Scary Signals

'P2P is a demand signal from the market,' says Cory Doctorow.  If that's the case, what are we to make of The Pirate Bay conviction last week?  For those who don't know, Pirate Bay is one of the world's largest Bittorrent search engines.  It allows people to search through the gazillions of TV shows, films and other entertainment that sit on the web.  This content is broken up into tiny parts and stored across distributed networks of computers, until someone makes a viewing request at which point Bittorrent or another P2P technology will draw the pieces together and put them back in the right order, ready to watch as a film or TV show.  The problem, of course, is that this distribution method is not sanctioned by the people who make and own the content, most of which appears without any advertising.  That's the advertising that pays the wages of the people who make the films and TV shows in the first place.  In the Pirate Bay case these good folk were represented by the IFPI (aka Hollywood).  So why does the world's entertainment industry persist with legal recourse, instead of listening to the 'demand signals' being sent to them through P2P?  The main reason is that P2P file-sharers have been seen as people who steal valuable IP. They must, therefore, be treated as thieves.  But that's misreading the signals.  The real driving force behind the growth of P2P is that it's convenient and gives people what they want, when they want it.  What if you don't want to wait a week to see the next episode of 24?  Or maybe a friend abroad has told you about a great new movie and you want to see it now so you can discuss it?  And, vitally, P2P is also a way for regular folk to distribute their own content and pursue the rock star dream.  Furthermore, with one third of all broadband users worldwide admitting they use P2P there's a massive network effect in place.  One that the entertainment industry will probably never be able to reverse.  However, the truth is that all of these signals are just too terrifying for people in the industry to listen to.  As Mark notes about the latest Digital Britian bashola, many executives in the entertainment industry and beyond, 'are paid to keep the current model going and just don't want to see the digital technology as anything but a means to turbo-charge the current model. It's just too scary to contemplate anything else.'  And this is why Pirate Bay is just one part of the massive bout of creative destruction occuring in our time.  After all, there are plenty of others perfectly happy to listen to the market signals if the uncumbents are too scared.  And despite this court case, Pirate Bay and others like it just keep on rolling, allowing people to create personal media platforms and services of their own design.  As Doc Searls says, 'in networked economies the demand side supplies itself'.

Comments

[Che Guevara]

"allowing people to create personal media platforms and services of their own design."

Woteva - as long as I can keep downloading DVD quality movies for free I'm happy.

[Charles]

There are interesting ways that brands could get involved with seeding content on P2P.

[James Cherkoff]

Thanks Che - tell it like it is! ;-)

Hey Charles, yes the challenge, methinks, is to create content that works in a P2P world. And that you want to see popping up on Limewire et al...

[Ian]

Charles... indeed you are correct. Check out Groove Armada's deal with Bacardi/B-live. Kinda beats the hell out of "True Music", huh, James ;-)

Stratos

http://iancollingwood.posterous.com

[James Cherkoff]

Whaaassuuup...? ;-)

[Brad Bell]

James wrote:
"The problem, of course, is that this distribution method is not sanctioned by the people who make and own the content, most of which appears without any advertising. That's the advertising that pays the wages of the people who make the films and TV shows in the first place."

I am again reminded of iCraveTV.com from the mid 90s. This internet service took a page out of the cable companies' "How To Start A Rebroadcasting Industry" manual and began rebroadcasting TV over the internet - ads and all. In a bid to enforce complete control, the cable companies, TV networks, and Hollywood turned the lawyers loose on them and inadvertently set the stage for P2P media sharing. Idiocy and hypocrisy - particularly from the cable companies - breeds more of the same.

(They could have instead licensed the rebroadcasters in a similar manner to the cable companies and raised advertising rates - and saved the jobs of poor creative people who make the exciting film and TV products which make our lives bearable.)

My wife just shared her new favourite site with me: Read It, Swap It. P2P book sharing. It's just like The Pirate Bay, but it's analog. Instead of hosting torrent files, the site hosts lists of peoples' books. Instead of downloading digital media, these literary pirates use the Royal Mail to transfer books to each other. I'm not sure whether the site should be given a commendation for recycling or imprisoned for facilitating this criminal conspiracy. And what of the Royal Mail's complicity? Jail time for Lizzy?

[James Cherkoff]

Thanks Brad, that is a particularly wonderful example! I wonder if a site called Watch It, Swap It for DVD sharing would attract quite the furore that P2P has. Not until it becamr big enough to hurt Hollywood's bottom line, I suspect...

[John Dodds]

Read It Swap It and Watch It Swap It require effort and postal costs for their distribution. They're labour intensive in comparison to digital versions. That's a crucial difference. It also implies a degree of amateurism in contrast with the professional pirate. That's the difference the industry sees.

[James Cherkoff]

Mmmm, so the industry is only worried about systems that distribute at scale? The problem with that approach is that P2P was once small...