Does p2p Really Have Any Traction In The States?

A few days ago, I added a new session to the upcoming Streaming Media East show in May that’s going to talk to p2p distribution and whether or not it will ever have any mass-market adoption in the U.S. I’d love to hear in the comments section what you think the session should focus on. What are the p2p topics that people need to know about?

Here’s my thinking. I don’t know of any company besides the movie studios who use p2p to distribute content. And the only sales pitch I ever get from p2p vendors is that it "reduces the cost of bandwidth". Is that really all they have to sell? Reducing cost? And if so, why haven’t more companies adopted it? What is reporting like when it comes to p2p delivery? Does it support live streaming? I’m no p2p expert, but for all the talk I hear of p2p, I still can’t name any customers who actually use it. And no matter who I ask, they don’t know of any companies either besides the movie industry using BitTorrent, which launches it’s legit video store when?

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Update: Christopher Levy from the Distributed Computing Industry Association (DCIA) just let me know about the organization and what they are up to. The DCIA is a voluntary organization representing all sectors of the distributed computing industry. This includes content providers, software developers and distributors, and service-and-support companies. The DCIA is engaged in developing standards-and-practices to advance this innovative consumer-based distribution channel. Good to see, I didn’t know they existed.