Group Discussion Moderated by Dave Clark
We will see if this works. You tell us what you picked up that was important and what you would like to
say back to us. Let’s go through it on a session by session basis.
THE EVOLUTION OF MEDIA CONTENT BUSINESS MODELS: I was not there. Let’s start there. Would you
identify what came out of that meeting to say back to us?
Natalie Klym: I tried to summarize into three topic areas.
1. When will the old license model blow up? Worries about copyright protection. Money being
misspent unnecessarily. Piracy. Most people are willing to pay a fair price.
2. Ownership vs. rental. What things do people want to own? What are the terms of the sale? Is
there a restricted ownership model? We buy content but it can’t be passed on to future
generations. The rental model is easier to protect. We need careful consideration of the idea of
the price point. Netflix price point wont’ last.
3. Alternative price models: Pay once for license then pay for content to come on. Pay per feature.
Pay separately for the container. A model based on person’s wealth and desire. Flat tax type
model. Monthly fee.
The last set of models we looked at: Idea of models that people could game to create market exchange.
Harrods casino example: collect points then sell or trade.
Greg Thompson: How the whole marketplace managing distributing content is under disruption. Any
content at reasonable price at any place ay time. Nexflix came up with a different content model of
distribution, which exceeded other companies like Comcast, but they had missteps. Market value
dropped. They wanted to set up a partner service, Quickster, but scrapped that. The public’s view of value
has a significant effect.
Audience Member: There are other considerations such as ultraviolet and building new mechanisms,
which has a lot of companies behind it and a lot of retail players looking to support. Or, moving to the
virtual ownership model, or do people prefer traditional ownership?
Andy Lippman: In consideration of the notion of fair price people will pay:
1. That is never a subjective measure (a grad student vs. a self-made millionaire). Maybe 99 cents
for music is okay but not for movies, maybe.
2. Seldom will I stand up for stake holders, the underwriting of someone making movies or music.
But, as a VC model they have to put up money in advance and they have the need to recoup
quickly. We have to take that into consideration.
Audience Member: One more comment. Collectively we identified our perceived need from creators to
providers to retailers to consumers. We played around with business models, but couldn’t come up with a
single model that worked for all players. This caused frustration, but maybe this plays to healthy
competition and innovation. Maybe we’ll see disruption after disruption….but eventually reaching
consensus.
SECOND BREAKOUT – KAREN SOLLINS: PRIVACY
Dave Clark: What was your conclusion or take away of this session? In the end we had a discussion about
proposed models: mobile payment for instance. There were others…
Audience Member: Other topics included:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Challenges about people’s locations.
Established metrics
How to do in real time.
Changes in ownership of device.
Old world vs. real world.
Karen Sollins: We will email and continue this discussion and determine how to go forward and do
something useful. There are many problems and we would like to figure out something useful and
feasible, however there are no conclusions yet. There were people of varied backgrounds in this group
with various issues. Privacy was one issue, but is only one part of the problem.
THIRD SESSION: INTERNET TRAFFIC
Dave Clark: Two phases. 1. Limits of traffic management. 2. Varies ways wireless can be used to carry
traffic and future forecast traffic. One thing I remember: If you had a gigabit available to each home how
would people use it?
Roberto Saracco: Three things:
1. What does the cost structure of the future look like on content? Why would people get into
business in first place?
2. Are we are concerned with live TV?
3. How do we make the most out of our network? What’s the most capital efficient way? Will
mobility extending all the way into the home cause behavioral changes? And, the technology
used for that. All are worth exploring.
Dave Clark: There seem to be very different cost points. Verizon cost is something like $700 per passing.
Fiber to the curb is only… $200 per passing? That last bit of construction is a very important cost
consideration. Do you have access to copper already? What will you compete with? And, how does all this
affect decisions? It may play out differently in different markets. Heterogeneousness will continue and
that may be good. Now, to look into the future what is the bottleneck?
Roberto Saracco: I don’t know fiber vs. wireless numbers. In terms of volume, wireless is so much larger.
So much is on the horizon with cell phones: broad spectrum, mesh networks… In the end it may be small
cells covering large areas and overlapping. The connection with Wi-Fi or Bluetooth will be useful. Are the
infrastructure components that connect all these devices going to totally change? Will interference and
other problems be solved?
Dave Clark: most things in my house are wireless EXCEPT TV. What will happen to TV? If a high speed
wireless link comes into the house then the question is will TV go wireless? Do you put your mobile device
in a dock and watch TV. What about the TIVO, DVRs and other devices? How does the business model
take all these variables into account? How do we make it all fit in?
CLARK: Anyone want to say “THIS” is what we should take away?
Audience Member: Are we going to follow up on the ONE CLOUD FOR ALL discussion?
Dave Clark: Let’s make a note. I don’t know. Cloud is very important but a lot of hype. How can I put heath
care data on the cloud is one thing, but because of scale/size of data now being talked about…is there an
incumbent that needs to be disrupted? Is the space simple, complicated, cascading? Will it become highly
distributed? Or, centralized? I don’t think we know yet. It is young.
If we had a cloud discussion group, would industry be interested? Hands here? Conversations could
center on standards, or several other conversations such as policy. We talked to Washington considering a
White House level cloud. I said that there is then a dispute of jurisdiction. Could countries then say, we
will put a cage around a certain region of the cloud and say this part is under FRENCH (for example)
jurisdiction regardless of physical location? What disputes would this set off? What are you willing to
give away in terms of national security? We have to face some of these issues. There are many things if
we have the courage.
Audience Member: Concerning traffic management, content and internetworking as a set of projects: Do
you see the need of changing the database structure, the caching of information? Do you think the next
meeting will address this more concretely?
Dave Clark: I don’t know. I think so. Will it be the next meeting, or the one after that? We have talked of
information-centric projects. There are 7 or 8 that could be compared. We would be interested to do
session on that. Karen would be willing. I’ll give you my opinion: Just as I said about cloud the strategies
and technologies you use for dissemination are going to be different for different types of info. We are
going to explore and understand it better. We don’t need a single answer for the market to move
forward. We shouldn’t try to impose any single answer because then people will defect. The semantics of
information dissemination are much more complicated. How about the persistence and failure of
multicast? We have learned that the semantics of multicast are more complicated than a single answer.
Karen Sollins: I would disagree…
Dave Clark: So continues the discussion.
LAST CALL…ANYONE?
Huawei, thank you for organizing and Deborah in particular, I thank her.
Thank you all for coming.
We do enjoy inviting our members to participate.
We stand adjourned.