A few days ago I was chatting in a sun bathed terrasse of Petite Italie with a founder of DEP, one of the biggest music distributor in Canada. The conversation went passionate about music, P2P, sustainable culture, etc. These are old subjects of interests for me because I’m both a culture fan highly frustrated by the whole digital media circus, and a UXP activist who believes the digital media experience must be improved drastically (see “The Punch” below).

When many salute the performance of iTunes and other legal alternatives to digital media piracy, they certainly realize that they just get the crumbs left by P2P.

“The paid video download market is a dead end (…)”
James McQuivey - Forrester Research - may 2007 (read report)

(…) CacheLogic estimates that P2P applications consume between 60 percent and 80 percent of capacity on consumer ISP networks. The fastest growth in P2P usage is coming in Asian nations with high broadband penetration rates, (…)
Joanna Glasner in Wired News - apr. 2004 (read article)

“A much bigger complaint against AppleTV is that it isn’t compatible with the market-leading video download service: the darknet.” Wes Felter

P2P is the best way to widely distribute digital media. Only a slight shift in business models and copyright laws can make it fair and sustainable for artists, producers, advertisers, distributors and consumers.

What I learnt is that it is acyually happening. Many people since 5 years, fought for this and they were too often mocked as idealist crackpots. By 2010, consumers will get open access to digital media (music, video, games) and they will pay bandwith usage instead of inernet access.

Here are four points to consider:

1. The media industry is absolutely ready to go all digital. The first step was taken in the 80’s with the introduction of the CD which is, from their point of view, a “digital master” for everyone. From this point on, there’s no way back.
2. The media industry knows the value of their products. There are songs, movies and games on one side, and things you can sell on the other side : concert tickets, special editions (digipaks, DVDs, vinyls), goodies, ringtones, soundtrack rights, etc, etc. The needs for media will never dry out as it is something we all need and appreciate.
3. Telcos are well aware that they will have to share the bandwidth revenue. Media companies and ISP are not blind, they just wait for the right conditions. This procrastination is offending because customers are actually taken in hostage behind inadequate copyright laws, and insiduous threat to put an end to all forms of creation.
4. It is absolutely feasible to anonymously trace every media file that transit through the internet so that its popularity can be measured and retributed accordingly.

Three questions then:

1. If everybody knows that digital media distribution is NOT a matter of copyright but solely a matter of repartition of bandwith cost and revenue (hence the Net Neutrality debate), why are they telling otherwise ?
2. Why us, media lovers and consumers, are we supposed to wait for the big fellows to let us consume culture in equitable and sustainable way ?
3. Why are we offered basic 20Gb/month internet connections without being supposed to download huge media files ? Clearly, why do we pay for a full pirate kit that we are not supposed to use ?

This faux-semblants game has to stop. Consumers have to stop being threatened by companies they give their money to. Consumers are ready to pay for bandwith use because it directly corresponds to something of value: songs, films, games, etc.
I acknowledge the common objection to this model : people don’t want to pay more for their internet access than they already do for free download. But most of them ignore that they already pay for huge bandwidth without being supposed to use it.

Anyway, according to the guy from DEP, the good news is that the dispute should be settled down by 2010. Negociations with Telcos have already begun about cell phones; simply because Telcos have big enough benefits with cell services to consider sharing a bit of their bandwidth revenue with copyrights holders. From cell phones, the new internet-broadcasting agreement will spread to all IP enabled devices.

The Punch: 2010, it’s pretty soon. What about the user experience ? In my previous job, I did some research on a Personal Entertainment Guide (term proposed by the Diffusion Group in its report “The IPG Gets Personal”). The concept behind the PEG is to build a layer (a UI) between sources of media (BitTorrent, youTube, VOD), sources of data (ImDB, etc.) and IP enabled consumer devices. It’s like a mix of an interactive programming guide, iTunes and Last.fm that links directly to the infinite nebulae of content available on the web. A small device, hybrid of a SlingBox and an AppleTV, operates the PEG interface in the household and grabs chosen content from the nebulae. In clear, it’s a BitTorrent enabled HDTV set with enough horsepower to play any digital media (music, video, games). I guess people would like that…

Here’s mocked up an experimental screenshot of a PEG on TV. Instead of listings, users navigate dynamic playlists of content (i.e. RSS powered dynamic channels) aggregated with relevance in mind.

I really believe that we will all use such a Personal Entertainment Guide every day within 5 years. We will not be pirates any more because we will pay for the bytes we download. Artists and producers will get a fair share, and no: creation will not perish.

Utopic ? Maybe… If you foresee alternate exits from the quagmire of digital media, I’m highly interested to debate.