« scientists vs. publishers vs. wikipedia • Wednesday Picks: Admiral Fallon, Butch Vig, Architecture »

CBC to Torrent?

March 19, 2008 in cbc, media by Hugh

Sources indicate that the CBC is set to become the first major North American broadcaster to freely release one of its programs without DRM using BitTorrent. This Sunday, CBC will air Canada Next Great Prime Minister. The following day, it plans to freely release a high-resolution version via peer-to-peer networks without any DRM restrictions. This development is important not only because it shows that Canada’s public broadcaster is increasingly willing to experiment with alternative forms of distribution, but also because it may help crystallize the net neutrality issue in Canada.

Tags: No Tags

2 comments

Comments feed for this article

Trackback link

http://hughmcguire.net/2008/03/19/cbc-to-torrent/trackback/

March 19, 2008 at 4:42 pm

Rob Maguire

This is great news, it’s just too bad that they are trying this out with a cheesy reality show, rather than The National, or something of that ilk.

March 19, 2008 at 6:15 pm

Hugh

Yeah … there’s still a problem with understanding who wants this stuff … generally info geeks. who probably don’t want to watch whatever that show is, it sounds god-awful.

tumbles

Canada's oil wealth strategy questioned

"But in Norway and in Saudi Arabia ... authorities have instead focused on corralling the foreign exchange earned in the sales of energy, and investing it outside their borders ...creating an income stream for future generations." [Link]

making available isn't distribution

While the "making available" issue can be tedious, technical, and contradictory (different court rulings have gone different ways), the brief actually does a fine job of making the debate accessible. [Link]