08-03-2002, 03:04 AM
Quote:With the advent of the Tivo and like devices, it's just a matter of time before your buddy is able to send you last nights episode of whatever tv/radio show you want, and you will be able to sit in your living room and watch it on your 52" HDTV.
See this plays into my pessimistic view of things. Most of the benefits of P2P that I can think of are ones that lose company's money. Not just lower profits on existing business, but completely erode the business as more people start using it. Music, TV, movies, software, etc. All that shit can currently be downloaded for free right now. The fact that there currently exists a regular market for any of it, is party due to the quality and speed (which is quickly improving), but mostly because the large majority of people don't know the option exists or how to use it.
As I'm supposed to approach this from a business prospective as opposed to users who like to pirate stuff, there aren't a lot of applications I can think of where people would be willing to pay anything since P2P pretty much be definition means that you can also get it for free.
The phone thing is a great idea, but once the technology is there, how hard will it be for someone to just create an identical client and have it available for free to use over the existing Internet infrastructure?