Norway's public broadcaster sets up its own torrent tracker using same code as The Pirate Bay

Eirikso from NRK, the Norwegian public broadcast, writes to tell us that they've set up their own BitTorrent tracker, adding, "The tracker is based on the same OpenTracker software that the Pirate Bay has been using for the last couple of years. By using BitTorrent we can reach our audience with full quality, unencrypted media files. Experience from our early tests show that if we're the best provider of our own content we also gain control of it."

The first show we’re putting on our new tracker is a very popular television series about people living in remote places in Norway. It features fascinating people and spectacular scenery. We have provided all the Norwegian subtitle files and if people want to fansub any of the episodes we’re more than happy to let you do that. Please let us know in the comments and we’ll link to your translations.

We are providing full quality video files with no DRM. The biggest problem regarding this project is to clear all the rights we need to be able to distribute content in such an open system. NRK is a big content producer, but record labels, actors, external production companies and format rights owners usually have contracts that prevent us from distributing our content freely in the internet. We are in constant negotiations over these issues. And it seems like it should be possible to find a solution where NRK gets the rights it needs and the rights holders get the compensation they want.

In addition to this we look into new providers. Pump Audio, Magnatune and other companies with easier licensing systems are interesting sources.

The Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation is promoting the free and opensource Miro software as their preferred BitTorrent client. It is user friendly and contains everything you need to both download and play the high quality video files.

Now that's public service broadcasting!

Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation sets up its own bittorrent tracker (Thanks, Eirikso!)

• [failix]

  This is incredible!

• [AirPillo]

  I love seeing new large-scale legitimate uses for bittorrent.

  If more organizations worldwide begin taking advantages of bittorrent it will go a long way towards customers mounting a reasonable defense against the protocol being blocked or throttled by ISP fiat.

• [Joe in Australia]

  A Møøse once bit my sister …

• [Alys]

  Now’s a good time to start improving on my Norwegian! I’d love it if other organisations started doing this too.

• [starfish and coffee]

  just started downloading one now :-)
  thanks for the tip.

• [Satan Ate My Ears]

  I would be tickled pink if the CBC did such a thing, including their entire back catalog of their most popular shows. I could keep my ears busy for a lifetime if every episode of Quirks & Quarks was at my disposal.

• [Shrdlu]

  Satan @ #4:

  You can get most of the past ten years here:

  http://www.cbc.ca/quirks/archives.htm

  It is more work than downloading a single BitTorrent file, but probably faster.

  And be glad you are not dealing with French CBC (Société Radio-Canada). I went to the site a few weeks ago and all their media is only accessible with Microsoft Silverlight for on-line listening.

  I really think there should be a law that all public broadcasters distribute content using open-standard platforms. Seems to me that any taxpayer-funded radio or television station should not be concerned with DRM or in any way restrict access to content.