A recent post on the Last100 blog (part of
the Read/Write Web network) written
by Guinevere Orvis,
an interactive producer with the CBC, talks about how the Canadian
television network has chosen to distribute one of its shows using the
BitTorrent peer-to-peer
network.
The idea apparently started after she read about the Norwegian
state broadcaster doing
the same thing with a travel show.
It’s nice to know that our national
broadcaster is open to new ideas, and from the sounds of
Norway’s
experience, it should be one that they consider repeating.
A Successful Experiment
According to Eirik Solheim,
who works for the Norwegian broadcaster, the show has been downloaded
more than 90,000 times and the network has been “saving huge
on
bandwidth cost.”
That last part is important to note: BitTorrent may be known
for
piracy, but it is fundamentally a distribution method, plain and simple
(ISPs argue that it is cheap because it piggybacks on their networks
and sticks them with the bill, but that’s a topic for another
day).
Here’s hoping that the CBC decides to continue this
experiment, and
congratulations to Guinevere for helping them come to grips with the
issues involved and spurring them on. Her full post on all
the details is well worth a read.
Further Reading
Michael Geist has
written about the CBC’s move, and so
has TorrentFreak, and
CNET. Mike Masnick at Techdirt has taken
note of it as well.
Written by Mathew Ingram, a technology journalist. Catch his views on the intersection between media and the web at MathewIngram.com. This post is licensed under the Creative Commons.
