[p2p-research] how much p2p in the pirate bay and filesharing community

Wed Apr 29 12:06:39 CEST 2009

Susan Cook Greuter has interesting research about value constellations in
groups of people,

if we take the full gamut of the p2p ethos, it's about 2% of the world
population, but it inspires another 25% as an ideal

the rest uses the infrastructure but can nevertheless be upgraded by the
values embedded in that infrastructure

see: http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/types-of-connectivity/2006/06/28

>From Chris Lucas, who uses complexity sciences and the spiral dynamics
system to distinguish nine different types of connectivity; it all seems
very logical and plausible though I have the gravest reservations about
coral which seems like a deus-ex-machina solution

my stats are based on loosely interpreting this:

http://www.slideshare.net/evansridge/integral-institute-community-presentation,
slide 17

communautarian green individualist from 11 to 26 percent; systemic
autonomous 4.9; holistic-construct aware 2% ... of US population, much lower
on world scale

On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 1:41 PM, M. Fioretti <mfioretti at nexaima.net> wrote:

> On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 23:14:05 PM +0100, Andy Robinson wrote:
>
> > Marco, I understand your point, and you re right that file-sharing
> > is not 100% gift economy from production to consumption.  But I
> > think you re misunderstanding or misconstruing some of the claims I
> > and others have made.
>
> Andy,
>
> sorry, I really wanted to answer this as it came, but it got lost in a
> lot of other messages.
>
> I don't think I am misunderstanding those claims. Whether I'm right or
> not is another issue, of course, but my core point is simply that,
> inside Pirate Bay and similar networks, the **amount* of activity which
> **consciously** happens because of, and is inspired by, real P2P culture,
> values and so on is *much* smaller than most of you think.
>
> > Data is inherently abundant because it is infinitely reproducible
> > (unless artificially restricted).
>
> The real costs of this "infinite reproducibility" and "inherent
> abundance" are huge (and I'm NOT talking of copyright, IP, etc...), so
> it's worth wondering if it's fair to spread all of them even on people
> who couldn't care less of file sharing. I wrote about this in the
> message I sent to this list yesterday titled "About "Failing business
> models for user-generated content". Please have a look to it and reply
> to that if you have any feedback.
>
> > You seem to be assuming real P2P is sharing of labour.  I think
> > there can also be sharing of goods and of information.
>
> It takes real labour and real, very limited personal time to produce
> quality information.  See the post from me starting with "Here I am
> again" at
>
> http://www.linuxformat.co.uk/index.php?name=PNphpBB2&file=viewtopic&t=9666&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=15
> If you have any comment, I welcome them, but please let's make a
> separate thread of that, as it's a much more general issue.
>
> >  That's how some seeding happens, ie not even
> > "giving" to the community the cost of one DVD purchase.
> >
> > You re missing the point completely.
>
> Are we sure? You, for example, wrote:
>
> > Certainly one might leave a file in the sharing folder out of lack
> > of motive to move it, but one wouldn t leave the file-sharing
> > program running indefinitely, and if one was concerned about
> > download speeds (which file-sharers generally are), one WOULD move
> > it or set it not to share.
>
> but sharing already downloaded files impacts upload speed, much more
> than downloads.
>
> I know, although not in all details, what seeding is and how file
> sharing networks work. Just like I know that in many of those networks
> how fast you can download depends on how much you leave available for
> upload, even if that's not the case of Bit Torrent, IIRC, so you are
> forced to leave it on.
>
> Or like I know that the world is still full of people who leave their
> VCR or all the lights in their home on for days, or their PC on 24/7
> just because they forget it, or can't be bothered to wait a few
> minutes when they go back to their desk in the morning (see links in
> my post sent yesterday for the overall greenhouse cost of such
> behaviors).
>
> Or like I know that many computer users never change the defaults of
> many programs they use, and that the default settings of several BT
> clients is "seeding on"
>
> Again, I don't think that all your models are wrong, bad or
> unpracticed. It's just that, if I apply the "simplest explanation
> often is the right one" to this case, I find it quite unlikely that
> file sharing participants who are this conscious and philosophical are
> not a (little) minority. Especially after looking at which the most
> torrented files are.
>
> The only real thing we disagree is actual percentages, ie how big each
> class of users is. That's why I pointed out that, whatever one thinks
> of them, maybe calling TPB users "champions of P2P culture" or
> anything of that sort is a bit misleading.
>
> Marco
> --
> Your own civil rights and the quality of your life heavily depend on how
> software is used *around* you:            http://digifreedom.net/node/84
>
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