Everyday it seems that there is something cool and neat in the RSS/BitTorrent/Broadcatching realm. Today is no exception. For example, Brian Clark, proprietor of the excellent Outside the System, suggests two business models for broadcatching.

Additionally, the music hacktivists behind Downhill Battle have launched Banned Music, a website dedicated to distributing unauthorized sampled music mixes such as the infamous Grey Album (About BannedMusic). Without discussing the merits of their concept (see here, here, here, and here for my take on related issues), they have come up with an interesting technology. Since many people haven't yet installed a BitTorrent client, Banned Music wraps their initiating .torrent files in a Nullsoft scriptable installer so that people automatically install the necessary software when they attempt to download the music (A New BitTorrent Downloader). The potential for this approach with regard to broadcatching is apparent.

Read on for all the latest broadcatching news ...

Counter-Intuitive Broadcatching Business Model

Brian Clark's Outside the System has a fascinating write-up on an alternative business model enabled by broadcatching (The Valley Cost Model: Broadcatching and Net Television). Writing from experience (cybercasting the Sundance Film Festival among other things), Clark notes that the costs of delivery for broadcatch are inverse to the demand, unlike traditional cybercast where delivery costs increase with demand. As Clark says, "The new mantra is: the higher the demand, the lower the cost.":

the idea that develops from this is one that is familiar to the Web: new content is free, and archival content costs. In this case, the relatively good gatekeeping of torrent files at the server level -- whether as authentication (seperate from a transaction) or a transaction (using something like BitPass) or even depublishing (no longer available) -- provides that potential....

As a model, that might mean you can afford to offer your "newest episode" for free for a limited period of time -- that period of time when your bandwidth costs are the lowest because peer swarming is the most efficient. At that point, the "other revenues" you can bring in might be sufficient since you spared the majority of the bandwidth cost. This even provides an added incentive to adopt the strange new tools needed to partipate in "torrenting with RSS feeds" (as it helps to ensure that you get your copy during the free period.)

This is just a taste, Clark goes into much more (interesting) detail. In particular, he looks at a possible ethos of such a system:

This is part of what makes the "new is free" model of the valley cost model so interesting for independents -- it reinforces the value of the most ardent fans and subscribers by giving them the content as close to free as the business model can allow, encouraging them to recruit new participants among the "first consumers" in much the way early fax machine owners pushed the adoption of faxes -- because that adoption adds value (in broadcatching's case, by lowering costs) to everyone in the network.

Read the whole thing.

Broadcatching and Public TV

Thomas Hazlett has written an article in The Hill on the coming death of analog broadcast for public television stations (Would last TV station turn out the lights?). Says Hazlett:

Broadcast stations’ volunteering to go dark sends a clear signal. Over-the-air transmissions are becoming useless, not worth the cost of firing up the transmitter.

Now Hazlett is primarily interested in freeing up the spectrum to use for other purposes, which is about as far as I go in agreeing with Hazlett here. Nevertheless, my second thought was why not broadcatching for public television stations (other than the fact that public TV is frequently more mercenary than commercial broadcasters)? Honestly, if the bandwidth costs can be shared or shouldered by the viewers, why shouldn't public TV make their content available to the public via broadcatching? Frankly, innovation-minded sponsors should require such distribution in return for their cash. Hello, Intel, IBM, and others.

Broadcatching and Porn - The Initial Killer App

Brian Clark suggested via email the killer app for early commercial adapters of the broadcatching paradigm: pornography. This is actually quite a good idea - seriously. Not that I would know about this personally or anything, but many pornography websites provide subscribers with periodically updated content in the form of bandwidth-intensive video. Heck, bandwidth costs are probably a major expense for pornographers and broadcatching would likely significantly increase their profit margins.

If there is one thing that can be said about pornographers it is that they are much quicker to exploit technological advances. Thus, pornography makes an excellent testbed for refining the technology as well as potential business models.

Roundup

Ross Karchner provides a couple of Venn Diagrams for RSS/BitTorrent/TiVo (Disruptive++). In addition to the nifty diagrams he says, "There has never been a more efficient path for video from the Internet to your TV."

LiveJournal member blueminder finds the concept of broadcatching addictive (rss addiction rekindling).

fling93 sees broadcatching as a boon to creators, especially the creator of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer and Angel (Television's Replacement):

[Broadcatching] means the Joss Whedons of the world will no longer have to pitch their shows to “Pointy-Haired Bosses” at networks (who air them out of order and then cancel them prematurely for not finding an audience). Instead, creative types can pitch directly to audiences.

And see his recent comment on this blog.

Research analysts are paying attention now. Jupiter Research's Michael Gartenberg writes that "This is the right idea but now it needs to be implemented for mere mortals to use" (RSS for TiVo). Yep.

Hublog reminds us of a concept similar to broadcatching with RSS + BitTorrent called "konspire" (Remembering konspire). As Hublog puts it:

The only real difference is that whereas clients poll the server to find out if an RSS feed has been updated, file servers send out pings to clients over the konspire network when new files are ready.

There's probably a good case for each of these systems, at particular levels of scale and channel popularity.

He's right. Too bad konspire appears to be defunct.

Feedster is adding enclosure support to their RSS feeds (Feedster Adds Support for RSS Enclosures !). Give it a try: Feedster feed with enclosure support.

Ubercyberprof Larry Lessig pointed to some "mash" multimedia from the Republicans (RNC Introduces John Kerry: International Man of Mystery). The Republicans are going to email 400,000 copies of the video to "Team Leaders" across the country. Broadcatching would make so much more sense ... and make the Republicans look technologically cool to boot.