Different types of content in p2p networks
Taking this opportunity, I want to share some thoughts about painful problems.
Namely, to draw your attention to some features of the information that is distributed using p2p systems.
Immediately I apologize for the sheet without pictures and beautiful graphs.
')
So, the Internet was created as if for the exchange of information, but as soon as this “information exchange” finally went uphill, problems immediately began. It turned out that up to 80% of the traffic is illegal, as it were, and violates the rights of some individuals who suddenly have good opportunities to pass the “necessary” laws in the parliaments of the leading world powers. And, of course, the situation began to emerge as something so that it would be nice to hack this part of the traffic at the root as violating property and other rights.
There is also a different point of view, which is often held by ordinary people, that is, we are with you. They believe that, on the contrary, a new digital era has begun and the distribution of data cannot be stopped (which is partly true), and the copyright holders, since this is necessary, must be included in the subscription fees for the Internet, in order to divide it among authors according to simple ones (or vice versa very tricky) rules. Or, in general, to allow everything, saying that sooner or later everything will come to this.
Here, in my opinion, lies the main misconception of those and others who consider any media content to be a certain product with stable temporal properties, any operations with which can be described by simple rules (now this is done in the laws).
How really? In fact, even with a cursory study, it is now possible to distinguish at least three types of the same media content, with fundamentally different attitudes towards them and the right holders and the users themselves.
These three types I will try to describe below. At once I will say that the boundaries between them are blurred and rather relative, while the content itself tends to migrate from one category to another.
I’ll start with the “elite”, i.e. from those who are the loudest screaming and tearing all the nerves.
1. The content on which they make money.
The tip of the iceberg. These are licensed games, films, programs that are for big money in beautiful boxes. They are trying to join the operating systems, music in various formats, well, all sorts of fresh lectures, theatrical performances, documentaries and the like, recently released products, which is expected mass demand.
According to my estimates, this content takes about 10-20% of the entire "circulation" of traffic (of course, this is about p2p, in the official stores there is simply no other) i.e. a rather insignificant part in quantitative terms. However, in terms of popularity - this is about 40-60% of requests - the cause is advertising, in which right holders often invest with almost no more frenzy than even in the production of the product itself. It is because of advertising that users, like blind kittens (koi, in principle, are), are kept on promises, and buy movie tickets, CDs, keys, licenses, and other artifacts of taking money from the public. At the same time, they download / watch / buy not only and not so much that they have at least some artistic or, so to say, practical value, but what they consider to be currently fashionable / relevant. Ie, this content has all the signs of an ordinary fashion, but not on clothes but on information. And fashion, as we know, should be expensive by definition, this is one of the fundamental signs of a fashionable thing, and not just good.
This mechanism has been worked out for years, and the “fashionable content” industry will probably continue to develop in that direction for some time, and will bring profits to its creators by selling CDs, tickets and fees.
In this vein, it is possible and necessary to speak both legal and illegal content, since once on the counter there is a “license” and you, instead of buying it, downloaded from torrents - obviously, this is not good, and welcome to the bench.
2. The largest mass share of content: "no one's," or, let's call it conditionally "abandoned" content .
The most interesting category, about which for some reason everyone diligently is silent, out of ignorance, whether it is intentional or not clear. This content, the right holder of which to exercise their legal rights, for various reasons, does not want or cannot. According to my, again subjective estimates, its share is somewhere between 60-70%, that is, it absolutely dominates over the other species, and it’s actually thanks to it that there is a p2p network, yes, and what’s really wrong with all this, this is one of two (the second is video online) the driving forces behind the development of Internet channel capacity.
Let's deal with this category in more detail. These are mostly popular films older than 3–4 years old, already rolled out, more recent films from “art-house” categories, which are not interesting to the average person to watch or even completely forbidden (tear off the roof), a huge mass of failed films of category B, C and D, recordings of TV shows, serials, music albums (semi) of famous groups of different years, old games, programs, OSes, in general, almost everything that lies on rutracker.org, and is over 2-3 years old.
All these works are united by the fact that their number is enormous, and the demand for each, taken separately, is miserable, that is, tens, hundreds, well, at best, thousands of “races” per year. In addition, due to the large number of these works, as well as the complete lack of advertising by the authors (or their representatives) and most importantly because it went out of fashion, users consume this content based on their interests, or just by chance, in moderation. quantities and without much enthusiasm. And most importantly, because it is “not fashionable” - users are not willing to pay for money comparable to those that are paid for “fresh”. It belongs to this category of content, about the same as to those films that are twisted on TV as if “for free”. “Yes, they are not quite fresh, but they will come off as an“ gum ”for the evening. “- considers the average man in the street, and here he is generally right.
Due to the above reasons, there is no benefit to trading in this category of content. For example, what's the point of keeping a store with 10,000 different art-house films, and selling 10 copies per day (of which you still have to negotiate an honest sale with copyright holders), if it's easier and more profitable than selling 100 copies from a dozen recently released blockbusters. Naturally, this art house is not really engaged. Apparently, they don’t give a damn about these products and copyright holders, because they quite soberly understand that running around the Internet defending their rights to a film that has already paid for itself with a profit, or has completely failed and will never pay off - a waste of effort and money. .
But that's not all! The concept of legality and illegality of content in this case often loses its meaning, since the concept of illegal content already implies the existence of legal content, to which it is contrasted. As an example, take any movie (or TV show) that was not imported, or was not officially broadcast on the territory of the Russian Federation, nor has a rolling ID, an official representative, no distributor, no translation, has nothing at all. Formally, for example, this film does not exist at all, since it is impossible to buy it legally. Nevertheless, it was downloaded from a foreign tracker, translated by enthusiasts and uploaded with us. Is this content legal or not?
No, you can of course forbid the general distribution of any “gray” media products, except those received from official suppliers, or filmed by our great directors for our great money. The consequences of such fateful decisions, I think, it is better not to comment. By the way, the ban on the export of “gray” content is trying to achieve when struggling with trackers as such, and for a very simple reason - the competition between “free” and “paid content” is extremely high, the free user is delayed by themselves, and with them and money that could be paid for legal.
So what do we have, as a result, with the content of this category? Yes, in fact, the usual library, where any user can come, scratching the back of his head, take (at random) a book / film / program from the shelf and carry it home. At the same time, the right holder, embracing the “K” department, will not run after this user, since the use of libraries is (as yet?) Kind of allowed for us.
In this case, any tracker (and the root tracker - especially :) - this is a distributed media library. And free. Both for users and for the state, although the latter is probably bad, because it would be very useful for some people to drank several billion rubles under the state-owned online library comparable in scale to a rutreker under the roof, for example, Skolkovo.
Well, the last type of content:
3. Free-imposed content, One that is distributed not only for free, is also imposed on the user for his free
These are all operating systems on the linux kernel, related products, all browsers, media viruses and commercials and films in any form, patriotic, some documentary and training programs and TV shows, albums of those bands and performers who earn from concert activities, and not trying sell “dollar for mp3”, in general, everyone who uses content as advertising and earns on the results of its distribution.
Roughly speaking, this is the same content that youtube, lastfm, and similar services consist of. In p2p networks, this segment is also widely represented, especially in cases where exactly bittorrent is the most convenient transport for distributing this kind of content, such as large files.
So, let us estimate this, the third, category of content, about 10-15 percent of the total number of distributions, moreover, recently, this proportion has been growing rapidly, and will probably grow further.
The evolution of types.
It is easy to guess that there is a tendency when content naturally naturally flows from category 1 into category 2 - to put it simply, it works its out in public and stops presenting financial interest for the assignor. More rarely, but it happens the other way around: some rightholder suddenly decides that the Internet has robbed him, and begins to vomit and toss, demanding money and fame, and even sometimes seeks to remove references to his “masterpieces” from 2-3 large trackers. Naturally, no growth in legal sales follows this, and the rightholder does not get any results other than a spoiled user attitude.
It is also necessary to mention the content from the first category, the right holders of which INTENTIVELY refuse to prohibit its illegal distribution, finding it evident that it is easier to make money on the service or subscriber support than chasing crookedly croaked rips and ekrankakh across the Internet.
What about finances?
As you can see, the ideas of “membership dues” to holders of 200 rubles per month “just to be left behind” have nothing in common with the real picture on the market, because, firstly, most of the content of rightholders is of little interest (!), But secondly, even if you pay for abstract access “to everything”, your money will fall into completely different hands that you should get into “justly”.
The very idea of ​​equitable distribution of remuneration among millions of authors sounds like utopia. I am more than sure that none of the DJs whose music plays every night in clubs, with the enviable regularity of the RAOs being robbed, has received a penny from them (from the RAO of course). Even in their thoughts they didn’t have to come to RAO and ask for their share, and if they had asked, they would have received a pittance, at best. Although I am sure, the Members of the Composers Union, especially those whose photos are posted on the RAO UES website, receive their “author’s” solid and regular.
There is not and cannot be a mechanism that would adequately and objectively distribute any funds between authors, of which there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions. And is it necessary to do this? As we can see from the previous notes, “grandmothers” are interested only in sellers of “fashionable”, “freshly squeezed” content, which is initially focused on sales, and they are so interested that no “200 rubles a month” will save the situation. The other authors, as a rule, have either already received their remuneration, have never received it, or generally do everything in order to familiarize with their products the maximum possible number of consumers for free.
What to do?
In my opinion, it would be quite logical to isolate the sellers of “Svezhak” and the other distributors of “recyclables” by some (possibly legislative) barrier that would allow the wolves to eat and be sheep ..
No one can and should not prevent producers from earning money from their labor, creating and selling content. People require spectacles, they must and are accustomed to pay for them. Let them pay.
At the same time, there comes a time when the media product goes from the category of “fashionable” to the category of “creative heritage”, and this period is, of course, not 75 years old, as some gloomy people have never written before. Objectively, this happens much earlier, 1-3 years for a film, 2-4 or for a game, a music album, 10 years for an operating system. Approximately in such a period, the right holder can squeeze all the money from his creation, and with a clear conscience, throw it to thepiranhas , that is, to the pirates , that is, in general, we are with you.
In conclusion, I want to say that it is very pitiful that no one seriously did and does not do research in this area. It seems to me that by settling the problem of “aging” of content, it would be possible to find a quite sensible compromise between its producers and consumers, and that the most important thing is to take the society out of the legal collision, when 95% of Internet users are de jure criminals, and people removing for Us films and writing programs - hated “kopirasty.
Thank you for your attention!
Namely, to draw your attention to some features of the information that is distributed using p2p systems.
Immediately I apologize for the sheet without pictures and beautiful graphs.
')
So, the Internet was created as if for the exchange of information, but as soon as this “information exchange” finally went uphill, problems immediately began. It turned out that up to 80% of the traffic is illegal, as it were, and violates the rights of some individuals who suddenly have good opportunities to pass the “necessary” laws in the parliaments of the leading world powers. And, of course, the situation began to emerge as something so that it would be nice to hack this part of the traffic at the root as violating property and other rights.
There is also a different point of view, which is often held by ordinary people, that is, we are with you. They believe that, on the contrary, a new digital era has begun and the distribution of data cannot be stopped (which is partly true), and the copyright holders, since this is necessary, must be included in the subscription fees for the Internet, in order to divide it among authors according to simple ones (or vice versa very tricky) rules. Or, in general, to allow everything, saying that sooner or later everything will come to this.
Here, in my opinion, lies the main misconception of those and others who consider any media content to be a certain product with stable temporal properties, any operations with which can be described by simple rules (now this is done in the laws).
How really? In fact, even with a cursory study, it is now possible to distinguish at least three types of the same media content, with fundamentally different attitudes towards them and the right holders and the users themselves.
These three types I will try to describe below. At once I will say that the boundaries between them are blurred and rather relative, while the content itself tends to migrate from one category to another.
I’ll start with the “elite”, i.e. from those who are the loudest screaming and tearing all the nerves.
1. The content on which they make money.
The tip of the iceberg. These are licensed games, films, programs that are for big money in beautiful boxes. They are trying to join the operating systems, music in various formats, well, all sorts of fresh lectures, theatrical performances, documentaries and the like, recently released products, which is expected mass demand.
According to my estimates, this content takes about 10-20% of the entire "circulation" of traffic (of course, this is about p2p, in the official stores there is simply no other) i.e. a rather insignificant part in quantitative terms. However, in terms of popularity - this is about 40-60% of requests - the cause is advertising, in which right holders often invest with almost no more frenzy than even in the production of the product itself. It is because of advertising that users, like blind kittens (koi, in principle, are), are kept on promises, and buy movie tickets, CDs, keys, licenses, and other artifacts of taking money from the public. At the same time, they download / watch / buy not only and not so much that they have at least some artistic or, so to say, practical value, but what they consider to be currently fashionable / relevant. Ie, this content has all the signs of an ordinary fashion, but not on clothes but on information. And fashion, as we know, should be expensive by definition, this is one of the fundamental signs of a fashionable thing, and not just good.
This mechanism has been worked out for years, and the “fashionable content” industry will probably continue to develop in that direction for some time, and will bring profits to its creators by selling CDs, tickets and fees.
In this vein, it is possible and necessary to speak both legal and illegal content, since once on the counter there is a “license” and you, instead of buying it, downloaded from torrents - obviously, this is not good, and welcome to the bench.
2. The largest mass share of content: "no one's," or, let's call it conditionally "abandoned" content .
The most interesting category, about which for some reason everyone diligently is silent, out of ignorance, whether it is intentional or not clear. This content, the right holder of which to exercise their legal rights, for various reasons, does not want or cannot. According to my, again subjective estimates, its share is somewhere between 60-70%, that is, it absolutely dominates over the other species, and it’s actually thanks to it that there is a p2p network, yes, and what’s really wrong with all this, this is one of two (the second is video online) the driving forces behind the development of Internet channel capacity.
- By the way, in real life, property relations of this kind are also very common. Take a ride in Russia by car or train - and you will find a huge number of abandoned houses, land plots, factories, former collective farms, and even entire cities that formally have a boss, but in fact they look and are used as abandoned. For example, you can live a month in a tent on the field, without even knowing that this is someone’s private property.
Let's deal with this category in more detail. These are mostly popular films older than 3–4 years old, already rolled out, more recent films from “art-house” categories, which are not interesting to the average person to watch or even completely forbidden (tear off the roof), a huge mass of failed films of category B, C and D, recordings of TV shows, serials, music albums (semi) of famous groups of different years, old games, programs, OSes, in general, almost everything that lies on rutracker.org, and is over 2-3 years old.
All these works are united by the fact that their number is enormous, and the demand for each, taken separately, is miserable, that is, tens, hundreds, well, at best, thousands of “races” per year. In addition, due to the large number of these works, as well as the complete lack of advertising by the authors (or their representatives) and most importantly because it went out of fashion, users consume this content based on their interests, or just by chance, in moderation. quantities and without much enthusiasm. And most importantly, because it is “not fashionable” - users are not willing to pay for money comparable to those that are paid for “fresh”. It belongs to this category of content, about the same as to those films that are twisted on TV as if “for free”. “Yes, they are not quite fresh, but they will come off as an“ gum ”for the evening. “- considers the average man in the street, and here he is generally right.
Due to the above reasons, there is no benefit to trading in this category of content. For example, what's the point of keeping a store with 10,000 different art-house films, and selling 10 copies per day (of which you still have to negotiate an honest sale with copyright holders), if it's easier and more profitable than selling 100 copies from a dozen recently released blockbusters. Naturally, this art house is not really engaged. Apparently, they don’t give a damn about these products and copyright holders, because they quite soberly understand that running around the Internet defending their rights to a film that has already paid for itself with a profit, or has completely failed and will never pay off - a waste of effort and money. .
But that's not all! The concept of legality and illegality of content in this case often loses its meaning, since the concept of illegal content already implies the existence of legal content, to which it is contrasted. As an example, take any movie (or TV show) that was not imported, or was not officially broadcast on the territory of the Russian Federation, nor has a rolling ID, an official representative, no distributor, no translation, has nothing at all. Formally, for example, this film does not exist at all, since it is impossible to buy it legally. Nevertheless, it was downloaded from a foreign tracker, translated by enthusiasts and uploaded with us. Is this content legal or not?
No, you can of course forbid the general distribution of any “gray” media products, except those received from official suppliers, or filmed by our great directors for our great money. The consequences of such fateful decisions, I think, it is better not to comment. By the way, the ban on the export of “gray” content is trying to achieve when struggling with trackers as such, and for a very simple reason - the competition between “free” and “paid content” is extremely high, the free user is delayed by themselves, and with them and money that could be paid for legal.
So what do we have, as a result, with the content of this category? Yes, in fact, the usual library, where any user can come, scratching the back of his head, take (at random) a book / film / program from the shelf and carry it home. At the same time, the right holder, embracing the “K” department, will not run after this user, since the use of libraries is (as yet?) Kind of allowed for us.
In this case, any tracker (and the root tracker - especially :) - this is a distributed media library. And free. Both for users and for the state, although the latter is probably bad, because it would be very useful for some people to drank several billion rubles under the state-owned online library comparable in scale to a rutreker under the roof, for example, Skolkovo.
Well, the last type of content:
3. Free-imposed content, One that is distributed not only for free, is also imposed on the user for his free
These are all operating systems on the linux kernel, related products, all browsers, media viruses and commercials and films in any form, patriotic, some documentary and training programs and TV shows, albums of those bands and performers who earn from concert activities, and not trying sell “dollar for mp3”, in general, everyone who uses content as advertising and earns on the results of its distribution.
Roughly speaking, this is the same content that youtube, lastfm, and similar services consist of. In p2p networks, this segment is also widely represented, especially in cases where exactly bittorrent is the most convenient transport for distributing this kind of content, such as large files.
- There is generally an interesting situation. Among the giants of the industry, periodically (and, probably, with a big creak) there are difficult to explain movements in this regard. For example, Mosfilm, which several years ago, as the copyright holder, sent us formidable demands to close the distribution of tens of thousands of Soviet films, (starting from those where Lenin and the armored car), and ending with Russian, modern ones. Then they made a website where you can watch these movies online, and then they started posting them yourself on youtube (!). Such are the owners in Russia.
So, let us estimate this, the third, category of content, about 10-15 percent of the total number of distributions, moreover, recently, this proportion has been growing rapidly, and will probably grow further.
The evolution of types.
It is easy to guess that there is a tendency when content naturally naturally flows from category 1 into category 2 - to put it simply, it works its out in public and stops presenting financial interest for the assignor. More rarely, but it happens the other way around: some rightholder suddenly decides that the Internet has robbed him, and begins to vomit and toss, demanding money and fame, and even sometimes seeks to remove references to his “masterpieces” from 2-3 large trackers. Naturally, no growth in legal sales follows this, and the rightholder does not get any results other than a spoiled user attitude.
It is also necessary to mention the content from the first category, the right holders of which INTENTIVELY refuse to prohibit its illegal distribution, finding it evident that it is easier to make money on the service or subscriber support than chasing crookedly croaked rips and ekrankakh across the Internet.
- The big uncles here also behave incomprehensibly. Like, for example, Microsoft, which suddenly , since February of this year, has ceased to distribute the distribution of its operating systems from rutreker, which until that moment were communicated with enviable regularity and perseverance.
What about finances?
As you can see, the ideas of “membership dues” to holders of 200 rubles per month “just to be left behind” have nothing in common with the real picture on the market, because, firstly, most of the content of rightholders is of little interest (!), But secondly, even if you pay for abstract access “to everything”, your money will fall into completely different hands that you should get into “justly”.
The very idea of ​​equitable distribution of remuneration among millions of authors sounds like utopia. I am more than sure that none of the DJs whose music plays every night in clubs, with the enviable regularity of the RAOs being robbed, has received a penny from them (from the RAO of course). Even in their thoughts they didn’t have to come to RAO and ask for their share, and if they had asked, they would have received a pittance, at best. Although I am sure, the Members of the Composers Union, especially those whose photos are posted on the RAO UES website, receive their “author’s” solid and regular.
There is not and cannot be a mechanism that would adequately and objectively distribute any funds between authors, of which there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions. And is it necessary to do this? As we can see from the previous notes, “grandmothers” are interested only in sellers of “fashionable”, “freshly squeezed” content, which is initially focused on sales, and they are so interested that no “200 rubles a month” will save the situation. The other authors, as a rule, have either already received their remuneration, have never received it, or generally do everything in order to familiarize with their products the maximum possible number of consumers for free.
What to do?
In my opinion, it would be quite logical to isolate the sellers of “Svezhak” and the other distributors of “recyclables” by some (possibly legislative) barrier that would allow the wolves to eat and be sheep ..
No one can and should not prevent producers from earning money from their labor, creating and selling content. People require spectacles, they must and are accustomed to pay for them. Let them pay.
At the same time, there comes a time when the media product goes from the category of “fashionable” to the category of “creative heritage”, and this period is, of course, not 75 years old, as some gloomy people have never written before. Objectively, this happens much earlier, 1-3 years for a film, 2-4 or for a game, a music album, 10 years for an operating system. Approximately in such a period, the right holder can squeeze all the money from his creation, and with a clear conscience, throw it to the
In conclusion, I want to say that it is very pitiful that no one seriously did and does not do research in this area. It seems to me that by settling the problem of “aging” of content, it would be possible to find a quite sensible compromise between its producers and consumers, and that the most important thing is to take the society out of the legal collision, when 95% of Internet users are de jure criminals, and people removing for Us films and writing programs - hated “kopirasty.
Thank you for your attention!
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/120791/
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