From: Roland Dobbins (no email)
Date: Sat Jan 13 2007 - 21:11:32 EST
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.
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Roland Dobbins <> // 408.527.6376 voice
Technology is legislation.
-- Karl Schroeder
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