The Internet Archive teams up with BitTorrent, starts seeding 1M torrents

Thought BitTorrent was just about illegally downloading recent Hollywood blockbusters? Think again: Now you can legally torrent more than one million movies, live concert recordings, radio shows and books, thanks to a partnership of the Internet Archive and BitTorrent Inc.

The Internet Archive just embraced P2P in a big way: The site is making more than one million torrents of its books, movies, TV show episodes and music albums available for free download. Torrents are seeded by two Archive.org servers, so download speeds should be fast even if a file isn’t particularly popular.

Some of the titles offered for download include vintage commercials from the Prelinger Archive, live concert recordings featuring artists like John Mayer, the Grateful Dead and the Smashing Pumpkins as well as feature films like Plan 9 From Outer Space.

Of course, all of that content has previously been available for download via plain old HTTP, but turning to BitTorrent could not only help the Internet Archive save on bandwidth, but also find new audiences for its content. The initiative was started in partnership with BitTorrent Inc., whose CEO Eric Klinker said in a press release that its goal is to “protect and maintain society’s cultural artifacts.”

Well, if it’s that noble of a cause, then I guess I better go and torrent my copy of Horrors of Spider Island right away…

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