Harnessing the Power of P2P, Looking Back

brajesh writes "It has been seven years since Napster, the first widely-used peer-to-peer music sharing service, was released, and it made a major impact on how people, used the Internet. NY Times has an article about Napster and how it quickly grew into an Internet phenomenon - not to mention the music industry's bête noire until it was shut down by the courts four years ago. The article also mentions Shawn Fanning, the creator of Napster and his new venture, along with other efforts like new version of Grokster, Apple's iTunes, trying to cope up with growing concerns of Copyright Violations and corresponding backlash against P2P file-sharing."

Comments

Sure it did...

[Anonymous Coward]

and it made a major impact on how people, used the Internet.

Sure it did. From that day on, people using the new protocol were all guilty before proven guilty. All people hear today are 'cutting sales', 'innovation', 'rootkit' for that matter. This is a new age I guess. And if you're not one of the 'big guys', it's not really fun...

Napster never lost his case, justice did.

[k00110]

Actualy if Napsters had has many lawyers and money as the Majors "babels", they would be where iTunes is right now. The ways laws work should be changed so people with the most ressources don't get an advantage over those without.

Isn't it funny?

[MightyYar]

Everyone who used Napster thought it was the coolest thing that had happened to music in a long, long time. How messed up is our system when something that universally praised met it's demise?

Hmmmm

[Sv-Manowar]

It's amazing how napster and the other p2p programs have really revolutionized the internet, before home pc's were common I knew no-one who would have over maybe 50 CDs. Now when I talk to anyone, they have a full iPod and tons of songs. Instead of hounding the net, the music industry should be celebrating how it has helped people find new bands and new genres that they like.

Re:Hmmmm

[Jerry Coffin]

Instead of hounding the net, the music industry should be celebrating how it has helped people find new bands and new genres that they like.

This would only make sense if the music industry really wanted to serve their customers -- and based on their actions, that's quite apparently not the case at all.

First of all, I'm pretty sure that while the recording industry makes lots of noise about how much revenue they're losing due to P2P, they also have good enough financial analysts that when they're being honest with themselves, they realize that the real loss is essentially zero.

First of all, the ability to actually search and find what you want to a large extent makes the recording companies irrelevant. Until recently, bands fell into two discrete categories: those with recording contracts, and those without. Anybody without a contract remained essentially a nonentity. Many bands were quite willing to sign virtually any possible recording contract, because even if they realized it was horribly unfair, they still ended up far better off than without it.

Most of this derived from two things: distribution and promotion.

With P2P, both of those are largely nullified. The P2P network provides absolutely anybody with essentially instant, worldwide distribution. Likewise, searching means people can find what they really want instead of depending on the record company promotions to tell them what they want.

Now, it's true that the majority of what has been distributed over P2P networks has been material copyrighted by the record labels. Frankly, I doubt that's what they really cared about though -- what they cared about was the fact that if Napster (for example) had been allowed to survive for very long, there would have been a migration away from "their" music, and they would have faced utter irrelevancy.

For them, this isn't a matter of boosting sales by an extra few percent -- it's a matter of outright survival. They probably also realize that it's really a losing battle. As an industry they're currently providing no value, and despite attacks on their intelligence, they're smart enough to realize that if they provide no value, they'll die.

What they're doing right now is (I suspect) mostly a delaying tactic, trying to maintain some degree of relevance until they can figure out how to put themselves back onto the mainstream.

I suspect iTunes (and its ilk) will be a large part of that. Contrary to implication elsewhere, while iTunes is certainly a way for people to download music, it's most assuredly not a p2p network. iTunes is a perfectly average centralized network where you're downloading music from ITMS' servers. It's centralized and controlled in almost exactly the same way as traditional music publishing was. In fact, in the long run it probably creates a situation even MORE favorable to the recording industry.

With traditional brick and mortar distribution, the big distributors (Best Buy, Sam Goody's, etc.) had quite a bit of power over the recording companies. Most of this power derived from the fact that building thousands of record stores was expensive and difficult, so the supply of national distributors was fairly limited. The Internet and non-P2P record distribution like iTunes changes that: it takes virtually nothing to set up a reasonably usable international recording distribution network. ITMS is way out in front right now, but I'm pretty sure Apple realizes that there are thousands of other people with the capability and resources to put together a reasonably competitive offering in a matter of months.

This means ITMS has virtually not power when they bargain with the record labels. Previously the record labels probably had something like 80% control over the music stores. I'd guess with Yahoo! Music, ITMS, MP3.com, etc., they see a chance to have more like 95% control, and they like that idea a whole lot.

ITMS (for one) may seem a lot like Napster in a

Re:Hmmmm

[Jerry Coffin]

It is very much the case. RTFA. The fact of the matter is this: Record sales are going down. Illegal P2P downloads are going up.

That depends on who you listen to -- according to the RIAA (i.e. representing only the largest labels) sales are going down. NARM (representing record stores) disagrees -- they claim that although it's slow, there is actually growth in record sales.

IOW, much of what's happening is that independent labels are growing at the expense of the major labels. The assertion that illegal P2P downloads in increasing seems completely unsupported. I'd guess that, if anything, the opposite is true: since Napster was shut down, illegal P2P downloads have slowed substantially.

All of this also ignores the economy as a whole: the fact is that the economy in general slowed substantially around five years ago, and especially luxury industries have had flat to falling sales since then. IMO, P2P downloads are purely a red herring, and record sales would be down about the same (or even a bit worse) if nobody had ever invented "P2P" at all. Again, NARM takes this into account -- for example, though they it was "offset by cannibalization", they admit that "...sales were stimulated by file sharing". Also note that this is from 2000, when file-sharing was at its height.

You missed one minor technical detail: Musicians, producers, studio engineers, and session musicians actually like getting paid for their hard work. [...] You forgot "paying all the people who work hard to make a great album of music".

I didn't miss this at all -- I ignored it because it's irrelevant. An engineer, musician (session or otherwise), etc., working for an independent label doesn't do it for free either. Likewise, when a musician decides to publish directly, he's rarely doing it for the sake of charity either.

In any case, a great album rarely needs much expensive production work. A great album is recorded, and transferred to its final form with a minimum of fuss or bother. The albums that are expensive to produce are mostly mediocre garbage made by "musicians" whose talent (if any) is in areas like synchronized dancing, not music.

It's also worth noting that costs in this area are really substantially lower than they used to be as well -- as with many other things, computerization has made engineering/post product substantially easier and faster than used to be the case.

Oh, it's very much what they care about. Case in point: Record companies did nothing to stop IUMA, who was delivering musicial content in mpeg compressed format before mp3 even existed.

You're making a fundamental mistake here. On one hand, there's what they really care about. On the other, there's what they have at least some minimal excuse to take people to court over. The fact that something doesn't fall into the latter doesn't necessarily exclude it from the former.

One thing to keep in mind is that many, many people can make music. Very few can make music that is actually worth listening to. This is why people download the latest Gwen Stefani song instead of some garage band.

Sorry, but this is pure BS. The reality is that lots of people can came music that's actually worth listening to. Addding things up in my head, so far this year I've heard at least seven local acts who are every bit as good as Gwen Stefani, and IMO, at least one of them is substantially better. Unless you happen to live near me, and go to listen to local bands, you've probably never heard of any of them though.

There are a lot worse examples than Gwen Stefani too. Face reality though: complete lack of musical talent hasn't stopped a lot of boy bands (to name just one class) from making tremendous amounts of money.

--
The universe is a figment of its own imagination.

Files on P2P are NOT EXACT copies of the CDs

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see how they even have a case. First off CDs are recorded in PCM, files are usually traded in MP3, if you compare the files side to side they are totally diffrent. If you convert the MP3 to PCM you will still see that both files are not the same. When a copyright is applied it is applied to THAT recording, not the varations that are made by computers to make the file smaller. While my defense might not hold up in court, it makes everyone stop and think.

To each their own.. The New Napster...

[issachar]

Well, to each their own. I like the service. If you don't then I guess it's not for you.

About the DRM. If you don't like it, that's your beef, but I see no problem in principle. Their DRM lets me download my music to a player and take it with me. I see no problem. iTMS lets you download your music to a player and take it with you. Again, no problem. I just prefer subscription to a la carte.

I DO see problems with DRM in an iTMS style purchase model. If I buy a song I want to actually be able to do anything I want with it. (Use Winamp, whatever). But with Napster I'm not buying the music. I don't want to buy it. As soon as I'm unhappy with the service or I see something I prefer, I quit. In a model like that, DRM makes sense. Without DRM that model wouldn't be available to me.

I doubt you'll get an iTMS plug-in because I suspect that Apple would have to agree to it. Why would they do that? They like the iPod-iTunes duo.

About the too much clicking though, I think you misunderstood me. No clicking at all in an interface? That wouldn't work for me. I'm just talking about the fact that I have to click a drop down menu to indicate a search for artist or track or whatever, click again in the text box for my search terms, and click again to begin the search. iTunes has a single box that refines my search every time I type a character. Much nicer.