Firstly I'd like to commend the BN for the amount of content it provides in its archives.
As an Australian, listening live isn't always convenient, the session starts at around 9am Monday & the BN isn't usually the first thing I think about on a weekday, but it does help the Monday-itis.
As a student, I'm unable to afford an ongoing donation to the BN as funds are tight. Worst case, I'll set up a $2 donation & cancel it once I have all the archives. This doesn't help new members though, where a topic like sanitation, kegging & temperature control might be of interest. Locking these archives away has two possible outcomes;
1) The topics covered in the archives need to be rehashed regularly, to provide new members with content suitable & useful to them, meanwhile frustrating long term members who have heard the same topic every few months.
2) The BN loses potential new members by not providing easy access to suitable content (essentially limiting the target audience to advanced brewers & long time listeners).
The other loss will be listeners directed here from other brewing forums.
I would support the following options;
1) DVD archives, with the cost covering the cost of media, postage & a cheap pint for Justin
2) Download limits, similar to the current situation, maybe limiting content to 32hrs/day
3) Torrent hosted archives, packaged for 2-3 months at a time.
The download limit might be able to be circumvented, but I doubt it would be worth the hassle.
codewritinfool wrote:The torrent thing is very unlikely. Download metrics like count / ip / location are essential and are lost with that method.
I'm not all that techy, but I thought there was a "tracker" with torrents that keeps track of computers seeding the files. Wouldn't the hits on the tracker provide you with the metrics? I think there are some torrent clients designed to track users via IP & a unique id to assist in providing evidence in piracy lawsuits.
