November 15, 2004
Volume 6, Issue 11
Warped Tour's P2P Distribution Play
Digital Music News
While the time for summer tours is clearly over, organizers of the Warped Tour decided to keep the energy going with a peer-to-peer (P2P) distribution scheme.
As part of the plan, concert footage was positioned as protected files on Kazaa, which is distributed by DCIA Member Sharman Networks, with fellow DCIA Member Altnet powering the backend.
Those searching for Warped artists were presented with paid options, with over 430,000 exposed to a dedicated "Warped Store." Total paid downloads were 43,000.
Welcome to Jun Group
Please warmly welcome Jun Group, Inc. to the Content Group. We look forward to providing valuable services to this newest DCIA Member and supporting its contributions to commercial development of the distributed computing industry.
Jun Group made news earlier this year by brokering a deal that promoted Steve Winwood's music in the P2P marketplace sponsored by Hearst-Argyle's "Access Hollywood."
"I look at P2P as a way to create more chances for people to actually hear and become aware of the music," said Marv Danielski, Marketing VP for Hearst-Argyle Television. "There are some artists who are not going to be heard on typical radio stations."
Using data from BigChampagne, Jun Group estimated that 2.5 million copies of Winwood's song "Dear Mr. Fantasy" were downloaded. The impact on his album "About Time" was an eight times increase in sales in some regions.
"This sales increase was solely attributable to the P2P promotion, since it was the only way the album was promoted at the time," noted Jun Group principal Mitchell Reichgut. "This was proof that the file sharing community is a very affluent, desirable market, and that P2P can be used to increase record sales."
Jun Group is now a leading distributor of free licensed content in the global file-sharing community. Its patent-pending process delivers high-quality music, television, film, and video games to millions of consumers around the world who share files via P2P software programs and other applications.
According to Jun Group, by conservative estimates, P2P represents more than 4 million people online at any given time executing over 120 million content searches per day. It is, quite simply, the hottest, hippest environment on the planet.
The company's unique access to, and understanding of, the highest levels of this community enables it to distribute sponsored content to millions of consumers in a way that is completely consistent with their culture.
Prior to forming Jun Group, the company's founders played leading roles on advertising and communications projects for brands such as AT&T, Avis Rent-A-Car System, Avon, British Airways, Lipton, Moet & Chandon, Perrier, Procter & Gamble, Sauza Tequila, Pfizer/Warner-Lambert — and many others.
Jun Group's clients include Cadbury Schweppes, PALM Entertainment, NBC Enterprises, and others.
Report from CEO Marty Lafferty
 We are very grateful to the National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG) and especially to the senior representatives who invested their time to meet with us last week to learn more about industry efforts to commercially develop peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing and to provide safeguards for our citizens who use P2P technologies.
And we are thankful to our Members and other industry participants in DCIA supported working groups and special projects for all that they are doing on both of these fronts.
There has been real progress, and that is being recognized and lauded by officials. But we also need to continue to work together towards our common goals of establishing new business models and improving the quality of P2P user experience.
Among the very constructive suggestions coming out of this meeting was a call for additional industry best-practice projects, which we have already begun to explore with DCIA's Best Practices leader Elaine Reiss.
These will focus initially on P2P software program default-setups, as well as methods for mitigating or eliminating each of the risks enumerated in the P2P Software Risks regime developed earlier by the Consumer Disclosures Working Group (CDWG) with input from federal regulatory authorities (please see CDWG Online Demo).
Additional recommendations dealt with technical enhancements to family-filters that will enable parents to further protect their children.
We also greatly appreciated the interest in industry efforts to ensure that beneficial adware and malicious spyware are understood to be mutually exclusive and treated accordingly.
Unlike spyware, adware is installed with consent and enables installation and usage of valuable computer programs by consumers at no cost or at a reduced cost in exchange for receipt of online advertising.
Properly deployed adware clearly communicates its value proposition before installation and during operation, fully discloses and clearly explains its functionality, requires positive affirmation of permission before being installed, respects end-user privacy while serving ads, provides easily understandable explanations of what it is doing, and is not difficult to uninstall.
We are particularly interested in establishing high standards for such innovative business models that are important to the nascent distributed computing industry. At the same time, we remain committed to combating risks and curtailing abuses of P2P technologies.
In the fullness of time, the elimination or reduction of malicious spyware, for example, will help increase distribution of P2P file-sharing software by removing a stigma that has been wrongly associated with it by certain of its opponents.
We also spent considerable time focusing on the three programs that comprise the industry's anti-child-pornography initiative, P2P PATROL - Parents And Teens React On Line, and we will be involving NAAG in this initiative going forward, including participation in the quarterly working sessions for law enforcement and private sector representatives.
Finally, we reviewed the P2P Revenue Engine project, which involves ten uniquely qualified companies focusing totally on a solution that will be attractive to major entertainment content aggregators.
Based on this highly productive meeting, we will be analyzing leading P2P software provider progress on key consumer-protection metrics, and include these in the year-end report that we will provide to NAAG, as well as to Senators Boxer, Cornyn, Durbin, and Smith, who originally requested this industry update.
Coalition Rallies to Fight Omnibus Bill
By Sarah Stirland in Technology Daily
A coalition of public-interest advocates, technology industry groups and a conservative group is launching a pre-emptive publicity strike designed to prevent Senate passage of an omnibus intellectual property bill during Congress' post-election session this week.
The omnibus bill, HR 2391, contains the language of many separate measures that would dramatically reshape the legal liability standards in copyright law. The American Conservative Union (ACU), Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), Computer and Communications Industry Association, Public Knowledge and Verizon Communications outlined their concerns with the legislation at a Friday press conference.
One of the most controversial provisions would lower the legal standard for prosecuting individuals who share large amounts of music through file-sharing programs. Critics charge that the provision not only would put thousands and perhaps millions of people at risk for owning music on computers accessible by others but also could make Internet service providers (ISPs) liable for the activities of their customers.
But entertainment industry lobbyists have said the lower legal standard is necessary to ensure successful prosecutions. They said Justice has had a hard time mounting criminal cases because it is almost impossible to provide evidence of willful infringement when file sharers passively share copyrighted content on their hard drives.
The ACU also is launching a weeklong advertising campaign next week in five different publications, including The New Republic and The Washington Times, against a portion of the bill that would give the Justice Department the ability to file civil lawsuits against copyright infringers. The ads object to Justice's potential role as Hollywood's lawyers, said Stacie Rumenap, deputy director of the group.
ACU ran a similar campaign against a bill, S 2560, that would make third parties liable for intentionally "inducing" others to infringe upon copyrights. Those ads ran in various publications. Rumenap said Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-UT, called ACU to complain about them.
Sarah Deutsch, Verizon's vice president, further said the omnibus bill would strip protections for ISPs like Verizon that were codified in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
The measure would facilitate a voluntary program enabling Justice to send warning letters to ISPs to forward to their customers who appear to be engaging in copyright infringement. That would give the ISPs knowledge of the activity and could make them liable for "reckless disregard" if they do not halt service to those customers.
The bill has many other controversial provisions, such as one that would outlaw the use of technology to skip ads while watching movies.
At least six senators – including Commerce Committee Chairman John McCain, R-AZ – used an informal procedure known as a "hold" to stall the bill. But those holds could be lifted at the last minute, some of the industry representatives at the conference said.
"The thing about lame-duck sessions is that you don't know what's going to happen," CEA President Gary Shapiro said. "It pays to be paranoid."
Public Knowledge President Gigi Sohn and other industry representatives said many of the provisions in the bill need more examination before Congress passes any legislation.
Coming Events of Interest
- P2P File-Sharing: Consumer Protection and Competition Issues - The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) will host a public workshop December 15th-16th to explore consumer protection and competition issues associated with the distribution and use of P2P file-sharing software.
The workshop is intended to provide an opportunity to learn how P2P file-sharing works and to discuss current and future applications of the technology. A detailed agenda and additional information on the workshop will be posted on the FTC's web site at FTC P2P Workshop Agenda.
The workshop will focus on uses of P2P file-sharing technology, the role of P2P file-sharing technology in the economy, identification and disclosure of P2P file-sharing software program risks, technological solutions to protect consumers from risks associated with P2P file-sharing software programs, P2P file-sharing and music distribution, and P2P file-sharing and its impact on copyright holders.
- Digital Hollywood at CES 2005 - Digital Hollywood will present a full program at the Consumer Electronics Show in the Las Vegas Convention Center North Hall, January 6th-8th.
The DCIA is proud to moderate "Next Generation P2P Music and Film - DRM, Paid for Pass-Along, and Other Distributed Computing Models and the Entertainment Industries" featuring Adrian Sexton, Executive Director, Business Development, Lions Gate Entertainment; Richard Conlon, VP Licensing, BMI; Derek Broes, Windows Client Strategic Relations & Policy, Microsoft; Marc Morgenstern, Vice President, Overpeer; Mark Ishikawa, Chief Executive and Technology Officer, BayTSP; Michael Weiss, President & CEO, StreamCast Networks, and Gerd Leonhard, CEO, ThinkAndLink.biz and Senior Advisor, Media Rights Technologies.
- P2P PATROL - Parents And Teens React On Line - The industry's anti-child-pornography initiative will hold its quarterly working session with private sector and law enforcement representatives in Dallas, TX on February 1st. For more information and to learn how you can contribute to P2P PATROL, please contact sari@dcia.info or call 888-864-DCIA.
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