Today, BitTorrent announced the BitTorrent Bundle, a new kind of torrent format that not only includes free content, but also acts as a gateway to additional material, offering creators a chance to distribute (and profit from) their work by themselves, outside of traditional methods. It's part of a new push by BitTorrent to legitimize the format in the eyes of the entertainment industry and take the file-sharing software from piracy favorite to necessary part of the business for movie and music makers big and small.

Although many people know BitTorrent as "that thing that everyone uses to download Game of Thrones illegally," significantly fewer know that the name actually belongs to the San Francisco-based company that developed the peer-to-peer file sharing technology. "We haven't done a very good job of owning our brand over the past 10 years," Matt Mason, BitTorrent's VP of marketing, told Wired.

"Many people don’t realize that we have over 2 million pieces of licensed and legal content available in our ecosystem," Mason said. "It is true that our technology is exploited as part of a stack of technologies used for piracy. But you’ll find that as a standalone tool we are not a very good piracy tool. We don’t rip CDs or capture movies on camcorders. We don’t host content that infringes on copyright, we don’t index it, point to it or promote it in any way. All of those things happen outside of BitTorrent."

Inside of BitTorrent, it's a different story. The BitTorrent Bundle is described by the company as an evolution of the torrent file concept. The user downloads the Bundle, which contains not only free content – in the case of the first Bundle, the Dada Life remix of the Kaskade track "Dynasty," as well as the trailer for Kaskade's Freaks of Nature tour documentary – but also a gateway to premium content, as well.

How you open that gate is determined by the creator of the content. For this launch Bundle, it's simply by sharing your email, but alternatives include pay gates, pay-what-you-want gates, or even links to outside sites like Netflix or iTunes. BitTorrent Bundles, in other words, gives musicians, moviemakers and artists of all kinds more control over how their work gets shared and sold.

Images courtesy BitTorrent

The Bundle is just one way in which the company is working to rehabilitate its reputation in the entertainment industry. In recent months, Mason pointed out, the company has worked with documentary filmmakers Vikram Gandhi and Stacy Peralta, author Tim Ferriss and musical artists like Death Grips and the Counting Crows to develop a series of programs that demonstrate BitTorrent can actually add value to content creators. "We’ve been piloting the transmedia and monetization potential of content published through BitTorrent," he said.

BitTorrent's efforts in this area prompted Fast Company to name it one of 2013's Most Innovative Companies, an award Mason hopes might change the perception about what his company is, and can do. "One of the hurdles we face is the way we are perceived by Hollywood," Mason said. "Many in that industry think we are Napster or The Pirate Bay. But they are misinformed. Although it's true that Hollywood and Silicon Valley have long misunderstood one another, we see everyday the value we can offer."

Others are starting to come around to the idea that BitTorrent not only isn't the enemy, but could be a very helpful friend. Last month, indie film studio Cinedigm released the first seven minutes of the film Arthur Newman via BitTorrent ahead of its April 26 release in theaters, a move that surprised many. But when you look at the numbers, it makes a lot of sense, said Jill Calcaterra, the company's chief marketing officer.

"When we learned that the BitTorrent protocol is used by over 170 million users, all of whom are avid consumers of entertainment and music and whom purchase 30 percent more of that content than average, we knew we wanted to reach out to them and engage them in our indie film," she said. "This was an opportunity to engage a huge fanbase from the onset by giving them something unique and exclusive early on, with the hopes that in return they will support the film through its lifecycle. Being an indie, I think we are more nimble than most and more willing to try and pilot new programs. The entertainment business is moving at a remarkable pace and we want to keep up and stay in front of opportunities."

According to Calcaterra, the Arthur Newman promotion, generated "hundreds of thousands of downloads" within just the first 24 hours and delivered a similar number of visitors to marketing channels for the movie. "We are also tracking the redirects to our website, monitoring social media and the overall conversation around the film, all of which is up since we launched with BitTorrent," she added.

For BitTorrent, initiatives like the Arthur Newman promotion and the Kaskade Bundle are just the start of a process that, it's hoped, will move the software and company further into the entertainment industry mainstream. It'll be a long haul, Mason said, but once executives – who tend to be all about the numbers, after all – see the results BitTorrent can deliver in terms of fan engagement, they'll get the picture.

"We find that once we do sit down and talk, there is a better understanding of how to work together," he said. "No other medium offers as good of a way for content creators to engage directly with their fans in a way that BitTorrent can."