Hollywood movie studios have long been at war with file-sharing platform BitTorrent because it provides an avenue for consumers to download films and other copyrighted content without paying.

But in an unusual twist, BitTorrent Inc has offered to distribute - legally - the controversial US film at the centre of the Sony Pictures Entertainment hacking scandal.

Sony cancelled the scheduled Christmas Day US release of The Interview, a comedy about the assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, after hackers threatened cinema-goers with acts of terror, and movie theatres refused to screen it.

While mainstream video-on-demand services such as Netflix are reportedly refusing to go near the film, BitTorrent Inc told various US media outlets that its peer-to-peer network was "the very best way for Sony to take back control of their film".

BitTorrent is a protocol that allows people to download large files directly from each other, also known as "torrenting".

While the technology itself is legal – torrent files contain only metadata – online pirates have long exploited it as a convenient way to share copyrighted content.

Sites such as The Pirate Bay, which was raided and shut down earlier this month, act as search engines for torrent files. People find the torrent file for the content they want and then download it using a third-party app.

In recent years BitTorrent Inc, the company that maintains the protocol, has sought to improve its profile by introducing a commercial torrenting option so rights holders can make their content accessible via the platform for a fee.

BitTorrent Inc denounced calls for The Interview to be pirated in the wake of its cancelled release.

On Friday, Sony clarified it still had plans to release the film and was "actively surveying alternatives to enable us to release the movie on a different platform".

It has yet to respond to BitTorrent's offer.

Brazilian author Paulo Coelho, who has openly criticised Sony's decision to pull the film, made an offer on Twitter to buy the rights to The Interview, saying he would then make it available free.

I offer @SonyPictures 100k for the rights of "The Interview" I will post it free on my blog. Pls get in touch with me via @SonyPicturesBr — Paulo Coelho (@paulocoelho) December 18, 2014

Coelho has previously endorsed the pirating of his own literary works, including bestseller The Alchemist, and made them available via BitTorrent.

Rights holders have sued hundreds of thousands of people for using BitTorrent to obtain pirated material.

with USA Today