Streaming torrents are fairly common as far as I can tell. One of the old clients I used to use (uTorrent perhaps) had the option to download sequentially so you could watch a video as it was downloaded. And then applications like Popcorn Time put the whole thing into a Netflix-like interface to make it even easier to skim, bookmark, and stream TV shows and movies.<p>As would be expected, the tech does appear to be simple but the main issues are the ones regarding the most obvious uses: watching and sharing unlicensed video content.<p>But yeah, I would love it if this was used more often as a way to do low/no budget streaming or independent broadcast-style content. But for big players like TV networks and movie studios, it seems like it makes more sense to just serve content from their servers and CDNs so that anyone paying to watch something isn't also acting as a distribution node for a torrent swarm. I know that if I was paying for something like Netflix or HBO Now, I'd rather not use both upload and download bandwidth if I could help it.