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Cringely on P2P
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Software production is assumed to be a line function, but it is run like a staff function. -- Paul Licker
Software production is assumed to be a line function, but it is run like a staff function. -- Paul Licker
Wait a second... (Score:2, Funny)
Nothing new there, but as usual, the interesting part is what SlashDotters will say here afterward.
It's like if I invite you over for dinner, don't serve it, and then say "The best part of dinner is the discussion during the meal." Something is missing!
Re:Wait a second... (Score:2, Funny)
Scaling (Score:2, Insightful)
Is P2P still alive? I gave up using it when Napster started collapsing under its own weight. This was before it got shutdown through the courts, of course.
As the number of nodes increased, searches took longer and longer until they just started timing out and failing altogether.
Until P2P developers solve these tricky problems, I don't see how P2P can resurrect itself.
Um, Napster didn't use nodes for searches. (Score:3, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Out of the loop (Score:4, Informative)
Kazza has about 3 million users on anytime of the day. more than the total napster users at it's peak. Way more.
Plus Winmx, Grokster, soulseek and about 20 others. And all of em have linux or Mac clients!
P2P will be impossible to stop in any real way sort of bandwith capping.
Re:Out of the loop (Score:2, Insightful)
Who's gonna want to pay for someone else uploading over their wire?
Re:Out of the loop (Score:2)
The whole it's too cheap to meter arguement falls apart when it becomes cheaper and cheaper to meter. Especially when there are new market players coming on the scene that will like it just fine to vend their wares over metered bandwidth. Those online pay-per-view outfits that loom in the future, for instance.
Re:Out of the loop (Score:5, Interesting)
Routers that drop packets with forged headers
This could happen tommorow. Most routers let you configure it to do this. Show me a forged header Ill show you a lazy admin.
ISP's could use this as a service to their customers. Find a forged header log where it came from (mac address, phone, etc...) Then help the user fix their computer. Today we have a very lazy group that see it as a non expense to them. But it does cost them bandwidth and time.
The ISPs have to balance per byte metered versus how they lure people into their network. Why would I pay more for brodband if your just going to turn around and charge me a lot more for it. That is exactly how it will be seen. Currently they are enticing people into the network with 'unlimited', or nearly that, usage. They almost say you can get fast mp3's with a wink and a nod. With phrases like 'I can get my music faster'. Yet technicaly most of these ISP's have the 'no servers' in the contract. Those p2p systems are servers. The only way I can see metered will work is if most of the time my bill would be lower than a flat rate.
There will be more pay per play type systems. There are some rudementary ones right now. But all it takes is one cheap dude to make something that can copy the data. Then poof that movie that costed 5 bucks to rent, now costs very little for Joe Smoe to copy. Pay-per-play is doomed from the outset because if you can display it I can copy it, or at least make a decent copy. The only way they can keep total control is to not distribute it, or not make a display program. Either of which make them no money.
The artical didnt point it out. It sort of danced around it. But the current system is setup by control of media. When you buy a CD its probably 3 cents worth of plastic. But it cost 20 bucks. That is in economic terms called scarcity. Not everyone can make a batch of 100,000 3 cent CDs. But the media producers can, they make enough so marginal revenue equals marginal cost. If the artist and the end user get screwed so be it, MR = MC. They end up with a tidy sum of money. The new p2p systems lower dramaticly cost. Cost is now very close to 0.
There is no shipping, pressing, marketing, etc. Suddely its just product and end user. You do not have to ship things. You do not have to have a batch run of CDs made. You do not have to have artwork made up for the cover. You do not have to pay the middle man distributor. There are new costs. But most of them you do not control, and cost you nothing.
The real change here is not the distribution method. That could have been controled up front and they still could have held onto some sort of percived scarcity. Instead someone else did it. Suddenly the scarcity is not there. If two products are fairly equal a normal person will purchase the one that cost less. They were making tons of money on scarcity. They know it. They are going ape over trying to keep it.
If someone figures out how to compress a 2 hour movie into something like 20 meg, and good quality. The movie companies will have something to worry about. But at current data rates a 700 meg file is just not practical. Its can be done. But most users will not do it. There will be some exceptions but currently not many. If the size comes down or the data rate goes up dramaticly it will become practical. Then the movie companies have something to really worry about.
Currently the only squaking your seeing is coming from the ISP's. You see silly names like 'bandwidth hogs'. But hell they SELL the service that way. A few people take them up on the offer! They are yelling uncle not because people are breaking the law. They yell it because they are seeing their bandwith bills skyrocket. They are currently trying to find the right balance of oversubscription, bandwidth needed, and pay rates. Bandwidth capping is just an kneejerk reaction to the fact they oversubscribed to much. The same sort of thing happened when phone ISP's started showing up.
Re:Out of the loop (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Out of the loop (Score:2, Insightful)
I imagine this is true for much of the United States.
Re:Scaling (Score:2)
KaZaA seems to be thriving, there's eDonkey, Gnutella, and numerous others [zeropaid.com].
Re:Scaling (Score:4, Insightful)
P2P is alive and kicking. Kazaa, Morpheus if its still going, WinMX, Kazaalite, blah blah blah. Its all still out there. People are still sharing files. But there are other forms of P2P. Gaming companies are now creating P2P downloads so they can alleviate bandwidth issues by pointing you to another person who has the same file, instead of their overloaded servers.
Secondly, Buhahaha state the obvious! Go Cringely Go!
"Forgetting for the moment that some of these media people are greedy pond dwellers, let's ask the important question -- how are peer-to-peer file sharing systems going to replace $100 million movies? Peer-to-peer systems can share such movies, but since there is no real peer-to-peer business model that can generate enough zeroes, such systems are unlikely to finance any epic films.
Well, right there we have a problem. People LIKE epic films, but even with the best editing and animation software, there is no way some kid with a hopped-up Mac or PC is going to make "Terminator 4." One can only guess, then, that people will continue to go to movies and eat popcorn and watch on the big screen despite how many copies of Divx there are in the world."
Thats it right there. What are they worried about if they're still selling 47 Million $ in Box Office Ticket Sales on the first 3 days of Harry Potter, or whichever movie it was that had made some tremendous ammount of cash... Why spend so much money fighting P2P when they could embrace it for completely different Ideas like gaming companies and even some slash movie websites have done.
Re:Scaling (Score:2)
Cringly says:
"people won't take tablet computers with them to the bathroom"
im not so sure about that one [cutlerscove.com]
Re:Scaling (Score:2)
Searching time certainly never was an issue in Napster, in fact, Napster was probably the P2P app where searching was fastest. IIRC, all the file lists of the clients were transmitted to a global server (or rather a cluster thereof), which then looked up requests in its database. So you had a single point where all the organisation went together, and consequently a single point of failure.
Modern networks like Fasttrack and eDonkey distribute this task, too. Fasttrack dynamically allocates certain client computers as "supernodes", which work as local servers other clients send their file lists and search requests to (so FastTrack is basically both P2P file sharing and indexing). EDonkey, on the other hand, has a dedicated server app which a number of people have set up, and to which client computers connect. In both cases, servers redirect search queries to other servers, so you get a number of results (basically) at once, and after some time more and more. This can take a while, but still never long enough to be bothersome, really. It doesn't make the system fail, either.
Shareaza is the best P2P (Score:2)
I think Shareaza using the G2 network is the most promising P2P right now.
Kazaa is about to be shut down, and I think Shareaza is going to be the next big thing.
P2P is still alive, Audio Galaxy and Morpheus took over after Napster died, then Morpheus died and Kazaa took over, soon Audio Galaxy died and now we have E-Donkey and Kazaa, when these two die, I expect Shareaza to take over, if not sooner.
Re:Movies aren't hypertext (Score:2, Informative)
See Bitzi.com
Which is vulnerable to lawsuit.
P2P files turned into hashes, then in turn into links.
You wanted "something like Google". Sure, Bitzi links to files on Gnutella, but without hypertext links from one document to another document, there's no way to assign a PageRank(tm) value to a document.
If you have a design for a lawsuit-resistant distributed search engine that reliably maps titles of works to hashes of good quality digital encodings of those works, feel free to post a summary of your architecture here.
fuck
It's possible to express a point without obscenity.
What the slashdotters will say?! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:What the slashdotters will say?! (Score:5, Funny)
Thats not much up time, maybe you should consider GNU/Underpants or BSD/Boxers for stability and longevity.
Re:What the slashdotters will say?! (Score:5, Funny)
I don't think uptime is the problem. He was complaining about the load average.
interesting, but ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:interesting, but ... (Score:2)
And text, well, text is even worse because it is easiest of all to steal. My columns are published in newspapers and websites and handed-in as college essays all over the world and there is almost nothing I can do about it because tracking down the perps costs me more than does their crime. From the perspective of the established publishers, there is also the horrible possibility that people might actually come to prefer material they find for free on the Internet -- not just pirated material but even original material. This column, after all, is free, and my Mother claims to find some value in it from time to time.
Re:interesting, but ... (Score:2)
I often spend my Saturdays out in the wilderness, crouched up against a tree, reading a wonderful novel on my battery powered laptop using wordpad. Ahh yes, it is so practical... Quotes like this guy's make me wish we could somehow mod down news articles. (-1, Lost Track of Reality).
Re:interesting, but ... (Score:2)
I have friends who read books (from Project Gutenberg) on their Palms while commuting. It's certainly not as silly an idea as you make out.
Anyway, there are many reasons why mainstream p2p book sharing hasn't caught on in a big way yet: the fact that not everyone owns a Palm yet, the fact that they're still a poor interface for novel reading compared to a book (as you point out), the fact that the existing distribution format (books again) is much harder to "rip" than CDs are, for example... I wouldn't like to rule it out in the future though. In fact, I'd go further and say that I'd be surprised if p2p book sharing *didn't* become a problem for the publishing industry.
It can be slowed down... (Score:2)
Re:It can be slowed down... (Score:2)
Re:It can be slowed down... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:It can be slowed down... (Score:2)
AIMster was shut down by lawsuit, but nothing prevents another service piggy-backing a ride on AIM, or any other software that allows file sharing.
One of the most popular file sharing services at some colleges is simply the Windows Network Neighborhood. Some people are even sharing their whole hard drive without knowing it!
Fact is, whenever you have the ability to transmit files, you have the ability to transmit illegal files. IP is a P2P protocol by its nature. There's no way you can block illegal sharing without seriously reworking the 'net.
Re:It can be slowed down... (Score:2)
I'm tunnelling thru the corporate firewall at time of browsing and posting, thru port 443, via their proxy 8088.
Re:It can be slowed down... (Score:4, Insightful)
The advent of P2P may prove to be even more damaging to those of us who simply run our own mail servers or ssh in from work to check on data on our home computers. It could provide the impetus for ISPs to just deny any and all connections except "established" connections. Or, worse yet, go NAT.
In fact, lots of ISPs would love to implement NAT just to avoid the hefty costs involved in having a stable of real IP addresses for their users. Implementing NAT would be an easy way to give all users a static IP (cross-checked against MAC address) and just turn down the bandwidth of those users who overuse what they pay for.
So, if that happens you can add some gamers to the victims of P2P. Of course, since most P2P players are also gamers they'd just end up cutting their own throats. I can hear the whining on
Re:It can be slowed down... (Score:2, Informative)
if the isp capped my outbound traffic, then they wouldnt be fulfilling my terms of service for dsl.
In fact, lots of ISPs would love to implement NAT just to avoid the hefty costs involved in having a stable of real IP addresses for their users. Implementing NAT would be an easy way to give all users a static IP (cross-checked against MAC address) and just turn down the bandwidth of those users who overuse what they pay for.
well they can cap my upload speed at 128kb, since that is what i'm paying for. if i'm using 128kb up and they turn it down, i will just cancel and move over to stargate. they do this enough and they will loose alot of money. plus they will open them selves up to a class action suit since they were contracted to provide A and failed to provide A.
this isnt whining. i'm simply paying for a service. if the choose not to provide it, i will move on to someone else.
Re:It can be slowed down... (Score:2, Interesting)
thats fine. if the best i can get is 56k, then why have dsl? why not cut the $60 extra a month and use a modem? i mean really, do you expect people to keep paying for dsl when they are not really _getting_ it-it being the advantage of faster transfer rates.
i dont think any of the dsl providers can afford to piss off a large number of their clients. not even the big ones. if the big ones piss off enough people, then smaller providers will spring into being-market forces and all.
maby i'll go back to isdn
You just don't get it.... (Score:3, Insightful)
You cost them money directly in your use of bandwidth to act as a server. You also cost them money directly in responding to legal challenges by MPAA, RIAA, and all the other "AA" groups out there. If 90% of their customer base is perfectly happy surfing and downloading email, why would they want the 10% that you make up?
And what other small ISP is going to spring up and gather you to their fold when they cannot make money on you? Do you see where this is headed? You are not a market anyone wants. You are a liability. You don't have any market clout. They actually WANT you to go somewhere else.
You guys all whine about how these "business plans" need to be changed. Well I got news for you: the business plans have changed. And you aren't in them.
Re:It can be slowed down... (Score:2)
Re:It can be slowed down... perhaps (Score:5, Insightful)
The ISP filtering s/w would have to be *damn* good
This doesn't cope with the blocking issue, so the "obvious" thing to do is to coerce the great unwashed into an involuntary P2P network using virus technology to steal bandwidth (disk & net).
There'd be no nasty virus payload (the authors would want the machines to be operating smoothly). The virus might even patch and protect against other virii just to keep it only infected with the P2P s/w!
If the virus can infect (ooh, say, IIS) then it could use HTTP as a transport without affecting normal behaviour.
It's coming, or something like it. It's just a matter of time before the arms race really kicks in.
Or then again, perhaps I've missed something obvious - it's very late over here in the UK
Simon.
Why the RIAA's P2P vendetta is crazy (Score:5, Interesting)
How long before they realize that they're just bitching about cracks in the windows while the door has been left wide open??
(yeah, I submitted this a few days ago and it was rejected -- but I'm not bitching
Re:Why the RIAA's P2P vendetta is crazy (Score:2)
Re:Why the RIAA's P2P vendetta is crazy (Score:2)
Unless they mean 128Kbps MP3 files encoded by a retarded chimp on a 386 while smoking crack, I'd like to know where they got this futuristic alien space radio that sounds as good as a 128Kbps MP3. Where I come from (I affectionately call it "Planet Earth"), FM radio does not sound that good. It doesn't even sound as good as those internet radio streams that are at like 30-somethingKbps.
uh, WHAT planet do you say you're from? (Score:3, Informative)
With respect to 28Kbps MP3 files encoded by a retarded chimp on a 386 while smoking crack, I've heard plenty of those.
Where are you getting your download music where you've never heard such? We all want to /. those networks and servers.
The problem most of us have with FM radio is content, not audio quality. But if one is going to the trouble of looking for N'Sync or Backstreet Boys on Kazaa, one should start checking into tuner card specs NOW.
decent quality FM sound? (Score:2)
Or perhaps your local college or high school radio station. YMMV, of course.
If you actually like Top 20 (as in no accounting for taste), try some audio processing software with dynamic range expansion capabilities, mess around, and see what you get.
Analog FM is about 50Hz-15K with a dynamic range of about 40db IIRC... compare this with RealAudio or 128K MP3.
Re:Why the RIAA's P2P vendetta is crazy (Score:2)
The big difference? Music is always cheaper when somebody else is picking what track comes next. These digital music services aren't even allowed to release their playlists in advance... you will always have to pay for the right to hear the song you want to hear on your demand. In fact, newer versions of all of these services try to sell you CDs at higher prices than in the store.
Remember the RIAA bust-US Naval Academy? (Score:2)
Recording off FM radio is explicitly protected "fair use", not stealing, and as far as I know, this doesn't change because the recording media is a chunk of HD instead of analog audio tape.
Well.. (Score:3, Funny)
Ok just a general chat then?
Well he's a story that has all the enthusiasm of a valium addict
pretty empty article (Score:3, Insightful)
Personally I find movie piracy to be good for the movie industry. I can search kazaa for divx's of movies, and if I like them, I go out and buy the DVD. There are no divx's that even come close to the quality of a dvd, and I cannot play divx's on my dvd player (I would rather watch movies on my 50 inch hdtv than my 17 inch flat pannel display!).
Divx's are also good because if I see a 'bootleg' home-camara recorded version of a movie that is still in theatres, I can get an idea of wether it is good or not simply by judging audience reation. For instance for the latest star wars movie, you could see alot of people getting pissed off and leaving the theatre because the movie was crap. If you didn't know this, you might have gone to see that terrible excuse for a movie.
Re:pretty empty article (Score:2)
I somehow doubt that the folks who run the movie industry would agree that this is good for the movie industry. In fact, they would even be correct in saying that pirating is losing them sales if they were to use this as an example. I highly doubt that they would ever use such an honest example, or that it would help to promote their cause, but that's a whole 'nother story.
Re:pretty empty article (Score:5, Insightful)
I remember walking home to my dorm room with a shrinkwrapped Visual C++ 4.2 educational edition. "Only" $80. I suspected somebody would see it in my bag and be envious or impressed. What a chump I was. A nerdy chump. Somehow, apt-getting that latest gcc revision doesn't give me that buzz. But neither would shelling out for the hologram, anymore.
Just like when I was 14 and realized there wasn't really a 24x7 party going on down at radio station.
I really hope I can teach my kids to see through all the crap at an early age, but it's not easy. Last night my wife asked my 4 year old what his favorite movie his. He said it was the new Little Mermaid movie - which he has NEVER SEEN. It could only have come from seeing commercials on the Disney Channel.
Re:pretty empty article (Score:2)
Yeah, but will you still do that when you can download them to
Re:pretty empty article (Score:2)
I can search kazaa for divx's of movies, and if I like them, I go out and buy the DVD.
Yeah, but will you still do that when you can download them to
But by the time this is possible, DVDs will be passe and they'll have some other storage medium that will enable the movie studios to bloat up movies so that they will once again take hours to download.
Re:pretty empty article (Score:2, Interesting)
It's only a matter of time before the MPAA starts cracking down on non-Blockbuster video rental stores. It's all under the same murky laws, unfortunately.
Just to explain everything, I believe that both these activities are not ultimately economicly damaging and should be judged as such. The survival of parasitic entities such as your local vid store doesn't play into my mind. They don't have a right to survive (although I DO hope they do).
Re:pretty empty article (Score:2)
Though with DVDs, they seem to have fallen out of that practice by and large...at least in the USA. They tried to shove it through in Australia with a software licensing issue, but the Australian courts put a stop to that.
shake me down, rattle, and roll... (Score:4, Insightful)
it just so happens that i really like the music that tends to be made in garages, or basements, or lofts... isn't this as much about access to choices, as paying for those choices? and, don't you think that these musicians might actually like to make money on their first recordings, as opposed to "waiting" for the labels to bequest riches? not to mention that rarely does money equate with artistic vision--second albums generally blow.
Somebody has to pay, somebody has to be paid, but where does that leave the RIAA?
Re:shake me down, rattle, and roll... (Score:2)
In the same boat as blacksmiths and buggy whip makers....
Cringely section? (Score:5, Interesting)
Come on, guys!
Re:Cringely section? (Score:2)
For the same reason they didn't follow my suggestion a while back about an MPAA/RIAA icon: They're too damned lazy.
Re:Cringely section? (Score:3, Funny)
OR
And I'm glad that other people are starting to realize that this isn't about piracy. It's about comptetition. I have been bleating about this for a year and most people ignore me.
Re:Cringely section? (Score:4, Funny)
I've been bothering with this for quite some time, and came up with the following 6 reasons to explain this phenomenon:
1) He got a cool name.
2) He writes in tone matches his name - paranoiac, suspicious, and - cringely
3) His look matches his name - that cringely look - the look that can be find in Stephen King
4)
5)
6) There's no 6th reason. Move along.
(I'm aware that there's no such word 'cringely', but you got the idea....or not?)
silly quotes from article.. (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd sooner compare a PC with great audio software to a typewriter of 50 years ago. And guess what.. 'literary establishments' are STILL necessary for widespread ditribution. The problem is really all in the distribution. Let's face it, if we wanted to we could affordably publish text in a comparible quality format to that of which appears in book stores today. The technology is certainly available, but it's not really replacing the big publishing/distributers at all.
Also, the article has the tone "P2P is here to stay and nobody will ever be willing to pay for a P2P file-sharing service", which I somewhat agree with.. but he does not offer support for the above quote, specifically "and make a living doing so". It seems to contradict the overall tone - how can the indi's make a living distributing their own music if people are unwilling to pay for it? Please enlighten us.
if I had a Tablet PC, I would!
Re:silly quotes from article.. (Score:2)
That part I read the same as you.
""...and nobody will ever be willing to pay for a P2P file-sharing service", which I somewhat agree with.."
I didn't get that from the article. It seemed to me he was saying that the crappy P2P that the xxAA companies will try to use to supplant working P2P models will fail be cause nobody would ever be willing to pay for those.
I also don't agree with your feeling that people wouldn't pay at all for a decent P2P model of distribution. I know she's quoted a lot in the discussions of this stuff (but that's just because her writings are so well thought out), but Janis Ian's articles [janisian.com] (second article here [janisian.com]) talk a bit about possible ways of handling P2P distribution while still making a profit very intelligently.
Re:silly quotes from article.. (Score:2)
Aren't we ?
You seem to be using the internet
It's all but removed the necessity for books (you can find every piece of information you need on the internet), books are now bought not because you need them, but for COMFORT factor ("I like a physical book" type argument).
I'd even go as far as saying that the internet has more choice, and often has better choices available (there is no book on php that matches www.php.net, there is no book on apache that matches it's website, there are no books on linux that match the linuxdoc site).
There are hoards of novels available (did you bother to check kazaa for this type of thing ?).
Re:silly quotes from article.. (Score:4, Insightful)
That's what the indie artists of all kinds need right now. A service such as MP3.com that advertises them to a following of people. The problem is, of course, that any such service usually gets bought up by "big media" and we're back in the hole we started in.
From Goods to Services (Score:3, Interesting)
Frankly, after P2P file sharing has run its course, I expect the entertainment industry to still be here. However, it'll be a lot different. They'll transition from Goods, which can be digitally copied and redistributed, to Services, which (as of yet) are copy-proof. Expect to see the resurrection of theater. We've already seen it happen with an emphasis on live concerts in the music industry.
The Industry will finally begin to understand that it's greatest asset it not the tangible, but the intangible.
"Services" with a different meaning (Score:2)
I see your idea, and I like the concept of having live theater as a really popular part our culture, but I think they'll transition from "goods" to "services" in another way. The "goods" they produce now aren't valuable - that is they are only pieces of media. There's a big price gap between a $1 blank cd-r and a $25 music cd. The valuable part of what they sell is the information encoded on that media which can be infinitely copied and doesn't behave like a regular physical good because it isn't a physical good.
By finding talent, promoting it, channeling that talent into finding valuable combinations of ones and zeroes, recording those bits on compact discs, and distributing them all over the country, they're already providing a service. It's the recognition of this service as the core of the industry that will save them - people pay them for recording information onto CDs that can be bought, not for the CDs themselves. What they really need to do is work out a system of payment where they can produce a work and then hold it for "ransom" until consumers have paid a certain RIAA-specified total. If the total is met, the work is released. If the total is not met, the money is returned to those who paid it. The RIAA does not disappear, their economic position as promoter and risktaker stays intact, and everyone gets to keep their jobs.
What about the freeloaders, or those that don't contribute to the release of a certain work, but listen to it anyway? Well, if they like it enough to pay towards the release of the next work by the same author, that's an extra sale. If they don't like it, that's exactly the kind of person who wouldn't have bought a cd under the old model. What's to stop the RIAA from setting rediculously high "ransom" totals? Only the same thing that stops them from pricing CDs at $60.00 now. What's to stop consumers from repeatedly not meeting totals to drive down future ransom totals? Only the same thing that stops them from organizing boycotts of CDs to drive down prices today.
[...] Services, which (as of yet) are copy-proof.
"Production of new art" services will always be "copy-proof". The reason we're having this "problem" with piracy right now is that information must be un-copy-proof the same way that matter must react to the presence of other matter through the force of gravity. It's a fundamental fact of information physics. In the same way, generation of _new_ art is fundamentally "copy-proof". Yes, you can copy already-produced art, but the creation of new art can only happen when a (perhaps) talented individual puts forth a creative effort.
Right (Score:3, Insightful)
They will be the ones with the how-to knowledge in creation / production / distribution / marketing and to a smaller extent, the ones who can loan the artists the high-end tools and venture capital to do a better job than they can do on their own.
I expect that there will be very, very few survivors among either record or movie companies of this shakeout.
Bad Monopolies at play (Score:4, Interesting)
-
My favorite historical example of this phenomenon comes from the oil business. In the 1920s, the Anglo-Persian Oil Company had a monopoly on oil production in the Middle East, which they generally protected through the use of diplomatic -- and occasionally military -- force against the local monarchies. Then the Gulf Oil Company of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, literally sneaked into Kuwait and obtained from the Al-Sabah family (who still run the place) a license to search for oil.
[emphasis added] It sounds so very familiar. Just like something the RIAA or Microsoft would do, if they were an Oil company.The Anglo-Persian Oil Company did not like Gulf's actions, but they were even more dismayed to learn that Gulf couldn't be told to just go to hell. Andrew Mellon, of the Pittsburgh Mellons, was the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, and he wasn't about to let his oil company be pushed around by the British Foreign Office. So Anglo-Persian and the Foreign Office did their best to delay Gulf, which worked for several years. They lied a little, lost a few maps, failed to read a telegram or two, and when Gulf still didn't go away, they turned to acting stupid. As the absolute regional experts on oil exploration, they offered to do Gulf's job, to save the Americans the bother if searching for oil in Kuwait by searching for them.
The Anglo-Persian Oil Company searched for oil in Kuwait for 22 years without finding a single drop.
Remember that Kuwait is smaller than Rhode Island, and not only is it sitting atop more than 60 billion barrels of oil, it has places where oil has been known for more than 3,000 years to seep all the way to the surface. Yet Anglo-Persian was able to fulfill its contract with Gulf and keep two oil rigs continually drilling in Kuwait for 22 years without finding oil. To drill this many dry wells required intense concentration on the part of the British drillers. They had to not only be NOT looking for oil, they had to very actively be NOT LOOKING for oil, which is even harder.
Microsoft Oil. RIAA Petroleum. Really.
Re:Bad Monopolies at play (Score:2)
Cringely and P2P (Score:4, Interesting)
Especially the part towards the end about the Grateful Dead and residual incomes vs direct publishing (now truly enabled by the 'net)
My only real question to all of this is: How does any of this differ from the social uproar caused by Johannes Gutenberg printing the Bible with his movable-type press? (Which really messed up Europe for at least a hundred years -- some publishers are still extant). Surely, the social upheavals were reflected in the massive financial swings of the time. What makes this (internet-based publishing) any different?
Re:Cringely and P2P (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Cringely and P2P (Score:2)
Too much efficiency means less money... (Score:2)
This is a classic problem. If the music industry makes it too easy to get music... then they'll lose money. It doesn't make sense at first... but it's like being too good of a system administrator. If you do your job too well... the company won't need you anymore.
Schadenfreude (Score:5, Insightful)
After all, many many years after the invention of libraries, book publishers are still in business. Heck, people actually plunk down premium dollars for hardcovers even after the mass-market paperback comes out in print. Amazing.
Re:Schadenfreude (Score:2)
HP is legendary for doing this with printers. Anybody notice that the cheapest printers always need the most expensive forms of ink? If you can't get them coming, get them going.
So Britney Spears makes more money going on tour in skimpy outfits, and being photographed in skimpy outfits than she does for singing in the first place... what a second, isn't that the way the industry has been for years, at least from the artist's point of view?
Re:Schadenfreude (Score:2)
Re:Schadenfreude (Score:2)
I meant 8"x10" not 8'10", obviously. Although I wouldn't exactly mind getting a gargantuan glossy bimbette in the mail for 50 bucks. (Sort of like a reverse "Hand Maid May," I suppose.)
Re:Schadenfreude (Score:2)
actually, "Oh,shit" (Score:5, Insightful)
Look up the word disintermediation.
MP3s sell CDs and everybody in and out of the RIAA knows it. MP3s are not the product, they're a promo item, just as tracks played over the FM radio with comparable quality (actually, I saw FM radio compared to 200K MP3, which might be about right given optimum conditions) are promo items.
The difference? Anybody can distribute MP3s over the Internet.
The RIAA is afraid that the artists who currently are already selling in platinum-level quantities will decide that they can sell CDs via Internet without them quite nicely and keep all the profit instead of a 15% of revenues as calculated using Enron-style economics.
Or the new artists with platinum potential will take a swing at this themselves. Somebody will get all the pieces and market momentum together. It's only a matter of time. Will it be a formula which can be duplicated? Since I'm working with an indie artist myself, I sort of hope so.
If the record industry believed what you were saying, they wouldn't be buying Congress to make laws that allow them to decide what technology gets deployed.
More to the point, I suggest you do some googling for record industry sales numbers. You'll find that the trend is uniformly downward, but look for yourself anyway, the practice with search engines will do you good.
NEW P2P IDEA! (Score:2)
I call it a "swap meet".
You folks pretty much all have DVDs and CDs lying around, right? You bought a few, or perhaps more prior to MP3's huge escalation in popularity?
Is it really worthwhile having them around any more, when you can keep hundreds of movies and thousands of songs on a cheap hard drive?
The idea is simple. Burn your songs into MP3s (or OGGs, or whatever, as high quality as you want), and your movies into DivXs, then take 'em to the swap meet. Find someone with some new discs, ones you're interested in hearing or seeing, and swap 'em, one for one.
Take 'em home, burn those discs too, and next weekend bring 'em back to trade for whole new CDs. Hey, you've got 'em queued up, ready to play, or even burn onto new discs for your stereo, what do you need more plastic around for?
If this gets popular, it'd be hell on the industries. How can the copyright cops prove you're not just swapping without recording copies, trading new discs for old? Will a judge really consider your attending such a meet enough evidence to issue a search warrant on your house? After all, they're legally produced discs, and you bought 'em or traded for 'em, fair and square.
Wiki on P2P (Score:2, Informative)
There is already a lot of good content and structure. Go, contribute!
silence
It's a broken business model (Score:4, Insightful)
I come from a generation that has been totally used to paying for things. For me there is a "guilt" syndrome about knowing that the music is made with profit in mind. So I am more willing to make purchases or delete
How do you stay in business when no one sees a direct reason to pay you for the information they can readily get for free? It's a broken business model for sure and they are really fighting to stay alive in more ways than the average guy realizes.... It will be interesting to see what happens.
Re:It's a broken business model (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually it's not a rationalization for theft, since I've always stolen music. When I was a kid, it was explained to me (and I did thoroughly research the issue in the late 80's and early 90's) that you are *not* stealing copyrighted material if you don't pay for it. You are stealing it when you pay someone other than the people authorized by the copyright owners to collect payment. For example, if you copy me a CD, that's ok. But if I give you $10 for it, *that* is piracy. Fair use includes the right to redistribute the works and to collect a fee up to the cost of materials. Anything higher than that is not covered by fair use anymore. The EULA's that have been printed on CD's for years are themselves illegal (or were 10 years ago) and FUD all the same.
Let's educate the up-and-coming bands by showing them ourselves what we want them to do. You don't get people to do what you want if you don't do it yourself. Lead them, and they will follow.
And as far as the bands we know and love that are now incredibly rich, let me direct your attention to Metallica. Need I say more?
In their early days, Metallica encouraged people to pirate their music, record it at shows and give it to their friends, buy the albums and copy them for all their friends. They even set aside SPACE at the show so people could get the best quality bootleg recordings possible! I joined up with them during this time, and when they got rich and successful and subsequently started sticking a knife in the collective back of their fans, I dropped 'em.
In spite of their ultimate hypocrisy, Metallica got rich and famous because they toured a LOT, and they encouraged PIRACY. Talent, as usual, had nothing to do with it. :)
Critical Mass in peer networks (Score:5, Informative)
We are starting to see some of these technologies emerge, awaiting integration into flexible infrastructure that allows fast, easy and efficient distribution of data, content or otherwise, between peers on a local and global scale.
The end result will be a combination of a number of technologies seamlessly interoperating like:
- distributed [mit.edu] hash [berkeley.edu] tables [nyu.edu]
- decentralized [cubicmetercrystal.com] search [neurogrid.net]
- swarming [bitconjurer.org] distribution [sourceforge.net]
- wireless [cubicmetercrystal.com] networks [personaltelco.net]
It is nice to see the word get out: You cannot control the flow of digitial information in decentralized peer networks!
Re:CriticalMassinpeernetworks-P2P overcomes physic (Score:2)
You missed the point. When you combine swarming distribution, decentralized resource discovery, and strong encryption you cannot tell what is going across the wire. It is opaque data, and that is what the Microsoft group is talking about. Once you remove any centralized points of weakness for the content industries to attack and monitor you lose the ability to not only track where data is going between peers, but also to even tell what it is that they are trading.
There is no doubt it will be interesting, but you are right: the legal stick is and will continue to be the most popular stick with which the RIAA/MPAA will beat peer networks.
Another reason that fully decentralized, open source peer networking infrastructure is not only advantageous, but effectively required to sidestep the legal implications of a far profit corporation in the US where contributory and vicarious copyright infringement is a real threat (most countries have NO contributory or vicarious clauses to their copyright laws)
Some basic flaws (Score:2, Interesting)
his fundamental unwritten premise: that the concept of P2P networking
is a zero-revenue generator, and that copying is stealing.
But the whole argument in this issue is whether copying per-se is stealing
or not? So the rest of the discussion is just a hyperbole of what happens
to the poor movie businesses if they are stolen, and what happens if everyone
in NY is a thief, etc.
The issue I have with this approach is that, on the one hand you say
its impossible to stop copying, and on the other hand you say copying is stealing.
Why not atleast _try_ to see if there is an intermediate standpoint
where you _try_ to see if under some business model copying can indeed
generate revenue but maynot be as much as the movie and music moguls are
making right now.
I dont want to start questions about such a model as such, and I am not even
advocating that such a model is definitely practical, but like all other
things in this world, it needs to be thought about, given a chance to
prove itself in all its manifestations and then be discarded.
It makes sense for the sheiks in Sahara desert to sell water to the passer-bys
at atrocious price, but does it make sense to sell water to the dwellers
next to a river ?
I've seen a few people give examples... (Score:3, Interesting)
And yes, I turned my swiped sound into solid support - (I bought the album).
Maybe people just aren't buying music (Score:5, Interesting)
Because "10.1% of people downloading music are not buying music" does not mean that the music industry is losing sales from all those (though I'm sure it is from some).
I wonder how feasible it would be for someone like Borders (trying to compete with Amazon as a music retailer) to directly sign for tracks with artists. Then they maintain at each location a fat data pipe (if this isn't economically feasible, it will be -- small credit-check data lines are already in place and data gets cheaper and cheaper, whereas CDs stay the same). Then they have a really fancy burner or press or whatever at the location. They download losslessly compressed tracks from the Borders central server and cache them at local locations (to avoid retransferring popular tracks). Then people can simply say "I want a CD and I want track X, Y, and Z on it". The money goes directly to the artist, aside from Border's profit.
So lets see why this makes sense:
* Artist gets money, users have less incentive for piracy.
* User gets to specify what tracks they want/don't want and get better quality than they would pirating MP3s.
* The user can buy CDs more cheaply -- by eliminating the middleman, they pay maybe $3 to Borders per CD (you automate the thing, with a little Borders card reader, and there's very little per unit cost) and 10 cents to the artist per track (hell of a lot more than the artists are currently making), and you get a full-quality CD where you're supporting the artist for $5 tops.
* Users would have a much broader selection, not limited to the few hundred titles that might be in the store.
* Borders makes money -- I suspect unit costs after amortization would be about 50 cents per CD, so they get a healthy $2.50 in profit per CD, which is probably more than they currently make.
* Borders risks far less than they currently do -- adding an artist to their central database is cheap cheap cheap. They don't have to risk warehousing and blowing shelf space on CDs that people don't want.
* New artists can break into the market easily -- they simply register with Borders, send in their music to the main server, and start getting money. They don't have to convince much of anyone of their music quality, since there's no massive production/warehousing costs for all the CDs.
There are two drawbacks. One, you don't get extras in the CD. You might be able to print out the cover and the CD label, if this "Borders mini-CD maker" machine was fairly capable, but you might not get other stuff jammed in the case. Second, even with a hefty local cache, Borders still has to transfer 300MB per full CD (assuming lossless compression averaging 2:1) for infrequently requested CDs. This may not yet be feasible -- however, data lines keep getting cheaper, and CD prices stay the same.
Finally, a $100 80GB HD can store about 160 fairly full CDs, and 300 with lossless 2:1 compression. That's a one-time cost -- like incredibly cheaply expandable floor space. At those prices, Borders can afford to have enormous local caches -- one sale of a CD much more than makes back the cost of storing that CD locally.
Fighting the inevitable (Score:5, Insightful)
Plus, I just don't see people willing to pay for music files, they are already used to getting it free off the net or hearing it on the radio, when I pay for music I expect a CD and something tangible. I know this isn't the case with software anymore, but music is different, when people buy music they don't just want to run it on their computer, but in their stereos, cars, etc and a DRM crippled file just won't let over 95% of the people do that, hence people will not migrate to these company offered P2P solutions when the free one offers them a "better" product in those regards.
I think to a certain extent, Piracy is good (Yes, someone throw me in jail please) because in any industry that has a near monopoly it keeps them semi-honest with prices and whatnot because then they have a competitor. Whoever says piracy drives prices up don't know what they are talking about- do they know what the profit margins on music cds are? Capitalism is based on normal human behavior, it's a model that lets natural selfishness benefit the whole within reason, and these companies are fighting this. And they will lose.
p2p isn't going away. it isn't even slowing down. (Score:3, Interesting)
in short, all the of the big problems with p2p are being solved. while i'm sure new ones will crop up in the future (particularly if cringley's prediction about phase two of the industry's anti-p2p tactics comes true), it isn't going away. if RIAA ever manages to hit the "off" switch on p2p, they're going to have to deal with one hell of a stink, not just from media consumers, but from video and audio hardware makers, optical drive manufacturers, broadband providers, and musicians themselves.
it's nice to know that free media advocates have a few 800 lb. gorrillas in their corner.
Re:p2p isn't going away. it isn't even slowing dow (Score:2, Interesting)
Basicly, this system can scale to sizes of current p2p systems and far beyond. The system would would be able to "detect bad nodes quickly, and it would incorporate enough redundancy into the system to recover gracefully from tampering."
Gee, it's like he can predict the future - NOT! (Score:2, Insightful)
"Of course, the recording and publishing executives, who often work for the same parent company, aren't going to go without a fight. We are approaching the end of the first stage of that fight, the stage where they try to have their enemy made illegal. But the folks at Microsoft Research now say quite definitively that legal action probably won't be enough. That's when we enter stage two, which begins with guerrilla tactics in which copyright owners use the very hacking techniques they rail against to hurt the peer-to-peer systems. This too shall pass when bad PR gets to the guerrillas. The trick to guerrilla or terrorist campaigns is to not care what people think, but in the end, Sony (just one example) cares what people think.
That's when the record companies and publishers will appear to actually embrace peer-to-peer and try to make it their own.
This will be a ruse, of course, the next step in the death of a corrupt and abusive cultural monopoly. They'll say they will do it for us. They'll say they are building the best peer-to-peer system of all, only this one will cost money and it won't even work that well. There is plenty of precedent for this behavior in other industries.
Is this supposed to be a prediction? All these things have already come to pass. Let me see if I can try to make a few similar "predictions":
There will be a decrease in the share price of technology companies that some will call the 'tech wreck' this will cause the NASDAQ to fall and investors to lose lots of money....
Sharing that makes money (Score:2, Interesting)
What I mean to say is that we have to make the users that share part of the payroll.
Let me explain, what if you made money by distributing the mp3s and movies you had on your computer ? Part of it goes to the bands and movie producers and part of it to you who pays the bw bill...
In that case won't you rather "sell" your bandwidth and hd space then give it away! ?
Then won't it be the end of the massive p2p sharring (a free one will always exist) but with the ppl you had the bw and space gone.. what will it be worth ?
The only problem in this is coordination of the whole thing
For this to work the sytem needs this info
1 - A way to indentify music and send the money to the right ppl
2- A way to bill ppl you d/l directly
This could be solved if we had a trusted system to make the transactions so that we could be sure of who really is d/ling. ( I kinda see paladium is this god forgives me ) And to whom are really the (c) rights...
If the system can provide that info then there's nothing stoping it
we will see competiton on the content prices , on the bw prices too... the lower you set your bw
price to be on your host the more d/ls you get etc...
The higher quality and the faster you are the more $ users will pay etc
It makes a new viable biz
Now I know this is kinda utopic but I still feel it's possible... feel free to bring me down on earth hehehe...
.
Re:Sharing that makes money (Score:2)
Re:Sharing that makes money (Score:2)
Why P2P will prevail... (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with "The Entertainment Industry" is that it's so manufactured - so programmed. Some people can see through it, and those are the people using P2P (other than the folks leeching Britney...).
Examples: Tom Cruise has a new movie coming out - Suddenly, there are a whole bunch of old Cruise movies on TV. The Chillies are coming to town - suddenly, their old vids are on TV, and their songs are getting airplay. These are without including paper and electronic media in the equation. Ad those into the picture, and it's very, very hard to see anything resembling freedom of choice - it's all designed to make people "like" a particular medium icon, at any given time. If you examine it, you'll find that very rarely are their conflicts between "products" within a given market segment. Apply some Reverse Engineering skillz to this area, and you may be surprised what you see. I wonder what Fravia would have to say about it...
Anyway, it worked for a while, but now people are seeing the patterns, and seeing through the crap. They want access to the entertainment of their choice, not just whatever Sony or Tri Star decides to sell today. The Next Big Thing isn't such a big deal anymore for most of us, especially when Media Co keeps pumping a new Next Big Thing out every couple of months.
The media companies (heh, I say it like there's more than one...) can't keep everyone blind forever, so given a little time, EVERYONE will be using some form of P2P simply to have the freedom to choose what they watch/listen to.
When I look at the media companies, I feel pity. I see a bunch of archaic industries fighting a losing battle for their lives. The battle's over. They've lost. They just haven't realised it yet.
Cringely is naïve about pirates. (Score:2, Insightful)
Why is this doubtful, Cringely? No pirate is ever going to think to himself: "Gee, I had better stop sharing files for awhile and pay to see some movies so that Paramount and Disney et al will have the capital to make more movies."
No pirate ever thinks that his individual actions will hurt anyone. And he's right -- much for the same reason that no rational voter can expect that his one vote will actually be the vote that affects the outcome of an election.
Pirates only think and act as individuals, not as some collective Borg consciousness.
There are several likely scenarios that will allow the entertainment industries to survive the P2P onslaught. But suddenly obtaining the good will and generosity of pirates is definitely not one of them.
The problem is that MPAA Gets It (Score:5, Insightful)
Cringely almost gets it, but he's made a major error in forecasting.
Apparently, Jack Valenti isn't quite the techno-illiterate we all thought him. He is no more worried about P2P piracy than Hilary Rosen is, and he's probably gotten plenty of entertainment out of her mistakes. As in the case of the record labels, this isn't about stopping people from distributing low-quality copies of product, it's about control.
MPAA is NOT worried about some kid with a loaded current generation Mac or PC making Terminator 4. Unlike their sister companies in the record industry, their business model is doing very, very well. They're selling an ok to good product at what people believe is a fair price.
They are worried about the next Steven Spielberg or George Lucas graduating from the UCLA Film School 5 years from now with a loaded PC or Mac with a story to tell deciding he wants 25% of the gross and that he doesn't have time to serve out a Hollywood-style apprenticeship.
He makes a rough draft of the movie using a workstation and a render farm in a box, i.e. a bunch of high-end current generation graphics cards. Or maybe he borrows some time on his school's equipment. How does he do crowd scenes? Were you paying attention to the article on the Monster crowd generation package? Like to bet that there won't be one downloadable or off-the-shelf by then?
What does he do with it? He shows it to investors and to a few stars who are either up-and-coming or haven't been selling too well lately and are willing to take a chance on a straight percentage of the gross.
How does he distribute it? Reduced quality copies or samples via P2P or streaming Real Video, via pay-per-download, etc., and actual DVDs to film critics. He pitches it as a TV movie. Once the film is in the can, lots of things he can do with it. He presses a bunch of DVDs and sells them off his Website at $10 a shot. He finds a way to get higher-quality versions (TVD media?) into the movie theaters.
Even if he doesn't, if he makes even a reasonable profit without Hollywood, his next picture will have serious budget behind it and he'll be able to cut a deal with an MPAA company that'll give him the whip hand. Or worse, the ability to have his own auditors check the books unannounced any time they feel like it.
Unless the MPAA locks down the technology and the bandwidth and locks it down now.
The MPAA movie companies know that one can make a high-quality record album using PC-based studio hardware and distribute via the Net if one can find buyers, and they don't plan to let this happen to them.
Though all this means is putting off the inevitable for a few years, if one can't do this in the US market, which is all but inevitable, there are other markets and with new US technology under the control of the RIAA/MPAA, the technologies to enable this will simply appear everywhere except America. The bright young people they're depending on for their next generation of movies will be doing what the ones who want to work in creating high-tech will.
Moving the hell out of the USA to anyplace with a Net connect that isn't under RIAA/MPAA control implemented by the politicians the Hollywood cartel has bought or are buying. What's the MPAA going to do when the hot new movies and video content is all coming from outside the USA?
Watching Americans buy it. Trying to get politicians to use import restrictions to keep it out of the USA either online or as physical DVD product.
Re:The problem is that MPAA Gets It (Score:2)
You are ascribing to the MPAA power which they simply do not have.
You're wrong. (Score:3, Informative)
Ever heard of the DMCA? CBDTPA? Broadcast Working Group? Those items are part of what that money is going for.
You new here or something? Do a Google search on each of the above search terms and get informed. While flaming you would be more fun, you're more useful to the community if somebody hands you a clue. Go do something with it.
If worse comes to worse... (Score:2, Insightful)
It takes a pirate to spot a pirate? (Score:2)
P2P works because: a)it is easy to do - with broadband and relatively simple applications; b)people, not all of them but a significant number, feel the music industry is a monopoly and overcharges for music; and c)doesn't it just feel good to do something that is probably illegal and know that there is little or no chance of you suffering the consequences?
Personally, I don't like to see stories like this in the media, mainly because the less coverage my favorite P2P application gets, the more likely it is to remain in operation. Luckily, I don't see that app mentioned but just a few times here.Blockquoth the article... (Score:3, Funny)
Yeah, and thanks to you, Cringely, I only got a D.
Re:Cringely is becoming Crufty (Score:3, Insightful)
It isn't like W&G has the resolution and production quality where a VCD degrades it.
Well, no, not after it's been recorded to VHS. After VHS, a well encoded VCD could be considered an improvement, especially if you started with the 24/25fps source material and didn't have to go through reverse pulldown.