P2P Manifesto

Elite Member Joined: Dec 19, 2004 Posts: 646

P2P Manifesto: because P2P is unstoppable, positive for companies, for the market and for users

“Quantity and quality of P2P technologies are inversely proportional to the numbers of lawsuits issued to stop P2P”
3rd Monty’s Law

Content

P2P Manifesto Abstract
P2P is unstoppable
P2P is positive for Companies
P2P is positive for the market
P2P is good for users
Suggested Web Sites, Blogs, Links

Source: http://montemagno.typepad.com/p2p_manifesto/

Elite Member Joined: Dec 19, 2004 Posts: 646

P2P Manifesto Abstract:

P2P it’s a revolutionary technology. P2P is technically unstoppable.

Most of all, P2P it’s positive for companies, for the market and it’s good for users.

P2P has already proven to be an unbreakable technology.

Either server centralized systems or decentralized ones are evolving, improving every day, adding new features that makes, as a matter of fact, totally useless both complaints issued by Majors and technical surveilling countermeasures.

Companies can benefit by P2P technology both for empowering their products distribution (products, content, information, etc.) and for creating new kind of business.

Market it has been refreshed by P2P, enlarging the number of players and the market size itself.

Users enjoy sharing all possible information.

It’s natural that they have immediately adopted P2P technology, to have what they want when they want.

Without intermediation and directly from the “info owner”.

File sharing is evolving to “social sharing” where individuals share all kind of social interesting information.

The swappers of today are becoming “file networkers”, individuals capable of creating large social networks that soon will be - paradoxically - the most desired allied of the Majors.

P2P will then soon become a more complex integrated system for sharing and networking (PnetP).

P2P is here to stay.

Elite Member Joined: Dec 19, 2004 Posts: 646

1) P2P is unstoppable

P2P it’s a revolutionary and unstoppable technology.

But the greater part of the industry and many content producers are convinced of being able to arrest the peer to peer/file sharing piracy, repressing it through complaints and by controlling technology (with sophisticated DRM or creating controllable peer to peer networks).

They are mistaken.

Not for a reason of philosophical character but for a simple technical motivation:

any digital content available on a network, that in order to work needs to share data (as it is the Web), is shareable itself.

Let’s have a simple example.

Take a singer (that we will call, Neo). He has just ended to realize its last album.

Now Neo wants to sell it and wants also to avoid that it ends in the “dark circuits” of file sharing, where tons of kids would start swapping it free of charge, without giving to Neo not 1 $ .

What kind of options for Neo then?

The first safest solution, is to close in a safe his MAC, with annexed Pro Tools and all the other used technology in order to create its music.

In this way every byte containing his artistic creation would not be swappable (since it’s very protect from its safe), unless expert thieves will successfully enter his house, force the safe and start burning a DVD with the content of his hard disk! (we can for the moment omit this hypothesis...).

Unfortunately in this way nobody would hear the beautiful music of Neo.

Nobody could appreciate it and consequently nobody will buy it.

Neo must necessarily then let his music listenable to somebody (or he better change business).

But here is where the problems begin.

If Neo decide to distribute his music on vinyl or perform only live concerts or decide to give his music only on the radio, well someone can easily record it, digitalize it and quickly share it with other users.

And if Neo try to distribute it on a CD, but without protection?

In this case in order to put it on Winmx it will be not even necessary to convert it from analogical to digital (it is already ready!).

Not a good scenario?

Ok Neo has got the solution; he’ll protect his music with a DRM (Digital Righ Management) system, powered by an important specialized software house !

Sorry Neo but in this in this case you’ll surely catch up 2 goals:

1) you’ll deeply annoy your fans (and in the long run you’ll lose always more);

2) you’ll delay, perhaps, of some minutes/hours/days the official insertion of your music into file sharing circuits.

This system (DRM), that it would seem the safest at the first look, deserves one deeper thought. How is it possible to prevent to a customer to unblock a DRM protection?

Are you not convinced Neo? Just read Microsoft Research DRM talk by Cory Doctorow and you’ll understand better the problem.

Shortly: “DRM systems are usually broken in minutes, sometimes days. Rarely, months. It's not because the people who think them up are stupid. It's not because the people who break them are smart. It's not because there's a flaw in the algorithms. At the end of the day, all DRM systems share a common vulnerability: they provide their attackers with ciphertext, the cipher and the key. At this point, the secret isn't a secret anymore.”

What can then make Neo in order to avoid that its music get "stolen" ?

Nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

Corporations should have been thinking about this problem, years and years ago.

Before the digital era. Now it’s too late.

We live in a world deeply based on the concept of "data sharing ".

If you think that today a digital content will not be shared, think again.

“But Majors are issuing hundreds of complaint to stop illegal sharing”.

Well do you really think that complaints will really stop p2p/file sharing?

One recent useful example.

The well famous web site Suprnova.org, containing also links to copyrighted files, it has recently been closed following a legal issue (to be lately reopened but without torrents and redirecting users to the Exeem project).

How long it took to restore Suprnova alike web site ?

Here you find a list of available sites after some 24 hours.

Furthermore we can basically say that today, there 2 real alternatives:

1) Take back technology of let’s say 20 years.

Unconnect users (deactivate their Internet connection), produce armored pc (to avoid all sort of external connections), blind all kind of wireless/cable data transmissions and stop commercializing all kind of digital support capable of creating offline file sharing (DVD, CD, burners, Personal Video Recorder, etc.).

Does it sounds possible to you?

2) Content producers understand that their business is in a new era.

And they adapt themselves.

And they try to figure out how to invent a new business model according to technological evolution.

According to what their customers want: share.

Elite Member Joined: Dec 19, 2004 Posts: 646

2) P2P is positive for Companies

P2P is today “the” big chance for companies willing to distribute their digital products or building up new kind of business.

If you’re a Company producing multimedia contents (video, music, etc.) try to figure out this concept:

P2P is simply a dream for your Company.

Why?

Because P2P gives to your company a direct, permanent, unmediated, communication channel with your customers.

And your customers can become you personal viral marketing supporters, redistributing your contents: and it’s free.

Well this is P2P.

Did you have the same possibilities in the past?

Did you get this unparalleled chance in the 90’s ?

Today a Company can reach users all over at the world, almost for free, and can have them to actively support their product (for free and on their customers time and expenses).

It’s a huge opportunity.

For this reason many Linux distributions are already offered via p2p (Debian. Gentoo. Knoppix. Fedora/RedHat. Ubuntu. Dynebolic. Mandrake. Slackware. WhiteBox. FreeBSD NetBSD ); as a matter of fact to distribute gigs and gigs of software is only possible using dvd or by bandwidth’s expensive downloads.

But if you adopt BitTorrent protocol, for example, then it lowers your distribution costs tremendously.

Bittorrent deserves merit to be a disruptive technology able to transform a Web problem (more users downloading = more costs) in a revolutionary benefit (more users download = better it is).

It save your money and it open new scenarios about what people can do with contents: people can become a media (quick suggest: if you haven’t read “We The Media” by Dan Gillmor…read it immediately).

One more example about P2P distribution advantage: Coral project.

If you never heard about how Coral it works: “a peer-to-peer DNS layer transparently redirects browsers to participating caching proxies, which in turn cooperate to minimize load on the source web server. These volunteer sites that run Coral automatically replicate content as a side effect of users accessing it, improving its availability.”

This is the kind of project (others will come soon), that can save your company a huge amount of money.

If you are thinking to distribute a large video over the web, you better have a look at this kind of systems.

And yes, they are based on peer to peer.

On the other side P2P has opened new business scenarios.

Skype is the most fabulous example and others are coming.

But the most impressive plus, is that with P2P technology you can really cut distances.

Company can speed light communication and create a new business order, potentially capable of subvert the existent hierarchy (when a TV Skype will come ?).

If you still believe that P2P is useful only for kids swapping music, again: think again and have a look, for example, at the partial list of Substantial Non-infringing Use in Peer-to-Peer applications that you find here.

Radio, television, educational purpose, science, news, political: the only limit is imagination.

You can start up a business benefiting of P2P, almost in every human being fields.

And you can succeed.

Elite Member Joined: Dec 19, 2004 Posts: 646

3)P2P is positive for the market

Scarcity is gone.

Today digital world offers an unprecedented freedom of choice.

There was a very good 1,5 years old post by Seth Godin, well representing the new scenario:

“ The point is this: The media business was built on scarcity. Scarcity of spectrum. Scarcity of hits. Scarcity caused by copyright and limited shelf space. Consumers hate scarcity. But you and I know that monopolists love scarcity. When consumers have fewer choices, a monopoly thrives.

Scarcity made it easy to get fat and happy. But almost overnight, the scarcity on which you built your media monopolies started to disappear. All of a sudden, there are about a billion channels available on the Web. There's a movie theater in any home with a DVD player. Amazon.com has infinite shelf space, so retail market power is now a myth. It's hard to charge take-it-or-leave-it prices when the consumer can just leave it...

...Here's the problem: You monopolists appear to believe that you have a right to business as usual. You believe that if the rules of the marketplace change, it's not fair. You believe that you somehow deserve the private planes, the great parties, and the obscene profits. You also seem to think that if your monopoly were to go away, so would all of the good ideas.”

You know what does it mean?

It means that Market is changed, technology is changed, consumers approach is changed, business is changed.

And there is no way back. Like it or not.

Also for this reason a digital distribution approach based on DRM has no future.

Because consumers can just “leave it” and decide to buy products better fitting what they really want.

In this context P2P it has been a disruptive technology able to open a breach in the oligarchy of media business.

Today, for the first time, new player (you?) can step into the media business thanks to p2p technology, produce music, video (and all the other kind of multimedia content) autonomously and become famous, adopting P2P technologies to distribute it via Internet.

But if the “opened market” P2P impact is obvious, a side effect benefit of P2P on the market it is not.

Most important Media business players are falling into a “digital technological cage”, mostly based on DRM systems.

The reason is simple.

Core business of Microsoft and other DRM providers it’s not music or movie: it’s software (or hardware).

Consequently there is not real attention to protect the Media industry or its prices and rules; but the interest is to create a software/hardware business, even if conflicting with Media business.

Apple example and the well famous success of Itunes/Ipod is significative.

Music it has been sold at 0,99 cents, with million of downloads. But Apple business is selling hardware (Ipod) and software (for Mac platform); it’s not music.

So how can online juke box survive selling music at 0,99 cents if they don’t have revenue by alternative sources (like Ipod for Apple)? And again: how many Apple singers do you know? Nobody.

Because music it’s not the core business of Apple.

In this context P2P will reveal to be helpful right to the Media companies; when this corporation will realize the digital cage they in, they will start looking around for alternative technical distribution solutions, allowing to avoid the DRM and connect directly with users.

Media business – same of all the other businesses - will have to front an highly interconnected future, made of social networks, instantaneous multidimensional, multiplatform, delocalized, communications.

A shared future.

The first unavoidable step will be that file sharing will evolve to social sharing, a context in which the exchange of data it will comprise hundred of other sort of data exchange (contacts, bookmarks, jobs data, etc).

With social sharing it will not be more imaginable to limit the sharing of data, audio or video, drown as they will be inside of other data and macro structures of data.

It will not be possible anymore to control the data exchange, in an atmosphere made of billions of exchanges every minute, everywhere and of any type (also with mesh networking technologies and similar).

Tracking the sharing will become impossible, because will exist not only the web; a multitude of different devices will be the Net and part of the Net, in the same time.

P2P will move towards a shape of “PnetP”, where it will be integrated into wider data sharing, inside more and more structured social networks.

Also the Music and Movie business they will move from product to the service, as it’s already happened for other categories of digitalized products.

New kind of licenses will be introduced, mostly from the software industry model; music with license GPL will be normally produced or under Creative Commons.

Will emerge a new figure: “file networkers”.

File networkers will be all the persons able to create social networks - as an example - musical, constituted from thousands of contacts, endorsements and connections.

The number and the quality of the contacts will decide the hierarchy of file networkers.

File networkers will become an important media business authority, the expert prompter; the unreplaceable guide in order to find the way, among the infinity of available contents.

To have the best file networkers, will be the challenge of the PnetP market of tomorrow.

The swappers of today will become the most wanted “file networkers”, paradoxically, the most desired allied of the Majors.

How many files are you able to share?

With who?

Which quality?

How fast?

The information that today characterize a "criminal", tomorrow will characterize the "go to guy" of Media business.

Create wide and authoritative artistic social networks, through which spread their own jobs, will be one of the main challenges that the Artists and the Majors will have to face.

Elite Member Joined: Dec 19, 2004 Posts: 646

4) P2P is good for users

Users love to share.

All the most interesting and innovative web projects - and the Net itself –, are based on sharing principles:

- images sharing (Flickr, Google Picasa)

- friends sharing (social networking: Friendster, Orkut, Tribe, ecc)

- business contact sharing (business networking: Linkedin)

- job contacts sharing (job networking: Monster.com)

- video sharing (coming soon Openmedia project, but also Internet Archive)

- news/info sharing (reblogging platforms)

- audio sharing(Voip P2P, like Skype; podcasting; etc.)

- web sites information sharing (for example social bookmarking, Delicious)

- generally… data sharing (

Creative Commons, Prodigem, Coral, etc.).

Sharing, is an attractive activity because gives the P2P users: autonomy and freedom.

Autonomy to decide what to share with others. Freedom to do it.

P2P as a matter of fact is the technical key to transform normal users into media.

This is the Genial intuition of Dan Gillmor’s book, “We The Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People”.

To understand that users can become a media themselves.

Today media world is changed, because normal users can create their own news, music, video, TV show and distribute it around the world from their laptop.

Take the recent SEA Tsunami example.

Most of the video and photos arriving from Tsunami zones in the first days, are arrived trough the web.

Blogs like Waxy posted link to amateur videos, tough used to normally have millions of users, got hit with a spike of thousands of requests and was temporarily off-line.

Then video where uploaded on Internet Archive, but well…same result; also the Archive got problems in serving so many users looking for videos.

What’s happen then? Videos started circulating in .torrent format (in addition to availability of the same video on mirrored web sites) and the situation went back to normality (do you remember Bittorrent rule? More people downloading > better it is).

This Tsunami disaster it has been very important to understand the limits of the web and the future of content distribution.

When Bittorent alike protocols will be normally adopted (and projects like Blogtorrent or Prodigem are going in the right direction, to simplify all the process), then it will be very easy for users to record an event, put it on their pc and give it to the world.

Without hassles of bandwidth problems, related costs, unavailability of the server and all these today issues.

Remember: freedom and autonomy are priceless for the users.

And P2P is born right to offer freedom and autonomy.

P2P is here to stay.