Originally Posted by
realityhd
While your post is well written and clearly inspired, I think it is better to analyze and critique your argument rather than support it without good cause, so in between s&d rounds I'll put on my devil's advocate robes.
It seems you conflate p2p and bittorrent at times. I assume by p2p you mean bittorrent and perhaps previous forms of filesharing (napster et. al.). Thus your otherwise comprehensible argument would be that bittorrent will die out but other methods of filesharing will emerge.
I'm not sure whether the typewriter>computer evolution is analogous, because that was a legitimate development protected and made profitable by a ton of capital, market forces and of course, patents and copyrights. So ironically, the analogy you draw was made possible by the laws you are arguing against.
There are two basic ways to share files over the internet: server based or peer based. There are plenty of fast, efficient server based systems, usenet and rapidshare both having their own issues. Bittorrent is certainly the most efficient peer based protocol.
There already are possibilities to decentralize and/or create a private, hopefully more secure network. The problem with decentralization is that it makes it more difficult to trust the content you're downloading and harder to find good speeds. The problem with more private solutions is that they limit you to very few friends or efriends, again reducing content and speed. Until these barriers are overcome or all decent trackers shutdown, I don't see how either of these options will be better than website tracker based bittorrent.
The great things about website tracker based bittorrent are as follows: you know what you're getting, you can connect to peers you "like", there is an economy already established (tracker levels on the macro scale and ratio on the micro), and speeds, you can often maximize your internet bandwidth using BT, which is pretty amazing for p2p. The other great thing about website based trackers is that there are few barriers to entry (overall, although some torrent sites are hard to join). So a lot of peers can find a lot of content very efficiently. You can't have that with current "prototype" technologies.
I'm sure more protocols will come about, but I just don't see one coming anytime soon. It's nice to put together pretty phrases, but I question whether there is the potential for a better p2p protocol. No matter what, there will always be something compromised, whether it is security, access, content or efficiency. Website tracked bittorrent seems to beis clearly the optimal form of p2p and I fail to see how something could surpass it.
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