Random Access Memories

So while browsing http://www.thislife.org/ looking for a show I missed recently that I wanted to listen to I noticed a constant request for money.

Not just the general NPR begging but directly to pay for the roughly 15 Terabytes of bandwidth per month that was eaten up by people downloading their podcast.

Immediately a fix sprang to mind, use BitTorrent. People that have no money to donate or don;t want to donate will probably be willing to cough up a little bandwidth.

So I posed the idea to them.

Their response? They said they’d think about it, but I realized they are probably not thrilled about the idea of having their radio shows strewn across the public ether free, since once those shows are archived after 30 days they are no longer free.

So, which is it? Are they offering it up free and asking for donations to cover your bandwidth, or are they using the free shows as a teaser to get people to snag the archived non-free shows?

I’m afraid they can’t have it both ways.