The CBC will become first of the major North American television networks to release content sans DRM. Indeed, you read that correctly.

The CBC will kick things off by releasing episodes of Canada’s Next Great Prime Minister the day after they air on TV. What I really admire about this plan is that the content will contain no DRM whatsoever (a la iTunes Music Store), so people are free to watch on whatever computer or device they wish. The icing on the cake is the fact that shows will be distributed via BitTorrent, which gives distribution power to the people. I would love it if they followed suit with some of their other shows like Air Farce, The Hour, The Mercer Report, This Hour Has 22 Minutes, Little Mosque on the Prairie or even jPod.

Actually, if we examine the CBC’s BitTorrent distrubution idea a little bit further, this is highlighting all of the right reasons for net neutrality. Putting this under a microscope yields:

• BitTorrent is a highly efficient means to distribute digital data like software, music, video, photos, documents, etc.
• BitTorrent, much to the chagrin of (mainly) the RIAA and MPAA, is a way to distribute copyrighted material.
• It should be noted that BitTorrent is also used to distribute a lot of un-copyrighted material in an efficient and legal manner.
• Due to the popularity of BitTorrent, pressure from copyright holders, and the bandwidth it consumes, major ISPs (in Canada’s case, that includes Rogers and Bell) shape network traffic such that BitTorrent traffic comes in like a trickle while other traffic (Web, email, instant messaging, etc) is unhindered.
• The CBC is funded by Canadian tax payers.

Would the Canadian ISPs dare to continue to cripple BitTorrent traffic, even if the packets of said traffic belong to a video made available by a publicly funded television network? Michael Geist points out that the CBC’s Mandate clearly states that their programming:

…be made available throughout Canada by the most appropriate and efficient means and as resources become available for the purpose…

In terms of the distribution of “large” digital content like high-quality video on the Internet, nothing currently comes close the appropriateness and efficiency of BitTorrent. Hopefully this experiement is successful and ISPs have no choice but to respond by providing equal accessibility to all information available on the Internet.

Even though earlier this year I complained about the CBC showing too many Leafs games, they’re still not off the hook. Although I am viewing them in a much more favourable light. 🙂

Geek Aside:
To get around some of the traffic shaping, I suggest using non-standard ports with your chosen BitTorrent client (I use µTorrent for Windows and Deluge for Linux) and changing the associated port forwarding on your NAT router, if you have one (and you should). For fun, I often change which port I use on a weekly basis. Also, some clients are better at obscuring BitTorrent packets from traffic-shaping hardware/software than others – Deluge’s default settings rule for this.