Tessa Sproule, head of CBC’s Digital Programming told TorrentFreak: “We had aimed to include a direct link to the torrent files on cbc.ca/nextprimeminister, but ran into a conflict with the CBC server which meant we needed to point to the file elsewhere, and that’s where Mininova came in. Since then, we’ve also submitted the CNGPM BitTorrent to Miro, Vuze, and a number of other torrent sites/services.”

Mininova’s content distribution platform, which currently has over 300 premium publishers, is ideal in this case because the BitTorrent site will also take care of the seeding, making sure the torrents never die. All CBC has to so is upload the file, and the torrent will automatically created and seeded for them.

When asked about the reason why CBC decided to use BitTorrent, Sproule said: “The show started online with a YouTube casting call in which 144 bright young Canada’s created and uploaded their own video pitches for why they would be a great leader of Canada. Making the final show available online, DRM-free, was our way of giving back.”

CBC thinks that BitTorrent is one of the easiest and most effective ways to share their shows. “As Canada’s public broadcaster, the CBC is mandated to make its programming available throughout Canada by the most appropriate and efficient means. I believe BitTorrent is a terrific distribution technology and absolutely something we as a public broadcaster should be experimenting with,” Sproule added.

Mininova, on the other hand, is happy to welcome CBC to their content distribution platform. We asked Niek, one of the founders of Mininova, for a response and he said: “This is terrific news, it’s great to see that broadcasters start using BitTorrent instead of fighting it. we expect that more (broadcasters) will follow in the near future.”

With torrent files seeded from the Mininova servers, Canadians should be able to download the show in a few minutes. That is, if Canadian ISPs aren’t throttling their traffic.

Update: It turns out that mininova is not seeding the files yet. The files on mininova use the Pirate Bay tracker. Mininova’s Erik told use that the torrents will be updated tomorrow. So, for now the credit goes to The Pirate Bay. Thanks Alan!

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

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.

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

Gary is glad his voice is heard:

I’m glad CBC gave me the opportunity to voice our stance, what we do and why the MPAA is after us. Media distributions are converging and decentralizing at the same time on the internet, and it’s an issue the general public should be aware of, many of which doesn’t know what P2P or BitTorrent is yet. Instead of suing each other, we should be talking about how we can use internet technologies and new forms of communications made possible, to the benefit of us all.

You can check out the stream over here, the interview starts at 26.45

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