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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.'"

14 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 TobyWong · · Score: 4, Informative

      They don't need to inspect the packets to identify them as p2p. Encryption doesn't do a damn thing for me (Rogers) unless I tunnel it all through a VPN.

      --
      - Toby
    2. Re:throttling from bell and rogers by esaul · · Score: 5, Informative

      Fortunately, as opposed to the US, you do not have to solely depend on large ISPs as Bell, Videotron or Rogers. Remember this story? There are dozens of independent ISPs, and while they often use Bell's networks, I have not seen any throttling on P2P as of yet. I routinely get speeds of close to 500KB/s.

    3. Re:throttling from bell and rogers by BForrester · · Score: 5, Informative

      I'm on Rogers, and it works for me. If there are sufficient seeders and peers, I regularly get up to 600 KB / sec on regular high-speed, up from 20 KB / sec without.

      Make sure you're using a non-standard port. Also, don't force encryption, just enable it. That will net you encrypted traffic + whatever low level of throttled traffic your ISP allows.

    4. 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. No Offense by AikonMGB · · Score: 4, Funny

    But I'm not sure I would have watched this on T.V. (if I had one), let alone downloaded it (legally or otherwise) =/

    Aikon-

    1. Re:No Offense by Brian+Gordon · · Score: 4, Funny

      But come on, this is so cool, suddenoutbreakofcommonsense, etc etc. Is it just me or is canada suddenly awesome? Eh?

    2. Re:No Offense by trolltalk.com · · Score: 4, Funny

      What it means is that the **AA, seeing the writing on the wall, is going to BLAME CANADA!

      This time it will be Bush who accidently says into a live microphopne "We start bombing in 15 minutes."

      He'll tell the voters "We're liberating all our oil from their commie socialist rule."

      Plus, now that Canadian Tire money is worth more than the US Dollar ... what has he got to lose?

      --
      Kevin Smith on Prince
    3. Re:No Offense by Drooling+Iguana · · Score: 5, Informative

      We've been awesome for nearly a century and a half. People just didn't start noticing until now.

      --
      ... I'm addicted to placebos
  3. 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...

  4. Oh Canada.... by molex333 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    From healthcare to Hockey, 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. The New York side of the falls is horriblly dirty and devoid of any decent food or lodgings, while the Canadian side is clean, has a vast number of resteraunts(including a Hard Rock cafe), and even has gambling. All this and you could eat off the streets! Why is this, does anyone even know?

    --
    Somewhere in a dark place you will find:
    www.m1
  5. CBC - It's Publicly funded by usedtolosing · · Score: 5, Informative

    Keep in mind folks.

    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.

    It's a novel experiment, and I love the idea. But I'm not sure that this exact model would work for a Private US broadcaster or private Canadian Broadcaster.

    Keep in mind. PBS has had documentary downloads available forever. PBS Frontline.

  6. Its a canadian thing... by Coraon · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Guys, you may think that this is the rare exceptions, but in reality this is the way the wind is blowing in Canada. We have a privacy act in Canada that many legal scollars agree that DRM violates because it requires to much information about the user of the file. The long and short of it is this. In Canada you can buy a lawnmower take it apart and make something out of it, In the US if you did that you violate the DMCA...do you see the problem here?

    --
    -Ours is the wisdom of Solomon, the magic of Merlyn, the fall of Icaris.
  7. *NOT* the first (at CBC or North America) !! by ivar · · Score: 4, Informative

    I was a software developer on the CBC programme ZeD, and we torrented (and streamed and broadcast) our " New new media" episode almost 3 years ago (April 1st, 2005 to be exact). And while the torrent file still exists, sadly the torrent server is no longer running. I believe we used Xvid as the codec too (or was it divx?), but I am certain there was no DRM on the file. Anyway, ZeD was web 2.0 in 2002 !