capabilities. This makes it considerably less of a threat than the recently-court-case-winning Grokster and Morpheus.

The basic game with BitTorrent is that every client is a server and thus the more people who are downloading, the more people are uploading. This means that each recipient contributes at least as much bandwidth in the upstream direction as they do in the downstream direction and therefore there is a net increase in distribution for anything on the service.

Since this method requires some coordination, the system requires a central server page for each file that coordinates the download/upload process. As such, it is easy to tell where the content is coming from.