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AOL's Got CDs Being Returned By Mail
from the enjoy... dept
You may recall our recent story about just how many "free hours" CDs and DVDs AOL sends. Well, now, a California politician is trying to force AOL to take back the discs... and pay for postage. A law being introduced here would require any promotional CD sent through the mail to include postage-paid envelopes for shipping them back to the original company. Of course, perhaps what AOL should do is include postage paid envelopes for others on their list. Then, if you got a CD you didn't want, you would just be passing it on to the next person (though, I guess you would then need another postage-paid envelope included for the next person... and so on).
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AOl disc
Tell me again why AOL dosen't include a smple P2P opreating system on each disc? Seems Like a easy way to create a huge self healing network that would be primed to be a great consumer platform. Takes the walled garden to a new, huge level.
Any AOL P2P OS included disc could carry, eh.. aLindows, Linspire type stripped down os that would install on any naked machine. Booting up would auto start a p2p update feed with the newest anti virus , or security patch.
Obviously, you then get to feed commercial content , etc, as well. Rather like the old, "we'll give them a PC then make 'em watch commercials" idea.. except that you don't need to distributre the PC.. just the basic OS.. then up date by P2P to save and control distribution costs. Not another disc would ever go out of date. The network would spread, just like other P2P apps have, but with hooks into the OS, AOL could exert a large degree control over the C2C (consumer to consumer ) swapping, while claiming ISP immunity for the little it missed. By seeding high quality files of commercials, video clips and sample MP3's,on the network, their content would soon become preferred over suspect files. Think Kazza and Brilliant Digital Entertainment, but as it could be executed by IBM (or Novell) and Disney
(or Pixar). Sooner or later the RIAA and MPAA will discover low quality C2C swapping is good for business, Feeding their promos into a controlled P2P network (OS hooks, remember..) would be alot like the old broadcast model they understand.
Free Sun Java desktop with AOL? "Self healing" P2P updates on bootup, with the newest films and music promotions? Steve Case could yet rule the world.
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Re: AOl disc
Considering that AOL is primarily a dialup based network, a P2P setup absolutely would not work.
There is too much sh*t you need to download.
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