Digital Content Networks : The Past, the Present and Decentralizing

Sammanfattning: This thesis presents a solution-oriented analysis of current issues in digital content distribution management and content networks. The findings support the view that the recent development in the area has created a few congestion points, both in content distribution and content business, that gather increasing technical, social, financial, and political influence in the world. As pointed out in the work, this is against the ideas of information democracy, network neutrality, and the original visions of the Internet and the World Wide Web. Furthermore, leading content companies are answering to the demands of the exponential content and traffic growth by  continuously adding rather similar technological solutions, which increases the environmental problems, i.e., energy consumption and e-Waste, at the rate of this growth. The research time period of this dissertation matches with the emergence and rise of P2P file sharing networks that have introduced a new challenging way of distributing content. In this thesis, they are presented as the main comparison points and controversy to the centralized client-server architecture that dominates the content business. The essential question of this work is simply: How to build a better content network? To understand the meaning of "better" in this context and to state what is a better digital content network, it is necessary to understand existing solutions and their shortcomings. The thesis contributes an analytical framework of concepts and principles for the development of future content networks. How do we change the threat of P2P file sharing into an opportunity for professional content publishers? Actually, all the listed objectives in this work – under performance, privacy, network neutrality, e-commerce, and green computing – are societal in nature. Thus, the objective of this dissertation is to improve societal issues through understanding information technology and its closely related context. Through active participation in the file sharing scene, this work presents the development of content networks from computer networks capable of messaging between machines and systems to user networks where people share digital content. Easy copying to friends with rapidly changing user behavior have created a content platform where culture is evolving at an accelerated speed. Drawing from ten research projects and a score of technical prototypes, this thesis concludes that the P2P content sharing applications with their modern protocols effectively create a more advanced network as overlay than the underlying Internet can offer. The operators, who are excited about Internet technology for their networks, are actually limiting their possibilities right from the beginning. It is essential to distinguish between the development of the Internet and the development of large-scale content distribution network.