P2P Solutions To Legal Game-Related Downloads?

[TASF]Overkill writes "As 'P2P' slowly becomes a synonym for 'illegal', the perfectly legitimate and still very useful capabilities of P2P emerge. Modifications, demos, trailers, and other game-related files are typically downloaded by a lot of users all at once, something that kills the client-server setup of most websites. Game Philez is using Gnutella, ED2k, and G2, to help users avoid the long lines at other download sites, and helping to ensure that P2P stays useful, even for the DMCA-fearing citizen." With legal game-related BitTorrent solutions like FileRush and GameTab also out there, is P2P a viable alternative to the subscription download services?

Comments

P2P was synonymous with illegal from the get go.

[Meat Blaster]

I'd argue that it's only now that it is making the slow climb to legitimacy, where one can argue with a straight face that it isn't just pirates using it.

BitTorrent is the best business argument for not banning the concept of P2P outright; it's a far better distribution model than having your customers visit FilePlanet and sit in line to grab a patch or demo for your program. I very much think that BitTorrent-style distribution is on its way towards broad acceptance, provided that authentication of the file contents and (in the event of commercial content) of the user's payment for use the file is easy and ensured... and FurtherNet is a good demonstration that both should be possible.

DMCA still catches this stuff

[OverkillTASF]

I run GamePhilez, and I'm on the Shareaza alpha team (And BitTorrent now works REALLY well for me in Shareaza) and I'm not a big fan of "ripping down teh 1ndu5try!" However, due to The ESA's (www.theesa.com) automated search bot, I've been flagged twice as sharing illegal content. The Enemy Territory client, E3 footage, the Half-Life patch... It seems the words "Wolfenstein", "Doom", and "Half-Life" generated those cease and decist letters we all know so well. That's not very nice of them... Most ISPs, upon receiving such a notice, immediately shut down the "offender's" Internet and remove their account, no questions asked. Well, when my school notified me (Two seperate occasions), a representative at Valve told me that no, these files were obviously meant for distribution, and they had no idea why the ESA would send out a notice for these things. If my Internet HAD been shut down, you can rest assured that I would have taken them to court.

Illicit uses can drive new technology

[cgenman]

Let's name some older technologies and their original uses.

Photography: Pornography
Telephone: Illicit listening to live concerts
Records: Illicit recording of live concerts
VCR: Pornography
Cinema: Pornography
Cassette Tapes: Illicit recording of copyrighted audio
World Wide Web: Pornography and Illicit playback of copyrighted audio
Broadband: see above

And now Peer-to-Peer distribution systems have evolved as a technology into something mature and usable. It only makes sense that the technology can and will be harnessed for legal ends, rather than the very human desires that drive most new technological adaptations. It's only a matter of time before the copy of Kill Bill volume 1 and 2 that you rent from Blockbuster.com and download to Media Player will be downloaded from other Media Player users who already have the movie.

Gaming companies generally are the first adapters because they live and die on both emerging technologies and risk. When Apple realizes that they could add 5c to their 7c per song profit on songs sold through ITunes, they will certainly enable a controlled form of P2P sharing. When CinemaNow realizes the same thing, they too will jump at the chance to add profit where there once was a major fixed cost.

Just as VCRs started as an uncontrollable piracy distribution medium, so too will P2P evolve into a powerful cash-earning medium for the content companies. It's not a matter of if, but when.

And it seems that now is the time.

P2P non-torrent downloads

[suedehed]

Not to be self serving here at all, seriously. I work for a company (happypuppy.com), whose business model is the same as the subscription services (we were subscription also, until a week or two ago). The software we use for download acceleration, was developed and licensed from Onion Networks (who've been mentioned on ./ before). One of the differences with our technology (FileSwarmer as we call it) is that we have multiple servers, East and West, populated with the game demos already. This coutners some of the issues I've personally noted with torrents. We can guarnatee that there will be locations for people to get the file from, and don't solely rely on the P2P functionality (which greatly increases the reliability and speed of the whole process). I think that sites like Gametab are great, I think that using P2P technologies for facilitating, and bypassing the subscription models, will help to continue the growth of the VG industry.

costs

[anakin876]

I haven't seen anyone mention costs here yet. I am on a 15 GB transfer limit here, and while I realize that many other people have "unlimited" transfer capabilites (as to total down and uploaded) if enough people were to switch to bittorrent style transfers, how long would it take before these "unlimited" system became very limited? Some of the cable providers are aqlready experimenting with capping off their "excessive bandwidth" users...... there are costs associated with this beyond what Fileplanet and their ilk pay. If we could devise a system that had a sedrver in each ISP, so that way traffic stayed local within the network, then we definitely would have something useful.