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Canadian TV to Adopt DRM-Free BitTorrents

Posted by Zonk on from the would-love-that-from-pbs dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Canada's public broadcast network, CBC, is to adopt DRM free BitTorrent distribution of one of its major primetime shows, Canada's Next Great Prime Minister. The effort has already been hailed by Canadian copyright guru Michael Geist, who expects the decision to add fuel to Canada's net neutrality debate. A CBC producer behind the show told CNET that the motivation for the move was that CBC 'wanted the show to be as accessible as possible to as many Canadians as possible, in the format that they want it in.' As for DRM, she said 'I think DRM is dead, even if a lot of broadcasters don't realize it.' She added that 'if it's bad for the consumers, its bad for the company.'"

19 of 229 comments (clear)

  1. throttling from bell and rogers by jmcnaught · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Hopefully this means that Bell and Rogers will both have to stop throttling Bittorrent downloads. Some days on rogers I would get faster downloads on dialup.

    1. Re:throttling from bell and rogers by jandrese · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I wish P2P designers would take a cue from the internet worm designers and prioritize "nearby" IP addresses first when choosing from a list (IE, if someone is in the same /16 as you, choose them over someone in a totally foreign network). My guess is that it would improve your throughput enough to make it worth the effort, and it would be really simple to add the logic.

      --

      I read the internet for the articles.
    2. Re:throttling from bell and rogers by billcopc · · Score: 2, Insightful

      How does that work ? I thought they were required by law to grant CLECs access to the lines. I obviously don't know the details in your case, but if they're not giving you good excuses, I'd verbally tear them several new assholes until you get what you want. From what friends have told me, TekSavvy is da bomb.

      --
      -Billco, Fnarg.com
    3. Re:throttling from bell and rogers by billcopc · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The problem, of course, is when P2P starts prioritizing same-network peers, ISPs will start throttling inside and piss on everyone's parade.

      It's never been about bandwidth, there's tons of bandwidth. It's about control.

      --
      -Billco, Fnarg.com
  2. Finally, someone gets it. by Jax+Omen · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The best way to make money in the long term is to have happy customers. Period. Now if only some US companies would learn that...

    1. Re:Finally, someone gets it. by Nos. · · Score: 3, Insightful

      That's a gross over simplification. Best way to make me happy is to give me the product/service for free, without any ads. That kills most revenue streams, so how do you make money if you have no revenue streams? Happy customers are better than unhappy ones, but that's not the only factor to consider.

    2. Re:Finally, someone gets it. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The best way to make money in the long term is to have happy customers. Period. Now if only some US companies would learn that... Why is that important to a public company today? A privately owned company has tons of reasons to do that but a public company has few. Stockholders will sell their stock in a heartbeat and they would be more than pleased with the destruction of a company if they made a profit (like buyouts). High level managers and executives have little need to be loyal since they can easily jump ship at any time and even if they run the company into the ground their golden parachutes will ensure a soft landing. The only people who have a strong interest in the operation of a public corporation are the low level employees who hope to have job security and perhaps someday collect a pension. A public corporation only has to *appear* to have a long-term strategy in order to not scare of shareholders. Incidents like the Enron or Worldcom collapses aren't caused by especially evil executives who are extremely abnormal. They are caused by people who realize that executives who make major short-term gains while the company appears to be able to survive for the long-term are much more likely to be retained than executives who make minor profits while actually making the company able to survive in the long term.
    3. Re:Finally, someone gets it. by Brian+Gordon · · Score: 2, Insightful

      But hordes of furious consumers rallying the entire internet against all DRM is a significant factor to consider.

    4. Re:Finally, someone gets it. by LunaticTippy · · Score: 2, Insightful

      There are a lot of ways to make it work. A successful show could pay for itself with product placement, and this doesn't have to be offensive. Alternatively, a 5 second ad at the beginning of the show might be sufficient. We are talking about a global audience, nearly zero distribution cost. You'd make a profit on less than a penny a viewer.

      --
      Man, you really need that seminar!
    5. Re:Finally, someone gets it. by Creepy+Crawler · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Happiness for getting schwag is one thing.

      Happiness is also getting superior customer service with being treated like a customer (as opposed to thief).

      If it comes down for me to make a decision about getting some media and I can either pay for crippled set or download high quality free set, which do you think I'll get?

      If you treat me like a thief, I'm'a gonna do it.

      --
  3. Add more shows! by Filter · · Score: 3, Insightful

    22 Minutes and jPod would be excellent!

    --

    "better ways of doing things eventually just replace the inferior things" - Linus Torvalds 09-08-07

  4. Re:Not a good example by Creepy+Crawler · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The view is one thing. New York doesn't even have volunteer "trash pickers" or anything. It's like the ghetto, but in nature, compared to Canada.

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  5. Re:Not a good example by molex333 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    While this may in fact be true, as a native New Yorker(and usually proud of it) I am really upset about the fact that we can not even keep the American side clean! It is horrible and dirty. Having been to both sides, the dirtiness takes away from what is still a particullarly beautiful site!

    --
    Somewhere in a dark place you will find:
    www.m1
  6. Re:CBC - It's Publicly funded by Mantle · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What is with you and all the FUD?

    Is it cutting out a revenue stream? Or increasing the size of the pie? How do you know they aren't embedding commercials in the bt version and making MORE money by telling advertisers they are reaching MORE eyes? Show me.

    Even if we accept that they will make less money with this distribution method, is it going to be significant to overshadow the savings to the CBC by using bt as a distribution channel? About 1/3 of CBC's funding comes from non-taxpayer sources, according to their 2005-2006 annual report. Of that 1/3, only a fraction of it is from advertising. Of that fraction, only a smaller portion yet comes from TV advertising. Is that a significant amount? Show me.

    Why are you so ready to draw negative conclusions so early?

  7. Re:Oh Canada.... by vertinox · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Although the GP was marked as Flamebait

    Technically it was a joke as I being an American would be the one most likley candidate to be offended by what I just said. ;)

    Its like saying that the reason the Canadian Government isn't as bad as the American Government is that the Canadian doesn't have American Politicians in it. Apparently someone took offense and none taking about that Cuba issue. Shame we Americans can't visit.

    --
    "I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
    -Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
  8. Re:No Offense by SpiderClan · · Score: 1, Insightful

    I suspect that for now this will only apply to CBC programs, since they are government funded and are trying to fulfill their mandate to make their programming accessible to everyone as easily as possible.

  9. Re:No Offense by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    I've worked for four different TV networks in Canada. The problem is mostly concerning artists unions. Recently (in light of the events in L.A.), they came to an agreement (it's 3% or 4% more on pay for each artist, and it allows webcasting). But the contracts were always built for a specific territory (just like the station I work at right now has the rights to show 24, but only in Québec, not outside).

  10. Re:Oh Canada.... by theheadlessrabbit · · Score: 3, Insightful

    why do the Canadiens constantly get things right where we can not. As an example, anyone who has ever gone to Niagra falls can tell you that the Canadiens are better than us at almost everything my personal favorite...

    Americans have the right to bear arms.
    Canadian women have the right to bear breasts.

    I believe the reason for us getting everything right while the US gets everything wrong, is that section 15 of the Canadian charter of rights and freedoms only extends rights to 'actual persons', not 'legal persons' like the US system (corporations are classified as 'legal persons') so we don't have the same problem of having to constantly welcome our evil corporate overlords.
    --
    -I only code in BASIC.-
  11. Re:CBC - It's Publicly funded by Jardine · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The good 'ole CBC is a publicly funded crown corp. So yeah, if they want to cut out a revenue stream...go for it...but we're paying for it in taxes.

    Except that pretty much any good show is going to show up on your friendly neighbourhood torrent site anyway. A lot of the shows are available in streaming clips anyway. By putting up a torrent themselves, they can save on bandwidth and provide a show that isn't as limited in video and audio quality.