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Google Wins the Filesharing Wars?
The Importance of writes "Compulsory licensing schemes such as those proposed by the EFF have been critiqued, but now LawMeme has an interesting article that claims Google will win the filesharing wars if a compulsory license is adopted."
Firstly, I cannot begin to comprehend the effort required to stay on top of the copyrighted material being shared around the network. File hashes can be used for sure, but imaging the resources required for checking and verifying this. Sure, a few automated systems currently exist for music, but when we're talking about w2k3 iso's, DiVX movies etc, these are going to require some serious resources, whether computing or man-power to acheive this. Certainly this will be required to satisfy the RIAA, MPAA et al.
Secondly, assuming they acheive this, then what, in all honesty is the network going to be used for. Sure, there's currently the odd RH iso that get's distributed by bittorrent. With most sharers scared to offer their mp3 collection (ie combination of ripped of their own cd's and downloaded), few will bother weeding out their copyright free music to share. With no sharers, there's no network. Besides, at the moment indepedent music seems served quite happily by services such as mp3.com and others.
I don't believe the P2P companies are asking for compulsory licensing because they believe it is a good thing. I think they want it because then they can claim "we are seeking a legal alternative", knowing full well that although some kind of legalized P2P sharing is inevitable, it will take 5-10 years and the emergence of new media groups for it to happen, not some court ruling that "Hey, it's OK to download those trax now, d00ds!"
However, I agree with the other half of the article, which basically says "Google is God", something that has been obvious for several years. For many people, Google is the Internet, something AOL and MSN never managed to do with their fluff-filled "portals". Whatever new things come along, Google will be there, doing them better, leaner, faster,...
But it will be several dotcom lifetimes before Google will be the place to go to download no-longer-pirate tracks and movies. I don't think the P2P companies really have such a long horizon.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Come on. If google was the only search engine in town then I might agree with the idea but they aren't.
If Google started being assholes to their users most of them will simply go and use another search engine to find things. But they don't. So people keep using Google and the wonderful features it provides.
Google Watch always verged on the "tin foil" brigade to me.
They still trumpet on about the Google Toolbar being spyware despite the fac that when you install the toolbar it spells everything out in plain english under a big red heading labelled "READ THIS CAREFULLY! IT'S NOT THE USUAL YADA YADA YADA!".
They still trumpet on about Google's immortal cookie yet fail to realise *gasp* Google does have user preferences and uses the cookie to track those preferences. Some small part of me believes that the Google reps never responded because they died laughing about... THE COOKIE.
They trumpet on about geotargeting but in reality its almost required by governments with lax freedom of speech policies who try to prevent their citizens from accesssing certain material. You can always turn it off in the prefs by telling google to go back to google.com for searching but now the legal onus is on you.
While the site does have some valid points, most of them are either overexagerations or crying sour grapes. Personally, I think the only thing that really needs to be addressed is Google's transparency. Sure it's a fairly big concern to address but Google hasn't steppped far out of line yet. If they were to say, for example, sell every user's personal search data to the highest bidder I would be incredibly pissed and be calling for their blood.
But they haven't.
So I won't. And I'll continue to use Google while they remain like they are.
Specifically, the problem of indexing the web is an extremely thorny one. There is a massive amount of content, almost none of which has any structure whatsoever, and much of which is of dubious interest (i.e. it's total crap). The page rank system used by Google is simply brilliant and deserves all the accolades heaped on it.
Indexing a bunch of MP3s is a much, much simpler problem. As the author of the article points out, Napster had this pretty much nailed years ago. So Google's technical advantage is definitely questionable. What about its deep pockets, market presence, etc.? Sure, this indicates that Google might be a contender in this theoretical new market, but there are a couple of other companies out there with brands, deep pockets, etc. Say IBM, or eBay, or Amazon, or Microsoft, or Yahoo, or... okay, you get the point.
To me this article is a perfect example of attracting attention by taking a superficially intriguing stance, basing it on today's much-hyped company to gain topical interest. Upon examination, the conclusions of the article don't hold water.
Peer Pressure
Network effects will bring one party to the top, as is already happening. Kazaa is not the best p2p app, but the most used and therefore most people use it. If legal changes make it possible again to have a central database, Kazaa is still in the best position to capitalize on that, because most people are still using Kazaa for downloading stuff.
Of course Google is bigger, but Google is bigger than eBay too and as the article states, eBay is the biggest auction site because of the same network effects. People go to eBay for auction searches and to Google for general searches, just as they go to Kazaa for music searches. If I type in the name of a song in Google, lots of results will appear, not just the mp3's.
It doesn't mean Google couldn't go after this market. If they would, they would stand a pretty good chance of winning, but so would Microsoft or Yahoo.
more from Douwe Osinga
Slashdot is a P2P network. Every message put here is just as much copyrighted as the latest hit by Stupid Band of The Week, or that eBook you want to get your hands on.
Compulsory licencing will end up being a tax on speech.
Big Brother Bush is doubleplus ungood.
The author is wrong, because there is no lock-in effect. Ebay, which is cited as an example, has a lock-in effect because with buyers and sellers, each additional buyer or seller increases the total pool available to each other. Ebay creates the lock-in effect by acting as a middle-man.
There is no such lock-in effect for a filesharing service. A company like google can simple mass-burn CDs, or auto-download mp3s from elsewhere on the net and analyze them automatically for quality. If they can put catalogs online by the hundreds or thousands, they can certainly manage mp3s, given they are fully digital.
An example of a company that DOES have a lock-in effect is Lending Tree. Again, like Ebay, they act as a middle man, in this case between lenders and loan consumers. The more banks they have, the more choices consumers have and the more likely they are to want to see LT's deals. The more consumers they have, the more potential business that pool represents, and so they are more likely to attract banks. (And that's why they were bought out, since it was becoming clear they had passed the critical mass point for that lock-in effect)
There is no middle-man after compulsory licensing. There will be some services will all music on them. You'll D/L whatever you want. So it's traditional competition to attract customers.