December 1, 2003
Volume 2, Issue 9
DCIA Activities This Week
Join DCIA's Founding Chairman Derek Broes, CEO Marty Lafferty, and Director of Member Services Karen Kaplowitz at the December 3rd meeting of the Copyright Protection Technology Working Group (CPTWG). Topics will include digital rights management (DRM) and advanced technological solutions for compensating media rights holders in peer-to-peer (P2P) distribution environments.
Karen Kaplowitz will also represent the DCIA at the December 3rd LA Copyright Society dinner meeting and evening program focusing on a discussion of the Grokster case.
In addition, Marty Lafferty will participate on December 4th in The Western Show Panel "Learning from P2P: Digital Rights and Wrongs," moderated by Kagan Media's Larry Gerbrandt. Other speakers include Entriq's Robert Fransdonk, Showtime's Donovan Gordon , and RealNetwork's Dan Sheeran .
Finally, the DCIA plans to unveil its second-of-three business models addressing P2P music distribution at The Western Show.
Report from CEO Marty Lafferty
 Those who work in the emerging distributed computing industry, whether in content, operations, platform, or a combination of areas, should be getting accustomed to being held to higher standards than predecessor technologies.
And why should that be any less the case with the industry's revenue generating activities than with other areas?
Indeed, we want to be able to take pride in our leading commercial enterprises, just as much as our licensed content services and advanced software applications, for exemplifying the state-of-the-art of Internet offerings.
In order to do that, every element of the user experience in P2P file-sharing, from pre-download to post-uninstall, must be optimized for the benefit of end users.
To that end, last week the DCIA initiated a relationship with the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), focused on ensuring that our Member companies win with consumers.
One of the first items for the DCIA and CDT to address is terminology. The DCIA believes that ethical software applications that appropriately require user permission and employ contextual marketing should be considered simply "adware," and that the pejorative term "spyware" should be relegated to non-disclosing privacy-threatening applications, and be used as a consumer warning.
Of primary concern to the DCIA is that industry best practices be communicated to all firms that can improve the experience they provide their users. We also want consumers to be educated as to what to expect and how to fully utilize P2P software applications from the first moment they download them.
The CDT dovetails with these interests for providing adequate consumer notification and control, while also having a broader mandate covering baseline privacy on the Internet as a whole.
We urge interested Members to avail themselves of CDT resources by scheduling through DCIA live demonstrations of their current offerings, and obtaining CDT's feedback on issues of privacy, disclosure, transparency, and coordination.
Based on this exchange, next steps can be planned, including development of high-level principles, recommended modifications, consumer communications programs, and dispelling of misinformation that may already be in the marketplace. Working together, we need to remain vigilant of inappropriate actions taken by our nascent industry's detractors, competitors, and opponents.
The CDT and DCIA share the view that consumers should clearly, and in plain terms, be advised as to what they are doing when they add, use, or remove P2P or any other software.
Notwithstanding that the industry is still in the earliest stages of new service development and deployment, involving the integration of multiple technologies and complex functionality, this is an extremely important guideline to follow.
The work of software developers and corporate attorneys, for example, sometimes still reveals its underlying complexity. Some things have not yet been sufficiently simplified for average consumers. Choices are not always spelled out as directly as they could be. Components sometimes appear separately, when the single total package is what the end user really wants to see.
DCIA Member and leader in behavioral marketing on the Internet, The Claria Corporation, sets an example of corporate good citizenship in this arena.
Claria conducts its business in such a way that if consumers knew absolutely everything there was to know about what they would get with its software, they would proceed with the download, and readily use the application.
From a disclosure perspective, Claria distinguishes itself with the level of consumer acknowledgement it secures, not only before an ad is displayed, but even before an adware application itself is installed.
Where appropriate, the option to pay for Claria partner software, instead of agreeing to accept ads, is clearly communicated. Its distribution partners show consumers the end-user license agreement (EULA) and privacy policy screens prior to installation. Users must accept both before the software is installed.
Claria's ad-targeting methodology aggregates the actions of users across a product or service category to trigger an ad. A collective number of behaviors puts a prospect in a potential audience data cluster for a particular message. Four identifying attributes appear on every Claria pop-up: toolbar name, logo, help question-mark, and more-info link.
Finally, all of Claria's applications can be uninstalled by means of easy access to standard add-remove programs typically provided by MSFT Windows.
We look forward to acquainting the CDT with Claria, and the opportunity to identify additional industry best practices, encourage improvements, advise Congress, and educate consumers on revenue generating activities associated with P2P.
Winter Quarterly General Meeting Date Set
Please mark your calendars now with Monday February 9th as the date of the next DCIA Quarterly General Meeting.
For the convenience of many participants who are located in or near New York City, this meeting will be held in NYC. The exact location and meeting time will be announced in next week's DCINFO.
Meantime, please send recommended agenda items to marty@dcia.info or call 888-864-3242. We look forward very much to seeing you next month.
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