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.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.
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.
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?
Filed Under: bittorrent, copyright, netherlands, public television
