They not only consume more media, but also pay more for legal content. While the average visit to The Pirate Bay doesn’t cost anything, the above suggests that it’s a good venue for indie creators to advertise their work.

This is exactly what a group of indie sci-fi creators thought, so last weekend they teamed up with VODO to promote their work on The Pirate Bay. The end result is the “Otherworlds” sci-fi bundle, which includes a wide variety of content, such as books, games, music, comics and videos.

The Pirate Bay was kind enough to promote the bundle for nearly three days, replacing the site’s iconic logo with a prominent banner. Those who clicked on the banner could download a torrent with free sample content, but those who wanted more had to pay up.

TorrentFreak reached out to VODO’s Jamie King, who organized the campaign, to learn more about the results. As expected, the Pirate Bay promotion generated a ton of traffic, over 100,000 visitors. Not all of this traffic resulted in sales, but overall results turned out quite well.

“The Pirate Bay helped us to make about $5,000 of sales from 375 customers. The simple immensity of the traffic really helped to move some bundles,” King tells us.

The “Otherworlds” bundle presents people with three payment options. A “pay what you want” option for five titles, a “beat the average” option with seven extra pieces of content, and a “beat the premium” option for the high rollers.

Interestingly, Pirate Bay users mostly picked the latter option. In total, 232 Pirate Bay visitors chose the most expensive “beat the premium” option, paying $18.11 on average. Another 72 visitors went for the cheapest option with an average payment of $1.78, and 67 people ended up in the middle with an $10.61 average.

Across all paying Pirate Bay visitors the average payment was $13.52. Interestingly enough, this is more than the average paid by people who came from other sites, or social media. That said, King notes that the ratio of incoming visitors to buying visitors was relatively low, about a tenth of that from other sites.

Those who have been reading TorrentFreak for a while may remember that VODO has been around for a few years already. Initially it started out by sharing torrents for free, and asking the public for donations. While some people were happy to donate, this model wasn’t very sustainable.

“To really create a success for a filmmaker, we’d have to generate literally millions of downloads. But it wasn’t do-able on a regular basis,” King tells us.

“So for us, putting up a ‘pay what you want’-wall has been a really simple and successful move. We still offer free sample torrents / mini-bundles, but basically, if you want the proper bundle, you have to choose to pay something,” he adds.

Conversions increased after the switch as more and more people started to contribute. The other advantage was that more creators were willing to join, as they were guaranteed a payment, while keeping control over how long their content remains available.

“Particularly, we can get much better content than if we were using torrents. The truth is most creators don’t have the rights to share their work freely, even if they wanted to,” King says.

In other words, if you want Pirate Bay users to contribute, the paywall system is a better way to do so than giving away everything for free in return for an optional donation. Perhaps this sounds counter-intuitive, but it’s how it works.

Finally, it’s worth noting that VODO has built-in an option for those who are not happy with the suggested payments. Beneath each offer is a “that’s too much for me” button where people can suggest the price they are willing to pay. Interestingly, hundreds of Pirate Bay users suggested their alternative price. In a week or so VODO plans to honor most of these offers, generating thousands of dollars in aftersales.

All in all the above shows that sites such as The Pirate Bay and EZTV, where it was promoted as well, can certainly help to finance indie creators. However, simply giving away content for free is not always the best option. As is often the case, people sometimes need a small incentive to contribute.

The “Otherworlds” bundle is still available today, and those who are interested can check out the offer here.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

And so it happened. For the distribution and promotion the pair teamed up with the VODO BitTorrent distribution platform, and the first $6,000 that was needed to shoot the pilot was collected from supporters through the Kickstarter website.

Mid-June 2010 the first episode of Pioneer One was eventually released to the public through VODO. With support from all the big players in the P2P-scene, the BitTorrent-only TV-series quickly gained a huge audience.

In the months that followed the episodes were downloaded more than 3 million times in total. Quite an audience for a web-only show with a very limited budget and a rather unpredictable release schedule.

Today the 5th episode of Pioneer One came out, which means that there’s only one episode left before the first season ends.

As always there are free .torrent downloads available. However, those who want to support the project are encouraged to donate (and receive some nifty goodies).

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Cold War spy thriller A Lonely Place For Dying boasts James Cromwell as Executive Producer, a Hollywood veteran with movies such as LA Confidential, The Green Mile and Secretariat under his belt.

But the talent doesn’t stop there. With actor Michael Wincott on board (The Crow, The Assassination of Richard Nixon, not to mention appearances in dozens of other movies and videogame Halo2) and first-time Director Justin Eugene Evans, the seeds to a great movie had been planted.

On July 1st 2011 those creative seeds were converted to BitTorrent seeds courtesy of VODO and part one of the movie was released out into the wild. Now, just over one month later, A Lonely Place For Dying is proving a smash hit online.

At the time of writing it has climbed to 3rd position in the VODO charts after amassing more than 1 million official downloads. Only Pioneer One and Zenith have achieved more in total but both have been available for several months already and in multiple episodes.

“Achieving over one million downloads on VODO in one month has exceeded our wildest expectations,” director Justin Eugene Evans told TorrentFreak.

“We’ve had well over one million Twitter impressions as well. We’re hoping this evidence will sufficiently convince an analog industry that this film has tremendous potential.”

In addition to huge download stats, for the last couple of weeks A Lonely Place For Dying has also been the best-seeded movie available on BitTorrent worldwide, even beating the likes of Source Code and X-Men First Class.

“You just listed movies with budgets of 32 million and 150 million respectively,” says Evans. “Our budget is only 200 grand. Conventional Wisdom would dictate the opposite; that when a microbudget movie is forced to compete with all the world’s torrented movies we’d be drowned out.

“I’m hoping this proves that there is no direct link between budget and craftsmanship. However, this method only works if the film is rock solid. It doesn’t have to be perfect (nothing is) but if the work lacks compelling characters, quality dialogue and the overall product is not well crafted this marketing tactic will fall on its face.”

This level of exposure is of particular importance to the creators of the movie. Rather than sell the rights to a Hollywood studio they chose to keep control themselves and generate funding through the BitTorrent community instead.

The movie is now undergoing a serialized release on VODO (there will be 5 episodes in total) in the hope that enough donations can be secured to fund a full theatrical release next year, although Evans says current levels of donations are disappointing.

“If every viewer gave us $1.00 we’d have over 1 million right now. That would be enough to reward every cast & crew member, every investor would make a reasonable profit, I’d be paid for my time and we’d have enough left over to make another feature film.”

VODO and BitTorrent aside, July was a great month for A Lonely Place For Dying. The movie won four awards at the Van Wert Independent Film Festival including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor and Best Editing.

Of its 40 official festival selections and 45 award nominations, A Lonely Place For Dying has now won an impressive 23 awards including 15 for Best Picture.

Those who still haven’t seen the first part of the movie can download it here. Don’t forget to throw in a few bucks if you enjoyed it.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Today, however, VODO sees arguably its highest impact release to date – ‘A Lonely Place For Dying‘. With Hollywood veteran James Cromwell as Executive Producer, a talented first-time Director, and a crew of professional filmmakers and actors it has all the ingredients for a quality product.

The real impact, however, comes from the distribution model selected for the movie.

Rather than accepting offers from traditional Hollywood insiders who sought to acquire rights to the movie, the makers felt more comfortable in keeping the rights and funding through the BitTorrent community instead. They therefore chose a serialized release on VODO, for free, in the hope that they can secure enough donations to fund a theatrical release themselves.

With the donations from BitTorrent users the filmmakers will complete a theatrical mix of the motion picture, create a digital cinema package, and get everything else ready to position the film in U.S. movie theaters. This order is the complete reverse of the regular Hollywood path, and it wouldn’t be going too far to describe it as a breakthrough.

“It’s no exaggeration to say A Lonely Place for Dying is a milestone for VODO and for original content distributed through BitTorrent. We hope the community will help us prove this can work!” Director Justin Eugene Evans told TorrentFreak in a comment.

“While some of our movie theaters are nervous about this decision we believe that the torrenting audience isn’t necessarily the same as the theatrical audience,” Evans added.

“We’re really excited about this release and the model the producers are following,” VODO Founder Jamie King told TorrentFreak.

“This is a suspenseful, intense movie that we know our audience are going to love. It’s important to show how the popularity we can build for movies online can convert into paying cinemagoers down the road. This could be a turning point for indie filmmakers –– plus it’s awesome to be premiering a film with real stars!”

A collection of high-profile P2P partners including The Pirate Bay, isoHunt, uTorrent and FrostWire are faithfully backing the VODO project, guaranteeing hundreds of thousands of downloads a week. Quite a privilege for an independent production.

At a time when many independent films are failing to find a route to audiences, either through traditional cinema release, DVD distribution or online monoliths like iTunes and Netflix, VODO’s free-to-share strategy might just be proving itself as a way for independent filmmakers to empower themselves. All that remains now is a positive reception for the film from the public.

The first part of Lonely Place For Dying is available for download now.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

In the months that followed this idea slowly transformed into something real. Within a few days the makers secured enough money to shoot a pilot, and with the help of many volunteers it was released to the public during June last year.

The pilot was released on the VODO platform, which guaranteed maximum exposure through partners like The Pirate Bay and FrostWire, but getting people to download it was the easiest part of the puzzle. There were still five episodes to go to finish the first season.

Luckily, many people liked what they saw and decided to donate money to keep the project going. An additional $20,000 was raised in two weeks and the counter topped the $30,000 mark early September – enough money to shoot more episodes.

As was hoped, the project was kept alive by fans of the show and the second episode was released late last year.

Today, Pioneer One reached another milestone as episode 3 of the show was just released. The fourth is currently scheduled for a release next month. Pioneer One writer Josh Bernhard is convinced that despite the unusual release format the show’s fan base is growing.

“The release of episode 2 demonstrated that the audience was still there, with more people discovering the show for the first time. I think each new episode is going to build our momentum, and people are going to become more invested as we reveal more pieces of the story,” Bernhard told TorrentFreak.

And it’s not just BitTorrent users following the project, there has been plenty of recognition from other filmmakers and traditional TV people too. The peer-funded episode won an award for ‘Best Drama Pilot’ at the New York Television Festival, which was quite a morale booster for the makers and an indication that they are on the right track.

“I think the idea of BitTorrent as a viable means of distributing content is really starting to break through,” Bernhard said. “BitTorrent has something of a stigma, especially for people in the entertainment industry. When you say BitTorrent, I think a lot of people hear ‘piracy’ and stop listening. But between Pioneer One, Zenith and other projects adopting the same model, it’s going to become too big to dismiss.”

Although the Pioneer One crew have left their mark on history already, there is one major downside to the BitTorrent model. Shooting a TV-show is a costly exercise, and since the main budget also comes from peers, the crew has to raise money after every release so they can finish the first season. Thus far this has worked out, but an extra push is needed to fund the remaining episodes.

“We’re starting production of the last two episodes of our first season in May, financed with whatever money we raise between now and then. Our main focus is finishing out the season of 6 episodes, which I think will be a huge achievement. Naysayers said it couldn’t be done, that we were foolish for even trying. But we’re closer than ever and we’re determined to finish this chapter of Pioneer One, come hell or high water,” Bernhard said.

The third episode of Pioneer One can be downloaded on VODO, and don’t forget to chip in if you support the project.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

If we have to believe the reviews the film is worth watching.

“A high-concept, brave-new-world sci-fi puzzle… echoes futuristic thrillers such as 12 Monkeys and Children of Men… an atmosphere of mounting paranoia that’s grim and chilling,” Loren King of the Boston Globe wrote.

“Zenith [is] at top of its game,” said the Boston Herald.

As with every VODO release, the film can be downloaded for free, powered by BitTorrent. In addition to the familiar .torrent downloads Firefox users can also stream the film directly via the BitTorrent powered Swarmplayer plugin.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

And so it happened. For the distribution and promotion the pair teamed up with the VODO BitTorrent distribution platform, and the first $6,000 that was needed to shoot the pilot was collected from supporters through the Kickstarter website.

Mid-June the first episode of Pioneer One was eventually released to the public through VODO. With support from all the big players in the P2P-scene, the BitTorrent-only TV-series quickly gained a huge audience.

Hundreds of thousands of people had downloaded the show, and many decided to donate money to fund future episodes. An additional $20,000 was raised in just the first two weeks and the counter topped the $30,000 mark early September – enough money to shoot more episodes of the first season.

“Once our heads stopped spinning after the pilot, we sat down in July to figure out our game plan. If we were going to produce more episodes, we knew we had to do more than one at a time to make it cost effective and timely,” Pioneer One writer Josh Bernhard told TorrentFreak.

“So a lot of preparations had to be made. Initially we didn’t think we’d be able to move forward with the money we had, but the cast and crew were all eager to do more based on the success of the pilot. So based on their generosity, we called in the rest of the favors we had and were able to start shooting in October,” he added.

Three new episodes were eventually shot in October, and the first one was released on VODO just a few minutes ago. Like the pilot, this second episode can be downloaded for free. In the coming weeks the Pioneer One team plans to release episodes 3 and 4, and gather enough funds to complete the remaining episodes.

Although the delay between the first and second episode is not something the general TV-audience is used to, it is one of the inevitable downsides of a peer-funded production. According to the current schedule it looks like the first season will be completed within a year, something the production team and all those who supported the endeavor can be proud of.

The first season has 7 episodes in total, but after that the show is far from done.

“From the beginning we knew this was a multi-season story with an arc that would play out over time. The first season is limited enough in scope that we felt we’d be able to pull it off with the resources that we had, but moving forward, it gets bigger,” Bernhard told TorrentFreak.

“How exactly those future seasons will happen, and what form they will take, is not set in stone. Ideally, we’d love to keep producing the show the way we have been: on our own, releasing through BitTorrent. But right now we’re focusing on getting the first season done, because I think that’ll prove what we set out to do, and all together it will stand on its own as a unit,” he commented.

The series was ‘invented’ for BitTorrent, and the team wants to keep it that way for now. However, there has been plenty of recognition from other filmmakers and traditional TV people. The peer-funded episode won an award for ‘Best Drama Pilot’ at the New York Television Festival, which was quite a morale booster for the makers and an indication that they are on the right track.

“We had some great meetings, but we felt very strongly that we had an obligation to our audience that supported the pilot to continue releasing episodes on BitTorrent. That was the stated goal, and that’s what we want to deliver,” Bernhard said.

Eventually, the Pioneer One team would of course be happy to see their work on traditional TV as well, which serves a wider audience than the traditional BitTorrent public. In the end, a collision between traditional TV and content funded and distributed on the Internet might benefit both sides.

For now, however, Pioneer One still relies on the BitTorrent community. Today, the release of the second episode will again be promoted by many P2P partners. Among other initiatives it will be bundled with all the new installs of BitTorrent Inc.’s uTorrent client. Through these promotions the Pioneer one team hopes to gather enough donations to finish the first season.

“We have no funding beyond user donations, but we’re hoping if we can repeat the success of the pilot and beyond, we may attract more support through some kind of sponsorship model. But for now user donations are absolutely crucial. At the moment, we’re depending entirely on the support of our audience to fund episodes 5 and 6.”

It will be interesting to see how the second episode will be picked up by the public. Josh Bernhard has high hopes, but realizes that the success of the pilot won’t be easily matched.

“I hope people will get a better sense of the kind of show we’re trying to make. Personally, I think this next episode is a step above the pilot. We’re all really proud of it. And, hopefully, people will get excited enough to support us and spread the word. I’d love if we outdid the success of the pilot, but we’re taking nothing for granted.”

Pioneer One, episode 1 and 2 can be downloaded through VODO, fully powered by BitTorrent.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

VODO, short for voluntary donation, has been a great success thus far. With support from several torrent sites including EZTV, The Pirate Bay and isoHunt, all of VODO’s major releases have been downloaded several hundred thousand times. In addition, downloaders have donated tens of thousands of dollars to the filmmakers.

Thus far, most of the buzz has been created by a small coalition of file-sharing sites. But with the the release of VODO 2.1 which rolled out this week, the founders of the project hope to get the average peer more engaged in promoting VODO films. With this strategy the promotional power should shift towards a swarm of real people and influencers, instead of the large sites.

The site added the VO.DO domain to the existing VODO.net one this week and introduced several new features at the same time. One of the new features is meant to increase user engagement. To motivate the public to share and promote films that are released through VODO, the project has introduced a reward system.

“We’ve created an internal currency, the Do, with which we’ll reward Influencers,” VODO founder Jamie King explains. “Every time someone downloads a release because of you, visits an artist’s VODO page, signs up or sponsors an artist, you’ll receive a few Do.”

VODO users who have an account can link to films on their blogs, or post download links on Facebook and Twitter. The VODO site then keeps track of all incoming links and how many people sign up and donate through their influence.

“There are two ways to look at Do: as a reputation currency that allows people to compare how much value they have produced for VODO creators; and as an exchange currency that has actual value in the world. In time, you’ll be able to trade Do for all sorts of offers, prizes and merchandise,” King says.

Of course, a lot of individuals have already helped to promote VODO releases such as Pioneer One and The Yes Men Fix The World. But through the new features the VODO team wants to reward those people and emphasize that the real power of peer-to-peer promotion lies with the people.

Another major change in VODO 2.1 aside from Do is the open submission process. Previously, VODO would carefully select which films were allowed to be distributed via the site, but as of now submissions are open. Everyone who wants to share video content can create a publisher account, connect with fans, and set up sponsorship incentives.

Every month VODO will continue to select one film that will be promoted and featured by the leading file-sharing sites and applications. Today, VODO begins promoting another high-quality film: Person Of Interest. As with all VODO releases it can be downloaded via BitTorrent for free.

Check it out to see what the new VODO is all about.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

In 2009 The Yes Men hijacked a United States Chamber of Commerce press conference, declaring a U-turn on their climate change policy. In a response to this “identity correction” the Chamber filed a lawsuit against the duo, claiming that they misled the public. Due to this legal battle no TV-station wants to take the risk to run some of the most controversial material, so The Yes Men took matters into their own hands by releasing an updated P2P-edition of their latest film today.

In addition to avoiding censorship, The Yes Men are looking for donations to fund their upcoming projects. This is where the BitTorrent-powered distribution platform VODO comes in. With free promotion from uTorrent, Limewire and a variety of prominent torrent sites including The Pirate Bay and EZTV, this release will instantly have an audience of millions of downloaders.

To find out more about their motivation to get the film out on BitTorrent and to find out whether they were also this excited about BitTorrent when their first film was pirated by more than a million people, we caught up with Mike Bonanno, one half of The Yes Men.

“There are a few reasons why we chose BitTorrent. First off, it’s a way to avoid censorship,” Mike Bonanno told TorrentFreak. “This version includes video of an action against the US Chamber of Commerce that we are being sued for. No commercial outlets will touch it. We had a TV show scheduled on Planet Green and their lawyers nearly wet themselves when they heard we wanted to use footage of us making political mince-meant out of the largest lobbying organization in the world.”

“It’s unlikely that anyone would distribute this material before we get out of court,” Bonanno continued. “But we don’t want them to win a de-facto censorship case, so P2P is a great workaround. Another reason we are doing this is because this is the way people see movies these days, and we made this movie for people to see it. We would love it if people bought our DVD, but we also want people who don’t do that to see it. And last of all: we do hope to generate some donations: we are broke and there are not so many funders for our new project, especially given that they are all spooked by lawsuits, no matter how stupid!”

Although the benefits of BitTorrent are clear in this case, The Yes Men’s previous film was also pirated by more than a million people. When we asked Mike Bonanno how he felt about this we found out that he’s more upset about the stranglehold that the ‘copyright mafia’ puts on indie productions than the people who grab a copy of their movie on BitTorrent.

“It’s great that people are watching our films! We are very happy that they are getting seen. But that having been said, we do wish that a few more people were paying for it. We borrowed a shit-load of money from friends to make our latest movie and we still can’t pay them back. Also, the way the industry is set up, if you want your stuff on TV or delivered through any official channels you have to spend a massive amount of money clearing rights and paying for legal stuff and that is just silly.”

“For us to get our ‘errors and omissions insurance’ required for any distributor to take it, we had to clear the rights on all sorts of stuff we should not really have had to… including music written in the 17th century, which apparently because of some kind of law in Austria was not public domain according to the interpretation of insurance industry lawyers! Anyway, that’s just one example… so what happens as a film maker – especially a documentary maker – is that in today’s market we are fucked.”

“Because to get it on TV we still need to act like we have deep pockets and can pay for rights for all sorts of shit, but then with the collapse of the indy film market distributors won’t pay for it. And of course most people file-share it rather than pay for it. So yeah, we are happy that people are watching it but not so happy that we are financially screwed! But we also see that it’s the system that is screwing us: we are not blaming the pirates, we are blaming casino capitalism!”

This comment from Bonanno led us to ask the question whether The Yes Men would ever consider exposing the ‘copyright mafia’ and anti-piracy groups. These outfits have turned copyright into a cash cow while pretending to protect the rights of artists, something we address here on TorrentFreak every week. As it turns out, The Yes Men are siding with us in this regard.

“I think in some ways most of our work is about targeting ideas about the rule of private property… so this is related,” Bonanno said. “Our first four years as The Yes Men was dedicated to attacking the World Trade Organization, which has historically supported the idea of proprietary media. Overall, I think that in some ways everything today, every major issue facing us can be seen through the lens of what role it plays in the commons… or lack thereof, as many a government and corporation would have it.”

“If copyright was actually working the way it was supposed to, and protecting the authors that would be great. But that’s not how it works anymore – it just protects money; whoever has the most of it. And usually that means that the authors are fucked anyway!”

The Peer-to-Peer edition of The Yes Men Fix The World is now available for free on VODO. To spread their knowledge The Yes Men have started The Yes Lab, which is also worth checking out. Lastly, don’t forget to donate a few bucks if you like what you see.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

By harnessing the power of all the major players in the P2P field, VODO offers a unique platform through which independent filmmakers can share their work with the masses. Downloaders on their turn are encouraged to donate if they like what they see.

Thus far all the previous VODO releases have been downloaded by hundreds of thousands of people, and that’s just the start. With backing from uTorrent, Limewire and The Pirate Bay, the number of downloads for today’s release might exceed one million.

VODO’s newest release is titled Pioneer One, a brand new 7-part TV-series that raised enough funds to film the first episode through donations from TorrentFreak readers and other supporters. Unlike traditional television, the sci-fi-ish series will debut on the Internet, on BitTorrent.

Pioneer One is an ambitious project from Josh Bernhard and Bracey Smith who have collaborated before on ‘The Lionshare’, a BitTorrent-exclusive film which was released on VODO earlier this year. With support from even more big names than before, Bernhard, who wrote the script for the TV-series, hopes that today’s release will set a new record.

“Based on The Lionshare stats and the amount of coverage we’re getting on this, I’m hoping we’ll hit a million downloads. Some have higher expectations, but I don’t want to jinx anything by putting it in print,” Bernhard told TorrentFreak.

Answering the question why they chose VODO for the release of their series, Bernhard said that it was a logical choice because he didn’t expect the pilot to be picked by a network anytime soon because it’s so hard to break into that industry now.

“There’s only so much of that TV pie to go around. There’s only so much real-estate on networks. We would have to storm the gate just to get a meeting with somebody,” Bernhard explained. “Why would they pick up a show from two nobodies outside their industry?”

Besides this pragmatic issue, the makers of Pioneer One also believe that the Internet and BitTorrent have the future. In the old fashioned TV-system it doesn’t really matter how engaged people are in a show. Passion is not rewarded in today’s numbers game on traditional television, something that has to change.

“TV has other priorities than making good TV,” Bernhard told us. “You have vocal fanbases whose enthusiasm is ignored, because to networks, their passion isn’t worth more than beating American Idol in the ratings. The fact that TV can’t sustain a show like Firefly, to use a well-known example, with such passionate viewers, shows that something is wrong with how that system works.”

The interesting contradiction is that, thanks to VODO, Pioneer One will not be an obscure indie release at all. In the coming week more than a million people are expected to download and watch the episode – numbers most network TV-shows can only dream of.

Although Bernhard hopes that a network or other sponsor will come along to fund the rest of the season, he emphasizes that it will always be released for free to the public. “Our plan has always been to distribute the whole season through VODO. That’s how we want to do it, and a big part of why this show is so exciting to us,” he said.

For VODO today’s release is yet another milestone. Not only is it supported by more P2P partners than ever before, but Pioneer One is also the first release that has a commercial sponsor, MOFILM, to bring in additional revenue aside from donations. VODO founder Jamie King told TorrentFreak that now there are so many partners in place, they will put more emphasis on the network itself instead of the distribution channels.

“In the next six months, we’re going to be rolling out a new VODO infrastructure for incentivising donation and getting more peers into active relationships with our creators. To put it simply, we continue to be incredibly optimistic about developing an independent creation culture on top of P2P infrastructure — and really making it work. Pioneer One is really the first step towards that.”

It’s going to be interesting to follow the progress of the Pioneer One project, a TV-series that is a true pioneer itself. BitTorrent has already revolutionized the TV-viewing experience for millions of people and through VODO and the high quality it brings this can only accelerate even further. In a future article will check up on the progress of Pioneer One to see if the 1 million views becomes reality.

In the meantime people can download Pioneer One’s first episode on VODO.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.