Industries can utilize P2P to increase profit by eliminating distribution costs. Criminalizing it will merely eliminate this profit potential.
With the MGM v Grokster case in its final run, it is more important than ever to show the substantial and commercially significant non-infringing uses of P2P software.
Of all people, I find it quite refreshing to find even Mark Cuban understands this. It’s ludicrous to see an industry try to destroy a technology that could significantly profit from directly, by utilizing the technology as a utility instead of envisioning it as an evil force.
The ‘viral’ aspects of the network effects produced by P2P software can enable distribution costs to go down to essentially zero. By eliminating this cost, copyright owners have the ability to increase their profit margins and reduce retail prices, in both cases enabling them to earn a higher profit. It even gets better, as copyright owners can now have a limitless potential audience that can scale infinitely, instantly.
This isn’t an issue of the consequences and benefits of copyright infringement through P2P software, this is an issue of an industry blindly trying to destroy something that it could instead utilize to make a higher profit. I find it utterly disgusting that so many P2P advocates continue to focus on a theory of how copyright infringement can somehow be a good thing. That’s not going to fly with the industries, and there’s just no significant evidence to support those theories. What will fly with them, though, is new profit potential. And that’s what we should be advocating here.
Why would an industry want to destroy something that can be tremendously profitable to them? If we can show them this, perhaps we could stop this current industry versus technology war and get some real innovation and business going.
