Authenticated RSS as a trusted show-season-episode delivery mechanism

[dominosultan]

The objective is to set up a torrent based publishing mechanism where the audience can be sure the source is trusted while removing the need for the RSS feed or a tracker to be hosted on a public server.

The question is which bits don't exist yet and how could they be achieved?

1. It starts off with the generation of a strong PGP key that is held by me, the publisher (or moderator);

2. Next an "authenticated" RSS "feed" is generated as a container for torrents related to the show;

3. The first episode of the show is added as a torrent to the RSS feed;

4. The feed is published over a gnutella style of hosting/propagation so people can go to "the search engine" and do a search of "the show name" (this means that once published into the network the host would not need to exist any more). This takes the role of the tracker and makes the definition of the torrent un-shut-down-able;

5. The search would return the list of season/episodes for the authenticated feed and automatically start downloading the listed torrents;

6. As new shows are developed they are converted into a torrent file and the "authenticated" RSS "feed" is updated with a new version number in the title and uploaded to the network;

7. The client would "become aware" of the new episode through the "authenticated" RSS "feed" and automatically download the torrent to the targeted directory. This would allow the new episodes to just appear in the directory for the show;

8. If necessary the publisher should have the facility to delete and replace an episode. This would allow an early version of an episode to be replaced with a better quality version.

The above steps should be automatic i.e. aside from coming up with a unique show name and the content of the show itself all the published should have to do is direct the client at a watched directory where new content is placed for publishing.

An option would be useful to allow for restricted publishing of the "authenticated" RSS "feed" by switching the public/private key pair. In this way the key could be shared with a family member to allow sharing in a restricted format.

An additional component would be the synergy of operating this in combination with an IP masking tool.