September 4, 2006
Volume 14, Issue 9
Jun Group & Coca Cola Bring Jay-Z to P2P
DCIA Member Jun Group this week launched the second installment of Coca-Cola Stageside featuring megastar Jay-Z and his sold-out performance of "Reasonable Doubt" at Radio City Music Hall.
Viewers can access never-before-seen performances of the highly influential album’s songs as well as exclusive content including interviews with Jay-Z and other participating artists, behind-the-scenes footage, and sound-bites from fans.
The new video is being released simultaneously on peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing networks, select websites, and at www.stageside.tv.
Coca-Cola’s foray into the file-sharing community is anchored by Stageside, the first-of-its-kind to offer free downloadable content via P2P networks such as Kazaa, distributed by fellow DCIA Member Sharman Networks. All downloads are formatted for PSP players, iPods, and similar devices for easy viewing.
The Jay-Z concert marks the second time exclusive file-sharing footage has been offered from Coca-Cola. The program launched in March with a live performance from Island Def Jam’s hot new artist, Ne*Yo, with more than 3.3 million downloads reported.
"With Stageside, we are using P2P networks and file sharing to change how we make entertainment content available digitally," said Carol Kruse, Vice President Interactive Marketing, Coca-Cola North America. "With the online landscape constantly evolving we have to offer distinctive content that people will really want to see. Jay-Z a perfect fit for this program, since his whole career has been built on innovation."
One of the most notable elements of the Stageside project is how the original video is distributed. By making the program available through P2P, Coca-Cola is breaking new ground and recognizing the file sharing community as a place where influencers of popular culture spend much of their time.
PlayFirst Introduces CONNECT FOUR
CONNECT FOUR, the vertical game of tic-tac-toe that everyone loved as a kid, is back with some grown-up twists. DCIA Member PlayFirst’s first multiplayer title, CONNECT FOUR Cities, builds on the classic four-in-a-row play of the original Hasbro hit.
It offers an expanded Cities theme and the ability to play with friends and family across the Internet, regardless of where they downloaded the game. CONNECT FOUR is under license from the Hasbro Properties Group, the intellectual property development arm of Hasbro.
Marc Saltzman, video game journalist and expert for Gamezebo.com, gave the new product a rave review, "CONNECT FOUR Cities is a highly polished, attractive and addictive spin on an old favorite. Kudos to PlayFirst – they’ve done it again."
CONNECT FOUR Cities, built by PlayFirst’s internal development studio, features three game modes that deliver the right dose of strategic fun and casual competition. Players can practice on their own or out-smart their opponents with twenty special checkers as they drill, float, or cha-cha their way to winning the golden keys to six cities. The Big Apple, Windy City, and Golden Gate are all up for grabs in a 10-minute coffee break.
"The time is right in the downloadable market for mass-market multiplayer games," said Kenny Dinkin, Vice President and Executive Producer, PlayFirst. "PlayFirst is entering multiplayer publishing with a significant advantage: the CONNECT FOUR license from Hasbro is a universally appealing brand that appeals to gamers of all ages."
"Today we’re starting with a basic community experience built into the game; tomorrow we look forward to seamless integration with our distribution partners’ online communities and multiplayer services."
Report from CEO Marty Lafferty
 We are grateful to representatives of federal and state agencies, entertainment industries, P2P software developers and distributors, and related service-and-support companies for investing their time to learn more about the new Global File Registry (GFR) during a series of ongoing meetings with DCIA Member Altnet that began this week.
The constructive dialog that has taken place and the next steps proposed by parties attending these meetings are encouraging. Cross-licensing arrangements, reselling GFR as a modular add-on with prospective affiliates’ various current offerings – for example as part of turnkey P2P developer kits, and similar partnering ideas predominated the discussions.
For those not participating in these introductory meetings, the GFR has as its core a centralized database that contains the unique identifiers of millions of infringing files, including variations of original IDs that are dynamically updated by GFR over time and collated on behalf of multiple content rights holders.
Each content provider receives a secure authenticated login to the GFR database via a back-office interface enabling it to track, take-down, and substitute authorized files of its copyrighted works on search engines, torrent sites, high-traffic portals, websites, and P2P networks. An automated batch process is available to conveniently register ownership of thousands of unique identifiers at one time.
GFR provides a web services interface to web search engines, torrent sites, and social networking sites. This is the channel by which take-down notices, deletions, and replacements with authorized files are automatically served to these entities – including encrypted swarming traffic.
GFR supports P2P networks via a series of dedicated P2P connectors. These allow the information in the GFR database to propagate in order to support blocking unauthorized file transfers and facilitating substitutions for licensed transactions in the P2P environment.
Content owners can log into GFR to view comprehensive file and network statistics showing an audit trail of all events related to their copyrighted works with respect to each site, application, and network.
GFR neither invades user privacy nor impacts efficient delivery of authorized files and files of content that is not registered. It focuses totally on eliminating the transfer of illicit material, which also dramatically improves bandwidth utilization.
Altnet believes that hash code identifiers currently represent the most robust technology for initial identification of infringing files, and GFR’s implementation allows rights holders and applications providers to implement a range of automated and administrator-driven options for tracking and dealing with file permutations.
The company is also open to explore incorporating additional technologies such as fingerprinting, especially useful for legacy music content, and/or watermarking, which has many even more attractive attributes, particularly for new content, as GFR adapts to marketplace developments.
In the fullness of time, GFR intends to adopt findings of such initiatives as the P2P Digital Watermark Working Group (PDWG), jointly sponsored by the DCIA, DWA, and MPAA. Should consensus among a critical mass of content rights holders emerge in support of either adding other content recognition systems to provide increased levels of security, or replacing hash code identifiers with alternative system(s), Altnet will work with its customers to develop and execute a migration plan to the preferred platform.
Commercial P2P companies now comprise a rich spectrum of implementations: from supporting open networks to closed systems, from operating with proprietary protocols to working with multiple protocols, from offering primarily free user-generated content to offering ad-supported or subscription or paid download or hybrid access to catalogs and libraries of licensed content.
Major established P2P brands are at various stages of transitioning to entertainment industry sanctioned business models, and more recent entries now also compete for user acceptance and market share with their own named P2P offerings or as white-label service providers. To be successful, viable P2P business models include options for continuing to provide content to consumers for free.
As P2P usage continues steadily to grow, the post-Labor-day season promises to be a among the most exciting times ever for development of this emerging distribution channel; and all DCINFO readers are encouraged to attend the P2P MEDIA SUMMIT Los Angeles (P2PMS-LA) on October 23rd for a comprehensive update and the opportunity to network with key players.
As previously noted, the key missing participants in what is already the most widely used medium for digital content redistribution continue to be Internet Service Providers (ISPs). The time is now right for ISPs to engage with content rights holders, P2P software developers and distributors, and solutions providers to define their role, responsibilities, and remuneration for helping to complete what promises to be the most productive and efficient distribution channel in history for content rights holders. Share wisely, and take care.
Telemar Selects Telcordia for Fulfillment
DCIA Member Telcordia Technologies has been selected by Telemar, one of South America’s largest fixed-line and mobile operators, to deliver an end-to-end service fulfillment solution to help enable mission-critical enterprise data services and consumer broadband. The solution is part of Telemar’s ambitious, multi-organizational project for transforming its order management and provisioning processes.
Telcordia’s suite of products will replace Telemar’s legacy order management systems, integrating the new solution into existing CRM to provide a complete order-to-cash fulfillment system. The multi-phase project will provide all order management, inventory, configuration, and activation functions needed for these services. This will allow Telemar to automate the provisioning process for a wide range of advanced data offerings, resulting in faster delivery of new services to the market and reductions in operating costs.
The Telcordia Fulfillment Suite, which includes industry leading products, Telcordia Granite Inventory and Telcordia Expediter, is a critical component as Telemar builds a foundation to transform its operations and position itself to deliver exciting new services.
"Telemar continues its record of innovation, providing our corporate and residential customers with the highest quality services," said Paulo Goncalves, CTO, Telemar. "Services are the key to growth and profitability for Telemar. Telcordia’s track record of reliability in delivering scale and breadth was fundamental to our selection. Having Telcordia’s open and flexible service fulfillment environment will help us rapidly develop new IP-based services for our customers and deliver them in a cost-effective and accessible manner."
Digital River Supports eLanguage
DCIA Member Digital River, a global leader in e-commerce outsourcing, announced this week that it is providing support services for eLanguage, a leading developer of language learning products. Digital River is managing the online sale, marketing, and physical delivery of eLanguage’s "Passport to 35 Languages" software as well as its award-winning "Learn to Speak" software suite.
"Based on more than a decade of experience helping thousands of publishers, manufacturers, and retailers launch e-commerce operations, we advise our clients on how to open new online sales channels as well as effectively promote and sell their products," said Don Peterson, Digital River’s Senior Vice President of Global Client Development. "We plan to leverage our marketing services and world-class e-commerce infrastructure to help eLanguage expand its sales opportunities by selling ‘Learn to Speak’ direct to consumers for the first time."
"Passport to 35 Languages" software provides a beginner course to learning Arabic, Chinese, Hebrew, and Italian as well as 31 other languages. The site also offers eLanguage’s flagship "Learn to Speak" products designed by language experts to quickly teach English, French, German, and Spanish using a building-block approach.
Digital River launched the online store to draw on the popularity and strong brand presence that "Learn to Speak" has established in brick-and-mortar retail stores. In addition to powering the branded online store, Digital River is processing order transactions as well as providing fraud screening and customer service support.
Skype & Kazaa Pioneer Trains Eyes on FON
Excerpted from SDA India Magazine Report
Niklas Zennstrom has twice co-founded companies that formed powerful industries by giving away important things to consumers: DCIA Member Skype, which is shaking the telecom industry with free phone calls, and before that, Kazaa. So look out for a wireless Internet startup Zennstrom is helping to run called FON, which could upend both the Internet and the mobile-phone industries.
FON is building an international network of free Wi-Fi by enticing people with home Wi-Fi service to share access with fellow "foneros" when anyone in the FON club is within range.
"I’m a great believer in sharing resources to create a virtual-access network," says Zennstrom, an active board member. FON’s CEO, 46-year-old serial entrepreneur Martin Varsavsky, shares that vision. "We are a user-generated infrastructure," he says, "not telco-generated."
After launching last November and receiving a $21.7 million infusion from Zennstrom, Skype, Google, venture capitalists, and others, FON has signed up about 65,000 people in Europe, the US, and Asia.
So how will a free network make money? Just as Skype seeded the market with freebies and later added revenue generators, FON put a revenue stream into place in June. It began enlisting venues like coffee shops to provide FON-branded Wi-Fi service to paying customers. Foneros get service free anywhere it’s available.
FON tries to distinguish itself from other commercial hot-spot operators on price. It charges as little as 2 euros a day in Europe, compared with a typical fee of 5 euros for a half-hour at competitors’ sites.
"The killer applications will be voice and games, and close to that will be music," says Varsavsky. In other words, he’s betting that people will use Wi-Fi to make phone calls, play Quake, and fetch Coldplay songs.
POGO Launches Mobile P2P Service
Excerpted from MyADSL Report by Cara Christian
POGO, a South African company, has developed new file-sharing software and is looking to benefit from the growing demand for mobile phone applications in the youth market. Its application has entered the market after several months of development and testing.
"The software application brings Internet-based P2P technology to the mobile phone. This is the first commercially successful application of file-sharing software in the wireless market," said Jaysen du Plessis, Managing Director of POGO.
POGO allows users to share ring-tones, music, games, videos, and themes. The application also allows users to send messages at 1c per SMS as well as access classifieds, body-weight calculators, and car-performance facilities.
POGO is downloadable to all GPRS and 3G mobile phones that are Java and wireless application protocol (WAP) enabled. The application is compatible with all phone types.
POGO carries a once-off download fee and is accessed by sending the POGO keyword to the short-code 4 20 30. This premium-rate service is charged at R30. POGO does not bill for any further use of the file-sharing facility and users pay only for the airtime to access the Internet.
According to Jaysen du Plessis, additional content will become available as more and more users join the POGO mobile P2P community.
"We are expecting a rapid uptake of POGO as users become aware of the benefits of sharing content with their mobile phones. The youth market is particularly open to innovative means for accessing new content. Their demand for mobile content will drive the uptake of POGO in the market," he added.
IIJ Plans New File-Sharing Technology
Excerpted from Washington Post Report
Web access provider Internet Initiative Japan (IIJ) said it is developing a new video and music distribution technology that lets users share files over the Internet more efficiently than older applications.
IIJ aims to roll out a pilot service in October, Founder & President Koichi Suzuki told a press briefing on Tuesday. The service will use a P2P technology based on the popular Winny file-sharing software developed in Japan.
"We want to distribute content that many people want to see but has been a burden for the network," Suzuki said. He said that IIJ is also working on improving the technology to increase security.
IIJ was a pioneer in promoting the Internet in Japan in the 1990s. The company operates networks and offers IT solutions to firms such as Sumitomo Mitsui Banking and Fuji Television Network. It also supplies networks in the United States.
Recently, Suzuki has questioned the rise of free web-based services such as video streaming because they enjoy a "free ride" on a network in which operators such as IIJ have invested heavily.
"Infrastructure should be managed with the expectation that there will be lots of content," Suzuki said. "But there is a need to question who will pay for the higher cost of distributing videos on the Internet than on radio waves."
Online Music Sharing Flourishes
Excerpted from Korea Times Report by Cho Jin-Seo
Soribada, the largest P2P music sharing service in South Korea, said this week that the number of its paying subscribers has exceeded 500,000.
The number of users who pay 3,000 won per month for unlimited music downloads has steadily increased since the charging system was first adopted on July 10th. In August alone, over 300,000 registered as new subscribers.
The company also said that it won a legal suit last week against 13 major music labels, which could strengthen its position in the ongoing dispute with the music industry over copyright issues.
"We have requested the Ministry of Culture and Tourism to revise the copyright law to include the fixed-rate music download service and, once we have the instruction, we will pay the music companies the right amount retroactively," said Soribada chief executive Jang Seo-Chan.
Founded in 2002, Soribada, which means "sea of sound," is the largest Internet music store in South Korea. As of July, it had around 2.7 million daily visitors. The second most popular site, Melon, has around 2 million.
It was closed in 2002 by a court order and then reborn in 2004 as a P2P service.
However, it was again being pressured by the music industry that blamed P2P services for allowing unauthorized music sharing among anonymous users. Eventually, the company signed contracts with some 350 music rights holders this year and began to charge its users in July.
Disgruntled by Soribada’s successful comeback, the music companies have been calling for government intervention.
In a joint statement last month, 13 companies, which have asked the court to order Soribada to stop its services, insist that it is neglecting the transfer of unlicensed music files. They also urged Soribada to abolish the fixed-rate price policy that allows users to download unlimited amount of music for only 3,000 won.
Soribada said it is operating a digital rights protection team, in which some 20 employees monitor the copyright of music files transmitted through the server.
"There is no trouble in filtering and protecting the copyright of the songs," said Park Jang-hyuk, the team’s chief. "But P2P service has different ways of copyright protection from regular web services, as the users themselves have control over the content. So we will focus on monitoring the download of unauthorized files."
MySpace to Enable Users to Sell Songs
Excerpted from LA Times Report by Dawn Chmielewski & Charles Duhigg
MySpace.com plans to let its 77 million users sell music downloads, another move by corporate parent News Corp. to make the social networking site as profitable as it is popular.
Shawn Fanning, whose Napster software upended the music industry in 1999, will provide technology that enables musicians on MySpace to sell songs directly to fans — and even for fans to sell to one another.
When the tentatively dubbed MyStore launches this year, bands will be able to price and sell songs in the MP3 format, which works on Apple Computer’s popular iPod players as well as rival devices powered by Microsoft software.
Although the service is aimed at independent acts, MySpace is in talks with all four major music labels to possibly offer the works of big-name artists. As with many new forms of online distribution, the big labels are waiting to see how well the technology works before striking deals.
"This is a huge step," said Terry McBride, chief executive of DCIA Member Nettwerk Music Group, one of Canada’s largest independent record labels. "Now, fans will be able to genuinely recommend music to their friends that people can buy."
One of McBride’s acts, the Format, is among the first to offer 79-cent downloads on MySpace. The Arizona-based band lost its Warner Music Group deal last year after releasing a 2003 album, "Interventions and Lullabies," but it has established a fan base on MySpace, where it posts tour dates and music videos.
Fanning’s company, Snocap, spent four years creating the technology that enables artists to register their music and collect payment no matter where on the Internet a person downloaded a song. It will also enable fans to sell their favorite bands’ tracks on their own MySpace pages, with a portion of the proceeds going to the artists.
San Francisco guitarist Shelley Doty, for instance, already uses Snocap’s technology on her website. The singer of "Don’t Miss This Ride" can set her own price and sell her music to fans.
"She can add tracks at will," Snocap Chief Executive Rusty Rueff said. "She can change the price at will. The coolest thing is the instantaneous side, the immediacy of bringing together creation, and distribution like it’s never been done before."
MySpace allows people to create personal web pages and then link to circles of "friends." In addition to teenagers posting their photos or poetry, bands and movie producers create MySpace pages to promote their wares — frequently attracting tens of thousands of friends.
About 3 million acts — including U2 and teenage garage bands — have MySpace pages.
It was that massive audience that News Corp. sought to capture when it bought MySpace’s Los Angeles-based parent company last summer for $580 million. At the time, analysts questioned how News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch would capitalize on MySpace’s traffic without alienating its mostly young users.
Since then, the News Corp. division overseeing MySpace, Fox Interactive Media, has bolstered the sometimes shaky technological foundations of the service. And it has gradually introduced money-making features that cater to the tastes of MySpace users. Last month, for instance, the company announced plans to sell downloadable copies of 20th Century Fox movies and TV shows on MySpace.
"The take on big corporate FOX coming in and heavy-handedly mistreating MySpace and ruining the community — obviously, that was anything but the truth," said Michael Barrett, Executive Vice President and Chief Revenue Officer for Fox Interactive.
"We’re just beginning to see the start of a strategy that really tries to take full advantage of the community. The power of it."
Some analysts doubted that News Corp. would make much money from MyStore initially. The company will split the processing fee of about 45 cents per track with Snocap. Even Apple’s iTunes Music Store is considered a modestly profitable software complement to the high-margin iPod.
"It’s really great for the bands and the fans on MySpace, but I’m very skeptical that anybody’s going to make a lot of money off this," said Jupiter Research analyst David Card, who noted that no media companies make money exclusively by selling esoteric content to niche audiences. "I believe in a ‘long tail,’ but I have yet to find a media company make a living delivering only the long tail without delivering any of the hits."
Longer term, though, some analysts said, MySpace could broaden the appeal of legitimate online music sales.
"This creates competition for iTunes," said Ted Cohen, a former EMI executive who is managing partner of digital media consulting firm TAG Strategic. This, combined with the impending launch of Microsoft’s Zune media player, "could make the digital music marketplace more of a horse race."
UMG & Spiral Frog to Challenge iTunes
Excerpted from International Herald Tribune Report by Eric Pfanner
A new online music company said this week that it would make a huge catalog of songs from the world’s largest record company, the Universal Music Group (UMG), available for consumers to download free.
The company, called SpiralFrog, said its intention was to wean music fans, especially young people, away from unlicensed downloads and unauthorized music sites by offering a legitimate source, supported by advertising instead of download fees.
SpiralFrog is the latest to offer a challenge to Apple Computer’s hugely successful iTunes service, which allows consumers to download songs legally for 99 cents each, and its many smaller imitators. Though the venture is not the first to try a free ad-supported approach, the backing of Universal, with millions of songs in its catalog from thousands of artists like Eminem and Gwen Stefani, Elton John and Gloria Estefan, Count Basie and Hank Williams, promises to give it instant credibility and scale.
SpiralFrog, which is privately held and headed by Robin Kent, a former advertising executive, said it expected to start testing its service in the United States and Canada by the end of the year and would extend its service to Britain and other European markets next year.
The announcement reflects the music industry’s eagerness to experiment with various digital business models and to find a way to overcome copyright infringement, which remains a big problem despite the record companies’ efforts to enforce their copyrights in court.
While the industry has tried to encourage the growth of legitimate alternatives like iTunes, some record executives have begun to chafe at Apple’s dominance in the online market, particularly its insistence on a "one size fits all" pricing model, saying it has restricted the growth of digital sales.
For consumers, SpiralFrog’s free downloads will come with many more strings attached than Apple’s paid ones. Users of SpiralFrog will have to sit through advertisements and will be prevented by special software from making copies of the songs they download or from sharing them with other people.
They will have to revisit the SpiralFrog website regularly to keep access to the music they download. And the songs will be encoded in the Microsoft WMA format, meaning they will probably not work on Apple iPod portable music players.
The venture is not the first legitimate one to make music available free. Napster, a former P2P file-sharing scourge of the record companies, introduced an advertising-supported service this year that lets users listen to a few songs without paying fees. But Napster’s free service streams its music to users, rather than allowing them to download and store the files, as iTunes does.
Kazaa, the current industry leading file-sharing software, agreed last month to settle copyright-infringement lawsuits with the music and movie industries. It is also expected to start a free-with-advertising service among its offerings when it reintroduces itself as a licensed distribution business.
Samsung Plans Rival to iTunes
Excerpted from Reuters Report
Samsung Electronics plans to introduce its own online music service to challenge Apple Computer’s iTunes-iPod franchise and Microsoft’s upcoming Zune music products.
Samsung, based in Seoul, South Korea, said Friday that it would work with the web company MusicNet to introduce a music subscription and download service later this year in Britain, Germany, and France. Samsung said it planned to later expand the service throughout Europe and Asia.
Samsung said the online music service would be compatible with its upcoming line of portable MP3 and media players, but did not disclose further details about the service, pricing, or fees.
New Law Fails to Stop Downloads
Excerpted from Helsingin Sanomat
A new law on copyrights, which came into effect in Finland at the beginning of the year, has done little to cut down unauthorized downloading of music. Only ten percent (10 %) of respondents to a fresh survey published on Wednesday reported that they had reduced unauthorized downloading from file-sharing networks.
According to Tuomas Kallio, the amendment to the copyright law is well known, and it has had a certain effect on the activities of the respondents. Nevertheless, this effect hardly qualifies as a major change in attitudes.
"At this stage, the use of file-sharing networks is more common than downloading from authorized sources", Kallio said in his analysis of the study. "Half of the respondents indicated that they used P2P networks, and that is a lot."
Executive Director Antti Kotilainen of the Anti-Piracy Centre (CIAPC) in Finland admits that unauthorized downloading from the Internet continues to be a problem.
"The problem is substantial. There are around 150,000 active users of P2P networks in Finland."
Kotilainen believes the new law will have long-term effects, though. One of its strong points is that it defines the terms for legal trading over the Internet. At the moment, there are sixteen licensed music dealers in Finland operating through the Net, and also films are gradually finding their way to online sales.
Kallio’s study confirms that digital music retailing over the Internet has not yet established itself as a major form of music consumption in Finland.
"Currently, the problem is that the unlicensed products are identical to the genuine article", Kallio explains. "Some sort of additional bonus is needed to attract consumers to download their music from authorized sources."
"There are still certain difficulties pertaining to the use of downloaded files. If the hard-drive crashes, a person may lose all of his files. Furthermore, the transfer of files from one operating system to another is also not without its hitches."
P2P Steps into the Darknet
Excerpted from Linux Pipeline Report by Matt McKenzie
The entertainment industry’s open-ended war against online copyright infringement – both real and imagined – has spawned its share of unintended consequences. But perhaps the most interesting of the bunch, and arguably the most troubling for groups such as the RIAA and MPAA, involves the race to create a new breed of tougher, more secure P2P networks.
If you believe the industry’s press releases, its recent string of legal victories against the likes of BearShare and Kazaa represented major victories against P2P-based music and movie infringement. The reality, of course, is very different: these networks have given way to a third wave of even more decentralized P2P technologies – including, of course, BitTorrent.
Is Hollywood prepared to launch yet another wave of litigation in order to bring BitTorrent to heel, one user at a time if necessary? You can bet on it. The problem is that once again, the entertainment industry is a step behind the state of the art in P2P technology – and the next wave of P2P technology could leave the industry pounding in vain against a virtual brick wall.
Ars Technica’s Jeremy Reimer wrote earlier this week about one of the new approaches to P2P that could soon give the RIAA fits, the darknet:
"Last December, I wrote about a team that was constructing a plug-in for Firefox called AllPeers. Claiming that their product would be ‘The best thing to happen to Firefox... since Firefox,’ the AllPeers plug-in promised to make file sharing between friends easy and efficient. At the same time, supporters of the service proclaimed that it would protect its users from lawsuits from the RIAA and MPAA due to its darknet architecture."
Now, after many months of development, AllPeers is finally ready to unveil its technology to the world. The application was released this week, albeit in beta form. According to AllPeers CEO and project leader, Cedric Maloux, the plug-in represents more than 200,000 lines of C++ and JavaScript code.
AllPeers, Reimer says, is based on the BitTorrent protocol; what makes it unique is the fact that it applies a decentralized client-server infrastructure with a network of trusted users.
While it is certainly possible that infiltrators will find their way onto such networks in order to gather evidence of copyright violations – a process that is already slow, tedious, and error-prone – AllPeers promises to make such efforts immensely more difficult. Indeed, it may even raise questions about the legality of "trespassing" upon such closed networks, especially since doing so will almost certainly involve joining them under false pretenses.
AllPeers, like other efforts to build a snoop-proof BitTorrent P2P platform, is still very much a work in progress; people who view this technology as a license to steal are about as dim as they are dishonest.
Even so, these technologies promise to add still more cost, complexity, and risk to the entertainment industry’s increasingly ugly legal war against its own customers.
That must be an appalling prospect for an industry that finds itself declaring "victory" against the same enemies, again and again, with nothing to show for their gains except a massive legal bill and a public-relations disaster that will take years to overcome.
Coming Events of Interest
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2006 Word of Mouth Marketing Forum – September 21st–22nd in Arlington, VA. Learn the ins and outs of one of the most innovative and efficient marketing techniques. New tools and technology have made Word of Mouth Marketing one of the best strategic tools marketers can use to build brand awareness and customer loyalty.
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OMMA Awards– September 26th at the Marriot Marquis in New York, NY. The OMMA Awards honor the brand marketers, agencies and content providers who continue to push the potential of online advertising creative. The OMMA Awards celebrate the year’s most innovative and brilliant creative work in 27 categories. Submission deadline is July 28th.
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Digital Music Forum West – October 4th-5th in West Hollywood, CA. Don’t miss the opportunity to participate in the premier event for music industry decision-makers focused on digital business models and legal issues impacting music. The DCIA will present a special panel on P2P.
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6th Annual Future of Music Policy Summit – October 5th–7th at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. FMC sees hosting this Summit in Canada as an opportunity to expand its perspective on a range of issues – from copyright, to sampling, to digital royalties, to radio, to how various musical communities are managing change. The music marketplace has become truly global, and some of the biggest challenges are navigating the assortment of legal and licensing schemes that encourage and/or impede the promotion and sale of music.
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Webcasts, Downloads & Ring-Tones – October 11th in San Francisco, CA. The National Association of Record Industry Professionals (NARIP) presents an overview of the legal and practical aspects of the NEW recording industry Whether you are an artist, manager, lawyer, record executive, or producer this music business overview is essential to understanding new income streams such as digital downloading, webcasting royalties, mobile music deals, video games and certain types of branding.
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P2P MEDIA SUMMIT LA – October 23rd in Santa Monica, CA. The Fall DCIA Conference & Exposition will cover policy, marketing, and technology issues affecting commercial development of this emerging high-growth industry. Exhibits and demonstrations will feature industry-leading products and services. For sponsor packages and speaker information, please contact Karen Kaplowitz at 888-890-4240 or karen@dcia.info. Plan now to attend.
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Digital Hollywood Fall – October 24th-26th at Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel in Los Angeles, CA. The preeminent digital media and entertainment conference in the country. This year featuring more than 70 different sessions and over 450 speakers. The DCIA will moderate "Track I: Next Generation P2P Music and Film - DRM, Paid for Pass-Along and Other Legal Distributed Computing Models and the Entertainment Industries."
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