The CBC is borrowing a page from the Internet pirate’s playbook by distributing one of its prime-time TV shows using Bit Torrent technology, a first by a North American broadcaster.

Beginning this Sunday, high-resolution episodes of CBC’s Canada’s Next Great Prime Minister will be freely distributed without any copyright restrictions over a Bit Torrent file tracker, said CBC Television’s executive director of factual entertainment, Julie Bristow.

“We think it’s a very unique project,” Ms. Bristow said. “We’re experimenting with putting this show out there and putting it back into people’s hands.”

The move is being heralded by observers as a highly positive move in keeping up with the public broadcasters mandate of distributing its content “by the most appropriate and efficient means.”

“In this day and age, you can’t just sit back and rely on traditional broadcast as the way to go,” said Alan Sawyer, a media strategist with Two Solitudes Consulting. “You’ve got to throw as many things on the wall as you can and see if it sticks.”

Using Bit Torrent appears to be the next step for the CBC to try to connect with a younger demographic after using YouTube to audition potential candidates for the show, said University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist.

“It represents a progressive approach to the way CBC treats its content and it’s exactly the kind of approach a public broadcaster should be taking,” Mr. Geist said.

Created in 2001, the Bit Torrent protocol has quickly become one of the most widely-used forms of peer-to-peer file sharing. Instead of taking several hours downloading a large file from a single service, users download a torrent file that connects to several peers sharing the same file over the Web and breaks the file into smaller pieces for easier transmission.

Its popularity has been a double-edged sword. Millions of Web users used the technology daily to transfer terrabytes of pirated software, music and entertainment. Observers have cited that Bit Torrent is responsible for up to 35% of all Internet traffic.

“[Bit Torrent] has low distribution costs, so financially, it is a low risk venture for the CBC to try,” said Mr. Sawyer.

Media companies are beginning to discover the technology’s benefits. BitTorrent Inc., has more than 35 partnerships with media companies such as 20th Century Fox and MTV to legally distribute content, but not prime time shows and usually with restrictive copywrite features.

The CBC is not the first broadcaster to experiment with using the technology to distribute its content. The NRK, Norway’s public broadcaster, distributed episodes of Nordkalotten 365 over Bit Torrent and had more than 90,000 downloads.

Ms. Bristow said the CBC is unlikely to distribute its entire programming schedule over Bit Torrent in the near future, and indicated that the initiative is an “experimental one-off.”

“Not at this moment, but we’ll see how it goes,” she said.

The only risk, Mr. Geist added, is if Canadians complain about transfer speeds being slowed down by Internet providers such as Rogers High-Speed and Bell Sympatico that have publicly admitted they “traffic shape” Bit Torrent data.

“They’re not going to distinguish between CBC and non-CBC content over Bit Torrent,” Mr. Geist said. “You have a public broadcaster whose mandate to distribute content as widely and efficient as possible [is] being undermined by non-transparent policies from Canada’s Internet providers.”

Representatives from Rogers and Bell did not return calls seeking comment.