Legal peer-to-peer sharing is dead
 

Joost will drop its peer-to-peer application and will focus on its web app.

Joost Scraps Video App - 12/17/2008 5:56:00 PM - Multichannel News

That's not to say peer-to-peer sharing is dead. (And not to say that the MPAA won't stop trying to kill it.)

'Forrester Research analyst James McQuivey said the development means that peer-to-peer “as a platform for legal consumer video is dead.” '

I love analysts.

The assumption here is that legal consumer video only comes from studios, and thus if they won't use peer-to-peer distribution it's dead.

There's a lot more people out there making video than ever before (there may even be a few around this site ;). Once you've uploaded a video to amazon's S3 you can turn it into a torrent in seconds - now you can distribute even HD videos for pennies a copy. Add in card-processing fees and you can sell and distribute your video for somewhere in the range of $.50 a copy, paying as you go with almost no upfront cost and no fullfillment hassles. Sell your videos for a few dollars a copy - make them so cheap that it's not worth the trouble to find a pirated copy for most people. Sell a copy for less than it costs to rent a studio picture from the video store. It's almost pure profit at that point so you make your profit on volume - you just need to find your audience.

Downloads have a smaller market of course because not everyone can play them on a tv, but that situation is only going to get better as more and more devices hit the market that can play video files on something other than a computer. A 720p mp4 will play on apple tv or PS3 as well as a lot of less common media devices.

So peer-to-peer as a platform for legal studio content may be dead, but I think the potential exists for it to become the best platform for independent media distribution.

I agree with you Evan, it just seems like it is a ways off before I can produce a video and tell folks to go and download it instead of getting a disc, and expect very many hits.

Silly me thought the industry might learn from the DVD extended rollout and the HD deliverable might be more organized and not confuse the consumer again.

Well I was wrong.

I have a worse outlook now as it seems Blu-ray is un-defineable and most people (over 30) do not feel comfortable with HMPC and media downloads.

When one steps back, it is quite a messy situation for all parties.

Copyright vs Convenience

I think that in some years it might develop into that everything is watched on the web similar to youtube, but with a lot bigger speeds.

Why doesn't a site like Vimeo use p to p? Not enough control? I don't understand their business model, and can't guess at how they intend to make money.