Related link: http://www.eff.org/news/archives/2004_12.php
Over a year ago I wrote and published an article for the Producer's Guild of America on file-sharing's effects on the Motion Picture Industry, including the television industry. At that time I felt it would be three to five years before the industry began to feel the effects of disruptive technologies, like P2P and TiVo. I now feel I should have said one to two years.
Within the article I stated my opinion that a majority of industries have had to deal with the effects of the internet. From bookstores to Wall Street, each industry has had to make adjustments in order to adapt. The Entertainment Industry has been able to avoid adapting...until recently.
I think the best way to remove the "threat" of P2P networks is to embrace them. I heard a saying a while back that has stuck with me: "If I make my enemy my friend, do I not destroy him?"* Essentially, I feel the Motion Picture Industry needs to find a way to befriend the P2P networks.
There are already many concepts on how to embrace P2P being discussed publicly. There are a lot of very smart and very creative people discussing possible solutions. However, and more importantly, Jun Group is doing more than talking.
Within the last week, Jun Group released The Scene as a P2P-only television show. It has been reported that there were hundreds of thousands of downloads, within a few hours of its release. Imagine what could happen if a large studio released a show...
...or if you did.
* If anyone knows who said that, please let me know.
Do you think the Entertainment Industry should embrace P2P networks? If so, how?
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Read More Entries by Joshua Paul.
P2P suprem court
You know the funny thing is no one cares about the people that look for the music you cant buy anymore. thats why most of the people choose lime wire or kazaa or somthing like that. People dont live in the now, they live in the past. Everyone i know is trying to get songs you cant buy anymore or they have a vinale and want it onto a cd or what not. Isnt tapeing your favorite show on a VHS the same thing? Then you let your friend barrow it wow there is P2P. please shed some light on this issue. if the want to ban P2P for ever then get rid or the VHS cd's cassetes video cameras hell ban computers while there at it. The government cant stop the world by saying you cant P2P. Its a new part of life that someone thought it would be a good idea then matellica said this has to stop becuase a fan wasnt buying there music but simply downloading it.
P2P networks don't want friends...
I agree that there will always be underground networks. However, I disagree that P2P doesn't want friends. If "Survivor" was only distributed via P2P I think the P2P networks would distribute the file(s). In fact, the nature of P2P requires that they do (whether people download it is another story).
I think there are a number of business models in the P2P space, especially for video entertainment. There's no reason videos can't be distributed for free within a P2P environment. Network television is free and that model works. Just because the distribution mechanism is different doesn't mean it won't work.
BitTorrent hashes files, so you know what you are downloading is what you intend to download. So if I, or someone else, produces a show *with* commercials and release the file via BT, people who download the show *will* receive the commercials. They can then fast-forward through them, a la TiVo.
Sure, people could edit out the commercial and redistribute the show, but that's a lot of work for something that is already free and easily obtainable.
As for Napster, as far as I can tell it is no longer a P2P service; it is a music service. Napster exists in name only. So, I don't agree with your statement about their fate after they "cleaned up their act," since they're using a completely different business model.
You are wrong about iTunes. The service is a success and your number "of a few million (at most) purchases" is way off. In less than two years they've sold more than 150 million downloads. That is more than a drop in the bucket...and Wall Street seems to agree.
The decline of CD sales has been debunked by a number of University and independent studies. Some even point to sales increasing. Yet, even if sales have gone down, there are other forces at work, like a recession. It would be hard to pinpoint an *entire* dropoff to one force in the market.
Piracy is not P2P. The two are different. Although *a lot* of people, like your ex-colleague's son, are using it for piracy, that does not mean Grokster, Morpheus, et al should be held responsible for the actions of the users. If they are, then there is a slippery slope involving alcohol, gun, DVD recorder, and video camera manufacturers (among many, many others) being responsible for their consumer's actions as well.
My business approach to the specific situation of your friends son would be to produce manga shows and give them away for free on the P2P networks. I'd also release associated products in toy stores, sell them online on my website, and strike a deal with with some fast food chain to build the hype. (Then people can create "knockoffs" and sell them at swap meets!)
Again, just my opinion.
P2P networks don't want friends...
Or rather the majority of the users of those networks are unwilling to pay for things they can get free.
This means there will always be underground networks which explode into general use as soon as an established one starts cooperating with the industry and starts preventing pirated content from being distributed.
Napster, once the largest, now amounts to next to nothing after they cleaned up their act.
The same fate awaits other networks that take similar steps.
Apple iTunes may be a success, but the volume of a few million (at most) purchases a year it not even a drop in the ocean compared to the tens of millions of mp3s being passed over Kazaa and Bittorrent every day.
While many of the pirates claim they buy anything they like, most don't (or they don't like anything, but then why do they keep gigabytes of mp3s on CDs, DVDs and harddisks?).
The decline of CD sales has coincided with an almost equal increase in the sale of blank CDs (and a massive increase in the theft of empty CD cases and booklets from music stores). Similarly I predict a decline in DVD sales and an equally large increase in the sale of blank DVDs starting next year (if it's not already underway).
Online piracy is no longer (if it ever was) the small man downloading a bit for his personal use, maybe exchanging a track or two with friends who as a recommendation for an artist.
It's business.
An ex-colleague got the police knocking on his door one night and cart away his son's computers.
Turned out the boy was selling (through his website and specialist magazines as well as on campus at his college) large numbers of CDs and DVDs with pirated manga shows.
He downloaded those using his parents' internet connection, without their knowledge.
And he's not alone, he was part of a group trading material and synchronising their actions.
He was caught when he got greedy and installed 2 more computers to suck ever more content from the net even faster, thus tripping the ISP's alerts about suspicious levels of activity over prolonged period...