March 15, 2004
Volume 3, Issue 12
Coming Events for DCIA Participants
March 29-31 - LA: Digital Hollywood Spring Conference. Digital Hollywood has become the premier entertainment and technology conference in the country. The extensive agenda for the Spring 2004 event "Transforming the Entertainment Industry" is now posted, and for the first time features multiple sessions focusing on peer-to-peer (P2P) distribution and DRM solutions for music, video, games, and software.
April 3-4 - NY: Global Entertainment and Media Summit. The music, film, video, and media worlds come together to address new opportunities for creative control. This year's event features more than 40 seminars, workshops, clinics, and keynotes presented by industry leaders, including sessions focused on helping content providers harness the power of P2P for secure and profitable distribution of their copyrighted works.
April 12-14 - NY: Jupiter DRM Strategies Conference. This will be the most comprehensive event on digital rights management business and technology issues ever held. Experience and compare the most important DRM solutions under one roof. The conference will feature keynotes from leading industry figures and provide incendiary debate on today's controversial issues of online piracy and digital copyright.
Kazaa's Reggae Real Estate
By Gerry McDaniel, Financial Gleaner
Chances are if you have more than a passing interest in music you are aware of the progress of Web-based Australian peer-to-peer (P2P) software program Kazaa. At least 321 million persons on six continents are, and millions turn to Kazaa daily to appease their appetites for a range of music from around the world.
In current e-commerce jargon that kind of traffic could be described as a "prime piece of real estate," in pretty much the same way that could be said of a physical storefront of a traditional mall located along the major thoroughfare in a populous modern city.
The news today is that a company which distributes licensed content via P2P applications such as Kazaa, American-based Altnet, has struck a deal with a bicoastal Jamaican team to take charge of the reggae component of Kazaa's menu under the "One Love" brand. What this means for brand Jamaica is that interests located in the home of reggae will have control over a significant chunk of the island's image in cyberspace.
Trading under the name Blue Mountain Interactive, the driving force behind this big move is Othniel Harris, Managing Director of local IT Consultancy, Internet Management Ltd., the company which developed and maintains the "One Love Channel" on Kazaa.
His partners are respected local musician turned audio-visual media producer Junior "Bird" Baillie, formerly of Fab 5, and New York based Jamerican impresario and music producer Lloyd Evans.
"The focus and main challenge right now is developing the largest repository of authentic reggae on the Web. We aim to offer more reggae music available for download than I-tunes and Napster," says Harris.
"We understand the magnitude of this task, and since our inauguration in December last year we have been on track to engage all the major reggae and dancehall labels to feed 'One Love,' and to promote our local music across the Diaspora."
The concerns of piracy have been addressed with the DRM solution we now utilize on Kazaa. He said, "This is really a partnership to provide a legal framework for the download and distribution music and video for a modest fee ranging from US $0.39-0.99."
Download.com indicates that 'One Love' has enjoyed more than 36 million 'hits' in its first six weeks on the Web. A breakdown reveals that 45 percent of this traffic originates in North America , 30 percent in Europe , with the remaining 25 percent spread over the other 4 continents.
"We see our ultimate role as ambassadors, selling the total Jamaican experience, using the positive side of our music as leverage," he said. "Kazaa's impressive reach affords us the opportunity to engage a wider range of potential visitors, especially within the primary markets of Europe and North America."
Report from CEO Marty Lafferty
 I'd like to take a moment to commend the responsible leaders of our nascent industry for staying focused on licensing copyrighted content for P2P distribution by means of legitimate business models, protecting children from undesirable content, and clearly communicating and fully disclosing information to consumers related to the benefits, approved usages, and security aspects of their software applications.
These efforts are being made despite the distraction of opponents attempting to discredit them at every turn by highlighting abuses of P2P technology and overstating its risks relative to other Internet environments.
The functionality of P2P programs is comparable to commercial search engines, and efforts to single out this newest example of technological innovation, representing the increasingly decentralized topology of the Internet itself, can have unintended consequences and be perceived as threatening to principal companies comprising the technology sector so important to the economy.
DCIA Members who are P2P suppliers have responsibly demonstrated their industry leadership by integrating powerful tools for the protection of users, including keyword family filters and anti-virus programs with their primary software applications. P2P users are protected from viruses by default, and can choose options such as blocking adult content by key words, preventing downloads of all images and videos, and password protect their filter settings.
Again, however, it is critical to recognize that the risks purported to be associated with P2P are proportionally minimal compared to such risks on the Internet overall. For example, the risk of encountering unexpected pornography via file-sharing is no greater than the risk of seeing graphic titles and descriptions along with links to porn sites returned in response to a query using any commercial search engine on the Web.
The DCIA and all our Members oppose copyright infringement. DCIA Members who are technology service-and-support providers not only offer solutions for secure digital-rights-management (DRM) protected distribution of copyrighted content in such decentralized P2P environments, they also represent the largest distribution of licensed content on the Internet today. This has been achieved despite major entertainment interests' withholding their content from licensed P2P distribution.
The astonishing growth of distributed computing is one of the most important technology developments of the last ten years, whether for government, scientific, professional, business, or consumer users. While, as with any user-directed technology, there have been abuses, responsible companies are developing business models to present users the choice of purchasing properly licensed and protected copyrighted works through the P2P medium they prefer.
Providing compensation to all parties involved in the creation and distribution of those works is core to such models. Clearly, the entertainment industry would far better serve its own long-term interests by ceasing its quest to destroy a vital new technology and instead sit down at the table with responsible P2P companies to work out win-win solutions.
CED Report Recommendations
As previewed last week, the Committee for Economic Development (CED) has published a new report, PROMOTING INNOVATION AND ECONOMIC GROWTH: THE SPECIAL PROBLEM OF DIGITAL INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY, prepared by its Digital Connections Council (DCC), a group of corporate information technology experts chaired by Paul Horn, Senior Vice President of Research at IBM Corporation.
The 100 page report includes an overview of copyright law and business innovation, as well as proposals for overcoming the challenges inherent in digital media. The DCIA endorses its five key recommendations:
1. Because quick legislative or regulatory solutions for the problem of digital copyright protection pose risks to innovation and economic growth and are likely to have unintended consequences in a period of rapid technological change, we should move slowly. Our first concern should be to "do no harm."
2. The development and testing of new business models for the distribution of creative content should be given the highest priority by the content industries. We should not turn to law or regulation to protect any particular business model.
3. Existing solutions to the issue of unauthorized uses, such as enforcement and education, should continue to be explored.
4. We recognize the need for digital rights management (DRM) systems that will allow creators to be rewarded for their efforts. We are skeptical about government-mandated DRM, and we recommend that manufacturers not be required to build in mandated copy protection technologies.
5. Market-based economic tools that provide incentives for copyright-holders to facilitate follow-on innovation should be considered - including measures to provide earlier dedication of copyrighted materials to the public domain.
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