Guba to distribute Warner Bros. movies

NEW YORK, June 27 (Reuters) Warner Bros. movie studios struck a deal to let some of its top films be sold through online site Guba.com, its second agreement involving technology companies that once threatened to destroy it.

Time Warner Inc.'s film division announced the deal yesterday in a statement with the Internet site, where users can find material ranging from home videos to illegal copies of mainstream movies.

It follows a deal it has struck with BitTorrent Inc. to sell movies using its technology.

Hollywood, looking to avoid the mistakes of the music industry, is aiming to make legal, protected versions of its films available for purchase online through as many avenues as possible.

Warner Bros. Home Entertainment plans to make about 200 of its films and TV shows available for purchase at BitTorrent.com. Videos purchased from BitTorrent.com cannot be copied to DVDs.

On Guba, viewers can purchase new release DVD films such as ''Syrianna'' for 19.99 dollar that can be downloaded to computers.

Older films such as ''Batman Forever'' from the Warner Bros.

catalog can be purchased for 9.99 dollar or rented for a day for 1.99 dollar.

Warner Bros. also makes some of its older catalog of TV shows available at In2TV.com, managed by corporate sibling AOL.

Guba uses Microsoft Corp.'s digital copyright management system.

REUTERS SY PC1041