Has P2P Become a Passing Fad?

plasticmillion asks: "As the RIAA launches increasingly rabid attacks against P2P networks and users, pundits continue to debate the future of P2P. On the one hand, some argue that P2P is just a clever way to escape detection from copyright owners, like in this recent Slashdot story. Others, like Clay Shirky, make a strong case that processing is destined to move to the 'edges' of the network. I'm curious to know what Slashdot readers think: is P2P the start of a major new trend that is just getting started, or is it a passing fad that will fade once legal client/server systems for media distribution finally take hold? If the former, which of the supposed advantages of P2P over client/server systems are really significant?"

no passing fad

I'm not heavily into P2P at all, so I'm speaking out of some ignorance, but: do we now accept the RIAA's definition that P2P is synonymous with piracy? It seems to me that, even if all sharing of copyrighted music were discontinued, P2P would still have a perfectly valid place in our spectrum of networking possibilities.

(As an example, I'd like to see P2P used to maintain collaborative anti-spam blacklists, so that there wouldn't be single-point-of-failure central repositories.)

Re:no passing fad

While there may still be uses for P2P without copying copyrighted files, it is safe to say that if there were no copyrighted files on P2P systems, there would be less than 1% of the users they now have. P2P without copyrighted files would be about as popular as gopher.

Gopher?!

Damn it, I'd still *use* Gopher if people hadn't taken down all of their Gopher servers and replaced them with this "World Wide Web" crap. :P

Information via plain ol' text. I like it. No Flash ads in Gopher. :P

Re:Gopher?!

"A lot of merkin-wearing fucktard web "developers" think that it's a great way to design a page ... until you remember that there are people in the world on sub-28.8kbps internet connections."

Sure, there are plenty of people on modems. A great many of these people have some sort of high speed internet access available but choose not to get it. The other folks, well, progression.. We can't keep tailoring to the least common denominator.

A lot of people want to see cool looking web sites with animations. I think a little flash is just fine. I pay for broadband, might as well make use of it.

Besides, most web sites that aren't flash-oriented have either little flash, no flash, or the option to use no flash. And you can disable the plugin.

"For whom the 400kb flash crapplet is a serious burden (that's about 8 minutes at 14.4, folks)."

Who gives a crap. Sorry that Mr. Cell Phone modem guy won't be able to view "high bandwidth" pages, but 14.4 speeds are not normal. 28.8 modems showed up .. many years ago. 56k modems are more common. And $2. Plus, see my comments above.

"And that flash itself may need to be downloaded in the first place (someone who considers flash a burden may not have it installed until he absolutely NEEDS it)."

You aren't required to use flash at all. If you want to use Flash, then that's the price you pay.

"Then there's minor annoyances like "homestarrunner". I have no fucking clue what that is (a cartoon done in flash?)"

You do have a clue then.

" I go to the site... Flash only."

No shit. It's a fucking flash-based cartoon series.

"The stupid fuck who works on the site can't even be bothered to write three sentences in plaintext to explain what the fuck the non-Flash-using (let's just shorten that to "good") people are missing. "

So he should tailor to the people like you that don't like flash? Then don't watch it. It's flash only, it's a cartoon. I don't see how this is an issue.

If you dispise Flash so much, don't use it. If you want to enjoy some of the better flash animations out there and don't want to use flash, well, sorry but you can't have your cake and eat it too.

" I run into sites like that all the time, some of them informational in nature (homestar was just the first thing I could think of)."

I don't. Unless I'm looking for them. Most commercial sites that have flash-only versions of their sites give you the option to use a non-flash version of the site.

So okay let me get this straight. You're bitching that you need flash for a FLASH CARTOON? You're bitching because the author didn't write a message saying "Flash Only, this is a very funny cartoon. I know only 1 in 1,000,000 don't install flash, so this message is for you four guys."

Classic.

Re:no passing fad

There are some very real, very good uses for ananymous P2P; for instance, it would allow the people of China to see and share information deemed 'subversive' by their government. I expect this to be the 'killer app' of P2P in the fairly near future.

It just so happens, though, that the features that would make P2P useful for fighting represive regimes are also useful for fighting the major media companies.

Which, when I think about it, is a redundant statement.

Re:no passing fad

I couldn't have put it any better. The original news post seems to assume that peer-to-peer is synonymous with piracy. As far as that aspect goes, I don't really know the answer. As far as P2P in general goes, we're seeing many widespread uses of the technology. Peer-to-peer allows a user to divide work across several machines rather than concentrating on a powerful, base machine. Such a solution is easily scalable - we can merely add more machines to the network instead of trying to upgrade a central machine to increasingly expensive bleeding-edge technology to keep up. Countless scientific surveys tout the benefits of a peer-to-peer approach compared to a centralized approach in various applications. In every application? Of course we cannot make such a generalization, but that doesn't make the concept any less valid.

The original asker of the question is short-sighted to assume that the RIAA will end peer-to-peer as a concept. Bottom line: Peer-to-peer is just a method for dividing a workload amongst several machines, not a gateway to piracy. Please don't let the RIAA or anyone clueless argue that peer-to-peer is anything more than what is clearly is.

No, but like any fad

There comes a time when it moves to the mainstream. Long-term and practical uses for P2P are just now being developed. It's a bit like the internet in general. At first, a few early adopters, then it was everywhere and everything, and now, it's calmed down to a more reasonable level. Instead of edogfoodwithfreeshipping.com, you have real uses for the web and the internet.

killer app

p2p is the killer app of the internet. really. access to information (the web) and communication (email, chat) is nice, but people want stuff. it's like one big mall... and we know how much americans' love their malls.

Re:killer app

This is what mystifies me. Software, including anything that can be encoded such as music or movies, is absolutely made for the Internet and p2p. The cost of distribution is zero. The marginal cost per unit is zero. All these stupid corporations need to do is work out that they're sitting on a gold mine and increase their profits exponentially. They ought to figure out that 1000 times the sales at one tenth of the price is still 100 times the revenue, or something in that order.

But, as all monopolies and oligopolies inevitably do, they have become fat and lazy and will eventually alienate or destroy (through overpricing) their market. Technology is just helping that process along. One day's they'll wake up and make a mint.

Meanwhile p2p and such tech will grow and flourish.

p2p is NOT DEAD...

especially for legal content... bitTorrent has made it so that you can get all sorts of legal content like game demos, linux distros, etc. off p2p without having to be on horribly slow ftp servers.

It's not a passing fad

P2P is not used just for piracy. P2P is used to download the latest Linux kernel, the Matrix preview when the official site was slashdotted, etc. It might stop having millions of users downloading copyrighted stuff, but it will always exist, and will be extremely useful to a lot of people involved in legal activities.

P2P is eternal.

is P2P the start of a major new trend that is just getting started, or is it a passing fad that will fade once legal client/server systems for media distribution finally take hold?

P2P will be around forever, in whatever form it takes through the future's unimaginable technology, for one simple reason:

It's free.

Legal systems for digital media distribution will always cost money. Why pay money when you can get something almost as good -- or as good, with a little know-how -- for free?

P2P as we know it

One thing which I think is interesting is that recently, VOIP over P2P was mentioned. Of course, you don't have to be kreskin [kreskin.com] to see that some form of legal online music purchasing has to eventually become legal. However, I think that the recent mention of VOIP over P2P shows that the technologies made for decentralised P2P will still be used, just not for the purposes that are currently used for.

The big question is...

...how are you going to keep them (from) down(loading) on the farm after they've seen the lights of peer-to-peer? Apparently more people use P2P than bothered to vote in the last Presidential election. With that many people engaged in the activity, it's not like it's going to dry up and blow away because the RIAA starts cracking down. Heck, if legal crackdowns ended illicit behavior, we wouldn't have had any booze since the '20s and we wouldn't have a drug problem now.

On the other hand, there's a certain case to be made for the vast majority of those sixty million P2P users being ignorant sheep who can only use P2P in the first place because it's so easy to install the app--and who may not even be aware that they're uploading songs at the same time as they're downloading them, strange as that would seem to a Slashdot reader. And so, even if someone comes up with a totally "safe" method of filesharing, it could lose many of its prospective users if it is even slightly nontrivial to get working properly. (As an example, consider what happened to the mp3 websites after the RIAA's last legal crackdowns...they retreated behind a web of spawning browser windows, porn ads, top ten lists, and so on, until you have to be a hacker just to find where the MP3s actually are.)

So balancing the two questions...I think peer to peer will always be with us, but depending on how easy it is to use, it may lose a lot of its users--and, thus, a lot of potential sources for files.

As a matter of innovation....

There is no one way of doing things, but many ways in which some ways are better than others dependant upon what one is doing. And it is by having many different ways of doing things that different things are discovered or innovated.

So of course P2P is here to stay, but the RIAA, that' a different story, one of the old fighting to not move out of the way of then new and innovative.

yes....

Just like Data processing was considered a passing fad in the 1970s. After all, things are going from a community-based system to people working ISOLATED BY THEMSELVES.

For instance, there is something new out there called the INTRA-web. Rather than connect to the OUTSIDE world in an attempt to get information, you simply search your own hard drive.

Analysts predict that someday in the future, people will have no further need to ever be connected again, and people will live in isolated padded cells, not talking or communicating to anything at all, simply staring at the ceiling. /sarcasm

I said it back when

I said it back when Napster took its famous stage dive, and I'm saying it again now that Kazaa is on the chopping block. Getting rid of 1 p2p service only enables 6 more to spring up, these even more widely dispersed. How long before p2p servers become located in non-US countries and routed through anonymous proxies to avoid the watchful eye of the RIAA/MPAA? How long before a pirates create apps to google through anonymous FTP proxies/IRC for the copyrighted material? p2p is the fall guy for piracy, the most readily available target. But because of that, its business is in the open. The pirated wares will be moved to the 'Net equivalent of a black market, while legitimate p2p (esp. with the right of first sale) will become like the 'Net equivalent of a flea market.

P2P vs. Commercial File Sharing

I guess when you look at this, the best question is: why are these systems being used now? And the even better question: what are the legal uses of the system now?

My answer is that the best reason to use these right now is to share ideas, music, pictures, etc. with other people, including strangers: things that you own and have the right to redistribute, either because you created it, or you have permission from the creator. Email is used heavily in this fashion, but it has the limit of most providers attempting to make attachments a no-no: either for cost considerations (size); or for the fear of viruses. So, is there a legitimate use? Yes.

Next question would be: what are the usage numbers for these legitimate uses? Well, that one I can't answer too well. My first guess would be that it is a relatively small percentage of the current traffic, with a VERY high figure being around 40%. So, is that enough to keep these things around? Yep.

Okay, so, my conclusion is that P2P serves a useful purpose, outside of the illegal ones. So, the next question becomes, can a commercial solution replace these P2P solutions? That one is really easy - no! There is no way that any organization can afford the freedom that is required in moving these files back in forth. Anyone in IT is quite aware of all the potential dangers to the network, and anyone involved in the whole law side can see how heavily exposed these companies would be if they were allowing viruses, etc. to be damaging customer's systems.

So, ultimate conclusion? Unless they are outlawed, P2P networks are useful, and are likely to remain in existance for a long time.

File Sharing != P2P

I am so sick of people using the term P2P as a replacement for file sharing. Yes, file sharing is one use of P2P, but there are plenty of other examples:

• Distributed/Grid Computing
• IM
• Web Services
• groupware

History

While P2P may be phased out by newer technologies, its main use - sharing files between users will not stop (a lot of them borderline legal to blatantly illegal). Look at the history of the Internet. First there were Newsgroups, FTP Servers (remember all those no leech policies), Bulletin Boards, Hotline, Napster, Kazaa, Morpheus, etc.

Since the beginning of the Internet people have wanted an easy and anonymous way of trading files. As each technology was foiled by the industry or upgraded by newer technology, one thing had remained constant - The sharing of files online.
That is not a fad - only the technologies supporting it.

Still early

I think p2p is here to stay, and there are still features that need to be put in place univerally before it's mature, and all the various p2p flavors are comparable.

The various bits are there scattered across different p2p networks. IMNSHO, all p2p networks/clients ought to have:

-Swarming (as defined/used in BitTorrent)
-Privacy/anonymity (perhaps as much as in Freenet)
-Good searching (Kazaa, Napster, those types. With room for improvement all around)
-Open-source clients with no ads/spyware
-Decentralized/self-organizing networks (no central point of failure, or at least minimal)
-Browser/web server hooks to autoswarm web content (there ought to be bittorrent:// links)

Pardon my BitTorrent bias. I moderate the bittorrent_help mailing list, so I have more exposure to that.

All these features should someday be pushed into numerous language libraries, so that they become ubiquitous.

passing fad?! Yeah right!

When I think of all the millions I've saved.

Neither a Fad nor a New Trend

The P2P architecture has been around for ages. The original concept of the WWW was based on a P2P model. Of course, that was pre-NAT.

What pundits fail to realize is that P2P is not a class of applications; it is simply a form of distributed computing architecture in which nodes act as both client and server.

The term P2P is, however, a passing fad. It is a label for this architecture whose greatest association is with a class of applications designed to steal intellectual property from others. It is unfortunate that this association has come about. However, the architecture will outlive the fad.

We should *thank* the RIAA...

P2P will not die just because the RIAA has cracked down on a few people sharing music.

First, let me say that I don't particularly support massive stealing of music - A bit of sharing between friends, sure, but the wholesale infringements we see thanks to the likes of Kazaa, no. That said...

As with virus/worm authors, the RIAA has served a useful purpose, if by reprehensible means. They have demonstrated that P2P has a major flaw that most people do not know about - The model itself does NOT automatically mean anonymity. It just means that no central server exists to shut down, thereby making it all but impossible for any legal action to completely kill. People (can) still have accountability for their actions on a P2P network. Aside from the RIAA's abuse of this fact, we should worry quite a lot more about government use.

So my prediction - P2P services such as Kazaa, that try to track users and transactions, will fade into oblivion. At the same time, those that make every effort to prevent logging, to give plausible deniability, and that use encryption to hide the actual data going over the weak links (anywhere between the first "P" and the second "P"), will gain in popularity. As an obvious current choice, the open-source Freenet does this already, though it has serious problems as far as actually finding what you want goes.

Someone will eventually find a way to make Freenet (or a similar app) more useable, however, without compromising the benefits I mention above. That will replace the current generation of P2P programs, but will itself still count as P2P.

So no, the idea won't die, nor will its use. Implementations will simply become far more sophisticated, and while at each step in the free-information arms race a few people will suffer (as has held true throughout all of history), the rest of us will benefit from their sacrifice.

Bittorrent

Bittorrent [bitconjurer.org] is currently the most viable legal method for large scale P2P. Just look at the network [aixgaming.com] traffic [gametab.com] that a site can sustain using Bittorrent's "swarm" download method. With it, a relatively small site can host a half-gigabyte file and transfer 1.31 terabytes [gametab.com] of data!

On the other hand we see how the traditional client/server system can break down [penny-arcade.com] if it has a significant user base and not enough bandwidth. The new Steam client hasn't allowed me to connect to a game since I installed it six hours ago. Who knows how much more data could have been transferred if all the Steam users were connected to each other and sharing their cache through a P2P network?

The next step in P2P would be to combine the swarm downloading of Bittorrent with a persistent P2P network like Edonkey2000. The Achilles Heel of Bittorrent is that it can only transfer one file at a time, and the only way to download multiple files is to open multiple instances of Bittorrent, which drains upload speed, a precious commodity among home broadband users. Some work [kefro.st] is being done towards this goal but it currently deals with upload rates for individual downloads, and doesn't manage multiple downloads.

P2P is definitely the future, and I predict its popularity will continue to rise as more consumers sign up for broadband and start sucking down large media files like full albums and movies from corporate sites who aren't prepared for the broadband explosion.

The Internet...

wasn't it once considered a fad too?....

Anonymous network possible & easy

Imagine a P2P system like Kazaa but with one extra twist...Whenever
someone wants to download a file from you, your computer doesn't send
it directly to theirs. Instead your computer sends the file to a proxy
machine which then sends the file to the rceipient. Both connections
are encrypted with public-key cryptography, and the proxy machine
stores nothing that is not encrypted. Congratulations, you have just
send a file to anyone (maybe even an RIAA spy) without then
interacting with you and finding out what your IP address is or who
you are.

Now imagine that in addition to super-peers, Kazaa maintains a list of
proxy servers whose sole job is to upload stuff from users and
download stuff to other users. You can run such a 'data peer' yourself
legelly since all the data is encrypted so you don't know what your
computer is storing.

Of course this network is less efficient than Kazaa, since each file
gets copied twice whenever it is downloaded. I guess that's why
nothing like this network exists yet. But if Kazaa dies due to its
users being sued off the network, I'll bet this 'proxy'-based network
takes over. Let the RIAA try to sue users on this proxy network!

Anyone interested in helping build this?

Re:And now imagine an RIAA sponsored Honeypot..

"Free speech protects YOUR speech, not media files you copied of OTHER people's speech. Is it really that hard to make the distinction between protecting the right to speak your thoughts as opposed to wholesale copying of other people's works?"

You are looking at the matter from completely the wrong viewpoint despite the fact that I told you I was not interested my my rights as a listener. Forget about the filesharer's rights. Concentrate upon the competing rights of the file's creator. The filesharer is merely a hapless bystander who has been caught-up in a legal quagmire.

Now, try again...

There is music out there which the artist wants downloaded. There is music out there which the artist does not care whether it is downloaded or not. There is music out there which the artist wants protected by copyright. The problem is that there is no way to tell which music is which.

What's a poor filesharer to do? If it is assumed that the file is protected by copyright then the free speech rights of the artist who wants it downloaded are infringed. If it is assumed that the file is free speech then the RIAA is going to harrass you.

I say that free speech is fundamental. The copyright interests just have to come up with a solution which doe not infringe fundamental free speech rights -- or not, and get swept away. It's not even my responsibility to care whether copyright survives or not, and it certainly ought not be my responsibility to figure out whether a file represents free speech or copyright.

p2p only needed for Illegal stuff!

Not that p2p isn't an interesting technology, but if I have my own stuff I created, why do I need p2p? I sign up for web hosting, and put it up on FTP, nice and simple! Everyone on the internet can get it.

The other use of p2p is for mirroring large OSS type files [isos, src, etc] This helps keeping any one server from bearing the brunt of bandwidth. Here though, I think p2p tech could help out if we could get ISPs on board to mirror legal stuff automatically for their users. If I have a 1000 users that all want something , why shouldn't ISP's be caching it to save their own external bandwidth? The problem with that is most content providers still don't "get" caching and mirroring on a local level yet so they scream DMCA everyone tries someting like that, but p2p tech could allow your first local connection to mirror something and still give the originating site credit for ads, hits, etc..

If Kazza or BitTorrent could clean up their act, they could have a really viable business instead of this shady stuff. Perhaps ISPs could have a "check-in" system to verify who's posting and that they can, and host the servers themselves for thier own local users. Once one legal mirror was in the system, everyone could mirror it honestly. It would be all server-side [business people] so that would eliminate much of the illegal activity right there. Sure things might take a day extra to get thru, but hosting for projects would be cheaper. There would be reduced bandwith costs because every iso after the first would be local for the ISP. A Kazza type system could still track all the hits though and scale back the mirrors after the initial "rush".

P2P was never a fad...

Swapping music and videos was the fad. The technology is never the fad, it is what you can do with it that drvies popularity.

Bah!

I was using P2P back when it was called IRC channels with a bunch of guys running FTP servers. Before that, I was into the type of P2P that was traded in wierd locations throughout Compuserve. Before that, we called the Bleeding Edge and other local BBS's and spent hours uploading gif files to their public areas. Before then, it was floppies and a copy of Renegade, and casette tapes with holes drilled in them.

Now, I've gone off the searchable networked P2P, and on to sending secret web links to people I meet over IRC. Napster, Kazaa, they just simplify and dehumanize the interaction. The ways that used to work -- hunting down generous people with loose morals and begging them for files -- still work just as well. As does sneakernet and a stack of discs. I've had file sharing "parties" in the past year...grandiose events where three friends come over with a couple cool CDs and we trade them.

Ironically, I don't trade files much at all. Not because I am afraid of the RIAA, but because most of what I want to listen to nowadays is off the major lables that are members of the RIAA and I want to support them. I had to seriously hunt for CDs from bands like Jiker, Valis, Edan (the humble magnificent) and the Black Keys. These same bands are all over the P2P networks. When your music distribution system is so screwed up that it is EASY to steal music but nearly impossible to BUY it...you've got big problems. Maybe an answer is to shut down p2p. Maybe a better answer is finding some way to reach the millions of listeners who don't want to hear Madonna's robotic warbling.

I believe W.A.S.T.E.-like clones are the future

Justin Frankel knew what he was doing when he made WASTE [sourceforge.net]: On big, open P2P-networks, you never can be sure if happysunshine84 downloading a MP3 from you isn't someone preparing a lawsuit. A closed, WASTE-like network is therefore a better solution, also redusing the noise (spam, renames, clients modified to not upload, etc) you usually see from the typical P2P networks.

I never tried WASTE, as I never got the thing to work under Linux, but as I understand it, I can have e.g. have one network with 10 co-workers and another one with my friends. If I share the files I download from both groups, I will be a link between those two networks. Now, if also my co-workers and friends are on more than one network, fresh files will always be pouring in (If these guys are nice and share what they download).

Quality-filtered content where no-one from the outside can know what you are doing, what else can you wish for?

That is, besides a Linux client

I vote for passing fad...

Yep, just like television. All the pundits predicted that no one would want to stare at a little box all day.

Oh, and compact discs. I mean, 650 MB of read-only data? C'mon, that's more worthless than 8-track tapes!

Or maybe it is a fad like bell-bottoms. They go out for a while, then come back in the 24th century as part of Starfleet uniforms! Quick, everyone go check the ST Encyclopedia and see if it mentions P2P!

All joking aside, to use a trite but true statement, I think the genie is out of the bottle, cat's out of the bag, etc. The only people that think P2P is a fad are probably the people that want it to be a fad.

P2P will likely usher in new business models, and new ways of getting entertainment. The RIAA/MPAA clinging to the old ways would be, as some have pointed out, not unlike the makers of horse-drawn carriages trying to stop the production of the automobile.

Change happens. People don't usually like it, but are capable of adjusting. Corporations are not people (despite what the law may say) and simply refuse to adjust to change unless they can see an obvious, and instant, financial gain.

Technology often makes current systems obsolete. For example, gunpowder pretty much made the feudal system of government obsolete. In the future, an invention like matter transporters (beam me up!) would probably make our current governments obsolete.

P2P is making the way we purchase, oh I'm sorry, "consume" entertainment obsolete. I highly doubt the RIAA/MPAA can cripple technology enough to keep us all in the old days.

"P2P" is for identity hiding only...

All P2P really does at a technical level is build a rather randomly distributed system of mirrors for the distribution of content. That's nice, but without a central starting point there's no facility for the updating, refreshing, or retracting of content.

High traffic websites have been doing mirroring for a long time, and Alakami's business is based on putting mirroring servers exactly where they belong... as close to upstream of the users as possible for the content that will be repeatedly requested. Caching proxy servers can also be used on the corperate/ISP side of things to get the same effect.

The only real use of the mainstream P2P clients is to obsficate the originator of a file by creating thousands of sites offering that file... basically an "I am Spartacus... I am Spartacus... I am Spartacus... I am Spartacus... " scene for anybody trying to figure out where the file started. As we've seen in today's other P2P thread [slashdot.org], the most popular P2P content is done in a way where the "leaker" doesn't wish to be identified.

BitTorrent is the only major P2P protocol that ensures what you're getting is what you meant it to be... basically that the content has been "signed" by its originator who needs some help on the bandwidth costs and many supporters of the sender are working together to provide it. For other content that's meant to be distributed, you have to step outside of the protocol to get the MD5 hash to make sure you got what you thought you got and not a virus... which effectively does the same thing. When somebody tries to distrubute a virus-tainted Linux on a website, they're sure to get shutdown by their ISP if not worse, because to run a website you've gotta tell other people who you are and stand behind the content you post. Not so on P2P, which is why it's such a popular way to send out viruses.

P2P as a distribution model has some limited merits, but "P2P" as an avoid-paying-"the man" system is a fad that'll die out has soon as "the man" reminds people that crime doesn't pay. The correct way to use P2P, which I'm sure will come out in time, is as too to beat "the man" at his own game. It'd be nice if a site with large-ammounts of open source fans (such as this one) would hold a musical talent contest where instead of locking the winner into an RIAA-label deal, the winner is given access to a recording studio and experts to help them to record their music, a personally-promotional infomercial (even if it has to be on TechTV) with which they introduce themselves, sing a few songs, and pitch tickets for a multi-city upcoming tour, and a high-bandwidth site from OSDN where they must post unprotected Ogg Vorbis and MP3 files of the songs they recorded with the prize. Their share of the ticket sales from the tour is the only prize money they get, but that should be more than enough for them. :)

p2p is the future

I'm curious to know what Slashdot readers think: is P2P the start of a major new trend that is just getting started, or is it a passing fad that will fade once legal client/server systems for media distribution finally take hold? If the former, which of the supposed advantages of P2P over client/server systems are really significant?

I believe p2p is the future. Copyright issues aside, I doubt I'm the only one that's noticed that there are some downloads that are getting extremely large. Maybe it's a game demo, a movie trailer, or a software upgrade. How often has it happened that some thing comes out like, say, a Matrix trailer or a new game mod and people swamp the main server and mirrors alike to download it? Why else would recent Slashdot articles on popular downloads be linking .torrent files?

The problem is further escalated by the fact that the ranks of broadband users are growning every day. I hear that Verizon is wanting to dump somewhere around 11 billion dollars into their network to ensure that all of their customers are able to get DSL, and they have lowered their prices across the board...You can now get 1.5 down/128 up for a flat $30/mo, similar to what SBC's been offering. With all this broadband around, popular web sites will not be able to keep up, expecially if they have downloadable goodies. The answer is distributed computing. p2p represents the infancy of the inevitibility of distributed storage, processing, and bandwidth.

Has the internet become a passing fad?

I mean I get more bandwidth over sneaker net than I do across the internet. And I don't have to worry about my government or the **AA intercepting my personal private data.

My family doesn't care if they ever get broadband, and now I'm finally starting to agree with them. Our society just ain't smart enough to know what to do with this technology, so we police it, tax it and commercialize it. Its almost forced monopolization of an extremely valuable service. Bra vo. Watch us turn the internet into the next cable TV network or telephone system. Watch us repeat our historical examples over and over and over again. Just watch us.

An idea...

Hey guys!

This is just an idea which I'm not more able to think through tonight (it's very later here), but what about a UDP approach to a file sharing system. Everybody sending something to you could definitely be anonymous (UDP does not require a valid source IP). The tricky thing would be how to actually _find_ stuff, because that would need the IP of the potential source to be known. Hmmm...

Any bright ideas?

Depends on Content, Not Technology

P2p will survive and grow if, and only if, the content available via p2p is attractive.

The question posed is a bit like asking, 500 years ago, if the printing press will survive. Well...it depends on what's printed.

If p2p is the only way to get something people want, then it will surviv e. If p2p offers nothing people want, it will fade.

P2P is here to stay

p2p filesharing wont die - its the killer app for broadband. Not many people have seemed to grasp this fact yet but, theres not much use for ever-faster connections unless you have something to download. Websites are not going to increase in size that much, streaming video isnt really what gets people going (its just another tv channel) and games have their limit in bandwidth usage.

Now, give people free content without restrictions and you have something that everyone wants. Why are search engines the most popular websites? because the user types in what they want and gets it. From a users point of view, kazaa is the same as google except you can get everything that you cant get on google - its like the too hot for google channel. Are you seriously telling me that people dont want to be able to download all the music, films, porn, software, games, books and southpark they want for free!?!?! get real!

The only things that might kill p2p filesharing as we know it are:

• Legislation and heavy enforcement (at the moment RIAA lawsuits and sen. Friz Hollings are restricted to the US only)
• Networks collapsing thru abuse, free-loading, or (taking the law into their own hands) sabotage (they seem to be pretty resistant)

Governments (well in the UK anyway) are pushing broadband for all sorts of PHB reasons like "education" and obviously the ISPs - AOL etc are gonna try and sell it. Sen. Hollings is even for it. The absolute irony here is that the very same people who are pushing broadband so they can sell content are the same ones who will be fucked out of their money by filesharing! its brilliant, serves them right for their evil DRM plans.

read current CS research

Second generation P2P, which uses consistent distributed hashing for organizing the network topology and lookup, have the potential to be "the future". Read Pastry and Scribe work at Rice, Content Addressible Networks at UC Berkeley, PeerCQ at Georgia Tech, and others.

They provide amazingly scalable (i.e. - theoretically internet wide) network topologies for things like multicasting, distributed file systems, and network monitoring.

Great stuff, and generations ahead of anything Kazaa/Napster/Gnutella did.

P2P can improve Freedom of Speech

I think that P2P could solve one serious issue that is still not solved in todays internet: Anonymity.

Today every surfer *could* be tracked, every download *could* be traced back, every chat *could* be deanonymized.

The industry and the government is more and more making use of this fact, so it is - to my mind - very important to move to technologies where everyone can stay in anonymity.

Please, don't tell me "I have nothing to hide". This 12 year old girl that now has to pay $2000.- for sharing songs also thought she had nothing to hide. People who linked to "FTP-Explorer" in their homepages also thought they had nothing to hide. In todays world a single person without a company backing him up can never know what's copyrighted and what not.
Moreover privacy is a basic right of every human being. Hopefully people will recognize this right.

Technologies that do not rely on single controllable servers seem to be the only solution; P2P is such software. Still, anonymity is missing because no one bothers. Hopefully these subpoenas of the RIAA will push secure technology like freenet or gnunet.

We will see.

Re:I hope so.

I'll bite as well. Now I agree that piracy "may" be contributing to some loss of sales, I also propose that it is also generating sales as well. The truely sad part of the matter is that they are even telling their employees that the problems they are facing are all because of piracy. Now, I don't buy that BS at all. There are just as many studies out there that support the case that P2P and music downloading are generating CD sales as there are case studies that say the opposite.

The real issue here is the fact that thier business model was forced to change due to technological developments, and they don't want to change at all. They feel that they should continue to mass produce the same style songs as they have been for the last 10-12 years and still have people eat up everything they lay on the plate. Well, P2P and Napsture has changed that. No more can they just place 1 or 2 decent songs on an album and expect everyone to go out and purchase that album for $20 just for those 2 songs. The music industry needs to actually redesign the way they produce and sell their music now. They can no longer expect people to buy the $20 album for those 2 songs with another 7-8 of pure filler. P2P has caused this problem, and that, I will concede.

No more will customers continually overpay for the product, as they know that CD's are easily created (physically created), and they also know how easy it is to mix songs that they (the customers) like to listen to. They want to be able to purchase a "custom" CD with the tracks that they select, not what they are told they "must" buy. People will no longer stand for purchasing something at full price for only wanting to listen to 16% of the product.

Now that is only the start of the problem that the music industry is facing. The other problem is the fact that they have been signing fewer and fewer new bands and creating less and less new music. There was a great study posted here before (sorry, too lazy to look it up), which delt with compairing the number of new bands signed (and their respective new songs produced) with the overall sales generated that year for the music industry. The study showed that there was a very high correlation between the number of new bands to the number of sales. Over the past 3 years, there has been approximately 30-40% decline in the number of new bands being signed. According to the numbers in that study, at least 20% of the "lost" sales over the last 3 years should be attributed to the fact that there are 30-40% less new bands being singed and thus less "new" styles of music out there that people might sample.

You can also chalk up a minumum of 10% more of the "lost" sales to the major economic troubles being faced in this country as well. You yourself should be able to realise this, especially with your wife lossing her job. Well, she isn't the only one out of work, or working in a job that pays far less then the prievious one. What is the first thing that you stop purchasing when you suddenly loose a major part of your income? Well you cut out non-essential purchases, i.e. anything that is not related to shelter, food, and health. Well, guess what doesn't fall under any of those 3 categories, $20 music CDs. With so many fresh-out-of-college students unable to find a job in the industry they just spent upwards of $100,000 over the last 4-5 years, and can only get work in the same summer job industries they could be imployed BEFORE they got that degree, you seriously think they will have the extra cash to purchase music CD's for $15-20 a pop?

The RIAA needs to seriously look at the above problem. They want to blame P2P and piracy for everything. Well, it isn't the real cause. The problem is and always has been their business model. P2P in a sense could be blamed, but only because it showed people that they should have to be forced purchase 100% of a product for only wanting to use 8% of that product.

I won't even get into the issue of P2P actually helping sales by introducing people to music that they never