Mark Cuban misses the point about legitimate P2P apps

November 20, 2007

1 Min Read
Cuban: Block P2P

3:30 PM -- In his latest blog entry, Mark Cuban urges "Comcast and Every Cable/Telco" to block peer-to-peer (P2P) traffic:

As a consumer, I want my internet experience to be as fast as possible. The last thing I want slowing my internet service down are P2P freeloaders. Thats right, P2P content distributors are nothing more than freeloaders. The only person/organization that benefits from P2P usage are those that are trying to distribute content and want to distribute it on someone else's bandwidth dime.



Of course, the question becomes who the freeloaders are and who is benefiting from the distribution of content. Cuban could be talking about P2P in its most basic form -- whereby end users use applications such as BitTorrent, eDonkey, and the like to illegally download copyrighted content -- or the use of P2P to distribute legal, premium content to end users.

It could be that it doesn't matter much to Mr. Cuban: There's the distinct possibility that he sees Joost users (or, more appropriately, Joost content providers) as freeloaders slowing down his network connection.

I guess my only question is whether, as a content provider and business owner, Cuban would use a P2P service if he could provide a better quality of experience at a lower cost over the Internet, or if he would stick to his guns and pay more to distribute his content in a way that would protect another end user's connection.

It's a total hypothetical, to be sure, but it reflects a very real question that many content distributors are thinking about.

— Ryan Lawler, Reporter, Light Reading

Subscribe and receive the latest news from the industry.
Join 62,000+ members. Yes it's completely free.

You May Also Like