After years of endless suing, lobbying, and silly “piracy is stealing” commercials, it looks like one studio has come to terms with the digital age. Paramount Pictures will be distributing the faux-documentary horror flick “The Tunnel” over BitTorrent as they also release it straight to DVD.

The film has been using a crowd-sourced model for production financing. In order to make the picture, the producers sold 135,000 individual frames that fan backers could buy for $1 each. The production studio shows that 29,495 of the 135,000 frames were sold to help finance the film.

Although this distribution model has yet to prove it can turn a profit, it’s a great first exploratory step for an industry that has had a difficult time in finding their footing in the never-going-away digital world of file sharers.

Viva web video.