New torrent provider

Loose thoughts by Bjorn Landfeldt

An interesting development s the move by the Norwegian broadcasting corporation, Norsk Riks Kringkasting (NRK) to start sharing its own productions using Bittorrent. In fact, the torrent will use the same open tracker software used by the Pirate Bay in Sweden (not that it matters just notable right now during the trial). NRK will distribute its own productions while maintaining copyright and the move is seen as strategic as the company believes this is the best way of maintaining control over the material.

It is only a matter of time until all media producers make their products available over network distribution channels of course but it is interesting to see torrent used as preferred technology. I wonder how this will affect the debate on ISP filtering of P2P traffic in Australia. Clearly, with such examples, ARIA and the government can't claim that P2P is used for illegal purposes anymore and ISP level filtering (as is proposed to be trialled now) would have a much shakier ground to stand on.