November 15, 2004
More on Snocap
More news via Paidcontent. Still very short on details on whether we’re likely to see PPD or subscription services come out of this. Rafat notes that services might allow sharing of low-quality copies for free and enable people to purchase the legit copies. I say again: why not use superdistribution to bring this sort of service direct to consumers who are already in P2P? Why not embrace P2P, not just by creating analogous environments to current P2P systems, but by selling directly through the current systems? If you use something like Weedshare, you can use consumers as distributors and take your content to all the millions of eyeballs already in KaZaA, eDonkey, et. al.
It’s worth noting that John Beezer, head of Weedshare, sees superdistribution working hand in hand with closed, filtered networks – see his comments to this post. To me, the real power in embracing superdistribution now is that it gives a convenient way for people to convert their currently illegal behavior into lawful forms, retaining the ability to share and try out content. You don’t have to shift consumers out of current P2P environments, and you don’t have to convince P2P services to filter.
This would, of course, require giving up on suing P2P networks and spoofing, but I don’t see the industries gaining much from that right now.
Filed by Derek Slater at 2:36 pm under General news
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