Our network blog Last100 has an interesting story about the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s recent experiment with offering a legal torrent download of one of its original primetime television shows — a first for a major North American broadcast network. The post was written by Guinevere Orvis, who is a Web Producer in Toronto, Canada and is currently working with CBC. It’s an interesting read about how a legal torrent is made at major broadcasting network from idea to deployment.
Last week, CBC released an official DRM-free BitTorrent of a prime time show — a first for a major north American broadcaster (see last100 coverage). Since then weve been getting hundreds of emails of support and one clear resounding message: give us more. This begs the question, why arent broadcasters doing more? Why in the year 2008, seven years after BitTorrents birth and a lifetime in Internet years is this a groundbreaking thing? Lets break down what it takes to get a legal torrent going and maybe well get some answers.
The post is worth a read, and be sure to subscribe to the Last100 RSS feed to keep up to date on all the latest digital lifestyle news and commentary.