Some of the latest articles on slyck.com pretty much sum-up the situation in the world of Peer-to-Peer :
First, it appears that in 3 years of legal actions against so-called pirates, the majors have all but reached their goal of stopping P2P growth. Peer-to-Peer is considered to have reached an all-time high, although it is very hard to measure: in fact, the BitTorrent community is probably the most efficient and de-centralized but it isn't even a network, and this population cannot be measured by any means! What is measured by companies such as CacheLogic is the amount of bandwidth it represents, and in that field BitTorrent is by far the leading the lot.
Second, the news in the P2P world are dull and sad and boring. We mostly hear of the end of this or that old P2P network and the end of legal battles in the US and sometimes in Europe. And sometimes you hear about a kid being arrested for sharing music and stuff. This is probably a success for the Majors who have cloaked the P2P world in a reputation of sad and ugly legal stories.
How can you reconcile the two impressions?
- To me it is pretty clear that the networks being closed are the old-school dinosaurs: too centralized, or aging protocols. And the web-sites that get closed down are the commercial store-fronts of companies with illegal business models - although you can argue that copyright laws should evolve, displaying an illegal business-model is a good way to attract law enforcers to your door-step.
- The P2P populations that are surging are those based on open-source proven latest generation protocols (eMule and BitTorrent) which are not sustained by any one centralized company with an illegal business model. eMule survived the fall of eDonkey2000 because it is developed by non-profit open-source developers, just like Azureus (heavy-weight BitTorrent client). And the mainline BitTorrent protocol remains open-source, even though BitTorrent Inc. is protecting its trademark and developing a new legal business model in collaboration with rights-holders such as Warner.
So where is this leading us?
This is leading us into a new era of Peer-to-Peer. An era where Peer-to-Peer, as a technology, is blending into many applications, without people even noticing it. It's not a story of P2P networks anymore. It's a world of applications and services.
We have seen that in court no argument stands to label P2P technology as illegal. Now that the advantages of using P2P have been proven to be manyfold, and the technology having matured over the years, Peer-to-Peer is now entering the industrial age.
And I believe that the slow news lately is the sign of a shift which is about to happen, maybe only in a few months. A shift in people's minds, and probably a point of no return.
One more step to go
I believe that two issues are being solved right now, enabing Peer-to-Peer to go mainstream:
- Ease of use: beyond geeks, who can use eMule and Azereus? right! Let P2P software be as easy or even easier to use as e-mail. That's what we intend to do with Podmailer anyway.
- Fear of getting sued: a good image is required to gain acceptance. So let's build new brands and new business models that no one can condemn - everyone will feel more secure.
Let's get it right, let's build it, and they will come!
Comments