British Treasury publishes public spending data via BitTorrent

The British government acknowledges that BitTorrent is a beautiful and efficient technology for sharing data. That is why it uses this protocol to share financial reports on the last two years.

The new Prime Minister, David Cameron, has set a goal of transparency when it comes to public spending. The British Treasury answers the call by publishing torrents for data that reveals just where the tax pounds were spent on.

BitTorrent is not just a fast way of distributing data. As in this case, the data is about public spending, it is fitting that BitTorrent is much more cost effective than central distribution.

It is good news that BitTorrent technology, that is mostly used for sharing copyrighted material, is now employed to benefit society. That is good pr for for a technology that has become synonymous for piracy. Another legitimate torrent user is NASA, that uses it to make available high resolution images of earth for ‘Visible Earth’.