Reports: p2p

Piracy was one of the original driving forces behind the digital content marketplace. Without Peer-to-peer (P2P) we may never have had Spotify, iPlayer or Netflix, all of which were direct responses to the demand and behaviours created by piracy. Now as streaming drives both music and video revenues, P2P is less central a force than it once was.

Ever since the advent of Napster, media industries have been locked in a war against free. Learning from the lessons of the music business, TV companies nipped much of the P2P demand for shows by fighting free with free itself, launching services such as Hulu and BBC iPlayer.

Ever since Napster raised its head in 1999 the music industry has been fighting a rear guard action against free. BitTorrent picked up Napster’s baton and ran with it, begetting music industry’s cartoon villain The Pirate Bay. Now though free has both changed and achieved far greater scale through licensed streaming services.

During the last decade Brazil underwent great economic advances, removing a considerable part of its population from poverty, placing them into the consumer market. Now, these Brazilian citizens aspire to smartphones and tablets in order to access digital content and services.