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Norwegian Broadcaster Evaluates BitTorrent Distribution Costs

Posted by Soulskill on from the leeches-welcome dept.

FrostPaw writes "An experiment was conducted recently by Norwegian broadcasting company NRK involving the release of the series 'Nordkalotten 365' (a wildlife program) in a DRM free format using BitTorrent. One of the broadcasters has posted the approximate figures for the overall distribution costs, and discussed his reasons for doing so. Their estimated cost for using Amazon S3 to offer the files through HTTP/FTP/etc. come to approximately 41,000 NOK (about $8,000 US). However, when using the Amazon servers as the originating seed and utilizing BitTorrent, their total cost for distribution of the entire project, thanks to generous seeds, would amount to approximately 1,700 NOK. The post with the original figures is available only in Norwegian.

15 of 175 comments (clear)

  1. At last! by nih · · Score: 5, Funny

    the definitive documentary about the Møøse!

    --
    I'm a rabbit startled by the headlights of life :(
    1. Re:At last! by maxwell+demon · · Score: 5, Funny

      the definitive documentary about the Møøse! The user who was responsible for this comment has been sacked.
      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
    2. Re:At last! by CopaceticOpus · · Score: 4, Funny

      A Møøse once bit my sister...

  2. This Just In: by rsmith-mac · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Making other people do your work for free makes your own costs cheaper. Film at 11.

    In other words, why is this news? It's something that has been obvious about BitTorrent since day 1: if you can get/make your users use their own upload bandwidth, you won't need as much of your own, and in a cost model that means your costs are lower. Did this really require a study?

    1. Re:This Just In: by yakumo.unr · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It's news because a lot of marketers need it spelled out for them, with big juicy numbers with currency symbols attached, once they start to really realize the financial positives of using the most efficient distribution systems, they might stop trying to shut down just that, a highly efficient distribution system. it's not the personification of piracy.

    2. Re:This Just In: by Rich0 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I'm surprised this hasn't already taken off for TV. Here's why:

      1. Right now networks can only own one station per market. With HD they can in theory broadcast multiple streams on it, but only a few. With online distribution they could put out as much content as they would like.

      2. Right now anybody can record and redistribute the off-the-air content. So, DRM is trying to lock up the front door when the back door is already wide open.

      3. Right now due to inefficient distribution schemes shows only run in a local market, creating a huge demand for online content. Typically this content lacks commercials, and is ignored when calculating ratings even if it did.

      4. If a TV station made it EASY to download their shows with full commercials they'd take over the market overnight. The big networks could collaborate to make it easy to watch their shows just like watching TV. Who would mess around with nzb files and all that when you could just fire up your online "Tivo" and it has already downloaded everything you're interested in. The polished experience would give them 99% of the market all the time.

      5. Sure, in theory somebody could find some way to redistribute their content and strip out all the commercials, but the scale of this task except for a few shows would be hard to match with the level of polish that the networks could deliver. They would still own copyright so they would only need to deal with distributed bands of unpaid volunteers redistributing their work - if anybody tried to organize they could be dealt with in court. The court cases would be stronger since the networks could convine local governments that they are actually genuinely trying to get their content to everyone (right now some countries turn a blind eye to copyright violation since it enables their consumers to get access to TV they wouldn't ever see otherwise).

      It seems like the TV execs are missing a huge opportunity that they could just own without issue if they just stepped out and took advantage of it.

    3. Re:This Just In: by Wildclaw · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Bittorrent is indeed efficent as it scales far better than http or ftp. A better example than that in the article would be the following article that was recently posted on torrentfreak.

      http://torrentfreak.com/university-uses-utorrent-080306Dutch University Uses BitTorrent to Update Workstations

      The worst case scenario is when every single users deems uploading to be too costly for their own good and therefore caps it to nothing. In that specific case, bittorrent basically have the same efficency as http or ftp, needing the same amount of dedicated servers and bandwidth. There would be a slight efficency loss due to protocol overhead, but that is minor when dealing with large files.

      In most cases however, the upload bandwidth of a peer will be less expensive than that of a dedicated seeder for the simple fact that the peer is idle otherwise, while the dedicated seeder is working at full capacity.

      Also, spreading out the distribution costs on the users lessens/removes the need to actually have to charge the users for that same distribution. Even if the users have to pay some/most of that money to the ISP instead, the simple fact is that removing the need for micro transactions is a huge benefit in itself.

  3. Government owned by Armakuni · · Score: 5, Informative

    It should be mentioned that NRK is owned by the Norwegian government, and that the programmes are not advertisement sponsored.

    --
    That's not Picasso, that's Kandinsky!
  4. Re:Why... by Ilgaz · · Score: 5, Informative

    Amazon S3 has a unique feature. Lets say you got hugefile.mov to serve. User can click the .mov file directly to download via ordinary http/ftp or you simply add ?torrent to the URL and it creates/enables a torrent and start tracking it.

  5. how nice by nguy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    If everybody does this, home Internet connections need to be upgraded or we're going to get volume pricing again. Either way, end users are going to pay for this.

  6. Re:Well duh!! by ozamosi · · Score: 5, Informative

    That's an interface problem - not a technical problem.

    You could probably write a bittorrent client as a flash applet. You press the big, shiny download button that covers half of your screen, and the flash applet connects to peers and starts to download, all with a pretty progress bar. Even my grandfather could figure that out (one of my grandmas can't even use a mouse, the other is paranoid and believes that "They" are spying on her if she use a computer, so she got rid of it).

    Or, you could let people download an exe file, that when clicked will automatically launch a simple bittorrent client that automatically opens the torrent file for Nordkalotten 365 and starts to download.

    They have thousands of extra dollars that they no longer need to pay Amazon, that they could now throw at the problem. I'm sure they can figure something out.

  7. Actual Torrent Files by pgn674 · · Score: 5, Informative

    If you're looking for the actual torrent files, episodes 1-8 can be found at the bottom of this post: http://nrkbeta.no/norwegian-broadcasting-nrk-makes-popular-series-available-drm-free-via-bittorrent/. I'm downloading episode 1 right now, and it has 73 seeds and 42 peers.

  8. No such thing as a free lunch by drhamad · · Score: 4, Insightful

    At some level this is redundant, but I'm going to state it in a slightly different way.

    Of course distributing via BitTorrent is cheaper for the originator, nobody could possibly argue this. But I'd like to see a study on the TOTAL cost to society. In other words, yes it's cheaper for the originator, but there is no such thing as a free lunch. SOMEBODY is paying for all that bandwidth/etc. If you have bandwidth limits, perhaps you are paying for them to distribute their file. If you don't (as we in the US do not) then the telecommunications company is paying. Bandwidth does not materialize out of thin air. SOMEBODY pays. Further, BitTorrent is not exactly efficient. It uses a lot more requests/connections/etc to download or distribute via BT than it does via HTTP/FTP/etc.

    The offsetting factor may be the more distributed load over the system, since there's no central point, really. I'm not sure how much this really helps though.

    I guess my point is, the total cost to society of BitTorrent use may very well be higher than that for distributing by older methods.

    --
    -Daniel
  9. A 100% share ratio requirement is unrealistic by tepples · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And you can use a tracker that will ban users if they don't seed to atleast 1:1 It is mathematically impossible for everybody to seed more than 1:1. That would require the sum of uploads to be greater than the sum of downloads, when they're supposed to be equal by definition. Besides, for an older file that has 20 seeds and 0 downloaders, how can one seed to 1:1 without keeping the computer turned on and connected to the Internet for weeks at a time, praying that another downloader might show up?
  10. Multicast? by gjh · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What I'd really like to see is figures for the broadcaster and the hidden costs to the ISP for each of....

    - Unicast
    - Bittorrent
    - Multicast

    Multicast is so obviously the best solution all round for the, what, at least 50% of a national TV station's audience that watch predictable and consistent shows week after week. It would be pretty trivial for PCs to grab a multicast overnight.

    By the way, the BBC really tried to do this right, but ISPs were too stupid to see that it was in their best interests to cooperate. This is my reading of the evidence - I accept corrections.