rrwood writes "The latest Cringely is out. In it, Bob give his take on P2P and Big Media and where it's all going. Nothing new there, but as usual, the interesting part is what SlashDotters will say here afterward."
Why the RIAA's P2P vendetta is crazy
by
NewtonsLaw
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Check out this Aardvark Daily column which shows another commentators view of just how silly the RIAA are for going after P2P network operators when, simply by adding a cheap card to your PC, you can get all the RIAA-sanctioned free top-20 music you want (at the equivalent of 200Kbps or better).
How long before they realize that they're just bitching about cracks in the windows while the door has been left wide open??
(yeah, I submitted this a few days ago and it was rejected -- but I'm not bitching;-)
Cringely section?
by
mcrbids
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Why isn't there a "Cringely" icon for slashdot? It seems that every time he publishes something, it ends up here!
Come on, guys!
-- I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
silly quotes from article..
by
doowy
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
This is simply because technology has reached the point where amateurs can make as good a recording as the professionals.
This is not entirely true. I know two people who have small independant record labels, and let me tell you it is VERY expensive to put out albums even when the majority of work is done in-house. There are a lot of stages to making a good quality album - for example, mastering can cost thousands of dollars for a small collection of tracks. Mastering studios are in business for a reason - because the indi's cannot (for the most part) do this themselves.
We're not that far from a time when artists and writers can distribute their own work and make a living doing so, which makes the current literary and music establishments a lot less necessary.
I'd sooner compare a PC with great audio software to a typewriter of 50 years ago. And guess what.. 'literary establishments' are STILL necessary for widespread ditribution. The problem is really all in the distribution. Let's face it, if we wanted to we could affordably publish text in a comparible quality format to that of which appears in book stores today. The technology is certainly available, but it's not really replacing the big publishing/distributers at all.
Also, the article has the tone "P2P is here to stay and nobody will ever be willing to pay for a P2P file-sharing service", which I somewhat agree with.. but he does not offer support for the above quote, specifically "and make a living doing so". It seems to contradict the overall tone - how can the indi's make a living distributing their own music if people are unwilling to pay for it? Please enlighten us.
and because people won't take tablet computers with them to the bathroom.
if I had a Tablet PC, I would!:)
-- ..mork
From Goods to Services
by
sgtsanity
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Frankly, after P2P file sharing has run its course, I expect the entertainment industry to still be here. However, it'll be a lot different. They'll transition from Goods, which can be digitally copied and redistributed, to Services, which (as of yet) are copy-proof. Expect to see the resurrection of theater. We've already seen it happen with an emphasis on live concerts in the music industry.
The Industry will finally begin to understand that it's greatest asset it not the tangible, but the intangible.
Bad Monopolies at play
by
Alien54
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I like this story
My favorite historical example of this phenomenon comes from the oil business. In the 1920s, the Anglo-Persian Oil Company had a monopoly on oil production in the Middle East, which they generally protected through the use of diplomatic -- and occasionally military -- force against the local monarchies. Then the Gulf Oil Company of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, literally sneaked into Kuwait and obtained from the Al-Sabah family (who still run the place) a license to search for oil.
The Anglo-Persian Oil Company did not like Gulf's actions, but they were even more dismayed to learn that Gulf couldn't be told to just go to hell. Andrew Mellon, of the Pittsburgh Mellons, was the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, and he wasn't about to let his oil company be pushed around by the British Foreign Office. So Anglo-Persian and the Foreign Office did their best to delay Gulf, which worked for several years. They lied a little, lost a few maps, failed to read a telegram or two, and when Gulf still didn't go away, they turned to acting stupid. As the absolute regional experts on oil exploration, they offered to do Gulf's job, to save the Americans the bother if searching for oil in Kuwait by searching for them.
The Anglo-Persian Oil Company searched for oil in Kuwait for 22 years without finding a single drop.
Remember that Kuwait is smaller than Rhode Island, and not only is it sitting atop more than 60 billion barrels of oil, it has places where oil has been known for more than 3,000 years to seep all the way to the surface. Yet Anglo-Persian was able to fulfill its contract with Gulf and keep two oil rigs continually drilling in Kuwait for 22 years without finding oil. To drill this many dry wells required intense concentration on the part of the British drillers. They had to not only be NOT looking for oil, they had to very actively be NOT LOOKING for oil, which is even harder.
[emphasis added] It sounds so very familiar. Just like something the RIAA or Microsoft would do, if they were an Oil company.
Microsoft Oil. RIAA Petroleum. Really.
-- "It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Cringely and P2P
by
inode_buddha
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Dude hits the nail right on the head, IMHO. Especially the part towards the end about the Grateful Dead and residual incomes vs direct publishing (now truly enabled by the 'net)
My only real question to all of this is: How does any of this differ from the social uproar caused by Johannes Gutenberg printing the Bible with his movable-type press? (Which really messed up Europe for at least a hundred years -- some publishers are still extant). Surely, the social upheavals were reflected in the massive financial swings of the time. What makes this (internet-based publishing) any different?
-- C|N>K
Re:It can be slowed down...
by
metatruk
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
A lot of current ISPs filter port 80 incoming. It wouldn't matter. If everyone has port 80 filtered, then none of the p2p programs would be able to connect to each other.
Cringely is becoming Crufty
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 1, Interesting
I agree with some of the points Cringely is making, however, I disagree with him when he says that big media is being hurt by P2P. Big media companies are being hurt by themselves and their refusal to adapt to a different business model. I'd gladly pay $0.50 per mp3, maybe $1.00 per shn or wav file, and perhaps even $1.50 for an sacd or dvd-audio track from a fast, 200+ kilobyte per second connection. The problem is, big media refuses to adapt. P2P exists because there is no other means of getting most desired digital media over the Internet. P2P exists to fill a growing niche market that currently isn't being served by a legitimate outlet.
When Atom Films released Nick Park's Wallace and Gromit movies for $9.99, I gladly paid it to get high quality encoded video from a fast connection. Imagine how much money HBO is throwing away by not offering last week's Sopranos episode as a download for sale on the web. HBO could run it on cable for a week, then offer it as a $5 download the following week.
These companies need to realize that there's a market developing for video and audio-on-demand over the Internet. I'd much rather pay for quality encoded media than download it from some P2P service or have to encode it myself. When are these companies going to realize that they can't keep selling these plastic discs forever?
Re:pretty empty article
by
CashCarSTAR
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Like it or not, renting a movie is not exactly a white-hat activity. Just because you are paying *SOMEBODY* for media does not make it legal. I believe that with the exception of Blockbuster which makes license agreements with the studios, most movie rentals are no differert than the above poster's actions. Both are limited time agreements to preview media. Both may be protected under fair use (or maybe not, depending on who you ask).
It's only a matter of time before the MPAA starts cracking down on non-Blockbuster video rental stores. It's all under the same murky laws, unfortunately.
Just to explain everything, I believe that both these activities are not ultimately economicly damaging and should be judged as such. The survival of parasitic entities such as your local vid store doesn't play into my mind. They don't have a right to survive (although I DO hope they do).
Some basic flaws
by
too_bad
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I think this guy's whole article makes sense only if you accept his fundamental unwritten premise: that the concept of P2P networking is a zero-revenue generator, and that copying is stealing.
But the whole argument in this issue is whether copying per-se is stealing or not? So the rest of the discussion is just a hyperbole of what happens to the poor movie businesses if they are stolen, and what happens if everyone in NY is a thief, etc.
The issue I have with this approach is that, on the one hand you say its impossible to stop copying, and on the other hand you say copying is stealing. Why not atleast _try_ to see if there is an intermediate standpoint where you _try_ to see if under some business model copying can indeed generate revenue but maynot be as much as the movie and music moguls are making right now.
I dont want to start questions about such a model as such, and I am not even advocating that such a model is definitely practical, but like all other things in this world, it needs to be thought about, given a chance to prove itself in all its manifestations and then be discarded.
It makes sense for the sheiks in Sahara desert to sell water to the passer-bys at atrocious price, but does it make sense to sell water to the dwellers next to a river ?
-- DO NOT PANIC
I've seen a few people give examples...
by
mtec
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
of adjustment that is already occurring in the industry. Here's another. Ani Defranco who I'd never have listened to if it weren't for P2P went around the system. She wasn't loud about it - more matter of fact. She has a loyal fan base and her own label where you can buy her tunes directly (think she makes more per album?).
And yes, I turned my swiped sound into solid support - (I bought the album).
-- Cake or Death? Cake Please!
Maybe people just aren't buying music
by
Do+not+eat
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
I never bought a single CD before MP3s...I just didn't listen to music. Now, I have some MP3s that I listen to. If those MP3s went away, I'd just go back to not listening to music.
Because "10.1% of people downloading music are not buying music" does not mean that the music industry is losing sales from all those (though I'm sure it is from some).
I wonder how feasible it would be for someone like Borders (trying to compete with Amazon as a music retailer) to directly sign for tracks with artists. Then they maintain at each location a fat data pipe (if this isn't economically feasible, it will be -- small credit-check data lines are already in place and data gets cheaper and cheaper, whereas CDs stay the same). Then they have a really fancy burner or press or whatever at the location. They download losslessly compressed tracks from the Borders central server and cache them at local locations (to avoid retransferring popular tracks). Then people can simply say "I want a CD and I want track X, Y, and Z on it". The money goes directly to the artist, aside from Border's profit.
So lets see why this makes sense:
* Artist gets money, users have less incentive for piracy. * User gets to specify what tracks they want/don't want and get better quality than they would pirating MP3s. * The user can buy CDs more cheaply -- by eliminating the middleman, they pay maybe $3 to Borders per CD (you automate the thing, with a little Borders card reader, and there's very little per unit cost) and 10 cents to the artist per track (hell of a lot more than the artists are currently making), and you get a full-quality CD where you're supporting the artist for $5 tops. * Users would have a much broader selection, not limited to the few hundred titles that might be in the store. * Borders makes money -- I suspect unit costs after amortization would be about 50 cents per CD, so they get a healthy $2.50 in profit per CD, which is probably more than they currently make. * Borders risks far less than they currently do -- adding an artist to their central database is cheap cheap cheap. They don't have to risk warehousing and blowing shelf space on CDs that people don't want. * New artists can break into the market easily -- they simply register with Borders, send in their music to the main server, and start getting money. They don't have to convince much of anyone of their music quality, since there's no massive production/warehousing costs for all the CDs.
There are two drawbacks. One, you don't get extras in the CD. You might be able to print out the cover and the CD label, if this "Borders mini-CD maker" machine was fairly capable, but you might not get other stuff jammed in the case. Second, even with a hefty local cache, Borders still has to transfer 300MB per full CD (assuming lossless compression averaging 2:1) for infrequently requested CDs. This may not yet be feasible -- however, data lines keep getting cheaper, and CD prices stay the same.
Finally, a $100 80GB HD can store about 160 fairly full CDs, and 300 with lossless 2:1 compression. That's a one-time cost -- like incredibly cheaply expandable floor space. At those prices, Borders can afford to have enormous local caches -- one sale of a CD much more than makes back the cost of storing that CD locally.
Re:Out of the loop
by
len_harms
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Routers that drop packets with forged headers
This could happen tommorow. Most routers let you configure it to do this. Show me a forged header Ill show you a lazy admin.
ISP's could use this as a service to their customers. Find a forged header log where it came from (mac address, phone, etc...) Then help the user fix their computer. Today we have a very lazy group that see it as a non expense to them. But it does cost them bandwidth and time.
The ISPs have to balance per byte metered versus how they lure people into their network. Why would I pay more for brodband if your just going to turn around and charge me a lot more for it. That is exactly how it will be seen. Currently they are enticing people into the network with 'unlimited', or nearly that, usage. They almost say you can get fast mp3's with a wink and a nod. With phrases like 'I can get my music faster'. Yet technicaly most of these ISP's have the 'no servers' in the contract. Those p2p systems are servers. The only way I can see metered will work is if most of the time my bill would be lower than a flat rate.
There will be more pay per play type systems. There are some rudementary ones right now. But all it takes is one cheap dude to make something that can copy the data. Then poof that movie that costed 5 bucks to rent, now costs very little for Joe Smoe to copy. Pay-per-play is doomed from the outset because if you can display it I can copy it, or at least make a decent copy. The only way they can keep total control is to not distribute it, or not make a display program. Either of which make them no money.
The artical didnt point it out. It sort of danced around it. But the current system is setup by control of media. When you buy a CD its probably 3 cents worth of plastic. But it cost 20 bucks. That is in economic terms called scarcity. Not everyone can make a batch of 100,000 3 cent CDs. But the media producers can, they make enough so marginal revenue equals marginal cost. If the artist and the end user get screwed so be it, MR = MC. They end up with a tidy sum of money. The new p2p systems lower dramaticly cost. Cost is now very close to 0.
There is no shipping, pressing, marketing, etc. Suddely its just product and end user. You do not have to ship things. You do not have to have a batch run of CDs made. You do not have to have artwork made up for the cover. You do not have to pay the middle man distributor. There are new costs. But most of them you do not control, and cost you nothing.
The real change here is not the distribution method. That could have been controled up front and they still could have held onto some sort of percived scarcity. Instead someone else did it. Suddenly the scarcity is not there. If two products are fairly equal a normal person will purchase the one that cost less. They were making tons of money on scarcity. They know it. They are going ape over trying to keep it.
If someone figures out how to compress a 2 hour movie into something like 20 meg, and good quality. The movie companies will have something to worry about. But at current data rates a 700 meg file is just not practical. Its can be done. But most users will not do it. There will be some exceptions but currently not many. If the size comes down or the data rate goes up dramaticly it will become practical. Then the movie companies have something to really worry about.
Currently the only squaking your seeing is coming from the ISP's. You see silly names like 'bandwidth hogs'. But hell they SELL the service that way. A few people take them up on the offer! They are yelling uncle not because people are breaking the law. They yell it because they are seeing their bandwith bills skyrocket. They are currently trying to find the right balance of oversubscription, bandwidth needed, and pay rates. Bandwidth capping is just an kneejerk reaction to the fact they oversubscribed to much. The same sort of thing happened when phone ISP's started showing up.
p2p isn't going away. it isn't even slowing down.
by
violently_ill
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
i'm surprised nobody has mentioned IRIS (infrastructure for resilient internet systems, or something like that) yet. it's an open source p2p project coming out of MIT and Berkeley. It uses something called "distributed hash table" technology that i don't understand. it's supposed to make it so that as the number of nodes increases, search speed increases logarithmically. if nothing else, it proves that large-scale decentralized p2p networks can be as fast as closed networks like Kaza.
in short, all the of the big problems with p2p are being solved. while i'm sure new ones will crop up in the future (particularly if cringley's prediction about phase two of the industry's anti-p2p tactics comes true), it isn't going away. if RIAA ever manages to hit the "off" switch on p2p, they're going to have to deal with one hell of a stink, not just from media consumers, but from video and audio hardware makers, optical drive manufacturers, broadband providers, and musicians themselves.
it's nice to know that free media advocates have a few 800 lb. gorrillas in their corner.
Re:It can be slowed down...
by
gimpboy
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
When some large regional buys the isp that provides services you want to purchase where will you go? Did you notice all the DSL providers who were not former Bells going under? Did you hear the wailing and gnashing of teeth as cable company buyouts removed services people were using?
thats fine. if the best i can get is 56k, then why have dsl? why not cut the $60 extra a month and use a modem? i mean really, do you expect people to keep paying for dsl when they are not really _getting_ it-it being the advantage of faster transfer rates.
i dont think any of the dsl providers can afford to piss off a large number of their clients. not even the big ones. if the big ones piss off enough people, then smaller providers will spring into being-market forces and all.
maby i'll go back to isdn:).
-- --
john
Sharing that makes money
by
hexa00
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
What if we were to combine the completly free network and the possible future legal distribution system.
What I mean to say is that we have to make the users that share part of the payroll.
Let me explain, what if you made money by distributing the mp3s and movies you had on your computer ? Part of it goes to the bands and movie producers and part of it to you who pays the bw bill...
In that case won't you rather "sell" your bandwidth and hd space then give it away! ?
Then won't it be the end of the massive p2p sharring (a free one will always exist) but with the ppl you had the bw and space gone.. what will it be worth ?
The only problem in this is coordination of the whole thing... lol a big part but still I mean it is possible to do that without even any centralisation...
For this to work the sytem needs this info:
1 - A way to indentify music and send the money to the right ppl
2- A way to bill ppl you d/l directly
This could be solved if we had a trusted system to make the transactions so that we could be sure of who really is d/ling. ( I kinda see paladium is this god forgives me ) And to whom are really the (c) rights...
If the system can provide that info then there's nothing stoping it:) and it will keep making money !!
we will see competiton on the content prices , on the bw prices too... the lower you set your bw price to be on your host the more d/ls you get etc...
The higher quality and the faster you are the more $ users will pay etc...
It makes a new viable biz:)
Now I know this is kinda utopic but I still feel it's possible... feel free to bring me down on earth hehehe...
.
-- Do what you wilt shall be the whole of the law
Love is the law, love under will
Capital drives the will of mankind
"It is nice to see the word get out: You cannot control the flow of digitial information in decentralized peer networks!"
Think so? Grab a local map. Plot your position on it. Now draw a line from that point back to your ISP's connection with the internet (cable,dialup.dsl,doesn't matter). Make a note of all the equipment between those two points, paying particular attention to any piece that manipulates the information in some manner. There's your "control". Peer or no peer. It all has to flow over a physical infrastructure. The question now is who has the greater resources to actually win in the long run. Your hacking skills against their ability to have you thrown in jail. Should be interesting.
Re:p2p isn't going away. it isn't even slowing dow
by
burns210
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
This project looks interesting. I will have to read up on it more. So, for those interested, here are a couple links you might want to check out.
Basicly, this system can scale to sizes of current p2p systems and far beyond. The system would would be able to "detect bad nodes quickly, and it would incorporate enough redundancy into the system to recover gracefully from tampering."
Slashdot Mirror
Check out this Aardvark Daily column which shows another commentators view of just how silly the RIAA are for going after P2P network operators when, simply by adding a cheap card to your PC, you can get all the RIAA-sanctioned free top-20 music you want (at the equivalent of 200Kbps or better).
;-)
How long before they realize that they're just bitching about cracks in the windows while the door has been left wide open??
(yeah, I submitted this a few days ago and it was rejected -- but I'm not bitching
Why isn't there a "Cringely" icon for slashdot? It seems that every time he publishes something, it ends up here!
Come on, guys!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
I'd sooner compare a PC with great audio software to a typewriter of 50 years ago. And guess what.. 'literary establishments' are STILL necessary for widespread ditribution. The problem is really all in the distribution. Let's face it, if we wanted to we could affordably publish text in a comparible quality format to that of which appears in book stores today. The technology is certainly available, but it's not really replacing the big publishing/distributers at all.
Also, the article has the tone "P2P is here to stay and nobody will ever be willing to pay for a P2P file-sharing service", which I somewhat agree with.. but he does not offer support for the above quote, specifically "and make a living doing so". It seems to contradict the overall tone - how can the indi's make a living distributing their own music if people are unwilling to pay for it? Please enlighten us.
if I had a Tablet PC, I would!
..mork
Frankly, after P2P file sharing has run its course, I expect the entertainment industry to still be here. However, it'll be a lot different. They'll transition from Goods, which can be digitally copied and redistributed, to Services, which (as of yet) are copy-proof. Expect to see the resurrection of theater. We've already seen it happen with an emphasis on live concerts in the music industry.
The Industry will finally begin to understand that it's greatest asset it not the tangible, but the intangible.
-
My favorite historical example of this phenomenon comes from the oil business. In the 1920s, the Anglo-Persian Oil Company had a monopoly on oil production in the Middle East, which they generally protected through the use of diplomatic -- and occasionally military -- force against the local monarchies. Then the Gulf Oil Company of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, literally sneaked into Kuwait and obtained from the Al-Sabah family (who still run the place) a license to search for oil.
[emphasis added] It sounds so very familiar. Just like something the RIAA or Microsoft would do, if they were an Oil company.The Anglo-Persian Oil Company did not like Gulf's actions, but they were even more dismayed to learn that Gulf couldn't be told to just go to hell. Andrew Mellon, of the Pittsburgh Mellons, was the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, and he wasn't about to let his oil company be pushed around by the British Foreign Office. So Anglo-Persian and the Foreign Office did their best to delay Gulf, which worked for several years. They lied a little, lost a few maps, failed to read a telegram or two, and when Gulf still didn't go away, they turned to acting stupid. As the absolute regional experts on oil exploration, they offered to do Gulf's job, to save the Americans the bother if searching for oil in Kuwait by searching for them.
The Anglo-Persian Oil Company searched for oil in Kuwait for 22 years without finding a single drop.
Remember that Kuwait is smaller than Rhode Island, and not only is it sitting atop more than 60 billion barrels of oil, it has places where oil has been known for more than 3,000 years to seep all the way to the surface. Yet Anglo-Persian was able to fulfill its contract with Gulf and keep two oil rigs continually drilling in Kuwait for 22 years without finding oil. To drill this many dry wells required intense concentration on the part of the British drillers. They had to not only be NOT looking for oil, they had to very actively be NOT LOOKING for oil, which is even harder.
Microsoft Oil. RIAA Petroleum. Really.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Dude hits the nail right on the head, IMHO.
Especially the part towards the end about the Grateful Dead and residual incomes vs direct publishing (now truly enabled by the 'net)
My only real question to all of this is: How does any of this differ from the social uproar caused by Johannes Gutenberg printing the Bible with his movable-type press? (Which really messed up Europe for at least a hundred years -- some publishers are still extant). Surely, the social upheavals were reflected in the massive financial swings of the time. What makes this (internet-based publishing) any different?
C|N>K
A lot of current ISPs filter port 80 incoming. It wouldn't matter. If everyone has port 80 filtered, then none of the p2p programs would be able to connect to each other.
When Atom Films released Nick Park's Wallace and Gromit movies for $9.99, I gladly paid it to get high quality encoded video from a fast connection. Imagine how much money HBO is throwing away by not offering last week's Sopranos episode as a download for sale on the web. HBO could run it on cable for a week, then offer it as a $5 download the following week.
These companies need to realize that there's a market developing for video and audio-on-demand over the Internet. I'd much rather pay for quality encoded media than download it from some P2P service or have to encode it myself. When are these companies going to realize that they can't keep selling these plastic discs forever?
Like it or not, renting a movie is not exactly a white-hat activity. Just because you are paying *SOMEBODY* for media does not make it legal. I believe that with the exception of Blockbuster which makes license agreements with the studios, most movie rentals are no differert than the above poster's actions. Both are limited time agreements to preview media. Both may be protected under fair use (or maybe not, depending on who you ask).
It's only a matter of time before the MPAA starts cracking down on non-Blockbuster video rental stores. It's all under the same murky laws, unfortunately.
Just to explain everything, I believe that both these activities are not ultimately economicly damaging and should be judged as such. The survival of parasitic entities such as your local vid store doesn't play into my mind. They don't have a right to survive (although I DO hope they do).
I think this guy's whole article makes sense only if you accept
his fundamental unwritten premise: that the concept of P2P networking
is a zero-revenue generator, and that copying is stealing.
But the whole argument in this issue is whether copying per-se is stealing
or not? So the rest of the discussion is just a hyperbole of what happens
to the poor movie businesses if they are stolen, and what happens if everyone
in NY is a thief, etc.
The issue I have with this approach is that, on the one hand you say
its impossible to stop copying, and on the other hand you say copying is stealing.
Why not atleast _try_ to see if there is an intermediate standpoint
where you _try_ to see if under some business model copying can indeed
generate revenue but maynot be as much as the movie and music moguls are
making right now.
I dont want to start questions about such a model as such, and I am not even
advocating that such a model is definitely practical, but like all other
things in this world, it needs to be thought about, given a chance to
prove itself in all its manifestations and then be discarded.
It makes sense for the sheiks in Sahara desert to sell water to the passer-bys
at atrocious price, but does it make sense to sell water to the dwellers
next to a river ?
DO NOT PANIC
of adjustment that is already occurring in the industry. Here's another. Ani Defranco who I'd never have listened to if it weren't for P2P went around the system. She wasn't loud about it - more matter of fact. She has a loyal fan base and her own label where you can buy her tunes directly (think she makes more per album?).
And yes, I turned my swiped sound into solid support - (I bought the album).
Cake or Death? Cake Please!
I never bought a single CD before MP3s...I just didn't listen to music. Now, I have some MP3s that I listen to. If those MP3s went away, I'd just go back to not listening to music.
Because "10.1% of people downloading music are not buying music" does not mean that the music industry is losing sales from all those (though I'm sure it is from some).
I wonder how feasible it would be for someone like Borders (trying to compete with Amazon as a music retailer) to directly sign for tracks with artists. Then they maintain at each location a fat data pipe (if this isn't economically feasible, it will be -- small credit-check data lines are already in place and data gets cheaper and cheaper, whereas CDs stay the same). Then they have a really fancy burner or press or whatever at the location. They download losslessly compressed tracks from the Borders central server and cache them at local locations (to avoid retransferring popular tracks). Then people can simply say "I want a CD and I want track X, Y, and Z on it". The money goes directly to the artist, aside from Border's profit.
So lets see why this makes sense:
* Artist gets money, users have less incentive for piracy.
* User gets to specify what tracks they want/don't want and get better quality than they would pirating MP3s.
* The user can buy CDs more cheaply -- by eliminating the middleman, they pay maybe $3 to Borders per CD (you automate the thing, with a little Borders card reader, and there's very little per unit cost) and 10 cents to the artist per track (hell of a lot more than the artists are currently making), and you get a full-quality CD where you're supporting the artist for $5 tops.
* Users would have a much broader selection, not limited to the few hundred titles that might be in the store.
* Borders makes money -- I suspect unit costs after amortization would be about 50 cents per CD, so they get a healthy $2.50 in profit per CD, which is probably more than they currently make.
* Borders risks far less than they currently do -- adding an artist to their central database is cheap cheap cheap. They don't have to risk warehousing and blowing shelf space on CDs that people don't want.
* New artists can break into the market easily -- they simply register with Borders, send in their music to the main server, and start getting money. They don't have to convince much of anyone of their music quality, since there's no massive production/warehousing costs for all the CDs.
There are two drawbacks. One, you don't get extras in the CD. You might be able to print out the cover and the CD label, if this "Borders mini-CD maker" machine was fairly capable, but you might not get other stuff jammed in the case. Second, even with a hefty local cache, Borders still has to transfer 300MB per full CD (assuming lossless compression averaging 2:1) for infrequently requested CDs. This may not yet be feasible -- however, data lines keep getting cheaper, and CD prices stay the same.
Finally, a $100 80GB HD can store about 160 fairly full CDs, and 300 with lossless 2:1 compression. That's a one-time cost -- like incredibly cheaply expandable floor space. At those prices, Borders can afford to have enormous local caches -- one sale of a CD much more than makes back the cost of storing that CD locally.
Routers that drop packets with forged headers
This could happen tommorow. Most routers let you configure it to do this. Show me a forged header Ill show you a lazy admin.
ISP's could use this as a service to their customers. Find a forged header log where it came from (mac address, phone, etc...) Then help the user fix their computer. Today we have a very lazy group that see it as a non expense to them. But it does cost them bandwidth and time.
The ISPs have to balance per byte metered versus how they lure people into their network. Why would I pay more for brodband if your just going to turn around and charge me a lot more for it. That is exactly how it will be seen. Currently they are enticing people into the network with 'unlimited', or nearly that, usage. They almost say you can get fast mp3's with a wink and a nod. With phrases like 'I can get my music faster'. Yet technicaly most of these ISP's have the 'no servers' in the contract. Those p2p systems are servers. The only way I can see metered will work is if most of the time my bill would be lower than a flat rate.
There will be more pay per play type systems. There are some rudementary ones right now. But all it takes is one cheap dude to make something that can copy the data. Then poof that movie that costed 5 bucks to rent, now costs very little for Joe Smoe to copy. Pay-per-play is doomed from the outset because if you can display it I can copy it, or at least make a decent copy. The only way they can keep total control is to not distribute it, or not make a display program. Either of which make them no money.
The artical didnt point it out. It sort of danced around it. But the current system is setup by control of media. When you buy a CD its probably 3 cents worth of plastic. But it cost 20 bucks. That is in economic terms called scarcity. Not everyone can make a batch of 100,000 3 cent CDs. But the media producers can, they make enough so marginal revenue equals marginal cost. If the artist and the end user get screwed so be it, MR = MC. They end up with a tidy sum of money. The new p2p systems lower dramaticly cost. Cost is now very close to 0.
There is no shipping, pressing, marketing, etc. Suddely its just product and end user. You do not have to ship things. You do not have to have a batch run of CDs made. You do not have to have artwork made up for the cover. You do not have to pay the middle man distributor. There are new costs. But most of them you do not control, and cost you nothing.
The real change here is not the distribution method. That could have been controled up front and they still could have held onto some sort of percived scarcity. Instead someone else did it. Suddenly the scarcity is not there. If two products are fairly equal a normal person will purchase the one that cost less. They were making tons of money on scarcity. They know it. They are going ape over trying to keep it.
If someone figures out how to compress a 2 hour movie into something like 20 meg, and good quality. The movie companies will have something to worry about. But at current data rates a 700 meg file is just not practical. Its can be done. But most users will not do it. There will be some exceptions but currently not many. If the size comes down or the data rate goes up dramaticly it will become practical. Then the movie companies have something to really worry about.
Currently the only squaking your seeing is coming from the ISP's. You see silly names like 'bandwidth hogs'. But hell they SELL the service that way. A few people take them up on the offer! They are yelling uncle not because people are breaking the law. They yell it because they are seeing their bandwith bills skyrocket. They are currently trying to find the right balance of oversubscription, bandwidth needed, and pay rates. Bandwidth capping is just an kneejerk reaction to the fact they oversubscribed to much. The same sort of thing happened when phone ISP's started showing up.
i'm surprised nobody has mentioned IRIS (infrastructure for resilient internet systems, or something like that) yet. it's an open source p2p project coming out of MIT and Berkeley. It uses something called "distributed hash table" technology that i don't understand. it's supposed to make it so that as the number of nodes increases, search speed increases logarithmically. if nothing else, it proves that large-scale decentralized p2p networks can be as fast as closed networks like Kaza.
in short, all the of the big problems with p2p are being solved. while i'm sure new ones will crop up in the future (particularly if cringley's prediction about phase two of the industry's anti-p2p tactics comes true), it isn't going away. if RIAA ever manages to hit the "off" switch on p2p, they're going to have to deal with one hell of a stink, not just from media consumers, but from video and audio hardware makers, optical drive manufacturers, broadband providers, and musicians themselves.
it's nice to know that free media advocates have a few 800 lb. gorrillas in their corner.
When some large regional buys the isp that provides services you want to purchase where will you go? Did you notice all the DSL providers who were not former Bells going under? Did you hear the wailing and gnashing of teeth as cable company buyouts removed services people were using?
:).
thats fine. if the best i can get is 56k, then why have dsl? why not cut the $60 extra a month and use a modem? i mean really, do you expect people to keep paying for dsl when they are not really _getting_ it-it being the advantage of faster transfer rates.
i dont think any of the dsl providers can afford to piss off a large number of their clients. not even the big ones. if the big ones piss off enough people, then smaller providers will spring into being-market forces and all.
maby i'll go back to isdn
-- john
What if we were to combine the completly free network and the possible future legal distribution system.
... lol a big part but still I mean it is possible to do that without even any centralisation...
:
:) and it will keep making money !!
...
:)
What I mean to say is that we have to make the users that share part of the payroll.
Let me explain, what if you made money by distributing the mp3s and movies you had on your computer ? Part of it goes to the bands and movie producers and part of it to you who pays the bw bill...
In that case won't you rather "sell" your bandwidth and hd space then give it away! ?
Then won't it be the end of the massive p2p sharring (a free one will always exist) but with the ppl you had the bw and space gone.. what will it be worth ?
The only problem in this is coordination of the whole thing
For this to work the sytem needs this info
1 - A way to indentify music and send the money to the right ppl
2- A way to bill ppl you d/l directly
This could be solved if we had a trusted system to make the transactions so that we could be sure of who really is d/ling. ( I kinda see paladium is this god forgives me ) And to whom are really the (c) rights...
If the system can provide that info then there's nothing stoping it
we will see competiton on the content prices , on the bw prices too... the lower you set your bw
price to be on your host the more d/ls you get etc...
The higher quality and the faster you are the more $ users will pay etc
It makes a new viable biz
Now I know this is kinda utopic but I still feel it's possible... feel free to bring me down on earth hehehe...
.
Do what you wilt shall be the whole of the law Love is the law, love under will Capital drives the will of mankind
"It is nice to see the word get out: You cannot control the flow of digitial information in decentralized peer networks!"
Think so? Grab a local map. Plot your position on it. Now draw a line from that point back to your ISP's connection with the internet (cable,dialup.dsl,doesn't matter). Make a note of all the equipment between those two points, paying particular attention to any piece that manipulates the information in some manner. There's your "control". Peer or no peer. It all has to flow over a physical infrastructure. The question now is who has the greater resources to actually win in the long run. Your hacking skills against their ability to have you thrown in jail. Should be interesting.
Basicly, this system can scale to sizes of current p2p systems and far beyond. The system would would be able to "detect bad nodes quickly, and it would incorporate enough redundancy into the system to recover gracefully from tampering."