[LINK] Huston: 'The Future Internet and Peer to Peer'
Roger Clarke
Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au
Mon Jun 25 18:28:46 AEST 2007
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
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