Quote:
Originally posted by assorted
furthermore, i think the future of p2p is in 'private' p2p clubs like this.. which is also why i'm curious.
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I also think that small dedicated & topical sharing groups will play an important role in future p2p. Many such groups have already operated for years around private OpenNap, FTP, Hotline and DC servers and other technical platforms but they have remained virtually unvisible as far as media coverage is concerned (which is probably only a good thing). The most stunning mp3 and movie collections never get shared on big open p2p networks... you simply have to know the right people to get access to them.
The idea of small dedicated trading groups may sound incompatible with the idea of large FastTrack-like open networks but I think the two different ways of distribution actually complement each other nicely, making the total p2p ecology more efficient and also more resistant to hostile attacks. The ideal situation would be to have popular clients that support smoothly both modes of operation. WinMX with its WPN / OpenNap support is doing something in that direction but the main problem with WinMX is that you cannot define separate shares to WPN and OpenNap. For example, you might want to share 100 rare files publicly on WPN and a classy library of 10.000 songs on a private OpenNap server. Now, being technically unable to do that you probably end up sharing nothing on WPN and everything on the private server.
(sorry for expanding a bit off your topic... 
)
- tg
