Brilliant Digital Entertainment, Inc.

Brilliant was founded in 1996 by Kevin Bermeister as a digital entertainment development and production studio, creating content for the Internet, PC CD-ROM, television, and home video platforms. The company used to specialize in developing "Multipath Movies". These are three-dimensional, digitally animated stories with multiple plot branches, or "paths", leading to multiple distinct conclusions. The authors'/programmers' intention was to combine the best qualities of traditional filmed entertainment story and plot, with the best of conventional computer games interactivity.

Brilliant Digital Entertainment seems to have abandoned its activities in other areas to focus solely on the digital distribution of music, using peer-to-peer technology, through its Altnet subsidiary. In the past, Brilliant Digital had agreements with distribution partners such as Sharman Networks, operator of the Kazaa Media Desktop, where Brilliant Digital provided technology and services to clients (owners and licensees of content, including music labels, video and film companies, software publishers, and game developers) so they could distribute content through their own Web site.

It's worth mentioning that BDE (Altnet) and Sharman Networks (Kazaa) were two major players in the legal battles over copyright and patent infringements, which ended only in 2006, between the music labels and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) on one side and companies operating P2P networks on the other.

Nowadays, BDE's core activities are digital content distribution, through Altnet, which functions as a digital music store, and content identification and metering, through its Global File Registry subsidiary, providing a database of digital file identifiers, which allows content owners to identify, filter and replace infringing copies of their content on web sites and P2P networks.

Latest info (2008) on Brilliant's officers lists Kevin Bermeister as President, CEO, Acting CFO, and Director. Anthony Neumann is VP Business Development.