On the Legitimate Uses of "Peer-to-Peer" Technology
“I used a web browser once and I believe there was no globally centralized server involved at any point. Does that count?”
The demonizing of “peer-to-peer” file sharing is as absurd as Jack Valenti’s demonizing of the video cassette recorder was twenty years ago. At that time, the medium was young and Valenti and his motion picture industry ilk were unable to see past the most basic use of the device. The most famous quotes from Valenti on the VCR as follow:
“We are facing a very new and a very troubling assault ... and we are facing it from a thing called the video cassette recorder and its necessary companion called the blank tape. We are going to bleed and bleed and hemorrhage, unless this Congress at least protects one industry ... whose total future depends on its protection from the savagery and the ravages of this machine [the VCR].”
“[Some say] that the VCR is the greatest friend that the American film producer ever had. I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.”
The absurdity of the quote speaks for itself. The VCR and other home-viewing media wound up injecting more profit into the movie business than had ever been seen before. In 2002, according to the DVD Entertainment Group, domestic consumers spent $20.3 billion on the purchase or rental of DVDs and VHS, as opposed to the mere $9.3 billion spent on seeing movies in theatres, and with better margins for the studios, too.
From 1983 to the present, the movie industry has adapted to the flow of new technology and has been rewarded greatly for it. When Congress decided not to protect an aging industry against new technology which hardly, in reality threatened it at all, big business won out by adaptation.
Need I remind my readers that at the time of its arrival there was no “legitimate” use for the VCR? Nobody sold content for it, yet. It was all DIY because companies were too busy fighting it to realize the opportunities available. Only after the Sony decision was legitimate content produced. Much the same, only recently are the legitimate uses for P2P becoming apparent.
A fellow named Joe Stewart has a great page pointing out actual, existent, and extremely profitable legitimate uses for P2P. Stewart shows how MandrakeSoft knew that distributing its free linux distribution would be extremely costly, and thus has used Bittorrent for every release since 9.2 (I just finished installing 10.0 on my box), saving tens of thousands (maybe more) in bandwidth costs.
The page’s other examples are equally important and indicative of a great asset to those who choose to use it. Another example I’ve heard people discuss where P2P could have been used but was not is that of Microsoft’s recent distribution of XP Service Pack 2. Terabyte upon terabyte was distributed in short work, and MS probably could have saved its shareholders a million bucks in bandwidth costs over a period of about three days with the use of Bittorrent.
What good is technological development if the innovators are banned from the marketplace in favor of stodgy incumbents? If Dell had been banned from competing with IBM, thousands of companies would have missed out for years on the cost-saving manufacturing methodologies we all know and love Dell for, and we’d probably still be paying a few hundred dollars more per computer than we are now (still today few companies have realized fully the extent of cost savings exhibited by Dell and other “six-sigma” or “just-in-time” manufacturers). Introducing one new technology, technique, or company into the marketplace can show the larger companies exactly how they can save money, increase revenues, and make their customers happier. It is not the fault of the little guy that they are too dumb to realize it in the first place.
Why should Congress make a different choice this time around, except to line its pockets? It is not the business of government to support dying business models. It is instead the role of government to support an environment where consumers can vote with their dollars and tell the MPAA and the RIAA “we don’t want to pay these prices for content we know we can get cheaper over the net. You’d better adapt and meet the market half way on this stuff, or you’re going to lose.”
The demonizing of “peer-to-peer” file sharing is as absurd as Jack Valenti’s demonizing of the video cassette recorder was twenty years ago. At that time, the medium was young and Valenti and his motion picture industry ilk were unable to see past the most basic use of the device. The most famous quotes from Valenti on the VCR as follow:
“We are facing a very new and a very troubling assault ... and we are facing it from a thing called the video cassette recorder and its necessary companion called the blank tape. We are going to bleed and bleed and hemorrhage, unless this Congress at least protects one industry ... whose total future depends on its protection from the savagery and the ravages of this machine [the VCR].”
“[Some say] that the VCR is the greatest friend that the American film producer ever had. I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.”
The absurdity of the quote speaks for itself. The VCR and other home-viewing media wound up injecting more profit into the movie business than had ever been seen before. In 2002, according to the DVD Entertainment Group, domestic consumers spent $20.3 billion on the purchase or rental of DVDs and VHS, as opposed to the mere $9.3 billion spent on seeing movies in theatres, and with better margins for the studios, too.
From 1983 to the present, the movie industry has adapted to the flow of new technology and has been rewarded greatly for it. When Congress decided not to protect an aging industry against new technology which hardly, in reality threatened it at all, big business won out by adaptation.
Need I remind my readers that at the time of its arrival there was no “legitimate” use for the VCR? Nobody sold content for it, yet. It was all DIY because companies were too busy fighting it to realize the opportunities available. Only after the Sony decision was legitimate content produced. Much the same, only recently are the legitimate uses for P2P becoming apparent.
A fellow named Joe Stewart has a great page pointing out actual, existent, and extremely profitable legitimate uses for P2P. Stewart shows how MandrakeSoft knew that distributing its free linux distribution would be extremely costly, and thus has used Bittorrent for every release since 9.2 (I just finished installing 10.0 on my box), saving tens of thousands (maybe more) in bandwidth costs.
The page’s other examples are equally important and indicative of a great asset to those who choose to use it. Another example I’ve heard people discuss where P2P could have been used but was not is that of Microsoft’s recent distribution of XP Service Pack 2. Terabyte upon terabyte was distributed in short work, and MS probably could have saved its shareholders a million bucks in bandwidth costs over a period of about three days with the use of Bittorrent.
What good is technological development if the innovators are banned from the marketplace in favor of stodgy incumbents? If Dell had been banned from competing with IBM, thousands of companies would have missed out for years on the cost-saving manufacturing methodologies we all know and love Dell for, and we’d probably still be paying a few hundred dollars more per computer than we are now (still today few companies have realized fully the extent of cost savings exhibited by Dell and other “six-sigma” or “just-in-time” manufacturers). Introducing one new technology, technique, or company into the marketplace can show the larger companies exactly how they can save money, increase revenues, and make their customers happier. It is not the fault of the little guy that they are too dumb to realize it in the first place.
Why should Congress make a different choice this time around, except to line its pockets? It is not the business of government to support dying business models. It is instead the role of government to support an environment where consumers can vote with their dollars and tell the MPAA and the RIAA “we don’t want to pay these prices for content we know we can get cheaper over the net. You’d better adapt and meet the market half way on this stuff, or you’re going to lose.”