Brilliant Technologies Corp. (fka BLLN)

[grovertdog]

Stand by it all you want, but it is rather absurd. Revenue from iTunes has been hugely relevant both to APPL and, to their dismay, the brick and mortar retail industry (and yes P2P has had an even bigger impact on these guys). In terms of folks actually making $ distributing music, iTunes is hardly a joke. 1% of "billions and billions" is nothing to sneaze at. And really, I think you need to get a sense of scale here. You say "5 billion over a 5 yr period ain't that much" compared to free and I reject that argument. QTRAX is well on its way to proving that free isn't free, as we have all noticed, not to mention that they seem to have abandoned their version of P2P, etc.

It is interesting you cite that 70% of the portable players "out there" are ipods, so DRM hasn't been an issue for apple. A couple posts back you quote Jupiter saying 84% of iPod owners don't get their music from iTunes. Figuring there's maybe 80 million or so iPods out there, and figure 20 album buys per iPod (pulling that out of my you know what), we still have three and half BILLION iTunes sales to account for.

Anyway, we've detoured to a off point tangent with the focus on iTunes here, my position is their success has been ahead of the most wildly optimistic predictions, and yours is that it is irrelevant since you feel QTRAX customers only consider p2p as an alternative. We have a valid argument, I'd say. I think p2p guys won't put up with anything less than the Napster/Kazaa/BitTorrent type model they're used to. If BLLN delivered what they said they were going to in a reasonable timeframe, things could have turned out differently. Sure as hell was why I bought in.

As for Jupiter, well, research is like economics. There is theory and there is practice, and the two sides generally don't get along. And trust me, companies like Jupiter know where there bread is buttered- as the Microsoft debacle indicates. But stepping back a second, the concept of "surveying" potentially illegal activity (downloading of copywritten content) with potential jeopardy to the user makes me sure question the quality of Jupiter's data. They can hardly go to ISP's and say "Hey, send us your stats on illegal downloads " And as far as surveys go, just like four out of five political research firms said Kerry would win in 2004, people often say things that are different from what they do.

But, if it makes you happy, , I'll gladly stipulate the p2p market is enormous, whatever the size it is...

As for my ever-increasing contrarian position with respect to BLLN: Investing generally involves folks buying securities believing the value will go up from sellers thinking the opposite. This forum certainly needs counterpointing as BLLN is so far looking like a bloodbath with very little rational reason to "ktf" for the promised upside, and I won't apologize for my role in that regard. I relish the discussion when my beliefs are challenged as I often emerge better informed than before.

I enjoy challenging you and others to stimulating discussions. You and lucky certainly provided p2p numbers that indicate a gargantuan market, kudos. I only wish I have seen something that makes me think QTRAX can tap into this.