[p2p-research] About "Failing business models for user-generated content"

Wed Apr 29 17:05:44 CEST 2009

Hi Marco,

I have no technical answers to your query, beyond my feeling that:

1) like literacy, it is a basic human right, and that not having access is
very detrimental in contemporary society

2) that there may be cheaper ways to build such infrastructure (as the
experiments in Nepal, and smari's chickenwire wifi in Afghanistan, could
demonstrate), than you and I are aware of

3) there may also be non-individualist solutions, for example in Thailand,
many people cannot afford a computer, but there are plenty of very cheap
cybercafes, up to remote rural corners

For me the digital is an enabler. By itself it doesn't solve all social
problems, but like literacy and education, it is part of any solution

Here is some additional documentation:

Infrastructure

Proposals:

   1. Broadband Policy <http://p2pfoundation.net/Broadband_Policy>: Beyond
   privatization, competition and independent regulation. by Larry Press. First
   Monday, Volume 14, Number 4 - 6 April 2009
[21]<http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewArticle/2374/2159>

Key essays:

   - The Political Economy of Collaborative Production in the Digital
   Information Age<http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/system/files/From+Wifi+to+Wikis+and+Open+Source.pdf>.
   By Mark Cooper. Journal on Law and High Technology (2006)

*What kind of information infrastructures do we need for more widespread
collaborative production to occur, and how do we achieve such policies? This
essay has also remarkable good explanations of the various types of property
and goods that we are dealing with.*

   - Making Net Neutrality
Sustainable<http://p2pfoundation.net/Making_Net_Neutrality_Sustainable>:
   David Isenberg argues that infrastructure and content ownership should be
   unbundled.

   - Report by *Educause* about international efforts to create broadband
   infrastructures: *A Blueprint for Big
Broadband<http://p2pfoundation.net/Blueprint_for_Big_Broadband>
   *. 2008

Also:

   1. Why Municipal WiFi failed <http://www.slate.com/id/2174858/>: and what
   can be done about it
   2. Information Infrastructure as a Public
Good<http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/attachments/information%20infrastructure.pdf>Mark
Cooper.
   3. Open Architecture as Communications
Policy<http://p2pfoundation.net/Open_Architecture_as_Communications_Policy>.
   Book edited by Mark Cooper.
   4. Open Communications
Platforms<http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/attachments/070a.pdf>

On 4/28/09, M. Fioretti <mfioretti at nexaima.net> wrote:
>
>
> (note: below I refer to several URLs and threads passed here recently,
> ie potentially already familiar to all the subscribers of this
> list. If anybody thinks this is worth putting online somewhere, I'll
> put together an HTML version with all the links)
>
> The last post at the P2P Foundation blog
> [
> http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/failing-business-models-for-user-generated-content/2009/04/28
> ]]
> is a good occasion to share some thoughts and doubts I've had for
> years about the "fast, universal Net access for everybody" dogma.
>
> I deliberately focus on what is actually doable, good and necessary
> **now** (0 to ~30 years), not on how life could be or will be for our
> grand-grandchildren.
>
> There are a few concepts to re-analyze together here:
>
> 1) production, replication and distribution of digital goods costs nothing,
> or practically nothing
> 2) centralized infrastructures (think YouTube, Flickr, etc...) are much
> more expensive than distributed infrastructures (file sharing networks from
> Napster to TPB and beyond)
> 3) regardless of its architecture, the costs of the infrastructure
> should/could be distributed (socialized)
> 4) fast, cheap, unmetered internet access is good, necessary and a human
> right, like education, etc...
>
>
> Concept #1 is, very often, a myth. Producing and keeping up and
> running all the material infrastructure needed to copy and distribute
> willy-nilly "immaterial" goods has a huge cost. Huge. Read for
> reference:
>
> http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/one-loaf-per-child/2007/06/14
>
> http://p2pfoundation.net/Thoughts_on_P2P_production_and_deployment_of_physical_objects
>
> http://www.infoworld.com/d/green-it/report-us-companies-waste-28b-year-powering-unused-pcs-758
>
> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/01/data-centers-are-becoming-big-polluters-study-finds/?ref=technology
> http://www.socialroi.com/interesting-facts-about-digital-waste.html
> http://sitemaker.umich.edu/section002group3/e-waste
> http://www.afro.who.int/heag2008/docs_en/New%20and%20emerging%20threats.pdf
> http://www.ban.org/photogallery/
>
> With respect to concept #2, bandwidth is bandwidth and storage is
> storage. I am not sure that changing from concentrated to distributed
> would reduce so much the order of magnitude of the cost mentioned in
> the links above. More on this in a moment.
>
> I am not sure that performance and reliability would always be at
> least equal in the distributed case. Downloading a video from a
> professional server farm like YouTube's takes more or less the same
> time now and one month from now. Whereas downloading via torrents is
> faster only if you want what everybody else is downloading, or at
> least seeding, in the same moment. This is a minor point however.
>
> A more important issue is if the real cost of one billion desktops and
> fast bidirectional connections, all "forced" to be servers/sources
> because there is no centralized structure built in a much more
> professional, highly efficient way, using much less raw materials and
> energy. Are there any data about this?
>
> Back to the cost of distributed vs "centralized content distribution"
> networks. I recently found some numbers about a very efficient, highly
> decentralized content distribution networks, ie spam. Spam today is
> mostly generated and redistributed by infected desktops but still
> dissipates 33TWh/year:
>
> www.net-security.org/secworld.php?id=7316
> www.softlist.net/press/pandalabs_says_half_a_million_computers_are_infected_with_malicious_bots_every_day-62.html
> www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/apr/08/spam-malware-online-security
>
> So, the first two points could be summarized as "no matter how you do
> it, production, replication and distribution of digital goods of the
> scale advocated by proponents of universal access, worldwide free
> flowing culture and communication, etc...has a very big, very material
> cost. Better wake up and accept it"
>
> At this point, we can move to "who should pay for it". It's an
> important decision, because the cost **is** huge but the benefits to
> society of fast, universal connectivity should be even bigger.
>
> Personally, I am sure that there are a lot of important things that,
> from a human/civil right standpoint, everybody should have the
> possibility (someetimes the duty!) to do online: communicate, study,
> check what the government is doing to keep it under control, publish
> opinions, work, etc... I'm convinced that the more people actually use
> the Internet in this way, the better, so I could agree with a law that
> says "doing these things is a basic right, so everybody must be
> connected and the related costs must be entirely socialized"
>
> The point is, to do all those things you don't need broadband. Not the
> kind the ISPs want to sell these days, to transform the Internet in
> the next TV.
>
> I think that to make your own life and the world better, a stable,
> flat-rate connection at 512KBps or so is enough these days, so I could
> support socializing the costs of connecting everybody in that way. I
> would be happy if flat rate Internet offers where I live didn't start
> at ~20 Euro/month for 5 MBps but from something like 5 Euro/month for
> 512KBps. Why don't they?
>
> But is it really necessary and fair to subsidize the cost of both the
> access and (above all) the backbone infrastructure that would be
> needed to keep everybody hooked at 5, 10, 20 MB?? I'm not saying it
> would be bad, but if it costs too much (especially in these times) and
> it isn't really necessary...
>
> There are tons of "content" online that could take much less space and
> bandwidth. I find all the time podcasts or video tutorials which are
> in that form ONLY because the author wouldn't take the time to
> transcript what he said. So we're all left with something that takes
> much more to download, isn't indexable as efficiently as text, is much
> slower to navigate back and forth, much harder to mix and mash with
> other content...
>
> Here are a few cases where real fast broadband isn't, IMO, something
> whose costs should be socialized (remember that you can't really
> separate the costs of access from those of backbone)
>
> - if you're stuck with cloud computing or software as a service,
> including any webmail or online office suite, that is if you gave up
> control of who owns and sees all your data. If so, you have a
> separate problem which would remain even if bandwidth were really
> gratis
>
> - online games
>
> - digital bulimia, that is downloading everything you find, even if
> you'll never need it, "just because it's there"
>
> Please note that, even if you're a "producer", ie a private citizen
> who blogs on whatever argument, a small business or an artist who puts
> online his/her works, it can MAKE much more technical/ecological/
> economical sense to rent for that a virtual server in a professional
> datacenter in a country which gives a minimum of warranties about
> civil rights... than to run a website from the second-hand PC in your
> closet which could break every second and consumes much more power
> than a virtual one (Virtual servers are NOT cloud computing!).
>
> The solution? Maybe it is to subsidize "basic flat connectivity" as
> described above, and let everything else to be paid directly by those
> who have or feel the need for it.
>
> More exactly: instead of an infrastructure based on the dogma that
> everybody needs and wants 10+ MBps to everything else worldwide,
> dimension network and fees so that the basic connectivity costs much
> less than today, but the "heavy users" pay by themselves the burden
> they place on the network (ie on everybody else and the environment),
> since very often what they're doing is NOT bad, but isn't really
> necessary to society as a whole.
>
> This is NOT an attack to net neutrality, of course.  In this context,
> a good read is "Net neutrality: An American problem?"
> http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-10053045-94.html (I agree with those
> Australian ISPs!).
>
> This approach is just recognizing that advertising like "for just one
> low fee you're entitled to unlimited traffic" (which, by the way, is
> exactly what keeps running today's decentralized file sharing
> networks!!!) never was nothing more than an unsustainable marketing
> scam.
>
> This isn't even anything new, by the way. It has been a well known
> fact of life among webmasters for YEARS that "if an hosting provider
> gives you unlimited bandwidth, he's either incompetent or not 100%
> honest. There can't be anything like "unlimited bandwidth". All
> hosting providers cut traffic, because their network would melt or
> cost too much otherwise. It's just that the good ones tell it to you
> fair and square in advance, in the contract, how and when they will do
> it". Search in any webmaster forum and you'll find posts repeating
> these concepts since the nineties, and they never changed.
>
> So the only news here may be the wish that literally everybody (not
> just "professionals") can become a producer, or at least a
> (re)distributor, without analyzing if the goal is (at least in the
> medium/short term) intrinsically sustainable, or generally worth of
> being completely socialized.
>
> Marco Fioretti
> Digital Rights writings: http://mfioretti.com
>
> --
> 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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