Napster and Gnutella Measurements

belswick writes "UW has posted a paper titled "Measuring and Analyzing the Characteristics of Napster and Gnutella Hosts" at Washington in PDF form. Interesting reading for those who implement P2P software, with actual measurements, tools, and topologies. You 3l33t H4x0rz are ACM members, R1gh4?" You can get a cache of the PDF and view it online as well.

Comments

I _will_ pay

[tarzan353]

But only on reasonable terms.

I have about 20Gb of MP3s. They're all mine. Ripped from CD's I own. Occasionally my CD was too badly damaged to get a good rip, so I've gotten a copy of a rip from a friend who owns the same album. Legal nit-picking aside, I think I have every legal right to do that.

I've never bothered with Napster, Kazaa, Gnutella or their like. I make intellectual property for a living, and I believe artists and creators ought to get paid for their work. (A discussion as to whether they actually _do_ get paid anything by the music publishers is beyond the scope of this rant.)

I want to buy more MP3s, legally. But I'm not going to bother with these half-assed more-expensive, more-restricted offerings. Sooner or later, they'll realize they have to offer equivalent or greater value to the consumer to win their business.

I want to listen to my newly-purchased songs in WinAmp, right along side my existing rips that I legally own. And if I want to put them on my laptop and listen to them while traveling, so be it. And MP3 players, while cycling. And maybe burn some to a CD to listen to in my car. It's my music, I can do what I want with it. Anything less is unacceptible.

Buying an entire album one song at a time and ending up paying _more_ than that album costs down the street at a bricks & mortar store? And getting a crippled, compressed, proprietary format that locks you to one CPU (what if it dies?) and only certain players? Who thought that was a clever idea?

The end of insane music publishing margins and selling the same music multiple times to a consumer (vinyl, tape, CD, DVD-Audio, MP3, etc) is here. The industry needs to learn to trim the fat like everyone else, and actually deliver value. And, to treat their customers like customers, not criminals.

I want to buy music. A lot of it. I'd probably drop $300 the first week such a reasonable system were available. And that's just the start. But lose this stupid business and operational model that they keep coming up with. Nobody wants less for more.

Re:What about those of us who despise music storie

[AKAImBatman]

Dude, I feel your pain.