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A Future Economics of Non-Physical Goods
I've been working in the P2P universe now for about as long as it has existed and the 'copyright problem' is still unsolved. The 'problem' is that it is so easy to copy files and as bandwidth and storage grows in size and shrinks in cost videos, music, books, etc flood onto the networks. Of course, at its essense this is a great thing. The problem is that in some cases people are not paying. I am increasingly convinced that users are mainly attracted to the lack of friction to discover, locate and obtain these intangible things. The 'freeness' is not the big thing - although cost is certainly an issue.
The most popular response is to prevent the distrbution of these non-physical goods over P2P, IRC, IM, email, etc - fighting a very natural market place.
I am fascinated with the model that surrenders to it and goes all the way. What if users continued to take over the distribution of media and additionally took over the selling? I am sure most users would prefer to do the right thing and pay for media if the price was right - especially if they could earn money by being a part of the distribution channel. This is the 'User as Partner' model rather than the 'User as Criminal' model. It is eBay meets Kazaa.
I am very interested in Weed because it was the first technical solution to this kind of model, but it is still rooted in DRM and consumers may not take to it. Recently, Faircopy came along. This only encrypts the files for distrbution, bet the user ends up with a more portable file of the content owner's choice.
Today I read this on the BBC site. Wow! The Zopa model is a piece of this puzzle also.
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I've been working in the P2P universe now for about as long as it has existed and the 'copyright problem' is still unsolved. The 'problem' is that it is so easy to copy files and as bandwidth and storage grows in size and shrinks in cost videos, music, books, etc flood onto the networks. Of course, at its essense this is a great thing. The problem is that in some cases people are not paying. I am increasingly convinced that users are mainly attracted to the lack of friction to discover, locate and obtain these intangible things. The 'freeness' is not the big thing - although cost is certainly an issue.
The most popular response is to prevent the distrbution of these non-physical goods over P2P, IRC, IM, email, etc - fighting a very natural market place.
I am fascinated with the model that surrenders to it and goes all the way. What if users continued to take over the distribution of media and additionally took over the selling? I am sure most users would prefer to do the right thing and pay for media if the price was right - especially if they could earn money by being a part of the distribution channel. This is the 'User as Partner' model rather than the 'User as Criminal' model. It is eBay meets Kazaa.
I am very interested in Weed because it was the first technical solution to this kind of model, but it is still rooted in DRM and consumers may not take to it. Recently, Faircopy came along. This only encrypts the files for distrbution, bet the user ends up with a more portable file of the content owner's choice.
Today I read this on the BBC site. Wow! The Zopa model is a piece of this puzzle also.
Like what you're reading? Subscribe to my feed.
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Movable Type 4.0 Everything here is my personal opinion.