P2P Survival in a Commercialized World

Depending on who you ask, P2P is statistically as solid as it’s ever been. BitTorrent is still sucking down bandwidth, eDonkey2000 is still finding rare files, and Gnutella continues to reliably find MP3 files. The Pirate Bay is responsible for maintaining the largest segment of the overall P2P population, with well over 10 million peers trading files at any given moment. By all accounts, such a diverse and large market should be ripe for commercialization.

But that's not exactly the case in P2P land. Since P2P went mainstream under Napster, there have been countless efforts to monetize file-sharing. Some companies have fallen into obscurity, while others, such as LimeWire, BitTorrent, Inc. and Azureus walk a tightrope between keeping customers and the entertainment industry happy.

These three developers represent the last sizable P2P firms that have maintained an open source client, a commitment to an open community, and are still trying to turn P2P into viable business. In essence, all three have fulfilled these requirements, but a shift in the technological marketplace tends to suggest that file-sharing networks aren't the prime real estate market they once were. While the P2P population continues to be strong presence, things are much different today than they were even two years ago. Let's dive into this theory a bit more.

Four years ago, there was file-sharing technology such as eDoneky2000, BitTorrent, Gnutella, and all of the associated programs such as uTorrent, Azureus, LimeWire, and so on. What other way was there to obtain media? YouTube? NBC.com? Comedy Central's website? Not really. Back then, entertainment companies were skittish about releasing their work, not just excerpts but full episodes, into the wild. But all that has changed. Now, if your favorite show is 'South Park', it has become simple to watch just about any episode on demand, whenever the viewer wishes - all without the hassles of P2P.

So the big problem confronting legitimate P2P developers is that web-based technology is catching up with file-sharing. The cliché the entertainment industry frequently uses (paraphrasing here) "there are plenty of free alternatives", is actually starting to hold water. Unlike the earlier days, even a few years back, there are now free, viable alternatives to using P2P to watch TV episodes.

Music generally isn't free online, however, this genre also has many free, streaming alternatives. Those looking for something more permanent find that iTunes, Amazon and Rhapsody are more than adequate. The surging popularity of these three entities shows that given good deal, people are willing to pay for music online.
It would seem the rise of iTunes, Amazon, Rhapsody, and individual TV show websites are giving users a low cost/free alternative to P2P - not to mention simplicity. This shift hasn't necessarily deteriorated the size or volume of the P2P world. What it has done, however, is offered significant competition. In the end, the user is confronted with this question: Should I download a TV show from BitTorrent, or should I stream it immediately? The growth of free and legal on-demand TV show availability indicates casual P2P users are choosing the latter.

What this effectively does is diminish a particular demographic of the file-sharing community, while leaving the overall volume intact. Those who are more willing to either pay or stream entertainment are exactly those who LimeWire, BitTorrent, Inc., and Azureus want to attract. But with the growth of alternative means, the target population of these commercial P2P developers is shrinking, while leaving those who never have any intention of paying behind.

P2P developers have to act fast if they have any hope of luring back potential customers. Vuze, the BitTorrent client formerly known as Azureus, hopes to make a strong case with its upcoming release of version 4.0. What P2P developers need to do, and it appears Vuze is making a serious attempt at, is try and exemplify the distinct advantages P2P has over web based products. Can you stream an HD movie over the web to the masses? Not really. But BitTorrent has that potential. The new Vuze attempts to get back to basics by retooling their once turbulent interface. Although the latest version has yet to be released, advanced screen shots show that Vuze 4.0 looks much more P2P-like, and developers have uncluttered the HD store interface. Additionally, the new version is much better organized, and the overall intuitiveness has improved greatly.

Simplicity is a core theme. iTunes and TV show websites have done very well because they require very little brain power to operate. The newsgroups will never see that kind of popularity because they are the exact opposite. BitTorrent really isn’t that difficult to use either, and probably no more so than iTunes. Vuze is heading in the right direction – a self contained application where the searching and downloading is done from one client. Whether it can stop the flow of potential customers away from P2P remains to be seen.


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