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Swapping Clock Cycles for Free Music?
droopus writes "USA Today is reporting on an innovative business model for the music business. Free music for your spare CPU cycles.
Honest Thief says the firm has developed software, to be available in the second quarter of this year, that will enable file-sharing providers to capitalize on the unused CPU cycles of their members. That in turn would allow them to raise money to compensate artists for the use of their material.
Honest Thief said the software, known as ThankYou 2.0, enables a peer-to-peer file-sharing client to turn the computers of digital music fans into nodes in a distributed net.
By leasing out the processor power on distributed nets to research facilities the firm could generate revenues that would be distributed back to the musicians.
Some very smart people have suggested this before, but this seems like the first real implementation. "
your PC just sitting there is not worth $150/year. If it were, then the company would just buy one for $450, and depreciate it over 3 years.
As if research institutions have the money to pay people for all those clock cycles. Hell, people do it for SETI for free and SETI *still* has money problems.
I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!
besides, the dialup users are not the concern of the RIAA and friends. That one mp3 per hour doesn't amount to much, at least compared to when I queue up a couple hundred and average about 1 every 30 seconds.
This business model just doesn't make sense. HonestThief is going to compensate users with something they could get for free (illegally) anyway and in a way that's much less portable than cash - so where is the user's incentive? On top of that, HonestThief will have to provide the music store and infrastructure to provide that "payment," not just to the users but the musicians as well. Seems like a MAJOR distraction, as opposed to simply cutting checks for the equivalent value to the users.
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
Ie, trojan horse?
Unless such an endeavour was open source, why would you trust it?
Frankly, these guys are asking for more trust than most people would extend their next-door neighbours. And abusing that trust would be far too easy.
Yes, SETI, distributed.net have shown the altruistic potential of such software but we're not talking about non-profit organisations here, we're talking about corporations, and the only language that corporations know is the language of money. And people interested in making money don't always put other people's (data) security high up on their list of priorities.
To be honest, I'd rather spend some hard cash buying music online or in the local record store. At least that way I know I'll never wake up one day to find that my system's been hacked by a script kiddie who was given the keys to my virtual front door by a "harmless" piece of software.
A touch paranoid, perhaps, but better safe than sorry is my motto.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
This seems sort of ridiculous, only because of the power of our processors. Do you really thank that one x86 processor which is connected by no more than a 256 kb/s connectionis going to be worth more than $5 a year or so to the ILM? I think not. They want huge Sun servers with gigabytes of memory which can crush numbers that rival that of the bloat of your Mozilla installation which you use to download the software. The money that you'll be earning will not be enough to buy more than one CD every couple of months, let alone the massive quantities of anything you can get your hands on needed to fill that 200 gigabyte quota you need to get onto that amazing DC++ hub you'll be downloading.
additionally,
it does not have to pay for the air conditioning costs to keep them cool too. Moreover beyond money you dont have to generate the electricity to power and cool the waste heat. instead the heat is dumped in the users homes and is not waste: it subtracts directy from the heat bill. and uses clean-water, clean air, anti-war nuclear power instead of say oil or gas (for which we fight wars).
Or even build a building, thus lessening development forces and consumption of water.
also this halves smaller disposal problem of computers. certainly they save on disposla costs. But also the land fill has fewer computers in it total (i.e. the one on your desk and the one in their rack will go to the dump --thats 2 computers. Or if you share it then that's only one computer in the dump)
by promoting electronic distribution (legal that is) of music we save the cost of millions of shipped packages every year containing CDs.
Since I might be willing to pay more for broad band if I were effectively getting a rebate on my use of it, it will promote broadband usage and higher profits for the companies that provide it, while not costing me more.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
So... I can barter my cpu cycles for music through this system... that's nice. What if there were a way that I could provide my CPU cycles for others to use, and get some kind of "generic credit" in return.
Then, I could use that "generic credit" to buy music, or EVEN OTHER THINGS! Hell, what if I could provide ANY service or product and get this generic credit??
Maybe we could call it "money".
Report to the Ministry of Information Wanting to be Free-as-in-Beer for reindoctrinalization.