P2P Calls in Air Strikes
Published March 28, 2003
P2P as the Path to Prosperity
Mr. Chairman, a recent study12 of investment opportunities in digital media lists the following benefits that would accompany a shift of sound recording distribution from physical to virtual:
1. No manufacturing costs.
2. No minimum economical production run, an astonishing benefit for a record industry that claims to lose money on ninety percent of its releases.
3. A sharp reduction in distribution costs, with savings further increased through P2P adaptation because 'the P2P network basically turns the PCs of participating consumers into storage units of tracks for sale".
No inventory costs.
No costs for returns of unsold merchandise, another astounding change for an industry that now sees twenty to forty percent of all releases returned from CD retailers.
Better opportunities for new artists, especially due to the elimination of minimum production runs to facilitate distribution or CD sales to turn a profit.
A sharp reduction in transaction costs with customers and greatly enhanced ability for the labels to engage in direct marketing and data gathering.
As point 3 of the above listing of benefits indicates, utilization of P2P distribution models provides additional and very substantial costs savings over central server models. When consumers enter into a paying relationship with services that use P2P for commercial distribution, they basically bargain to share a portion of their bandwidth for Internet connectivity and their hard drive for content storage in exchange for a substantially lower cost of service. A series of white papers available at the CenterSpan website13 documents the magnitude of these savings over central server distribution models - bandwidth distribution costs savings of about two-thirds for file downloads and ninety percent for streaming media (webcasts). P2P also pushes content out to the edges of the Internet where it can be assembled and transmitted quickly, an especially important feature for large media files like games and video. While a number of webcasters have begun to switch to P2P business models, the major labels and studios have largely chosen to ignore these potential benefits. One can only guess that they've been drinking too much of their own kool-aid and automatically associate P2P with piracy rather than prosperity. Placing content, especially DRM-protected content, on a P2P network does not lead to loss of control over that content but to regaining control over consumer wants and expectations by adopting the economic model that can satisfy market demand for a breadth of quality-assured and conveniently accessible media at the lowest feasible price point - regardless of whether the pricing relationship is charge per unit, limited subscription, or "all you can eat".
Brilliant Digital Entertainment, Inc., a Los Angeles-based business partner of Sharman Networks, announced just ten days ago that it had surpassed the 75 million license mark for content downloaded across the music, game/software and video categories. These copyright protected and secure files were downloaded via their Altnet TopSearch technology by users of the Kazaa Media Desktop software. For example, more than 25,000 secure games and software had been sold even when the same version is available for free in an un-secure format, indicating that you certainly can "compete with free". Last fall, Microsoft used Altnet to distribute copies of its new Windows Media 9 audio and video software to Kazaa users, in a demonstration of both improved reproduction capabilities and anti-piracy features. Commenting on the experiment, the Director of Microsoft's Windows Media division said, "We're really interested in how peer-to-peer networks can be used for the legitimate distribution of content.... the number of [authorized] downloads has been pretty promising and actually has been surprisingly high".14
- P2P Calls in Air Strikes
- Published: March 28, 2003
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- Section: Sci/Tech
- Filed Under: Sci/Tech: Internet, Music: News, Video: News
- Writer: Eric Olsen
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this was great i am happy to see that others are benifiting to open mindness
of new technologies/ and sad to see that the world is all about price gouging/ worries of hollywood suicide and most inportant greed. I believe point in case
as a consumer of movies and music and will come straight out and say it as no one else will -fear of are goverment I guess.
1. movies-are so many experience good and bad /sad and happy -and so many experinces have been held on the cinimatic screen exploited/ and life situations to catastrophies of floods/earthquakes to aliens and how we view them. theaters are great experinces
but some times the translation is lost
and can only be gained by home expirence . thanks to technolgy we have that choice. are own tiny theater -surround
speakers /flat screen tv's -can you accually blame people for not wanting to sit in a theatre were some lady smells and has a crying baby. also might i add
that downloading of a movie is a differn't experiance all together-you have this wierd tech-feeling you get that we accually have moved into the future 2004. That u can not belive that u are accually watching this on a computer and quite an overwellming feeling just ask the executives of the movie industry /when they wanted to know exactly what was going on with the p2p
and one them said ooh let me show u and downloaded the matrix revolutions. so point in case no matter if u are watching it on a hollywood screen or
a computer screen-if u like what u watched -its most likly going to influince you to purchase it on dvd.
(mundanity i love it.)
1. big fish-saw in theatre -bought it on dvd
2. finding nemo-down·load·ed-bought it on dvd
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Music it enriches are lives its one thing everyone agrees on -just not the form/ rap/hip-hop/ and boy bands and fake corporation meglaconglomerates
are now choosing the way we are to listen to music/ and how we are to view
who's hot and who's not. show's like american idol that cuts people's dreams and hopes down to size that does not fit the profile in fashion/and music style are outcasted. music should not be this way/ 2004 music terms are lets take the-sex out /no drugs/ hay what about just the rock and we can sell it as is.
nope it just doen't happen that way . some of the best groups like the sex-pistols were wacked out of their minds and made the best music. can u
imagine what john lennon would have been
like without drugs. the groups that no
one will hear such as revolver exept in small circles. here's my biggest point I own 3000 cd's used to have 2000 tapes
but traded them in for cd's. but still downloaded music to hear the new upcoming bands that no one wanted u to hear too controversial i guess. And help
people to experince music that they would not open up to. and vice versa
I have helped a 50 year old man to gain music back that his ex-threw out and thought he would never hear ever again.
Some of this music i downloaded I thought was good but not good enough to buy-as the letter to senator murry states just samplings never albums.
in a couple of cases was given full albums/ but one was the new mattalica and it just sucked sooooo bad that i gave it away. the other a new anthrax album-which i kept but plan to buy or get it at a pawn shop for the cover art .
and info in the jacket. so bottom line
music is music whatever the jonra. i have been buying cd's so long and also enjoy finding groups on the net like maroon 5 /overkill and d.r.i / groups not many listen too. last point -distrubution of these kind of music
can be bought but are hard to find it's either bidding on ebay for em-or special order. just try and find scars of the crucifix -from deicide not a liked group but hay someone listens to it.
thanks for the time/ viva la p2p controversy and the history that is made.