Slashdot Mirror
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. "
Although, Kazaa hid it from the users, and kept the profits for themselves...
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.
I dont have spare cycles, i have mp3s to encode.
Since the folks who download music are more likely to "borrow" that cd of Office it would make sense that the first few CPU cycles used will be to send MS or other software supplier a list of all unregistered software on your system. This idea really does work.
It sounds really great but it begs the question how much free music for how much cpu power and then what is the point if you are going to download other illegal music anyway, well I guess you may be able to find something in 192kbs that wasn't on kazaa.
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!
People already donate CPU cycles, if you really want to donate, try clicking on things in Kazaa, you'll know your donating enough cycles when you get a nice gray window that repaints your desktop as you move it. Take that distributed.net.
At least now, I can have my PC slow to a crawl AND help artists.
Aren't the vast majority of people still on 56k dial-up connections? Is it really possible to do "distributed computing" using computers that are constantly being turned on and off at irregular and unpredictable intervals?
Looks like they can use all the CPU cycles they can get right now!!
Artist: Where's the Cash?
Honest Thief: All the cash we raised went into taking in that last slashdotting.
No, it wasn't /.ed after 4 posts...
http://www.thehonestthief.com/ is the correct URL.
My CPU is busy downloading MP3s...
If I'm giving up my clock cycles, it's not really free, is it?
I have come to believe there is no "free music", just a point where ones tolerance is higher than the perceived level of annoyance caused by the "not free" (whether it's commercials, Carson Daily, or unused processor cycles...)
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
-dunar
...but I don't think so. The RIAA & co. wouldn't be interested, beacuse they would not understad the concept. Believe me, they _never_ understand the concepts of new innovations.
Since they will not understand it, they will boycott it and try to ban it.
Geeks wouldn't want to install something that surely will be delivered with a 1096-page EULA stating that Honest Thief can do whatever they please with your CPU, whenever they please, and that they may close your account when they feel like it.
And Joe Sixpack couldn't use it either, because his ISP would ban this bandwith hog.
That's just the way it is, and I am _not_ pessimistic.
I confess I don't understand the business model here. It seems like Honest Thief is offering to pay record companies from the proceeds from an arguably untested business model, which would generate an unknown amount of money that would be divided among an unknown number of people in an unknown number of ways.
It seems to make more sense to offer the CPU cycles directly to sound production studios for post-production audio, to transform tomorrow's raspy-voiced bimbo into the sultry songbird that studios want and crave.
Just the 2003 version of an ad-driven "free" ISP service, I'm afraid.
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
Barring these concerns, I would see this as possibly viable...
IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS,
And everywhere the language went, it was a total loss...
See here. The evildoers were Brilliant Digital Entertainment.
This time around its Honest Theif.
When will the naming of companies with oxymorons end?!
clock cycles from a computer are worth Cents on the day.... hell we leave our comp on all day and it costs us jack-nothing almost.
.... traded....
You can sell that distributed power to firms and even they are going to realize how much the true cost/value of such a net is.
which in turn is going to make the value of selling such power go down... the revenue from even selling 80% of Kazzaa's distributed computing wouldn't match the "lost" sales of even just the TOP 40 artists or so "traded" on the P2P network. Much less the huge amount of other artists who become
the real solution is to stay ahead of the RIAA , MPAA, DRM, and paladium/itanium by cracking their shit quickly until the media industry is forced to re-shape itself into a more communal buisness model which would award the artists more and promote the local talent more.
-- enter the sig --
--Idiots, Every single one of YOU, A flaming mass of conglomerated morons, hey wait a second, isnt that how RAID works?
"Is it really possible to do "distributed computing" using computers that are constantly being turned on and off at irregular and unpredictable intervals?"
Yes, if your system is designed right. Remember, seti@home doesn't require extensive communication to work, it handles 250K packets which are handled over several hours or a day, and then returned, and new information is gathered. This keeps the master servers from being hammered to death. Also, they're redundantly assigned, to make sure of data integrity, and if a client never returns a result, another one with the same packet probably will. It's no good for small jobs, but big jobs, like weather modelling, key cracking, analyzing RF signals, etc, should be fine.
IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS,
And everywhere the language went, it was a total loss...
It seems like Honest Thief is offering to pay record companies from the proceeds from an arguably untested business model
Untested is the key word. I think this idea is worth testing. People have been preaching this sort of thing for a long time; why not try it?
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
Aww, man. I only have a Celeron 500. Does that mean I'm going to get stuck with "The Best of Perry Como"?
Just yesterday Eminem was wondering where he could get some spare CPU cycles to do his computations with. Good thing they thought of this!
Geek perspective: If you let me dl your music (something I want), I'll let you have my unused cycles (something that is surely valuable).
Evaluation: Fair trade
RIAA perspective: You want to drive to my house, take my stuff, and drive away. In exchange for me allowing you to rob me blind (yes, this is the way the RIAA thinks, despite absence of evidence), you're offering to let me borrow your shitty old car while you're not using it??
Evaluation: You're still a god damned thief, geek boy. Go to hell!
I've only glanced at the first 20 or so replies to this article and already about a third of them are talking about KaZaA.
If you don't like KaZaA's constant pop-up windows and warning messages and prompts to install the latest Flash plug-in etc... use something else!
I just discovered the eMule Project about a week ago. Open source. No ads. And it looks a lot nicer than the spamware that I've been using for the past year or so too. Yes, it took me a while to get used to it (I had to actually READ THE HELP FILES to figure out how to get it past my router!) but it works really well now.
Karma: NaN
-Doc
We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.
Since the article is slashdotted, is there some ratio of operations performed to bits downloaded? Would people with faster CPUs be able to download more music?
I know there are a few entities that would pay for unused cycles, but I think they are few and far between. I will bet that the numbers of potential "sellers" of cycles will far outstrip the buyers very quickly.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
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
The man behind this corporation doesn't have a very good name in the Netherlands. (Pieter Plass). He has already been trying to hype his 'honest thief' service on various occasions (the last years). Without releasing one single byte.
He has also shown in the past that he had no real knowledge about P2P, he just follows the buzzwords. Just look the silly honest thief site...
Just some weirdo who desperately wants to become rich and who thinks he is very cool. I think this service will utterly fail.. (unless perhaps he convinced some skillfull developers with his peptalks, but I hope they are smarter...).
I highly doubt this will be a viable revenue stream for the music industries. Think about how much they get for an average CD as far as profit goes. Now compare that to your average MP3 downloader. Computer processing power is cheap. If your average person downloads an album a month (a SEVERELY conservative estimate) that is a $15-20 album that isn't sold. Over the course of a year, you are seeing $180-$240 given out in free downloads (that is the album cost @ 1 album/month). You may as well just BUY a board and chip and case for that price and network it locally. You can get a middle of the road AMD or Intel processor and board for that cost, and possibly fit in the case cost. If it has onboard lan, just pop some memory in and you're good to go. Use network booting, maybe a MOSIX cluster or something.
Don't forget to add in the salaries of all the people who have to run this "P2P for cycles" system. Development costs. Administration. Those are people that could just be running the purchased cluster, instead of trying to milk P2P somehow. I think this is just a shot in the dark. Or a conspiracy to fingerprint downloads, as someone else mentioned.
-- Having a Creationist Museum is like having an Atheist place of worship
Damn you pay a lot for electricity.
I have 5 PC's on all the time (though not at 100% utilization). Even at 100% they wouldnt suck more than about 100 watts each.
I also have a bearded dragon, whos home has two 150 watt basking lamps, and 60 watts of flourescent lighting. I'm also not a fanatic about turning off the lights when I leave the room. I'm notorious for leaving the bathroom light on all day (60 watts times 4 bulbs)
My bill is only around 100 a month.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
www.freeaudiobooks.com tried this with spoken word books in mp3 format.
Free audiobooks, with ads embedded in the first 15 seconds or so.
Recently, they had to change their model to one of buying all but the lowest bitrate quality mp3's.
Maybe poor advertising, maybe poor ad sales, but I think in all the books I got from them (50-75?), I heard maybe one ad that was not 'internal.
Before I allow some peer to peer client the ability to let other users run programs on my machine.
err... on purpose that is
I'm sure Kazaa already has plenty of ways to let users do this, but ignorance is bliss.
how it would work exactly is another question.. but clients could generate beats/tones/tempos/vocals and the p2p system would be the means of bandwidth needs..
clients could vote if they like whats being generated and the music would shift accordingly..
just an idea
There are some fundamental problems with this proposed business model, but I won't get into those. My problem with this is that spare CPU cycles that they intend to use simply aren't worth very much because of the slow and unreliable nature of the network connectivity that most users will have. While SETI@home and distributed.net work on "embarassingly parallel" problems that require very little communication, many, many problems that people are interesting in paying money to solve require regular communication between nodes and thus some guarantee on the quality of network service. Some amount X of spare CPU cycles on machines using 56K modem connections (or even cable or DSL modems) just isn't worth nearly as much as an equivalent amount of spare CPU cyles on machines connected by something like gigabit ethernet... or even switched fast ethernet.
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.
Yeah, but there are currently 40 million users online on Kazaa ae I'm writing this. Now, 40 million times a couple of GHz per user distributed all over the net do add up to a couple of clock cycles that ILM could use to create Jar Jar Binks' grand children in Star Wars VII or whatever they like.
Plus, they can buy it on demand when they need it and don't have to invest in hardware that gets useless after a couple of months.
This is the exact reason why I use OpenFT.
broadcast everything over radiofrequency waves for everyone to hear and then play ads during the broadcast.... oh wait. that wont work...
Assuming a business model like the following, which may or may not closely resemble this 'Thank You' software:
- User runs a distributed computing app on his computer, accumulating credits of some kind on a per work-unit basis.
- User can cash in his work-unit credits for merchandise, music, software, whatever.
This could have interesting impact on the whole "how much CPU power is too much" question. Suddenly there are more reasons than just bragging rights to have the fastest CPU on the block. I wonder if Intel or AMD would start to encourage this kind of thing.
-- Mojo Tooth : exploring our world as only an idiot can.
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".
I guess I like the idea, but how much money will my dual Pentium computer at home will be making a year for the artists? Would they keep stats that tells you how much your PC made in profit for the music companies? That would be interesting, thinking of all my friends with either DSL or Cable Modems at home thart leave their computer on 24/7. So if you work 8 hours a day and sleep about 4, that 12 hours your PC would be working for them.
:Some very smart people have suggested this before, but this seems like the first real implementation.
One dont need to be smart to proclaim the benefits of using idle PC time for the distributed computing. Quite a few companies are already doing just that.
It's now purely the issue of effective marketing and sales, not the technology. And grabbing CPU cycles to compensate musicians is just another business plan, certainly neat in idea, but not exactly novel.
3.243F6A8885A308D313
That's the network that RIAA/MPAA execs use to distribute revenues so that the artists see very little of it, right?
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
Could be an interesting way to address micro payments. They maintain an on-line account that builds credits for the useage. This account could be accessed for any micro charges. Newspaper articles and such. I'm loath to hand out my credit card number to every site out there but a CPU useage account would be more like found money. Not sure how viable the whole approach is but there are definate uses for any funds that it would generate even if they have not off-line cash value.
>I'd rather spend some hard cash buying music online or in the local record store
Me too. Its somewhat hypocritical to condemn the RIAA and keep sucking the top 40 teat. There are plenty of indie bands out there which not only sound great (of course music taste is subjective), but also sell CDs for 10 dollars and throw eight dollar concerts. Its not like its hard to find lots of indie music.
I'm getting tired of hearing how we can appease the RIAA. They don't want a truce, they want you to buy their shiny CDs at 16 bucks a pop, listen to their radio stations and commercials, and go see their overpriced shows plus play the ticketmaster tax.
Capitalism is supposed to decentralize power, the RIAA is as centralized as you can get. Cut them out, ignore their products, and give your money to other markets.
Even if selling cycles was 10x more profitable, they still wouldn't got for it. Maintaining the current system is much more profitable and they're already commited to DRM and already told MP3 traders to piss off.
did u consider the ethical part of the thing
I don't suggest anything even remotely resembling "stealing" the music (if one can even do such a thing, I still haven't decided that myself) - I don't mean downloading MP3s, or swapping with friends, or anything of the sort.
Turn on a radio. What do you hear? Music! Coming to you FOR FREE. Your radio doesn't give the station spare CPU cycles, it doesn't "force" you to listen to commercials, it doesn't even collect demographic info.
My point centers around that. So many companies seem to have this idea that the internet counts as this amazing new medium that needs totally different laws and pricing schemes. That simply does not hold true. Internet radio doesn't need to differ AT ALL from broadcast radio. But folks keep saying some difference has to exist, and we keep swallowing it up.
Until the RIAA gets its act in gear, I'll keep listening to Canadian and European internet stations; buying indie music that doesn't pay for lawyers to fight against what I believe in; and giving a great big finger to corporate America that believes it knows what I want and how I'll pay for it more than I do.
Just in the really unlikely chance someone in the afforementioned group reads this... You know what I want? Choice. I would pay perhaps $10/CD (twice what I spend per indie CD) to choose the exact contents of such a CD, shipped physically to my door (not some sub-quality DRM'd format that expires when I miss my monthly music-library-extortion). I want real music to choose from, not a canned boy-band or slut-soloist of the week to repackage the same drum-machine-with-bad-lyrics songs over and over. I want variety. I want artists who get paid for their work, not artists who need to sue their labels to get what their contract promises them. I want the right to rip music to my computer in the format of my choice (which I theoretically have, except for increasing technical difficulties thanks to "broken" CDs, which I keep returning but the companies keep making anyway).
peronally i have no ethics and shouldnt be talkin, but maybe some may think it is the right thing to do.
I do have ethics. I don't want to screw anyone out of their work. However, those ethics include the idea that the people actually doing the work should get my money, not lawyers, suits, and PR folks so far behind the times they think people will pay more for less just because they redefine the words "better", "cheaper", and "choice".
Perhaps you really do have no qualms about downloading music with no compensation for their work. I can't tell you that. I do, however, believe that most people who "illegally" download MP3s don't do so out of lack of ethics, but out of lack of choice. If music cost a realistic price (of which more than a pittance went to the artist); if 99% of it didn't completely suck; if music stores actually offered choices rather than prepackaged sets of one or two listenable songs and fourteen tracks that make dogs howl; then I think we'd see a lot more "honest" people buying music rather than "stealing" it.
In the mean time, the RIAA has reached the end of its life. I fully expect it to collapse worse than the video game insdustry 25 years ago, or the comic industry did a decade ago, in the next few years. And you can bet I won't mourn its passing as I did either of those previous two. I see its pathetic attempts to squash any form of music on the internet as no better than SCO's attempts to report one last quarter's profit for a dying product.
Good riddance.
Here we have a company that is perfectly willing to pay them for their copyright claims. Yet, quoting from the article:
This pretty much reveals it all. In fact, that second paragaph is particularly interesting; "...and have said they will press ahead with an effort to enforce their rights". Anti-trust legislators around the world should really begin asking them exactly what "rights" they're really trying to enforce, because it's quite obviously not copyrights that they're interested in. And when a cartel believe it has a right to control distribution, governments should have an interest in protecting the public from the corruption of that cartel. And if the recording industry is not a corrupt cartel, then Microsoft is not a monopoly.
--K.
Sig: Bad people happen. Try to avoid being one of them.
It might've made it easier, but SETI's been perennially due for funding cuts whenever money gets tight. When people think "which of the projects we're spending money on isn't really that essential," it's not surprising that "searching for aliens" comes up near the top of the list.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Because such a thing hasn't been made by our uber-fast progress of dot-com creation, then most likely, it doesn't work.
Suicide is the true mark of an advanced civilization - philipd
Philosophistry
Report to the Ministry of Information Wanting to be Free-as-in-Beer for reindoctrinalization.
The biotech industry has cash to spare and needs lots of cycles. This should be a major source of funding.
Of course, I prefer to donate cycles for research that will be public domain.
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
I don't think that HonestThief can function, because
1. RIAA won't let him distribute music electronically without restrictions (DRM) no matter how much he pays them per song. RIAA views at every unlocked MP3 as source of hundreds, if not thousands of pirate copies.
2. CPU cycles are difficult to sell, especially when they are not reliable (client might just disappear for a month) and not trustworthy (client might sabotage the project by producing false computation results).
I see a possible way for it to function, but it would be a complete rip-off. Note that this not related to reality at all - it's pure imagination. I possess no knowledge about HonestThief (I've not even read the article, just the Slashdot comments!).
A. don't intend to pay the music producers at all, just prepare to disappear within a months (or go bankrupt)
B. don't intend to sell the CPU cycles. Instead, consume them yourself. The best (but most illegal!) purpose would be to crack some cryptographic secret that can be turned into money later. You know, bank network security etc - let your imagination play..
I'm not suggesting that HonestThief is planning any such thing.. It's just that I can't figure out how his business model can work.
Marc