User Oriented Business Models in Peer-to-Peer Services

• A limited number of business and legal solutions have been used over the decades to solve the content industry’s "problems" arising from new technology. Content industry has been lagging behind technology developers especially when it comes to different file-sharing (Peer-2-Peer) technologies and systems. The paper shows that P2P technology will be necessary in the future. Research has shown that it is possible to group file-sharers in three major gropus – "free riders", "samplers" and "squirrells". Studying the properties of these groups a number of business models can be defined. This study show that business models such as licensing, subscription, retail and e-commerce models can be derived from these groups of users. This study also concludes that new underpinning technologies such as DRM and a natural language approach to content mark up are necessary to be able to develop solutions to make these business models satisfactory for both users and content owners.

Subject headings

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Annan teknik -- Mediateknik (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Other Engineering and Technologies -- Media Engineering (hsv//eng)

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

kon (subject category)