CBC To Release TV-Show via BitTorrent, For Free
Written by Ernesto on March 19, 2008CBC, Canada’s public television broadcaster has plans to release the upcoming TV-show “Canada’s Next Great Prime Minister” for free via BitTorrent. This makes CBC the first North-American broadcaster to embrace the popular filesharing protocol.
According to an early report, high quality copies of the show will be published the day after it aired on TV, without any DRM restrictions.
CBC is not alone in this, European broadcasters, including the BBC, are currently working on a next generation BitTorrent client that will allow them to make their content available online. The benefit of BitTorrent is of course that it will reduce distribution costs.
The popularity of movies and TV-shows on BitTorrent hasn’t gone unnoticed. We reported earlier that some TV-studios allegedly use BitTorrent as a marketing tool, and others leaking unaired pilots intentionally.
It is safe to say that BitTorrent is slowly replacing Tivo. Approximately 50% of all BitTorrent downloads are TV-shows, and some episodes of popular shows such as “Lost”, “Prison Break” and “Heroes” get up to 10 million downloads per episode, spread over thousands of sites.
It is good to see that broadcasters slowly start to realize that they can benefit from sharing their content via BitTorrent. Last month Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) made the popular TV-show “Nordkalotten 365″ available in a DRM-less format. This experiment turned out to be a huge success, while the distribution costs were close to zero.
Previously: VLC Player Vulnerable to Remote Hijack
Next: The Pirate Bay to BBC: We Don’t Want To Be Information Slaves
78 Responses (Add yours or TrackBack)
Pages: « 1 2 [3] 4 » Show All
For those who have never seen it, the CBC is particularly unwatchable. They come up with aweful original programming that ends up with about a half dozen viewers in the whole country.
BUT, because the network is operated by politicians and their corporate cronies, it is kept on life-support at the taxpayers expense.
When I was a kid, I lived in Windsor, Ontario, and NOBODY in this city would watch shitty Canadian TV, because even with crappy rabbit ears, you could pick up a good dozen or so real TV stations from the US.
CBC is to TV as NPR is to radio.
And btw this show they want to put online will probably get a whole 5 viewers a month. Just go over to cbc.ca and look at the garbage dump. They’re lucky to still have Hockey Night in Canada. And even that sucks ass (hockey is soooooo lame, Canuk equiv of Americunt Idol.) I hope Don Cherry dies while hosting that lame show.
P.S. the web master of this place needs to fix their fucking CMS so it doesn’t complain about comments being posted too quickly.
BTW as a few previous commentors have noted, the CBC is a TOTAL PROPAGANDA OUTLET run by media-whores that would make Fox-news jealous.
Their radio stations do nothing all day but tell you how great Afghanistan is now that our brave kill-bots are there to murder anyone who looks at them cock-eyed.
Their newscasts are similarly biased.
One thing you’ll never hear them talk about is the brutal regime running China and harvesting organs of dissenters. In fact, they’ve been caught actively censoring these uncomfortable truths. All it takes is a politician to call and it’s ‘taken care of.’
They did a 9/11 truth hit-piece a year or so back that was so obviously crafted for political purposes it made me want to vomit in terror.
The CBC really should be fully privatized so it can die a quick death.
What a f*** s*** are they distributing there?
First I thought it might be some kind of comedy series ….
… but no!
It’s some kind of political “casting” mesh up.
What the fuck do they try to waste our time with now?
Not enough wannebe superstars?
Not enough wannabe supermodels?
Do they realy have to add wannabe “superpoliticians” now?
Are they serious or just media morons?
Why on earth should anybody ever want to look at “wannabe popular at any cost” people who are so media horny they are even willing to molest viewers with their pathetic opinions on how to build a better world?
Does politics really have to become so crappy that it’s meassured in TV popularity of media whores?
(Doesn’t it already enough?)
I wouldn’t even waste a single bit of my bandwidth or storage capacity for this crap!
CBC: share some real (valuable) entertainment or information program!
Not this disgusting crap of most idiotic production ever!
Idiots!
(@ TORRENTFREAK : What are the download rates for casting shows on Bittorrent in general? Can they measure up to popular TV shows (stargate, heroes, lost? That would be nice to know)
I only hope this crap flops on the Bittorrent network completely!
(i.e. Bittorrent users are smarter then those watching these CBC crap production on traditional TV - if anybody does at all!)
who cares what cbc are giving for free. here’s why it’s goood:
my isp: stop using bit torrent,it’s illegal/unfair use of our bandwidth.
me: no,it’s not.it’s just cbc….see.
Sadly, one of Canada’s major ISPs, Rogers, is effectively blocking Bittorrent (and encrypted) traffic.
Hopefully more legitimate uses of Bittorrent like this one pop up and force these ISPs to stop hiding behind their “it’s illegal” excuse to shape their network traffic.
Wait, it’s not gonna be fun to download stuff via. BT if it’s legal…
If they are commercial,we can just remove them and repost a torrent with out it.Similar to the harry potter book leak.
> The benefit of BitTorrent is of course that it will reduce distribution costs.
Sure. But the total costs remain the same or go up. The difference will be paid by our internet connections. That’s basically a flat rate for culture through the back door.
This concept first needs to be discussed publicly.
“This effectively removes the argument that all torrents are illegal”
Nah, it just changes it to “all torrents SHOULD be illegal”.
The CBC has a lot of quality programming. The comedy stuff like 22 Minutes, Rick Mercer, Just for Laughs. Plus their news and sports coverage is great, as are shows like Marketplace.
[quote comment="314590"]For those who have never seen it, the CBC is particularly unwatchable. They come up with awful original programming that ends up with about a half dozen viewers in the whole country.
[/quote]
Hey! That’s not fair! Okay, a lot of the programming on CBC is really boring. Its national or international news, or its biographical or scientific or geographic or economic documentaries, or its professional reports and commentators for major and often otherwise COMPLETELY unreported world events - in other words, CBC programming is INTELLIGENT! Its not FUN, its USEFUL; its the only thing remotely close to an awareness of the rest of the world and current/recent-historical world conditions any Canadians have!!!
Its boring because its content is neither fluff nor eye candy, but rather professional journalism, and it puts every other major news outlet (Global, which only talks about how many people got shot in Toronto today, CTV, which only talks about how the kids at St. Mary’s highschool put on a great science fair vs. CBC, which traverses the latest famine in North Korea, the genocide currently happening in Kenya, the brutal crackdown on protesting Tibetian monks, the latest violation of NAFTA by the states, and the results of the parliamentary elections in Germany).
Honest to God, I love fluff - B5, Futurama, Alias, House - great work, really fun to watch, really pleasant and enjoyable - but a completely different animal!
[quote comment="314596"]BTW as a few previous commentors have noted, the CBC is a TOTAL PROPAGANDA OUTLET run by media-whores that would make Fox-news jealous.
One thing you’ll never hear them talk about is the brutal regime running China and harvesting organs of dissenters. In fact, they’ve been caught actively censoring these uncomfortable truths.[/quote]
I don’t know, I haven’t watched for a while, but when I do, they consistently report the news fairly, accurately, and with a minimum of censorship; bear in mind, while they report the news, they don’t go out of their way to pull the tiger’s tail!
I can see this as a great way for the beginning of legal torrents, because its hazy whether providing entertainment to Canadian citizens should be part of the CBC’s mission, providing impartial news/docs/etc + citizen-centric material like “Canada’s Next Great Prime Minister” is definitely within the realm of CBC’s “duty” to the taxpayers, and therefore the use of low-cost transmission methods IS fully justified end-to-end, rightful-creation to rightful-distribution; moral and legal from a->zed:)
too bad can’t do with scripted shows cuz actors/writers/directors have to get paid but maybe hope for low monthly fee with unlimited downloads for all shows
This is a good start. But…. the Conservative government, a pack of Bush ass-kisers still want to bring in a law that makes the US laws look like the recoding companies are Santa Clause. This isn’t over until we kill all the Conservatives. They are nothing but right-wing religious zealots.
Visit this too!
http://pluking.blogspot.com/
That is why Canada rocks!
maybe if they dont make us download a ‘fagged up’ bitrorrent client ill be more than happy to download it
The torrent is up!
http://www.cbc.ca/nextprimeminister/blog/2008/03/download_canadas_next_great_pr.html
Thank you for letting us know about this.
And thanks to Guinevere for posting the link to the site.
I have just spent the last few hours trying to spread the word out. We as a whole community needs to support this, Canadian or not.
This could be just the start of the revolution we’ve been looking for.
how do you get this stuff man as i want prison break free
6 references to this post
Pages: « 1 2 [3] 4 » Show All
Add your response