Norway launches its own BitTorrent tracker
p2pnet news view Freedom | P2P:- Dear dear.
Not only did Norway’s minister for education, BÃ¥rd Vegar Solhjell, suggest there’s not a lot wrong with downloading, and not only did Norwegian telecom group Telenor have the “sheer effrontery to tell Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony BMG’s IFPI to stuff it! (or words to that effect), as we posted recently, now the state broadcaster has decided to start using BitTorrent, as NRK beta points out.
The Creative Commons photo on the right is by Eirik Solheim, and it’s used by NRK beta in its post, which declares »»»
The tracker is based on the same OpenTracker software that the Pirate Bay has been using for the last couple of years. But it will only be used to distribute content from the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK).
Not that it’ll be a first.
For example, a trifle under a year ago, “after the broadcast of Canada’s Next Great Prime Minister … 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,” boasted Canada’s CBC.
But the Norwegian effort is far more significant than Canada’s because Norway appears to be full frontal and on-going.
“NRK is license funded and aims to reach their audience with the best possible quality,” says NRK beta, pointing out every day, eight out of 10 Norwegians tune into its TV, the radio, the Internet and mobile phone offerings.
“Tests with traditional download methods have proven difficult because of the large files and extreme load on the servers,” it says.
Entities which want to control of their content, “need to lock it down in a vault and never show it to anyone,” says the NRK doctrine, going on »»»
We gave up control of our content the day we started broadcasting. For years our most popular content have been available on BitTorrent and on sites like YouTube anyway. DRM doesnââ¬â¢t work. The only way to control your content is to be the best provider of it. If people want it on YouTube then you should publish it on YouTube or in a system that give the same experience. If people want it on BitTorrent then you should provide that. If you do it right people will come to your official publish point and you’ll end up with more control.
By using BitTorrent, “we can reach our audience with full quality media files,” says the broadcaster, continuing, “With our own tracker we will get better statistics and gather important data about how this technology works. And as we did with our early tests we`ll also try to share the knowledge as we grow this service.”
On right issues, “We are providing full quality video files with no DRM,” it says, adding »»»
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.
NRK is using free and opensource Miro software as its preferred BitTorrent client.
Stay tuned
(Thanks to everyone (too many to list here 
) who emailed me about this.)
sheer effrontery – Downloading OK, Norway minister tells IFPI, February 24, 2009
stuff it – Poke it! – Norway ISP tells Big 4`s IFPI, March 2, 2009
Slashdot – Norwegian Broadcasting Sets Up Its Own Tracker, March 8, 2009
NRK beta – Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation sets up its own bittorrent tracker, March 8, 2009
Canada’s CBC – CBC show online via BitTorrent, March 19, 2009
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March 9th, 2009 at 12:43 pm
This is not a first, but NRK *was* first in using BitTorrent, note that CBC said “1st major broadcaster in North America”.
March 9th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
^^ I wasn’t meaning to belittle Norway’s achievement. Sorry if I gave that impression.
Cheers!
March 9th, 2009 at 4:52 pm
BBC next please. HaHaHa never happen.
March 10th, 2009 at 3:16 am
Heartwarming