MSNBC Napster heralds new business model
"Napster’s place in history may extend far beyond the e-commerce world."

"AT THE heart of the controversy is a clash that goes far beyond the music industry. What we’re witnessing is the beginning of an epoch struggle between two great economic systems. On one side of the divide lies the old market-based economy made up of sellers and buyers. On the other side lies the new network-based economy made up of servers and clients. In markets, the parties exchange property. In networks, the parties share access to services and experiences."

"By the mid decades of the 21st century — markets — the hallmark of conventional capitalism, will have largely disappeared, replaced by a new kind of economic system based on network relationships, 24/7 contractual arrangements and access rights."

redux [04.12.00]
The Standard The Age of Access
"Think of waking up one day only to find that every aspect of your existence has become a purchased affair, that life itself has become the ultimate shopping experience.

The capitalist journey, which began with the commodification of material goods and places, is ending with the commodification of human time and duration. E-commerce and networked ways of doing business are giving rise to the "Age of Access," a new economic era as different from industrial capitalism as the latter was from the merchantilist era that preceded it."

The Standard From Selling Goods to Commodifying Relationships
"Instead of thinking of products as fixed items with set features and a one-time sales value, companies now think of them as "platforms" for all sorts of upgrades and value-added services. In the Age of Access services and upgrades are what count. The platform is merely the vessel to which these services are added.

In a sense, the product becomes more of a cost of doing business than an item in itself. The idea is to use the platform as a beachhead, as a way of establishing a physical presence in the customer's home or place of business. That presence allows the vendor to begin an ongoing "relationship" with the customer."

Salon GM's e-mobile magnate
"On a weekly basis, there are over a half a billion hours of eyeball time that customers spend in their vehicles. I used to live in the Bay Area and I'm well aware of the traffic patterns there; some days you might be stuck for a couple hours. If you can make your time in the vehicle more efficient by conducting activities and services over the Web, all of a sudden your life can be more efficient. That's really our goal."

redux [08.21.00]
Inside Human Nature 1, New Paradigm 0: On Gnutella, There Are Plenty of Files but not Enough Sharing
"Napster and other file-exchange services love to tout the virtues of sharing. But a digital world where most people are selfish and don't share files isn't just impolite, it could threaten the future viability of such peer-to-peer networks.

Raising profound issues, two researchers at the prominent Xerox Palo Alto Research Center published a paper on Gnutella last week. Their main discovery: 70 percent of users don't share any files and 76 percent share less than 10. According to research scientists Eytan Adar and Bernardo Huberman, this can lead to system blockages as the relatively few sharers are overwhelmed by file requests from freeloaders. With a few downloaders hogging the available bandwidth, it effectively blocks the majority of users from accessing the tiny pool of file providers.

More importantly, the study implies that copyright interests may have an easier time than suspected chasing down pirates."

Xerox Palo Alto Research Center: Internet Ecologies Area Free Riding on Gnutella
"An extensive analysis of user traffic on Gnutella shows a significant amount of free riding in the system. By sampling messages on the Gnutella network over a 24-hour period, we established that 70% of Gnutella users share no files, and 90% of the users answer no queries. Furthermore, we found out that free riding is distributed evenly between domains, so that no one group contributes significantly more than others, and that peers that volunteer to share files are not necessarily those who have desirable ones. We argue that free riding leads to degradation of the system performance and adds vulnerability to the system. If this trend continues copyright issues might become moot compared to the possible collapse of such systems."