[dublinben]

Broadcast television has been given away for free since it's inception, and monetized with advertisements. I don't see why officially-sanctioned torrents couldn't do the same. Make them high quality, and backed by fast seedboxes, and you'll outcompete the crappy scene releases that trickle down to public trackers.

[VLM]

"Make them high quality, and backed by fast seedboxes,"

Another option: directors cut type content. So you get 2 minutes extra content of dubious quality, but there's a 10 second diet coke ad at the start. Well, you could try to find a torrent of the extra content without the ad, but its got slower seeds, so you're better off with the diet coke ad...

[drdaeman]

> but its got slower seeds

I'm not sure this would be true.

This may work for rarer content, but certainly wouldn't work for hot torrents. A fast webseeds CDN or whole datacenter of seedboxes is still on par with a large community-only swarm - that is, except for minor issues (possibly slower start) they both can well saturate one's downstream channel.

That is, unless one wants the download to start at full-speed right at the release second and not an hour or two later when swarm gets enough seeds. But I'm not sure most users care whenever their favorite series get an update at, say, 18:00 or 20:00.

[glomph]

People would just release versions with the adverts cut. What do you think goes on with HDTV releases at the moment?

[Zigurd]

There are torrents of TV shows with the ads cut. That hasn't made a dent in broadcast TV.