Funferal

Feature Request

OK, a little bit more than a ‘feature’. Podcasting is all very well, and it makes it easy to choose the information that’s pushed at you, and have it automatically moved to your library, so you can play it as you wish.
However, the actual distribution channel isn’t changed – content is pulled from the producer’s site by each user[‘s software]. Why not take advantage of the BitTorrent approach? Merge the ‘seed downloaded files’ and ‘automatically download content I choose’ tools. Since publishers will continue to have the files available on their sites, there will always be at least one source available, but where there’s a burst of interest in a file – as will happen with regular podcast shows that are requested automatically via an RSS feed – the load will be shared.
Of course the tool should allow users to choose whether or not they wish to share the file with the network. I’m unsure too whether the approach would suit those who can’t run a bittorrent program from their server/site, but perhaps some hybrid approach could be adopted.