The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) leaps ahead:

On March 24th after the broadcast of Canada’s Next Great Prime Minister (airs March 23rd at 7 pm on CBC Television) we’ll be the 1st major broadcaster in North America to release a high quality, DRM-free copy of a primetime show using BitTorrent technology. We’ll also be distributing a version you can put in your iPod.

The show will completely free (and legal) for you to download, share & burn to your heart’s desire.

— CBC to BitTorrent Canada’s Next Great Prime Minister, CANADA’S NEXT GREAT PRIME MINISTER NEWS, 19 March 2008

The CBC blog post goes on to say CBC has already been using Facebook to promote the show and they even used YouTube to cast it. They even credit BoingBoing for coming up with the idea, only two weeks ago. BoingBoing seems to have gotten it from a similar move by NRK in Norway. And BoingBoing noted CBC’s move the day before CBC announced it.

CBC asked for comments, and got some:

It’s great that this will be available. Now if only my rogers cable internet would not throttle my torrent downloads.. this is in essence useless for anyone with rogers and for bell playing similar games.

Posted by: Mike | March 19, 2008 02:32 PM

Michael Geist also made this point in his blog, the previous day. (More here about what Rogers has been up to.) As more legitimate broadcasters move to use BitTorrent, it will become harder for ISPs like Rogers to justify outright stifling of BitTorrent.

Another commenter has a point none of the bloggers seem to have thought of yet:

I’m currently using bit torrent to pull down CBC sponsored shows *MONTHS* before they show on the CBC. This is a step in the right direction, but now is not the time to talk baby steps. The CBC needs to be moving at a full out sprint if they want to stay ahead of the curve.

I’m currently downloading Torchwood everytime it shows in the UK and the last time I checked it had a co-produced by the CBC message at the end, yet I can’t legally view it for several months.

Posted by: Steve | March 19, 2008 12:48 PM

The Internet is about participation and feedback and fast file sharing, yes, but it is also about time-shifting across geographical and political boundaries; TiVo is a pale shadow of what the Internet can do.

So far we’ve got NRK in Norway and CBC in Canada experimenting with DRM-free torrents, and BBC in Britain and PBS in the U.S. already making many of their programs available over the Internet, although not necessarily in BitTorrent form. As one of the commenters suggests:

If this is successful, (it should be fairly difficult to mess up) I expect to see the for-profit networks start seriously looking for ways to change their business model so that they can take advantage of this technology too.

Which TV network is going to figure out how to make money off of free online distribution? Not a bad bet would be Comedy Central.

As more people get used to watching their favorite TV programs via BitTorrent, they will revolt against stifling by ISPs, and net neutrality will win.

-jsq

PS: I saw this on shiny dot bulletin courtesy of google news alerts.