Thank you, DonDodge, and welcome to P2P-Zone.
Yep, you were clearly ahead of your time. In a sense you
started the new p2p timeline, the clock started to tick from you, and therefore you were doomed to be ahead of all other businesses. The music industry woke up from its own status quo and stagnation only when Napster already enjoyed huge popularity, and at that point the RIAA had its entire learning curve ahead.
My own gut feeling is that the RIAA has remained some 1-2 years behind the technical edge to this date, and I doubt whether they have even today any clue of what has happened on the social p2p scene. They were obviously incapable of making any realistic scenarios or predictions about what would happen to p2p technology or to p2p users after Napster's shutdown but nevertheless they insisted on shutting it down. The mass exodus of deserted users first to OpenNap servers and later on to Morpheus, Fasttrack etc. happened surprisingly smoothly, and after a few obligatory evacuation practices the average p2p users have grown savvy enough to survive any such attacks or scare campaigns. The insecure and ignorant Internet rookies of year 2000 have grown into smart, battle hardened p2p experts of 2005. This collective learning process has been one the remarkable consequences of the p2p revolution, and it is a new factor to be considered by anybody wishing to do serious reality-based business on the public p2p scene. But as said, I have my doubts on whether the RIAA is even aware of such a remarkable social development within its previous customer base.
- tg
