March 8, 2004
Volume 3, Issue 11
Lindows Embraces P2P Distribution
Lindows Hugs P2P -- Halves Price
On Thursday, Lindows began promoting peer-to-peer (P2P) distribution of its software. LindowsOS is now being offered at a 50% savings to consumers selecting P2P as their primary method of delivery.
Lindows specializes in highly affordable software, focusing on ease-of-use and reliability. Its OS offering is an intuitive operating system that allows the installation of thousands of applications with just one click.
Lindows stressed that P2P allows customers to bypass download queues and achieve rates superior to traditional ftp-based downloads.
Networking charges are known to be among the largest fixed costs when digitally distributing content. By utilizing P2P architecture, bandwidth rates are greatly reduced. In addition to the bandwidth savings, hosting infrastructure (servers, firewalls, routers, etc.) can be postponed or even eliminated.
Together these savings allow Lindows to serve 1,000 or more simultaneous users with no new costs where previously it could serve only 125.
These savings are now being passed on to consumers in the form of lower prices. LindowsOS via P2P is available for $25 or about 50% of the normal $49.95 price.
According to Lindows CEO Michael Robertson, "We started using P2P as a promotion tool and now we're taking the next step and deploying our own P2P servers to help us sell our commercial software. P2P allows us to serve more customers faster than previously possible and at a huge savings, which we're able to pass on in the form of lower prices."
Lindows has implemented a BitTorrent-based P2P promotion which is ideal for large commercial applications with large peaks of demand. BitTorrent technology divides the desired data into small numbered chunks, which can be retrieved from many different places in any order and are then reassembled into the finished product.
A typical 500 MB LindowsOS file is divided into about 1,000 pieces, each of which is approximately 500K in size. All active downloaders then cooperate by exchanging those numbered chunks with each other until they have the entire list. Once all pieces have been delivered they are assembled into the final product and are ready to be put into operation.
Lindows expects the BitTorrent P2P approach to eventually become the primary downloading mechanism for its larger files.
Kazaa Drives Global Music Distribution
Their Name in Lights from Philadelphia to Bollywood
Many aspiring musical artists dream of touring the US and performing at venues with hundreds of fans screaming their name. For the University of Pennsylvania 's newest a cappella group, Penn Masala, this is their reality. Blazing the trail for the Indian-American community, Penn Masala connects mainstream American music with Indian undertones and influences.
Founded in 1996 and now comprised of 10 Penn students, the award-winning group has taken both the Philadelphia, PA campus and the international scene by storm. And with the release of their latest album Soundcheck, their music has spread to the Internet.
"Kazaa has been great to us. We have been getting orders for CDs from Malaysia and other places where we have never toured, and it's because of Kazaa," exclaimed Penn Masala President and Wharton School senior Indranil Guha.
Report from CEO Marty Lafferty
 The Council for Economic Development (CED) last week released a new report that provides balanced recommendations to combat digital piracy, while also fostering innovation and economic growth.
The CED shares the DCIA's view that finding solutions that harness the power of peer-to-peer (P2P) technology while respecting the rights of copyright holders is key to advancing the growth of digital commerce.
CED is a nonpartisan, non-profit public policy research organization led by 200 senior corporate executives and university presidents. The report was prepared by CED's Digital Connections Council (DCC), a group of corporate information technology experts chaired by Paul Horn, Senior Vice President of Research at IBM Corporation.
Please visit CED's website to obtain this 100 page report.
The March issue of DCIA sponsored P2P Journal is also available now online. Editor-in-Chief Ray Gao completed several enhancements for this edition. Please take time to check out lead articles MIDDLEWARE TO MOTIVATE CO-OPERATION IN PEER-TO-PEER SYSTEMS by Ben Strulo and TOURNAMENT IN P2P NETWORKS by David Savage.
The fourth annual Digital Music Forum in NYC last Monday attracted nearly 400 attendees. Kudos to Digital Media Wire Publisher Ned Sherman for surpassing past successes with this strategically organized and highly energized event. Those who participated truly represent the pioneers at an exciting and pivotal moment in media history.
For complete coverage and to sign-up for insightful daily coverage of this rapidly changing sector of the industry, we recommend Digital Music News published by the very talented Paul Resnikoff. Go to Yesterday's News and scroll down to find comprehensive coverage of Digital Music Forum.
Several DCIA Members and prospective Members demonstrated P2P MUSIC SOLUTIONS during a special lunch session at Digital Music Forum.
INTENT MediaWorks (IMW) demonstrated its Palladium and Peer Ports products for legitimate secure distribution of music in P2P environments. IMW enables performing artists and other music rights holders to harness the viral power and authentic nature of P2P file-sharing by integrating digital rights management technology, e-commerce solutions, and market segmentation methodologies to drive revenue and support their marketing objectives.
Digital Containers Inc. (DCI) demonstrated its SuperDRM system for P2P distribution of music. DCI owns intellectual property, patents and technologies to protect copyright and enable robust e-commerce applications in P2P environments. It operates with a decentralized architecture providing music content owners with the means to safely and easily support the redistribution of music tracks by P2P software users (super-distribution).
DCide Records and Whatif Productions teamed to demonstrate SmartData and MusicMiles. SmartData offers music owners flexibility in P2P pricing, usage, rights, content enhancement, language, currency, and future device compatibility. MusicMiles encourages and enables P2P users to convert existing shared files of no value to SmartData files of value. SmartData monetizes P2P distribution and protects files into the future; MusicMiles monetizes past unauthorized duplications and provides a new marketing opportunity.
Clickshare Service Corporation demonstrated its commerce platform for P2P music micro-payment aggregation across affinity networks. Clickshare avoids centralized payment handling, empowering customers to choose the most-trusted site from among independent Clickshare-enabled service providers to safeguard their personal and financial information. Buyers and sellers of digital goods can easily, securely, and privately complete purchases of music without having to pass around a credit-card number, repeatedly register, or give out personal information.
P2P Popularity at Work
File Sharing Common on Workplace Networks
Employees are sharing music and other files on peer-to-peer (P2P) applications at work in significant numbers, according to a survey released last Wednesday by Sunnyvale , CA based security provider Blue Coat Systems.
42% of the 300 respondents said they use file-sharing applications such as Kazaa, Grokster, eDonkey, Morpheus, BearShare, LimeWire, and clients using Gnutella or FastTrack networking technologies.
Among those using P2P file-sharing, 39% of users are doing so on company networks. Additionally, almost half of all respondents indicated that they did not believe their company had an Internet use policy that would restrict this activity.
Nearly 70% of the P2P application users said they spend more than 15 minutes a day sharing files, and close to 16 percent said they spend more than an hour.
Almost 60% of the employees polled said they are not concerned about whether the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) will take action against their employers for the redistribution of music on their corporate networks.
Although the RIAA cites digital piracy as the main factor behind a three-year slump in CD sales, that trend appears to be changing as recent music sales figures show that sales are actually up this year from a year earlier.
The survey respondents, contacted via e-mail from purchased lists of Internet users, work at a range of public and private companies, with most located in North America.
Blue Coat offers hardware that companies can use to control Web activities on their corporate networks.
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