Well, yes. My view on this subject is U.S.-centric. In fairness to me, this is NANOG, not AFNOG or EuroNOG or SANOG.

I would also argue storage and distribution costs are not asymptotically zero with scale. Well designed SANs are not cheap. Well designed distribution systems are not cheap. While price does decrease when scaled upwards, the cost of such an operation remains hefty, and increases with additions to the offered content library and a swelling of demand for this content. I believe the graph becomes neither asymptotic, nor anywhere near zero.

You are correct on the long tail nature of music. But music is not consumed in a similar manner as TV and movies. Television and movies involve a little more commitment and attention. Music is more for the moment and the mood. There is an immediacy with music consumption. Movies and television require a slight degree more patience from the consumer. The freshness (debatable :-) ) of new release movies and TV can often command the required patience from the consumer. Older content rarely has the same pull.

I agree there is a market for ethnic and niche content, but it is not the broad market many companies look for. The investment becomes much more of a gamble than marketing the latest and greatest (again debatable :-) ) to the larger market of...well...everyone.

Gian Anthony Constantine
Senior Network Design Engineer
Earthlink, Inc.
Office: 404-748-6207
Cell: 404-808-4651
Internal Ext: x22007
constantinegi@corp.earthlink.net

On Jan 8, 2007, at 5:15 PM, Bora Akyol wrote:




-----Original Message-----
From: owner-nanog@merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu] On 
Behalf Of Gian Constantine
Sent: Sunday, January 07, 2007 7:18 PM
To: nanog@merit.edu
Subject: Re: Network end users to pull down 2 gigabytes a 
day, continuously?

<snip>
In entertainment, content is king. More specifically, new 
release content is king. While internet distribution may help 
breathe life into the long tail market, it is hard to imagine 
any major shift from existing distribution methods. People 
simply like the latest TV shows and the latest movies.

What's new to you is very different from what's new to me?

I am very happy watching 1 year old episodes of Top Gear whereas
if you are located in the UK, you may consider this as old news.

The story here is about the cost of storing the video content (which
is asymptotically zero) and the cost of distributing it (which is also
asymptotically
approaching zero, despite the ire of the SPs).


So, this leaves us with little more than what is already 
offered by the MSOs: linear TV and VoD. This is where things 
become complex.

The studios will never (not any time soon) allow for a 
subscription based VoD on new content. They would instantly 
be sued by Time Warner (HBO). 

This is a very US-centric view of the world. I am sure there are
hundreds of
TV stations from India, Turkey, Greece, etc that would love to put their
content
online and make money off the long tail.

I guess where I am going with all this is simply it is very 
hard to make this work from a business and marketing side. 
The network constraints are, likely, a minor issue for some 
time to come. Interest is low in the public at large for 
primary (or even major secondary) video service on the PC.


Again, your views are very US centric, and are mono-cultural.

If you open your horizons, I think there is a world of content out there
that the content owners would be happy to license and sell at < 10 cents
a pop.
To them it is dead content, but it turns out that they are worth
something to someone out there.
This is what iTunes, and Rhapsody are doing with music. And the day of
the video is coming.

Bora

-- Off to raise some venture funds now. (Just kidding ;)