Re: Google wants to be your Internet

[Gadi Evron <ge () linuxbox org>]

On Sat, 20 Jan 2007, Roland Dobbins wrote:
> On Jan 20, 2007, at 11:55 AM, Randy Bush wrote:
>
> > the question to me is whether isps and end user borders (universities,
> > large enterprises, ...) will learn to embrace this as opposed to
> > fighting it; i.e. find a business model that embraces delivering what
> > the customer wants as opposed to winging and warring against it.
>
> I believe that it will end up becoming the norm, as it's a form of  
> cost-shifting from content providers to NSPs and end-users - but for  
> it to really take off, the tension between content-providers and  
> their customers (i.e., crippling DRM) needs to be resolved.
>
> There have been some experiments in U.S. universities over the last  
> couple of years in which private music-sharing services have been run  
> by the universities themselves, and the students pay a fee for access  
> to said music.  I haven't seen any studies which provide a clue as to  
> whether or not these experiments have been successful (for some value  
> of 'successful'); my suspicion is that crippling DRM combined with a  
> lack of variety may have been 'features' of these systems, which is  
> not a good test.
>
> OTOH, emusic.com seem to be going great guns with non-DRMed .mp3s and  
> a subscription model; perhaps (an official) P2P distribution might be  
> a logical next step for a service of this type.  I think it would be  
> a very interesting experiment.

Won't really happen as long as they stick to a business model which is
over a hundred years old.

I would strongly suggest people with interest in this area watch
Lawrence Lessig's lecture from CCC:
http://dewy.fem.tu-ilmenau.de/CCC/23C3/video/23C3-1760-en-on_free.m4v

But I would like to stay on-track and discuss how we can help ISPs change
from their end, considering both operational and business needs. Do you
believe making such a case study public will help? Do you believe it is
the ISP itself which should become the content provider rather than a
bandwidth service?

        Gadi.