[twinspan]

The Short Answer:
No.

The Long Answer:
as assorted pointed out, the AG model relied on a central server...serving. i.e. it was all based on someone providing a service, and once those folks crumbled to the RIAA, the service was stopped and it was all over.

it was beautiful while it lasted, but i don't see the point in recreating such a vulnerable model. what p2p needs is not a vulnerable system based on a legally-dubious service that could end at any moment, but based on a product alone; and once the product is out there, there's nothing to stop sharing with it.


The Tangents this is making me go off on
of course, the potential for revenue generation is far greater for service-based models (constant contact with users, potential for ad or subsription revenue) than product-based one (fire & forget), which skews the future of p2p towards the vulnerable side, as for people to spend time on good p2p, they'll need to make a living from it.

the only interesting attempt I've seen to preserve the revenue potential of service-based p2p with the 'invulnerability' of product-based p2p was/is Kazaa-Altnet.

The way they went about it was disastrous. But their idea of making money from p2p was smart, and based on an important realisation: You can't legally make money from providing a service for filesharers, coz inevitably they are going to share unauthorised material and that's going to get you sued.

So they don't even try to get money from filesharers by providing THEM with a service (which would involve assisting the spread of copyrighted files and thus expose it all to being closed down).

Instead they came up with the idea of piggybacking a legitimate service to legitimate customers (companies wanting to distribute their own content, thus legally invulnerable). The Kazaa prog is the vehicle for Altnet; the Altnet system is the pay-off for Kazaa & Sharman making the Kazaa filesharing app.

I don't think I'd want to participate in Altnet after all the things Kazaa/Sharman have tried to pull. But if someone more trustworthy came up with a similar idea (making & providing filesharers with a constantly-improved decent p2p app in return for some bandwidth to help the creators provide a service that CAN financially support their work), I might consider it.

</rambling>