Re: Google wants to be your Internet

[Roland Dobbins <rdobbins () cisco com>]

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.

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Roland Dobbins <rdobbins () cisco com> // 408.527.6376 voice

                    Technology is legislation.

                        -- Karl Schroeder