Dutch Public Television Testing BitTorrent For Downloads... Just As Dutch Courts Try To Shut Down Trackers Everywhere

from the left-hand,-right-hand... dept

We've been noting a whole variety of stories about efforts in the Netherlands by the "anti-piracy" group BREIN to shut down or block access to various BitTorrent search engines and trackers (with some success). And yet, at the same time, TorrentFreak reports that Dutch Public Television is about to test out distributing all of its video content via BitTorrent:
The goal of the trial is to assess the demand for downloadable content and whether it’s possible to effectively reduce the bandwidth costs of the streaming platform currently in use. The decision to use BitTorrent, the most efficient P2P protocol, was an easy one.

Through the current platform NPO streams are watched more than 13 million times per month. With the BitTorrent-powered streams, users will offer their own bandwidth which means that streaming costs could go down drastically.
As the article notes, in Canada, the CBC did something similar with one of its programs, but this effort appears to be much larger. While the situations are obviously different, I do find it amusing that just as the courts are shutting down or blocking so many BitTorrent search engines, claiming that there are no legitimate uses for the technology, the local public broadcasting effort is ramping up its efforts to use BitTorrent for distribution, recognizing the inherent efficiencies.

It does make you wonder, of course, if more content rights holders start recognizing this and distributing content in this manner, will the courts finally recognize that barring such search engines entirely goes way too far?
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Filed Under: bittorrent, copyright, netherlands, public television


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  1. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 1 Jul 2010 @ 3:49am

    I'm downloading a bittorrent TV series right now.

    http://vodo.net/pioneer_one

    Let see if any good.

    It is legal people, no need to hide or anything, they can't touch you unless they find a way to make illegal to distribute legal content over bittorrent.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 1 Jul 2010 @ 4:00am

    You can bet that those alternatives will never come from the U.S..

    If Comcast/NBC goes through what it will happen it that Comcast will find a way to throttle everyone and say "hey we are just protecting our content from others", instead of being a delivery channel it will morph into a producer/delivery monster that will take all the wrong decisions and say it is doing the right thing, then it will fail after a decade because of true competition coming from outside from little countries that couldn't give a damn about delivery channels and what goes on on them, probably Comcast at that point will be so weak it will be bought by an Asian competitor trying to get into the market.

    Ever wonder why all American companies are owned by people outside the U.S.? Because they don't know how to compete that is why.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. identicon
    Greg G, 1 Jul 2010 @ 5:38am

    Re:

    If Comcast/NBC goes through what it will happen it that...

    huh? speaka de engrish preeze

    link to this | view in thread ]

  4. identicon
    John Smith, 1 Jul 2010 @ 6:05am

    Ask purity puleeze first :)

    link to this | view in thread ]

  5. icon
    :Lobo Santo (profile), 1 Jul 2010 @ 8:13am

    Re:

    "You can bet that those alternatives will never come from the U.S.."
    Ah, the joys of ignorance! Microsoft's Silverlight lifted bittorrent's bandwidth methodology for their 'live broadcast' code.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  6. icon
    sprearson81 (profile), 10 Jun 2012 @ 8:48am

    Ignorance is bliss.

    link to this | view in thread ]


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