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
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· 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
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· 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.
Re:What the slashdotters will say?!
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 5, Funny
My underpants smell as they have not been changed in 2 weeks
Thats not much up time, maybe you should consider GNU/Underpants or BSD/Boxers for stability and longevity.
Re:It can be slowed down... perhaps
by
Space+cowboy
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· Score: 5, Insightful
At which point, you adopt a "spread-spectrum" approach to the data transmission. Chop each item up algorithmically into N blocks (so the split points can be determinable and reproducible across multiple servers), append metadata to the end of each block saying how to get the next from this, and encrypt each block with a key from the previous one. Use changing ports and servers (if it's a true P2P system) for access to each block.
The ISP filtering s/w would have to be *damn* good:-)
This doesn't cope with the blocking issue, so the "obvious" thing to do is to coerce the great unwashed into an involuntary P2P network using virus technology to steal bandwidth (disk & net).
There'd be no nasty virus payload (the authors would want the machines to be operating smoothly). The virus might even patch and protect against other virii just to keep it only infected with the P2P s/w!
If the virus can infect (ooh, say, IIS) then it could use HTTP as a transport without affecting normal behaviour.
It's coming, or something like it. It's just a matter of time before the arms race really kicks in.
Or then again, perhaps I've missed something obvious - it's very late over here in the UK:-)
There seems to be a bit of wishful thinking of a twisted sort in Cringely's doomful prophesying. To paraphrase Twain at his most cliched, reports of the RIAA's death are indeed greatly exaggerated. Not only is the record industry adapting with more specialty packaging and combo CD-DVD packs, but more importantly, there's the fact that a whole lot of people just prefer to actually own the official package and are willing to pay for it. I myself...um, know a friend who...has on occasion downloaded an mp3 album and then bought the damn thing a few days later simply to have the real, legal, genuine, uncompressed item in my, um his, collection.
After all, many many years after the invention of libraries, book publishers are still in business. Heck, people actually plunk down premium dollars for hardcovers even after the mass-market paperback comes out in print. Amazing.
-- There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
Re:pretty empty article
by
timeOday
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· Score: 5, Insightful
I think this is a big issue in the whole matter. Giving up control. Companies try so hard to present everything with that shiny, deceptive sheen, and the actual product so rarely lives up to that.
I remember walking home to my dorm room with a shrinkwrapped Visual C++ 4.2 educational edition. "Only" $80. I suspected somebody would see it in my bag and be envious or impressed. What a chump I was. A nerdy chump. Somehow, apt-getting that latest gcc revision doesn't give me that buzz. But neither would shelling out for the hologram, anymore.
Just like when I was 14 and realized there wasn't really a 24x7 party going on down at radio station.
I really hope I can teach my kids to see through all the crap at an early age, but it's not easy. Last night my wife asked my 4 year old what his favorite movie his. He said it was the new Little Mermaid movie - which he has NEVER SEEN. It could only have come from seeing commercials on the Disney Channel.
Critical Mass in peer networks
by
PureFiction
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· Score: 5, Informative
One thing Cringley hints at is a coming boom in popularity and capability of truly decentralized peer networks. It is the fully and highly decentralized network architectures that the Microsoft group credits most with resilience against any kind of legal, technological or political attacks.
We are starting to see some of these technologies emerge, awaiting integration into flexible infrastructure that allows fast, easy and efficient distribution of data, content or otherwise, between peers on a local and global scale.
The end result will be a combination of a number of technologies seamlessly interoperating like:
It is nice to see the word get out: You cannot control the flow of digitial information in decentralized peer networks!
Maybe people just aren't buying music
by
Do+not+eat
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· 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
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· 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.
Fighting the inevitable
by
rolfwind
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· Score: 5, Insightful
The RIAA and all those organizations are going to have to give in some time. They are not going to come up with their own P2P effectively, because it's been shown that most people want to shop at one place so to speak, but every company will want their own network (Sony, Columbia, etc.) and people simply don't want that.
Plus, I just don't see people willing to pay for music files, they are already used to getting it free off the net or hearing it on the radio, when I pay for music I expect a CD and something tangible. I know this isn't the case with software anymore, but music is different, when people buy music they don't just want to run it on their computer, but in their stereos, cars, etc and a DRM crippled file just won't let over 95% of the people do that, hence people will not migrate to these company offered P2P solutions when the free one offers them a "better" product in those regards.
I think to a certain extent, Piracy is good (Yes, someone throw me in jail please) because in any industry that has a near monopoly it keeps them semi-honest with prices and whatnot because then they have a competitor. Whoever says piracy drives prices up don't know what they are talking about- do they know what the profit margins on music cds are? Capitalism is based on normal human behavior, it's a model that lets natural selfishness benefit the whole within reason, and these companies are fighting this. And they will lose.
Re:What the slashdotters will say?!
by
nakaduct
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· Score: 5, Funny
My underpants smell as they have not been changed in 2 weeks
Thats not much up time, maybe you should consider GNU/Underpants or BSD/Boxers for stability and longevity.
I don't think uptime is the problem. He was complaining about the load average.
Why P2P will prevail...
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Why is P2P popular? Because it's cheap? No. It's popular because you've got choice.
The problem with "The Entertainment Industry" is that it's so manufactured - so programmed. Some people can see through it, and those are the people using P2P (other than the folks leeching Britney...).
Examples: Tom Cruise has a new movie coming out - Suddenly, there are a whole bunch of old Cruise movies on TV. The Chillies are coming to town - suddenly, their old vids are on TV, and their songs are getting airplay. These are without including paper and electronic media in the equation. Ad those into the picture, and it's very, very hard to see anything resembling freedom of choice - it's all designed to make people "like" a particular medium icon, at any given time. If you examine it, you'll find that very rarely are their conflicts between "products" within a given market segment. Apply some Reverse Engineering skillz to this area, and you may be surprised what you see. I wonder what Fravia would have to say about it...
Anyway, it worked for a while, but now people are seeing the patterns, and seeing through the crap. They want access to the entertainment of their choice, not just whatever Sony or Tri Star decides to sell today. The Next Big Thing isn't such a big deal anymore for most of us, especially when Media Co keeps pumping a new Next Big Thing out every couple of months.
The media companies (heh, I say it like there's more than one...) can't keep everyone blind forever, so given a little time, EVERYONE will be using some form of P2P simply to have the freedom to choose what they watch/listen to.
When I look at the media companies, I feel pity. I see a bunch of archaic industries fighting a losing battle for their lives. The battle's over. They've lost. They just haven't realised it yet.
The problem is that MPAA Gets It
by
alizard
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Meaning that without real political representation via our own PAC or a high-tech industry PAC, we're all going to get it. Without Vaseline.
Cringely almost gets it, but he's made a major error in forecasting.
Apparently, Jack Valenti isn't quite the techno-illiterate we all thought him. He is no more worried about P2P piracy than Hilary Rosen is, and he's probably gotten plenty of entertainment out of her mistakes. As in the case of the record labels, this isn't about stopping people from distributing low-quality copies of product, it's about control.
MPAA is NOT worried about some kid with a loaded current generation Mac or PC making Terminator 4. Unlike their sister companies in the record industry, their business model is doing very, very well. They're selling an ok to good product at what people believe is a fair price.
They are worried about the next Steven Spielberg or George Lucas graduating from the UCLA Film School 5 years from now with a loaded PC or Mac with a story to tell deciding he wants 25% of the gross and that he doesn't have time to serve out a Hollywood-style apprenticeship.
He makes a rough draft of the movie using a workstation and a render farm in a box, i.e. a bunch of high-end current generation graphics cards. Or maybe he borrows some time on his school's equipment. How does he do crowd scenes? Were you paying attention to the article on the Monster crowd generation package? Like to bet that there won't be one downloadable or off-the-shelf by then?
What does he do with it? He shows it to investors and to a few stars who are either up-and-coming or haven't been selling too well lately and are willing to take a chance on a straight percentage of the gross.
How does he distribute it? Reduced quality copies or samples via P2P or streaming Real Video, via pay-per-download, etc., and actual DVDs to film critics. He pitches it as a TV movie. Once the film is in the can, lots of things he can do with it. He presses a bunch of DVDs and sells them off his Website at $10 a shot. He finds a way to get higher-quality versions (TVD media?) into the movie theaters.
Even if he doesn't, if he makes even a reasonable profit without Hollywood, his next picture will have serious budget behind it and he'll be able to cut a deal with an MPAA company that'll give him the whip hand. Or worse, the ability to have his own auditors check the books unannounced any time they feel like it.
Unless the MPAA locks down the technology and the bandwidth and locks it down now.
The MPAA movie companies know that one can make a high-quality record album using PC-based studio hardware and distribute via the Net if one can find buyers, and they don't plan to let this happen to them.
Though all this means is putting off the inevitable for a few years, if one can't do this in the US market, which is all but inevitable, there are other markets and with new US technology under the control of the RIAA/MPAA, the technologies to enable this will simply appear everywhere except America. The bright young people they're depending on for their next generation of movies will be doing what the ones who want to work in creating high-tech will.
Moving the hell out of the USA to anyplace with a Net connect that isn't under RIAA/MPAA control implemented by the politicians the Hollywood cartel has bought or are buying. What's the MPAA going to do when the hot new movies and video content is all coming from outside the USA?
Watching Americans buy it. Trying to get politicians to use import restrictions to keep it out of the USA either online or as physical DVD product.
actually, "Oh,shit"
by
alizard
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
What's the RIAA afraid of?
Look up the word disintermediation.
MP3s sell CDs and everybody in and out of the RIAA knows it. MP3s are not the product, they're a promo item, just as tracks played over the FM radio with comparable quality (actually, I saw FM radio compared to 200K MP3, which might be about right given optimum conditions) are promo items.
The difference? Anybody can distribute MP3s over the Internet.
The RIAA is afraid that the artists who currently are already selling in platinum-level quantities will decide that they can sell CDs via Internet without them quite nicely and keep all the profit instead of a 15% of revenues as calculated using Enron-style economics.
Or the new artists with platinum potential will take a swing at this themselves. Somebody will get all the pieces and market momentum together. It's only a matter of time. Will it be a formula which can be duplicated? Since I'm working with an indie artist myself, I sort of hope so.
If the record industry believed what you were saying, they wouldn't be buying Congress to make laws that allow them to decide what technology gets deployed.
More to the point, I suggest you do some googling for record industry sales numbers. You'll find that the trend is uniformly downward, but look for yourself anyway, the practice with search engines will do you good.
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.
Thats not much up time, maybe you should consider GNU/Underpants or BSD/Boxers for stability and longevity.
At which point, you adopt a "spread-spectrum" approach to the data transmission. Chop each item up algorithmically into N blocks (so the split points can be determinable and reproducible across multiple servers), append metadata to the end of each block saying how to get the next from this, and encrypt each block with a key from the previous one. Use changing ports and servers (if it's a true P2P system) for access to each block.
:-)
:-)
The ISP filtering s/w would have to be *damn* good
This doesn't cope with the blocking issue, so the "obvious" thing to do is to coerce the great unwashed into an involuntary P2P network using virus technology to steal bandwidth (disk & net).
There'd be no nasty virus payload (the authors would want the machines to be operating smoothly). The virus might even patch and protect against other virii just to keep it only infected with the P2P s/w!
If the virus can infect (ooh, say, IIS) then it could use HTTP as a transport without affecting normal behaviour.
It's coming, or something like it. It's just a matter of time before the arms race really kicks in.
Or then again, perhaps I've missed something obvious - it's very late over here in the UK
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
There seems to be a bit of wishful thinking of a twisted sort in Cringely's doomful prophesying. To paraphrase Twain at his most cliched, reports of the RIAA's death are indeed greatly exaggerated. Not only is the record industry adapting with more specialty packaging and combo CD-DVD packs, but more importantly, there's the fact that a whole lot of people just prefer to actually own the official package and are willing to pay for it. I myself...um, know a friend who...has on occasion downloaded an mp3 album and then bought the damn thing a few days later simply to have the real, legal, genuine, uncompressed item in my, um his, collection.
After all, many many years after the invention of libraries, book publishers are still in business. Heck, people actually plunk down premium dollars for hardcovers even after the mass-market paperback comes out in print. Amazing.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
I remember walking home to my dorm room with a shrinkwrapped Visual C++ 4.2 educational edition. "Only" $80. I suspected somebody would see it in my bag and be envious or impressed. What a chump I was. A nerdy chump. Somehow, apt-getting that latest gcc revision doesn't give me that buzz. But neither would shelling out for the hologram, anymore.
Just like when I was 14 and realized there wasn't really a 24x7 party going on down at radio station.
I really hope I can teach my kids to see through all the crap at an early age, but it's not easy. Last night my wife asked my 4 year old what his favorite movie his. He said it was the new Little Mermaid movie - which he has NEVER SEEN. It could only have come from seeing commercials on the Disney Channel.
One thing Cringley hints at is a coming boom in popularity and capability of truly decentralized peer networks. It is the fully and highly decentralized network architectures that the Microsoft group credits most with resilience against any kind of legal, technological or political attacks.
... and many others.
We are starting to see some of these technologies emerge, awaiting integration into flexible infrastructure that allows fast, easy and efficient distribution of data, content or otherwise, between peers on a local and global scale.
The end result will be a combination of a number of technologies seamlessly interoperating like:
- distributed hash tables
- decentralized search
- swarming distribution
- wireless networks
It is nice to see the word get out: You cannot control the flow of digitial information in decentralized peer networks!
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.
The RIAA and all those organizations are going to have to give in some time. They are not going to come up with their own P2P effectively, because it's been shown that most people want to shop at one place so to speak, but every company will want their own network (Sony, Columbia, etc.) and people simply don't want that.
Plus, I just don't see people willing to pay for music files, they are already used to getting it free off the net or hearing it on the radio, when I pay for music I expect a CD and something tangible. I know this isn't the case with software anymore, but music is different, when people buy music they don't just want to run it on their computer, but in their stereos, cars, etc and a DRM crippled file just won't let over 95% of the people do that, hence people will not migrate to these company offered P2P solutions when the free one offers them a "better" product in those regards.
I think to a certain extent, Piracy is good (Yes, someone throw me in jail please) because in any industry that has a near monopoly it keeps them semi-honest with prices and whatnot because then they have a competitor. Whoever says piracy drives prices up don't know what they are talking about- do they know what the profit margins on music cds are? Capitalism is based on normal human behavior, it's a model that lets natural selfishness benefit the whole within reason, and these companies are fighting this. And they will lose.
I don't think uptime is the problem. He was complaining about the load average.
Why is P2P popular? Because it's cheap? No. It's popular because you've got choice.
The problem with "The Entertainment Industry" is that it's so manufactured - so programmed. Some people can see through it, and those are the people using P2P (other than the folks leeching Britney...).
Examples: Tom Cruise has a new movie coming out - Suddenly, there are a whole bunch of old Cruise movies on TV. The Chillies are coming to town - suddenly, their old vids are on TV, and their songs are getting airplay. These are without including paper and electronic media in the equation. Ad those into the picture, and it's very, very hard to see anything resembling freedom of choice - it's all designed to make people "like" a particular medium icon, at any given time. If you examine it, you'll find that very rarely are their conflicts between "products" within a given market segment. Apply some Reverse Engineering skillz to this area, and you may be surprised what you see. I wonder what Fravia would have to say about it...
Anyway, it worked for a while, but now people are seeing the patterns, and seeing through the crap. They want access to the entertainment of their choice, not just whatever Sony or Tri Star decides to sell today. The Next Big Thing isn't such a big deal anymore for most of us, especially when Media Co keeps pumping a new Next Big Thing out every couple of months.
The media companies (heh, I say it like there's more than one...) can't keep everyone blind forever, so given a little time, EVERYONE will be using some form of P2P simply to have the freedom to choose what they watch/listen to.
When I look at the media companies, I feel pity. I see a bunch of archaic industries fighting a losing battle for their lives. The battle's over. They've lost. They just haven't realised it yet.
Cringely almost gets it, but he's made a major error in forecasting.
Apparently, Jack Valenti isn't quite the techno-illiterate we all thought him. He is no more worried about P2P piracy than Hilary Rosen is, and he's probably gotten plenty of entertainment out of her mistakes. As in the case of the record labels, this isn't about stopping people from distributing low-quality copies of product, it's about control.
MPAA is NOT worried about some kid with a loaded current generation Mac or PC making Terminator 4. Unlike their sister companies in the record industry, their business model is doing very, very well. They're selling an ok to good product at what people believe is a fair price.
They are worried about the next Steven Spielberg or George Lucas graduating from the UCLA Film School 5 years from now with a loaded PC or Mac with a story to tell deciding he wants 25% of the gross and that he doesn't have time to serve out a Hollywood-style apprenticeship.
He makes a rough draft of the movie using a workstation and a render farm in a box, i.e. a bunch of high-end current generation graphics cards. Or maybe he borrows some time on his school's equipment. How does he do crowd scenes? Were you paying attention to the article on the Monster crowd generation package? Like to bet that there won't be one downloadable or off-the-shelf by then?
What does he do with it? He shows it to investors and to a few stars who are either up-and-coming or haven't been selling too well lately and are willing to take a chance on a straight percentage of the gross.
How does he distribute it? Reduced quality copies or samples via P2P or streaming Real Video, via pay-per-download, etc., and actual DVDs to film critics. He pitches it as a TV movie. Once the film is in the can, lots of things he can do with it. He presses a bunch of DVDs and sells them off his Website at $10 a shot. He finds a way to get higher-quality versions (TVD media?) into the movie theaters.
Even if he doesn't, if he makes even a reasonable profit without Hollywood, his next picture will have serious budget behind it and he'll be able to cut a deal with an MPAA company that'll give him the whip hand. Or worse, the ability to have his own auditors check the books unannounced any time they feel like it.
Unless the MPAA locks down the technology and the bandwidth and locks it down now.
The MPAA movie companies know that one can make a high-quality record album using PC-based studio hardware and distribute via the Net if one can find buyers, and they don't plan to let this happen to them.
Though all this means is putting off the inevitable for a few years, if one can't do this in the US market, which is all but inevitable, there are other markets and with new US technology under the control of the RIAA/MPAA, the technologies to enable this will simply appear everywhere except America. The bright young people they're depending on for their next generation of movies will be doing what the ones who want to work in creating high-tech will.
Moving the hell out of the USA to anyplace with a Net connect that isn't under RIAA/MPAA control implemented by the politicians the Hollywood cartel has bought or are buying. What's the MPAA going to do when the hot new movies and video content is all coming from outside the USA?
Watching Americans buy it. Trying to get politicians to use import restrictions to keep it out of the USA either online or as physical DVD product.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Look up the word disintermediation.
MP3s sell CDs and everybody in and out of the RIAA knows it. MP3s are not the product, they're a promo item, just as tracks played over the FM radio with comparable quality (actually, I saw FM radio compared to 200K MP3, which might be about right given optimum conditions) are promo items.
The difference? Anybody can distribute MP3s over the Internet.
The RIAA is afraid that the artists who currently are already selling in platinum-level quantities will decide that they can sell CDs via Internet without them quite nicely and keep all the profit instead of a 15% of revenues as calculated using Enron-style economics.
Or the new artists with platinum potential will take a swing at this themselves. Somebody will get all the pieces and market momentum together. It's only a matter of time. Will it be a formula which can be duplicated? Since I'm working with an indie artist myself, I sort of hope so.
If the record industry believed what you were saying, they wouldn't be buying Congress to make laws that allow them to decide what technology gets deployed.
More to the point, I suggest you do some googling for record industry sales numbers. You'll find that the trend is uniformly downward, but look for yourself anyway, the practice with search engines will do you good.
Tech Public Policy stuff