March 1, 2004
Volume 3, Issue 10
The DCIA Welcomes New Member Clickshare
Please warmly welcome Clickshare Service Corporation (Clickshare) as the newest Member of the DCIA's Platform Group.
Clickshare is a commerce platform for enabling peer-to-peer (P2P) transaction payment aggregation. Its affinity payment system supports single-bill, multi-source purchases of digital content and e-commerce, with relationship management and privacy-enhancing features.
Clickshare joins DCIA Members Altnet, BlueMaze Entertainment, Digital Containers, and INTENT MediaWorks in participating at the Digital Music Forum (DMF) sponsored by Digital Media Wire and Billboard Magazine on Monday March 1st in NYC. Clickshare is demonstrating its solution during the DCIA-sponsored DMF luncheon in Gould Hall at The French Institute (59th Street and Park Avenue), which will also feature independent music label DCide Records and Whatif Productions.
"Clickshare was founded on our conviction that people will pay for digital content if given an easy and safe way to purchase what they enjoy," Clickshare CEO Rick Lerner said. "We are pleased that a voluntary industry association is dedicated to this same objective, and look forward to cooperating to establish best practices that will help drive renewed growth for the entertainment industry well into the 21st century."
"Membership in DCIA is part of Clickshare's strategy to become a leading participant in the online purchase of digital content," Lerner added. "The Internet has for too long tolerated the growth of file sharing without compensating rights holders. With Clickshare's solution, buyers and sellers can easily, securely, and privately transact for music tracks or other downloadable digital media with a single click. Clickshare enables rights holders to monetize their content while satiating the customer's desire to enjoy the latest song or book or videogame - and customers have a secure, private way to make the purchase."
Clickshare, with its focus on privacy protection, is ideal for the P2P marketplace. Clickshare's service empowers customers to choose a provider from among any of the independent Clickshare-enabled service providers, and safeguard their personal and financial information.
Clickshare supports a variety of payment methods including: credit cards, debit cards, wallets, ACH transfers, and appends to circulation invoices, phone bills, wireless bills and ISP invoices. Able to handle small-valued purchases, which are typical of music downloads, Clickshare can aggregate micro-payments, then collect from the customer, once the amount reaches the level specified by the client.
Clickshare has been providing an Internet transaction infrastructure for shared authentication and single sign-on, enabling privacy-protected purchasing of text, music, video, software, and other products and services for nearly 10 years. With Clickshare, consumers have one account at a most-trusted website and buy from other sources without having to pass around a credit-card number, repeatedly register, or give out personal information.
Clickshare's investors include Sawgrass Seacoast Investors LLC, the University of Massachusetts, Comtex News Network Inc., MultiService Corp., and private individuals, including founding executives of PeopleSoft Inc., and the former publisher of the Philadelphia Inquirer and Chicago Sun-Times. Its executives, board and advisors include veterans of the software, publishing and financial-services industries.
Report from CEO Marty Lafferty
 DCIA Charter Member Sharman Networks Ltd. (SNL) responded last week to malicious letters sent by the IO Group (dba Titan Media) to the Judiciary Committee of the US Senate. Please call 888-864-3242 or e-mail me at marty@dcia.info if you'd like to receive a copy of SNL's response.
Four of the issues raised in these letters also apply more generally to our Members and industry, and I'd like to share our comments with you as well.
First, the DCIA abhors child pornography and other instances of criminally obscene content and strongly encourages our Members to actively participate in efforts aimed at its eradication. As previously discussed, the DCIA and our Members are supporting the FBI Cyber Division's enforcement activities, and are jointly developing meaningful deterrence and education programs.
For those of our Members who distribute P2P file-sharing software applications, we urge them to provide tools for parents to help protect children from exposure to inappropriate content. SNL's Kazaa Media Desktop (KMD), for example, installs with its family filter preset to block adult material, permits users to add keywords to identify additional files to be blocked, includes an option to block all still and video images, and provides parental password protection.
Second, the DCIA acknowledges the reality that P2P software providers do not, however, have the ability to comprehensively track, monitor and report on the vast numbers of digital files transferred through the use of their applications by consumers. The DCIA encourages its P2P Members to cooperate with rights holders of copyrighted works, who through legal process obtain the names and addresses of any individuals using their software to illegally redistribute such works, by warning these individuals that they are in violation of permitted usage.
Third, we also encourage our content-owning Members and other rights holders of copyrighted works to utilize digital rights management (DRM) tools to protect their content in P2P distribution. DCIA Member Digital Containers, Inc. (DCI) offers DRM specifically for P2P. Our newest Member Clickshare provides secure payment solutions for P2P. DCIA Member INTENT MediaWorks provides a full range of services for rights holders to support the secure distribution of their content in P2P environments. DCIA Charter Member Altnet is the global leader in online distribution of licensed content, marketing DRM protected files to consumers who use such P2P software applications as Kazaa, Grokster, eDonkey, and Overnet.
And finally, the DCIA encourages its content-owning Members to explore possible introduction of enhanced copy-protection technologies to prevent CDs and DVDs containing their material from being uploaded for distribution on the Internet without authorization, as well as from other types of unlicensed copying. Along with such protective measures, we also urge the examination of the practice of personal computer hardware bundling with software that enables CD burning and ripping digital content to compressed file formats for consumers to share by e-mail, instant messaging, and P2P.
In our view, the best way to address copyright holders' concerns regarding unauthorized digital distribution is to license content for secure P2P distribution, particularly music from major labels that has been until now withheld from P2P, rather than relying on litigation against consumers and seeking impractical limitations on technology.
Forum on Technology and Innovation
P2P Vendors Say Let the Music Play
On Thursday, the February Tech Forum, sponsored by US Senators Ron Wyden and John Ensign, focused on P2P legitimacy. The luncheon panel featured P2P United's Adam Eisgrau, the RIAA's David Sutphen, and Luhrq's Joe Stewart, and was moderated by the Council on Competitiveness' Bill Bates.
Adam commended the Senators for encouraging this discussion and defined P2P as decentralized groups of people using file-sharing software for the purpose of diverse information exchange. He noted that P2P technology is a neutral tool, with many positive usages, but acknowledged that it can also be abused.
Regulatory initiatives that single-out P2P should not be pursued when the issues they seek to address apply more broadly to the Internet as a whole. The decentralization fostered by P2P is to be desired and encouraged, and P2P software vendors are already legitimate businesses. What is needed is a neutral lens to look at the dynamics involved in this arena.
Adam recommended the concept of a voluntary collective, akin to compulsory licensing, to compensate artists and rights holders.
David criticized P2P suppliers for developing businesses over the past four years that have not compensated rights holders. He said that the largest amount of content distributed using file-sharing software is unlicensed copyrighted material, and that the presence of pornography, the second largest category, and "spoofed" files, diminishes the user experience.
The RIAA believes that P2P suppliers should find a way to use filtering technology to curtail copyright infringement and monetize file-sharing transactions, and should join the RIAA in searching out and prosecuting heavy uploaders of unauthorized music content.
David said he believes that marketplace issues should resolve the problems currently being faced in this arena, and that technology solutions provide the best answers to technology problems, urging P2P companies to take greater responsibility.
Joe, who described his area of expertise as that of a "malware" analyst noted that there are significant and growing legitimate uses of P2P technology. He gave the example of recently developed BitTorrent software, being used for the efficient transfer of very large amounts of data.
File sharing has really become a social phenomenon and technological advances are increasing its efficiency. Mandrake Linux 9.2's distribution, for example, was accomplished with downloaders actually sharing the capacity for transferring its very large files.
Joe cautioned that attempting to deploy fingerprinting filters for P2P would not be effective because defeating this form of security using "white-noise" encryption algorhythms that already exist would be a relatively trivial matter. Any such measures need to be thought of as engaging in a kind of escalating arms race against hackers.
Senator Ensign noted that P2P, like the Internet generally, has the potential to be used for both good and evil purposes. He underscored the importance of protecting intellectual property, and encouraged the use of "moralsuasion" campaigns in this area similar to Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" to drug abuse.
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