Sebastian Kai Frost, who created the torrent file and also appeared in the movie, told TorrentFreak that BitTorrent was the "perfect solution."
"In New Zealand, this would have resulted in a completely unaffordable amount of bandwidth that would be used to share the file through traditional methods," he said.
"Especially since all the bandwidth in and out of the country at the time was less than a modern Wi-Fi link."
And it turned out that using BitTorrent did exactly what it was intended to do, helped the movie reach a massive audience, and saved the creators an outright fortune.
"The file was downloaded more than tens of thousands of times during the first week and then it really took off based on news articles on news from both New Zealand and American television," said Frost.
Some rough calculations by the team at the time estimated that they saved more than half a million dollars in bandwidth costs in the first month of launch alone.
"The fact that people still seed it after all these years is a good feeling. Although I suspect a lot of people are on board now because they want to be a part of keeping the world's oldest active torrent," Frost told TorrentFreak.
For those interested in a unique Kiwi landmark on the internet, the The original torrent file can still be used to download the movie.. For those unsure how to use BitTorrent, the last 18 years have seen many advancements in technology that make it easy to view the short film in a variety of ways, like the Vimeo embedded below.
