Digital distribution has potential advantages for students

One day in the future, nearly everything you need will come to you digitally - without boxes, cases or instruction manuals.

That's right - books, video games, music, nearly anything you can think of that doesn't rot - will be beamed directly into your home through that magic system of tubes: the Internet.

While it's true digital distribution may be the wave of the future, we're not there yet. The infrastructure that currently exists is not set up to deliver a full digital package and some of the hitches are surprisingly low tech.

For those unfamiliar with the concept, digital distribution is a method of product delivery that shoves aside the packaging of a product in favor of shipping it to the consumer via the Internet.

Most students at the University are already too familiar with the concept, however not in the legal way. I imagine most University students are familiar with it's free-spirited cousin - peer to peer networking.

Peer to peer (P2P) networking involves the sharing of media

between individual users - usually distributing pirated software, music and games.

While P2P networking does distribute things digitally, its not what I'm talking about here.

The type of digital distribution I'm referring to is next step in a process the general population is already familiar with - it's like shopping, except you don't go anywhere and never get to actually hold anything.

The legal version of digital distribution involves manufacturers selling it to consumers directly and then allowing them to download the product at their leisure.

It's already pretty popular.

iTunes and Rhapsody.com already make millions of dollars from digitally distributed content, and sites such as Netflix.com have recently opened up on-demand downloadable movies.

Even video games are transitioning to digital distribution with Nintendo's WiiWare and Microsoft's X-Box Live Arcade.

Digital distribution may be in its infancy now, but the road to complete digital distribution will lead University students to some big payoffs.

For the general population, digital distribution may actually be more expensive than traditional methods of shipping.

Blogger Nick Beaudrot, of the site Cogitamusblog.com, calculates that it's still cheaper to ship products the old fashioned way. Production of the items that are easily digitally distributed is still remarkably cheap. The CDs and DVDs that contain our music, movies and video games are pressed out rapidly, and the packaging is usually pretty meager outside of special editions.

The cost of production and light weight of transport make them relatively cheap to ship compared to the cost of bandwidth. As one anonymous comment on Beaudrot's post said, never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes.

In truth, Beaudrot's idea is sound, and the increasing cost of gas and increasing availability of broadband Internet will eventually make digital distribution paramount.

What Beaudrot doesn't take into account is the other forms of digital distribution - namely books, magazines and academic journals.

These are the media that most directly apply to University students.

University students already have access to many periodicals and e-journals through Middleton Library.

But that's not where the real gain for students is.

For University students, the real gain will be from e-books, podcasts and digitally distributed lecture videos that are already here in some cases and on the way for others.

Other universities are already on top of this. Universities such as Purdue, Washington State and U.C. Berkeley, among others, offer podcasts and in some cases videos of lectures that students can download.

The University has taken the first steps toward getting it all lined up, but the future holds tons of promise.

Unlike DVDs and movies, the benefit of digitally distributed books is easy to see. Books are costlier to produce than disc-based media and it would be much cheaper to distribute them electronically.

Podcasts and videos of lectures may get bogged down in image rights, but by far the biggest hurdle here is an administrative one.

If podcasts and videos of lectures are online, why would students take notes? Would attendance matter anymore? These are anything but trivial issues, and they cannot be resolved easily.

The age of digital distribution is coming, but it's not here yet.

In the case of popular media, it's close and coming fast. For the academic community, it's merely a tiny shadow on the horizon of an academic revolution.

It'll be here eventually, but in the meantime we should all invest in bigger hard drives.


Originally published in The Daily Reveille...