Distributed Tivo
I haven't heard of this idea before in this exact form.
Background: the other day, Red Hat released Fedora Core 2 test 1 (the hobbyist version of Red Hat Linux), so in the height of optimism I tried downloading all 2GB of it over my DSL line at home. I normally get 26 KBps, but this time I used BitTorrent, and because so many people were simultaneously downloading it, I averaged about 100 KBps and completed the download easily overnight. I have _never_ had such high download rates over my DSL line.
Then this morning the FCC shut off Howard Stern, and there are talks in Congress of a 10X increase in fines for showing "indecency" on TV, and they want to require a digital delay on all live broadcasts. I don't like Howard Stern myself, but I don't like where this is going. Puritans can go believe whatever they want, but when they use Janet Jackson's revealing costume as a pretext for imposing blanket censorship rules on publicly-owned bandwidth, I get mad, and I want to take the government out of the equation.
This got me thinking: there should be a Tivo-like box that uses BitTorrent as its distribution mechanism, where the programs are all licensed under some variant of a Creative Commons license, such that programs are freely distributable, but only on condition that they be unaltered (i.e., they might contain commercials). This is exactly like regular Tivo: you fast-forward through commercials if you want, but they're still there whether you like it or not. Since the bandwidth available for BitTorrent downloading increases with demand, you could get near-real-time access to the "offline" version of Survivor as soon as it's released. At a certain point, it seems the networks have no choice but to release a downloadable version simultaneously with the broadcast version, because it's going to be pirated anyway.
Personally, I'd be willing to put up with a shitload of commercials if I had access to a large library of syndicated shows and movies. It's not a DVD replacement when you want the full theater effect, but it's perfect for being bored on a Saturday afternoon and wanting to watch something good on TV and are willing either to watch commercials or fast-forward through them.
If the box reports information about what people view, advertisers would get ample feedback on the effectiveness of their ads -- maybe a variant of pay-per-click but pay per viewing of at least 80% of a commercial? Use PKI and heuristics to address view spam.
The "You may be a digital content distribution kook if..." part of this is it requires content providers to sign up. History shows they'd rather litigate than lose control. Or else this starts out as pirate television (not pirate in the sense of stealing but rather in the "pirate radio" sense of unregulated) where the box shows you a lot of disturbing stuff or extremist crap. OR -- as with all media, this may be what makes it succeed -- is this a box for delivering porn? And is
there a distributed model, maybe PayPal, where you pay for the keys to unlock all but a teaser portion of the content? Sure, the protection is easily defeated, but people can already download porn for free on the Internet, so if you make it easier to use, most people will take the path of less resistance even if it means paying money from time to time.
What do you think? Is this a business idea? A geek idea? A dumb idea?
