OStatic

Last week the Canadian public media service, CBC (the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) became the first major North American broadcaster to distribute a DRM-free download of a primetime television show via BitTorrent. The download was not only DRM free, it didn’t contain any commercials or license based copy restrictions. In fact the CBC website proclaimed β€œYou are free to download, share and burn this video”. This is how I like my media served.

But don’t get too excited. This was an experiment for the CBC which was limited to a single episode of a single show. It is unclear if the CBC has any plans to implement BitTorrent downloads in a more comprehensive manner. The show which was torrented is titled β€œCanada’s Next Great Prime Minister” (think The Apprentice for university students who think they have a shot at being Prime Minister) and has been making innovative use of technology this season. In addition to the BitTorrent distribution of the season finale, the show was cast via YouTube and they have been maintaining a YouTube channel all season.

Aside from the obviously technologically inclined producers and production team, the show has a few other characteristics that made it suitable for BitTorrent distribution. Guinevere Orvis, a producer at the CBC has a great post titled β€œInside story: the making of a legal TV β€˜torrent’” where she outlines the ownership, demographics, approvals and tracking considerations that went into the project as well as some indication of how the CBC may be looking to monetize the process.

One interesting development in this story was the fact that one of Canada’s largest ISPs, Bell Canada, had started throttling BitTorrent downloads which affected a great number of the intended BitTorrent audience. In this particular case, a national ISP interfered with the publicly funded broadcaster’s ability to distribute content to a Canadian audience. This is a big deal because the CBC is mandated by the Canadian Parliament. Part of its mandate is for it to be β€œβ€¦ available throughout Canada by the most appropriate and efficient means and as resources become available for the purpose”. Clearly Bell Canada interfered with the CBC’s federally regulated mandate. They had to do this because they oversubscribed their network, promising users bandwidth that they can’t deliver.

More and more legal media is becoming available on BitTorrent due to its massive bandwidth cost savings for distributors. As this happens, the arguments for throttling BitTorrent traffic seem to fall apart and media distributors may end up taking on ISPs in court.

Do you think bandwidth throttling of specific traffic types is an acceptable practice?

• bittorrent
• Net Neutrality
• ISPs
• bandwidth throttling
• traffic shaping