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North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical Re: Network end users to pull down 2 gigabytes a day, continuously?
On Jan 13, 2007, at 3:01 PM, Stephen Sprunk wrote: Consumers, OTOH, want to buy _programs_, not _channels_. This is a very important point - perceived disintermediation, perceived unbundling, ad reduction/elimination, and timeshifting are the main reasons that DVRs are so popular (and now, placeshifting with things like Slingbox and Tivo2Go, though it's very early days in that regard). So, at least on the face of it, there appears to be a high degree of congruence between the things which make DVRs attractive and things which make P2P attractive. As to an earlier comment about video editing in order to remove ads, this is apparently the norm in the world of people who are heavy uploaders/crossloaders of video content via P2P systems. It seems there are different 'crews' who compete to produce a 'quality product' in terms of the quality of the encoding, compression, bundling/remixing, etc.; it's very reminiscent of the 'warez' scene in that regard. I believe that many of the people engaged in the above process do so because it's become a point of pride with them in the social circles they inhabit, again a la the warez community. It's an interesting question as to whether or not the energy and 'professional pride' of this group of people could somehow be harnessed in order to provide and distribute content legally (as almost all of what people really want seems to be infringing content under the current standard model), and monetized so that they receive compensation and essentially act as the packaging and distribution arm for content providers willing to try such a model. A related question is just how important the perceived social cachet of editing/rebundling/ redistributing -infringing- content is to them, and whether normalizing this behavior from a legal standpoint would increase or decrease the motivation of the 'crews' to continue providing these services in a legitimized commercial environment. As a side note, it seems there's a growing phenomenon of 'upload cheating' taking place in the BitTorrent space, with clients such as BitTyrant and BitThief becoming more and more popular while at the same time disrupting the distribution economies of P2P networks. This has caused a great deal of consternation in the infringing- oriented P2P community of interest, with the developers/operators of various BitTorrent-type systems such as BitComet working at developing methods of detecting and blocking downloading from users who 'cheat' in this fashion; it is instructive (and more than a little ironic) to watch as various elements within the infringing- oriented P2P community attempt to outwit and police one another's behavior, especially when compared/contrasted with the same classes of ongoing conflict between the infringing-oriented P2P community, content producers, and SPs. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Roland Dobbins <[email protected]> // 408.527.6376 voice Technology is legislation. -- Karl Schroeder
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