Analysts Not Impressed By Tiscali/Kazaa Deal

from the good-points dept

Earlier this week we posted a story about the relationship between Kazaa and European ISP Tiscali. My initial reaction was that this was a good thing - as Tiscali could use the offering of file sharing as a good way to sign up new customers. However, analysts have been trashing the idea and they make some valid points. I hadn't realized that the direction of the deal is to get current Kazaa users to sign up for Tiscali. That's backwards. As the analysts point out, if you're using Kazaa, you probably already have broadband access. What they should be doing is having Tiscali promoting Kazaa to get more people to sign up. Unfortunately, that won't work either, since most people seem to think Kazaa is filled with useless junk now. A more reasonable strategy (though, one unlikely to ever occur) is for an ISP to make agreements with the music industry to allow for a cleaned up file sharing service - without all the junk uploaded by the music industry to trick people - but with a completely open, unrestricted file sharing service that lets people experiment and share music. Then, they charge an extra few dollars a month as part of the ISP fees - and pass that money on to the recording industry and the musicians. It seems like a perfectly sensible plan that no one will ever go for.
Hide this

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team


Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread


  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 27 Sep 2002 @ 10:30am

    potential good deal

    I believe this deals true purpose is to incent Tiscali users to sign-up for broadband using Kazaa's music/file inventory offering as the bait and this recent negative article on the deal is really spin to make it look like the other way around taking the heat of Tiscali which is using a "rogue" service provider for its benefit.

    link to this | view in chronology ]


Follow Techdirt
Essential Reading
Techdirt Deals
Report this ad  |  Hide Techdirt ads
Techdirt Insider Discord

The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...

Loading...
Recent Stories

This site, like most other sites on the web, uses cookies. For more information, see our privacy policy. Got it
Close

Email This

This feature is only available to registered users. Register or sign in to use it.