[LINK] Huston: 'The Future Internet and Peer to Peer'

[Roger Clarke]

At 17:55 +1000 25/6/07, Howard Lowndes wrote:
>Methinks that Geoff has just gotten himself in the sights of the 
>RIAA and MPAA.

Nah, their members are too busy signing up to P2P networks.

I wrote at:
http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/EC/Web2C.html#SS

4.3 Storage Syndication

"The previous sections have outlined the ways in which Web 2.0 sets 
out to exploit and 'monetise' publicly available content, and 
people's requests for access to it. But the movement may be in the 
process of leveraging Web-users' storage facilities as well.

"Peer-to-peer (P2P) architectures are complementing longstanding 
client-server architecture, and, judging by the large proportion of 
total Internet traffic attributed to P2P networks, P2P may even be in 
the process of replacing client-server as the dominant architecture. 
This has been most noticeable in the areas of entertainment content, 
where, since Napster in 1998, a great deal of material has been 
shared among consumers in defiance of copyright law.

"A new phase has begun. The success of Apple iTunes, the limited 
success of litigation threats by the Recording Industry Association 
of America (RIAA) against P2P operators and particularly against 
consumers, and the ongoing use and maturation of P2P, have together 
forced content-owning corporations' hands. At long last, the 
feature-film industry began negotiating with BitTorrent in 2005, in 
order to apply the technology to legal, for-fee reticulation of video 
(BitTorrent 2006). And in 2006, the music industry finally got over 
its years of denial, and entered into an accommodation with major P2P 
providers Sharman and Altnet.

"In short, P2P is becoming 'mainstreamed' and respectable. P2P does, 
after all, have some attractive features for content-providers. One 
is the avoidance of their own server-farms and network-connections 
becoming congestion-points and single-points-of-failure. Another is 
the transfer of costs to consumers by utilising their storage-devices 
and bandwidth.

"There are many potential applications for P2P beyond illegal and 
legal music and video entertainment, including audio, image and video 
related to news and education, emergency management information, 
urgent virus signatures and security-related software patches (Clarke 
2006). A further category of content that is already stored on P2P 
users' devices is the paid advertisements that fund the operations of 
the P2P networks. The advertisements are reticulated through the same 
highly distributed network as the content itself.

"Advertising syndication and storage syndication are natural 
partners. As P2P extends into new markets, and as the P2P field 
becomes dominated by for-profit corporations eager to supplement 
fee-for-service with advertising revenue, the space on users' disks 
appears likely to be exploited by corporations, possibly 
non-consensually, but at least with only limited consumer 
understanding about what the software licensing terms authorise."

-- 
Roger Clarke                  http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/
			            
Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd      78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA
                    Tel: +61 2 6288 1472, and 6288 6916
mailto:Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au                http://www.xamax.com.au/

Visiting Professor in Info Science & Eng  Australian National University
Visiting Professor in the eCommerce Program      University of Hong Kong
Visiting Professor in the Cyberspace Law & Policy Centre      Uni of NSW