Earlier this month we reported that director Michael Moore's latest film was to be released legally, and for free via the Internet and as of today, he has followed through with that promise.
The film, which is intended to bring out new voters for the upcoming presidential election, was made available via the movie's official site, but more interestingly through BitTorrent as well, using the Pirate Bay tracker with PeerExchange and DHT allowed as well.
Therein lies the problem however. The film's site says the downloads are only available to US and Canadian residents and makes it very clear that when downloading from the site you will go through an IP lookup system which will then either accept or deny your request. By putting the movie on torrents, especially extremely popular public ones such as The Pirate Bay, there is no way to enforce geographical restrictions.
Was it intentional? Was it an accident or a complete misunderstanding of how the BitTorrent protocol works? We don't know, but more importantly, the film is available and for free, from wherever you want to get it.
Therein lies the problem however. The film's site says the downloads are only available to US and Canadian residents and makes it very clear that when downloading from the site you will go through an IP lookup system which will then either accept or deny your request. By putting the movie on torrents, especially extremely popular public ones such as The Pirate Bay, there is no way to enforce geographical restrictions.
Was it intentional? Was it an accident or a complete misunderstanding of how the BitTorrent protocol works? We don't know, but more importantly, the film is available and for free, from wherever you want to get it.
