February 16, 2004
Volume 3, Issue 8
The DCIA Welcomes SeamlessP2P
Please warmly welcome SeamlessP2P, LLC as the newest company to become a DCIA Member. SeamlessP2P brings an important new voice to DCIA's Platform Group, and its views will be significant in the development of business models that expand beyond win-win solutions for peer-to-peer (P2P) entertainment content redistribution to also address corporate and government enterprise solutions.
P2P represents the largest growth segment in software today. P2P is gaining critical mass and companies are looking for secure P2P technologies to deploy immediately. Companies like Groove Networks, Microsoft Corporation, IBM, Intel, Sun, and Oracle have invested millions in their P2P product development and offerings.
SeamlessP2P provides P2P networking solutions using proprietary, private, secure technology. Its technology allows both companies and individuals to easily and cost effectively create private, secure P2P environments among PCs over local area networks (LANs), wide area networks (WANs), virtual private networks (VPNs), wireless networks (Wi-Fi), and the Internet.
The majority of P2P proponents look to the birth of killer applications that utilize P2P to reduce the need for centralized computing (e.g. data centers, large storage area networks, etc.) and focus on decentralized and distributed computing, storage, and collaboration.
SeamlessP2P uses its revolutionary PeerSystem technology to create a private, encryption-secured P2P backbone. This backbone enables corporate and home users to safely share information and data anywhere in the world through direct P2P access.
IDC, a leading technology research analyst, projects that the P2P market will be $30 billion by 2005, and that new killer apps related to P2P will start appearing in 2004.
Based in Orange County, California, SeamlessP2P is a privately held company that offers a proven P2P technology platform and products. Its flagship Phenom product has been downloaded over 300,000 times over the past three years.
According to SeamlessP2P President & CEO Luke Rippy, "We offer the ability to embrace existing and proven software platforms and then extend their functionality. Our P2P platform can be integrated with popular software like Microsoft Office and Microsoft Internet Explorer to provide a 'seamless' secure platform for communication anytime and over any network."
The company's goal is to provide a standard for secure P2P communication over the Internet. Through OEM distribution, selected vertical market enhanced products, and direct distribution to corporate enterprise customers and wireless providers, SeamlessP2P offers solutions that are effective across the entirety of this highly fragmented marketplace.
Price points for SeamlessP2P's products are designed to make it highly attractive for OEMs to widely distribute them with computer hardware. By licensing seats on a yearly contract in selected vertical markets, Seamless P2P provides high value to its customers. For more information, please call 949-235-7178 or visit www.seamlessp2p.net.
Altnet Celebrates a Major Milestone
300 Million Authorized Files Downloaded Through P2P Software
DCIA Charter Member Altnet, Inc. last week surpassed 300 million downloads of authorized content using Altnet technology.
"The 5,000 music, video and other files Altnet now offers translates into 50 million authorized files being downloaded through P2P each month at current rates," said Altnet EVP Derek Broes.
"We believe that inserting licensed files into P2P software is the most effective form of anti-piracy, and our download numbers support that. If the record labels were to provide their entire catalogs for distribution through Altnet, we estimate the number of legal downloads could soar to more than one billion per month, providing a significant revenue stream for the music industry."
Altnet's technology works by obtaining preferred listing spots in the search results of the most widely used P2P software, including Kazaa Media Desktop (KMD), the world's largest and most popular file-sharing application, Grokster, eDonkey, and Overnet. Altnet technology delivers search results into the file-sharing software after a search request is initiated. Altnet results appear first, before any results appear from shared directories, as gold icons, and can occupy the top 50 slots when relevant content is available in Altnet's catalog.
Other results provided by shared folders of other users are not controlled by Altnet or the P2P application and appear as blue icons, which Altnet cannot monitor due to the decentralized nature of the technology. Altnet's current catalog consists of 5,000 files. The company is in the process of adding another 20,000 files over the next few months.
Report from CEO Marty Lafferty
 Thanks to the more than 100 participants who attended our 2004 Winter Meeting last week in New York City. We greatly appreciate your interest and look forward to your continuing involvement.
As Drew Clark reported Tuesday in the National Journal's Technology Daily, "Senator Norm Coleman on Monday warmly praised the Distributed Computing Industry Association (DCIA), and said the entertainment industries need to provide users with affordable and easily accessible copies of their works online.
'The key to that is what DCIA is all about and why I applaud what you are doing,' Coleman said in remarks made in person after a video greeting by Nikki Hemming, the CEO of Sharman Networks, which is a DCIA Charter Member.
Coleman said he supports DCIA's mission to work with content companies and Internet service providers toward solutions to Internet piracy. 'I want to bring folks together, so we can figure out a way to develop different business models that ensure we have a bright future for the entertainment industry and allow technology to move forward,' he said.
Two new DCIA Members presented their technologies at the meeting: Les Ottolenghi, a co-founder of INTENT MediaWorks, a marketing and promotions company for independent recording artists; and Chip Venters, the CEO of Digital Containers, which makes encryption technology designed to manage digital copyrights.
We would also like to thank the FBI's Arnold Bell and CDT's Ari Schwartz, who updated attendees on privacy and security initiatives and upcoming actions, which are extremely important to our new industry's continued growth and development. Member support for education, deterrence, and enforcement measures and active participation in related communications programs must be a top priority along with revenue generation.
ReachTV's Mark Ellison and Arlen Communications' Gary Arlen deserve special praise for accepting the challenge of helping DCIA Member Services leader Karen Kaplowitz and me present the three alternative digital music distribution models for discussion. These can also be found at P2P Music Models and you can comment online at Add Your Comments. Our priorities are to move forward from the model development stage to the market trial stage within the next few months, and we sincerely hope you will participate in that process.
DCIA Government Relations leader Doug Campbell provided an excellent perspective on upcoming legislative activity. DCIA Communications leader Kelly Larabee supported media before, during, and after the meeting very effectively. And finally, DCIA Administration and Technology leaders Sari Lafferty and Adam Marcus, respectively, made this meeting our best so far in terms of production and operations.
Please act on Senator Coleman's recommendation to get involved, so that you can play a formative role in this exciting new industry. Active participation in the DCIA can range from sharing your ideas to working on projects to becoming a full Member. Our new Winter 2004 White Paper provides more information about the DCIA.
Digital Music Forum Coming March 1st
Charter Member Altnet's EVP Derek Broes will be one of the featured speakers at Digital Music Forum in New York City, presented by Digital Media Wire and Billboard Magazine and cosponsored by the DCIA, a full-day conference focused on the role of digital technologies in the future of music.
The event, which will be held at Alliance Francaise (59th Street and Park Avenue), includes five panels and three keynote addresses, and brings together decision-makers from music labels, record companies, music publishers, producers and distributors, technology companies, wireless companies, rights organizations, industry bodies, radio, advertising, attorneys, artists, investors, and venture capitalists.
For more information, please visit www.digitalmusicforum.com or call 323-464-0793.
Sharman Networks Weighs in on Filtering
Global File Upload Monitoring by Kazaa Not Practical
DCIA Charter Member Sharman Networks Ltd. (SNL) last week released a statement addressing differentiation between copyright-infringing and legitimate file sharing in order to help clarify this crucial issue.
SNL explained in the statement that the Kazaa Media Desktop (KMD) application is not able to monitor files that users of the software exchange with one another.
"Kazaa has a fully decentralized architecture, which allows users to share material directly with each other. This is what gives P2P, or distributed computing, its unique efficiency. Users of the software are responsible for ensuring that when they share material, they respect copyrights, just as are users of e-mail, photocopying machines, CD burners, and numerous other copying technologies."
"Altnet's patented top search technology does allow it to monitor DRM-wrapped files that it makes available or sells to Kazaa users, but this in no way translates to an ability to track, identify and block any of the hundreds of millions of digital files created and exchanged directly by Kazaa users that are not wrapped with Altnet's DRM technology."
"Sharman has reviewed suggestions from other parties on filtering technology for peer-to-peer software, and in simplistic terms, they are analogous to asking book authors to keep track of every single copy of their works made with photocopying machines around the world. Or, to put it another way, asking Microsoft to monitor the contents of every single e-mail attachment individuals send to each other globally."
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