So if you've used the BitTorrent program Azureus, you may have attempted to upgrade it only to find that it has evolved inot the digital video on demand service VUZE.

I just spent some time chatting with VUZE's Manager of Business Development, Erik Koland, about the company's plans for anime. The big news is that they're now offering an anime called Neko Rahmen for free, subtitled directly from the Japanese company THINK Corporation-- oh, and did I mention that it's totally DRM-free, too?

Neko Rahmen is a series of 13 three-minute episodes. Each episode is directed by a different creator with a different take-- so the first episode is fairly typical, in Japanese, etc. But the second episode is spoken entirely in cat language (you know, meow meow). And the third episode has a completely different art style from the first and second. It's all in its original language(s) and subtitled in English by VUZE.

The company already has a bunch of anime from Geneon, Media Blasters, Central Park Media, and others. Everything is download-to-own (not streaming), and the majority of it is ad-supported but with DRM, with some pay-per download. VUZE hopes to continue leaning more and more towards the ad-supported, free, DRM-less model. Koland is also well-versed in the recent fansub controversies, including the Sevakis editorial, and hopes that by offering a full package of subtitling and release that they will prove their worth to Japanese companies like THINK Corp. They also plan to continue offering content from other U.S. licensors as well, though.

And a hint to those licensors: they're happy to host trailers for anime series, even ones that they don't host the actual episodes of.

As for the rest of us, Koland describes VUZE as an open entertainment platform. Users can release their own (non-pirated-type) content to the entire VUZE community, whether it's a home video or a Flash cartoon.

Around the end of the discussion Koland notes that the company is aware that Neko Rahmen is a small title and that its free DRM-less release is merely a baby step in the grand scheme of things. But he hopes that it will open doors for VUZE and the industry as a whole to serve us fans better. How'm I supposed to argue with that?