One of the most popular file-sharing services in the world right now is BitTorrent, a "peer-to-peer" network in which every user downloading a file also acts as a server, allowing others to download it from them. Developed by Bram Cohen, it now accounts for a substantial proportion of the global trade in copyrighted movies, music and software, and is the technology used by The Pirate Bay, the Swedish file-swapping service that is currently being sued by the U.S. music and film industries. I wrote about that recently in this post.
Not everyone sees BitTorrent as evil, however. It is also a very efficient distribution method (although Internet service providers don't like it much, because it eats up bandwidth). Norway's public broadcaster, NRK, decided to take advantage of that efficiency recently when it released a popular documentary made for the network as a free download on BitTorrent -- without any of the traditional digital rights management or DRM controls that most media companies use for their digital files.
The show, called Nordkalotten 365, followed a back-country hiker on a tour through the northern parts of Norway over 365 days, and was a popular draw when it first aired, according to NRK's blog, and it proved pretty popular as a download as well: on the first day it was available from BitTorrent servers, more than 8,000 people downloaded it. "This technology makes it possible for us to make our content available in a very high quality without having to invest in large server farms and expensive bandwidth," Eirik Solheim of NRK (who also has a personal blog) wrote.
The Norwegian broadcaster isn't the only one distributing its programs digitally, but it appears to be the only one doing so without any restrictions, and using the BitTorrent network (Solheim says NRK is already thinking about expanding the experiment with other programs). The BBC distributes much of its programming, but only through a dedicated piece of software called the iPlayer, which is Windows-only and has DRM controls built in. The CBC also requires that users listen to programming through Windows Media Player. In Brazil, meanwhile, the national news agency, Radiobras, distributes its content under a "Creative Commons" license.
