February 26, 2007
Volume 16, Issue 10
Viacom Chooses P2P over YouTube
Excerpted from Bit-Tech Report by Brett Thomas
The war over how downloaded content gets to your desktop and in front of your eyes is being fought in a million little battles. Choosing which strategy to support - among peer-to-peer (P2P), download sites like iTunes, or sharing sites like YouTube - is a complex decision for content makers. It appears that at least one of those little battles has been decided today – and the winner is P2P.
Viacom Entertainment decided to use the beta P2P network Joost to provide its downloadable content. There is little being said about prices, digital rights management (DRM) tactics, or other methods of control that will be used.
So why is it newsworthy? Mostly because of who got slighted. Google’s YouTube had been in negotiations with Viacom for quite some time, and apparently those talks were discontinued about a month ago. These types of deals were a big part of Google’s plans for YouTube as a revenue provider, and Viacom turning its back on the service is not a trifling matter.
Viacom’s move says a lot about what content makers really think of sharing sites like YouTube. The lower-resolution, short segments simply do not provide a useful enough delivery service for paid content, and upgrading the YouTube infrastructure to create a different service would probably cost far more than companies like Viacom are willing to pay. On top of that, YouTube is now owned by a company that’s not always friendly to copyrights – Google.
If you compare YouTube to a fledgling P2PTV service that could be influenced in its own copyright protection measures with big dollar signs, the decision makes sense. YouTube is simply too mature, too controversial, and too difficult a technology to convert into anything more useful than freely distributable content like trailers. A lot less money could be spent for a lot better returns through services like Joost, and DRM may be less of an issue.
BitTorrent Opens Digital Media Store
Excerpted from CNET News Report by Greg Sandoval
The 45-employee company BitTorrent is planning to use its software to launch a download service, called the BitTorrent Entertainment Network, which will distribute more than 5,000 titles from digital movies, TV shows, games, and other media.
In the battle for the nascent online video market, BitTorrent could be a competitor that already has a reputation for speedy file distribution. It also has an established user base that the company says numbers 135 million.
That is the kind of muscle that could immediately pit the company against some of the sector's heavyweights such as YouTube, Brightcove and Joost, a new P2P started by the founders of Skype and Kazaa.
The store's opening marks a triumph for San Francisco-based BitTorrent. Despite the software's reputation for helping people share millions of unauthorized video files, the company's managers have convinced studios such as 20th Century Fox, Lions Gate, and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer that they come to Hollywood with a laurel branch in their hands.
Raketu Combines P2PTV & Social Networking
Excerpted from PC World Report by Fred O’Connor
A new application from Raketu Communications aims to integrate P2PTV with social networking, two of the Internet’s hip technologies.
Raketu.tv, which became available in beta mode on Tuesday, delivers P2PTV and video-on-demand (VOD) programming. The social-networking component factors in when using the video services with Raketu’s other communications and entertainment applications, which share the company’s name.
"Raketu," which debuted last September, "aims to integrate separate communications and entertainment programs into one client," said Raketu CEO Greg Parker. It includes voice over IP (VoIP), instant messaging (IM), and file sharing.
While simultaneously using other applications and websites accomplishes the same tasks as Raketu, Parker said that his software eases communicating and information gathering by combining several services into one program.
For example, friends could use Raketu to watch a video on surfing while discussing it via VoIP or IM. The friends could then use a travel search feature in Raketu that locates airfares to plan a surfing vacation.
"We’re a bit of YouTube, a bit of MySpace, a bit of Joost," said Parker. "We feel that we do a better job of integrating these services."
Parker also noted that Raketu differs from other P2P software applications by not using super-nodes, which other services use to link multiple computers together to transfer data.
Media Global Intertainment will provide the P2PTV content. VOD content will come from KlikVU. The VOD offerings are pay-per-view, which is how the media service will generate revenue, according to Parker.
Report from CEO Marty Lafferty
 P2PTV advanced this past week with newsworthy highlights ranging from Viacom’s licensing of Joost to Raketu.tv’s launching of its beta. And we look forward this coming week with great anticipation to the new BitTorrent Entertainment Network.
Meanwhile, we are moving forward with new working groups focused on optimization of digital media management alternatives for P2PTV led by Digital Containers’ Chip Venters and BUYDRM’s Christopher Levy.
These new groups will explore and make recommendations regarding P2P content security approaches such as fingerprinting, metadata, and hash-code identification, as well as their integration with each other and with other approaches.
We are also continuing the work of the P2P Digital Watermark Working Group (PDWG) led by INTENT MediaWorks’ Les Ottolenghi and will coordinate its efforts with the new working groups.
It’s important to put current P2PTV announcements in perspective. This is very early in the game and much work remains to be done in terms of technology development and establishment of business practices. Following is a preliminary to-do list from the DCIA that outlines some of the key areas that need to be addressed for P2PTV to realize its full potential.
While these tasks may seem daunting, they also reflect the degree to which P2PTV can be a truly disruptive technology in very positive ways for content owners, participants in a new distribution chain, and consumers.
What is clear even at this early stage is that P2PTV is superior to other distribution technologies for both live and archived video content from a quality, cost, and efficiency perspective.
Business rules need to be established that fully exploit the potential of P2PTV. Specifically, each video program (aka torrent) can be globally transmitted commencing with its initial live or world-premiere telecast, and immediately made available for playback on-demand thereafter.
Each show can simultaneously be offered for free with interactive advertising or branded sponsorship(s), as part of subscription offering(s), as an a la carte paid download, or in innovative combinations of multiple means for monetization. And each title can also be controlled in terms of destination devices registered to each viewer; and different terms-and-conditions can be established for different time-from-release windows as well as geographic territories.
As importantly, revenue sharing models must be solidified that recognize and reward the necessary participants in the P2PTV distribution channel. At the simplest level, these participants include the Internet service provider (ISP) in the role of wholesaler or transmission facility and the P2P client in the role of retailer or user interface.
Consideration should be given to each party that "touches" a licensed content file (or part of it, with swarming software applications) as it is redistributed among audience members via P2P technologies. This includes those who perform roles in ensuring the efficient delivery of the video program (caching and content acceleration, for example) and those who perform roles in preventing copyright infringement.
P2PTV offers content rights holders greater flexibility than alternative distribution channels, and challenges them to respond to these expanded technological capabilities with more advanced business models and licensing regimes.
P2PTV user interfaces and navigation tools need to be evolved to accommodate an exponentially larger inventory of available viewing alternatives than any previous distribution channel.
Specifically, familiar content schedules and packages need to be supported (the ability to access a traditional cable TV programming channel, for example), individual titles need to be accessible in viewer-friendly and logical ways, and new ways of packaging content must be perfected, including with interactive simulcast components and communications functionality.
Basic delivery quality issues such as picture resolution, which needs to include options for high-definition, standard broadcast quality, as well as low-res optimized for small screens, plus corresponding audio channel options, from surround-sound to monaural, need to be resolved, and, perhaps most critically, consumer-friendly alternatives for transporting signals from broadband connected devices to viewing screens need to be worked out (for instance, outputting PCs to TVs easily). Interoperability across devices and operating systems must be a mandate.
Within the larger P2PTV network platform, which can include hand-offs among different ISPs, such as between wired and wireless carriers, and between public and private LANs, systems need to be established to optimize the quality, efficiency, and integrity of the distribution of video content, both from professionally produced and user-generated sources.
Collaboration among participants and standardized business practices will ensure that channel capacity factors, including bandwidth and storage facilities, are best utilized for all parties.
The DCIA believes that advancing commercial development of the P2PTV distribution channel can best be supported with a series of working groups focused on specific areas from the above to-do list, plus other to-be-identified needs, constituted openly to ensure broad industry sector representation from qualified parties, with clearly defined deliverables and timelines for producing quantifiable results.
We are now supporting and helping to facilitate several of these, and are developing others where interests coalesce; we encourage you to participate now and have a voice in the ongoing development of this enormously promising distribution channel. Share wisely, and take care.
P2PTV Service Joost Launches Mac Beta
Excerpted from MacWorld Report by Jonny Evans
Global P2PTV distribution platform, Joost, formerly known as The Venice Project, has released a beta version of its client software for Intel Mac users. Co-founded by Skype and Kazaa founders, serial entrepreneurs Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, Joost distributes TV shows and other forms of video over the web using P2P technology.
While it’s very bandwidth-hungry, the software is capable of supporting HDTV broadcasts using distributed computing. The service also offers online interactive and community benefits and aims to bring an "unprecedented selection of video content to viewers anytime," the founders proclaim.
The service is powered by a secure piracy-proof Internet platform that lets users watch the TV they want while also protecting the rights of copyright owners.
Joost requires a broadband Internet connection; users must sign up for the beta test period before accessing the service.
Is Advertising Dead
Excerpted from MediaPost Report by Joe Mandese
Joshua Lovison, 21, an undergraduate film student at New York University, doesn’t consume media the way most of us still do. When he wants to watch TV he doesn’t turn on ABC, CBS, Fox, or even Comedy Central. He watches BitTorrent or Gnutella, online file-sharing communities that give him instantaneous access to virtually all of the same content available on over-the-air or cable TV, on-demand, when and where a computer screen and broadband access are available.
In fact, Lovison doesn’t even use the term "program" to refer to the file he downloaded of an episode of Comedy Central’s "South Park" recently.
He calls them torrents, a generic term used to describe files of TV shows and feature films peer-to-peer file sharers exchange via BitTorrent, Gnutella, eDonkey, Ares, or FastTrack.
Lovison is not alone. According to a report by Brian Wieser, Vice President-Director of Industry Analysis at Magna Global USA, such networks now attract millions of users.
"P2P clearly reflects consumers’ interests in accessing content in on-demand environments," Wieser says. "Equally important, P2P reflects consumers’ interests in procuring content that can easily be moved from platform to platform (i.e. from PC to TV to portable digital player, such as an MP3 player or Sony’s new PSP)."
Lovison affirms that view, acknowledging, "It’s completely about convenience." He wants what he wants when he wants it. While that raises huge implications for media rights holders and marketers alike, it’s a drop in the bucket that threatens the very fundamentals of Madison Avenue.
"Commercials are really annoying," he says, "and advertising is becoming completely irrelevant because of the Internet." By irrelevant, Lovison means he does not watch any advertising when he downloads a torrent. The files usually strip advertising out to save space and download time.
The funny thing is that Lovison is not opposed to advertising. He even understands that advertising is the reason many of the files he downloads exist in the first place. He just believes that to reach him, "advertising has to change fundamentally."
Those fundamentals, he says, are that ads either have to be integrated directly into the media content he watches and have to be relevant to him, or it has to be advertising content he seeks out directly as part of a product or service via a search process he initiates.
"I don’t care about the mommy van commercial," Lovison says, describing the shotgun way in which many TV ads are still scheduled.
Clearly, Madison Avenue understands this. It is the reason why so many agencies and TV networks have flocked to branded entertainment and product placement. And it’s the reason why online search is booming. But Harvard Professor Silk believes these tactics are still in transition as the media industry tries to develop a new set of economics that will replace traditional advertising.
Even ad industry bible, Advertising Age, seemed to acknowledge as much in its recent "Chaos Scenario" cover story written by columnist Bob Garfield. His take is that the media marketplace hasn’t evolved the way past futurists predicted it would, and that has left Madison Avenue ill-prepared to make the transition.
"There is no reason to believe the collapse of the old media model will yield a plug-and-play new one," Garfield wrote. "On the contrary, there is nothing especially orderly about media’s New World Order. At the moment it is a collection of technologies and ideas and vacant-lot bandwidth, a digital playground for visionaries and nerds."
Watching TV Anywhere & Everywhere
Excerpted from CNN Money Report by Stephanie Mehta
You’d think that people already watch enough television in their homes and offices. But no: increasingly companies, especially outside the United States, are trying to find ways to pipe television to us wherever we are.
Consider: PCCW, the Hong Kong-based phone company that pioneered Internet Protocol Television (IPTV), is now looking at ways to deliver IPTV in coffee shops, train stations, parks and other public places. The telephone company is deploying a network of 3,000 Wi-Fi hotspots throughout Hong Kong that, they hope, will allow customers to watch subscription television services they’d normally have to watch at home.
The concept of "place shifting" TV viewing has been popularized in the US by Sling Media, whose Slingbox lets customers watch their home television programming on any device that’s hooked up to a broadband connection by using routers and software to redirect cable or satellite TV signals over the Internet. Co-founders Blake and Jason Krikorian came up with the idea because they wanted to watch San Francisco Giants games on their computers when they weren’t at home.
IPTV, in theory, makes place shifting even easier. As the name implies, IPTV transmits video programming in Internet Protocol, the language of the ‘Net. IPTV is different from Google’s YouTube or other video-over-broadband services, which feature select programming for download or viewing.
As it is deployed by most phone companies today, IPTV offers so-called "linear" programming - pretty much the same pay television lineup you might get from the cable or satellite company - delivered over phone lines.
According to Selina Lo, CEO of Ruckus Wireless, which is supplying gear for the Hong Kong Wi-Fi effort, telcos such as PCCW are keenly aware that customers increasingly want to access their video services remotely, much the way they now check e-mail or check out their favorite websites while waiting in airport lounges or cafes. "The triple play," says Lo, referring to the bundle of phone calling, Internet and television services offered by phone and cable operators, "is moving outside the home. People want to access what they have at home when they are on the road, away from their sofas."
The Revolution will not be IPTelevised
Excerpted from Wired News Report by Michael Calore & Scott Gilbertson
This is shaping up to be a big month for P2P video. Today we learned that Joost has signed a deal with Viacom to distribute its TV shows. Last week, Azureus’ Zudeo hit the one-million user mark. And just yesterday, we heard that the BitTorrent store is arriving as soon as this week.
Are any of these the next killer app for P2P? They sound promising, but are they viable offerings that are really going to turn our heads around on the whole television and movies over the Internet dream? Let’s examine the status quo.
Zudeo is great for one reason: progressive downloads. Thanks to some back-end voodoo, I get to start watching very shortly after clicking play.
Our own Scott Gilbertson reviewed Joost’s new Intel Mac client: the user experience is pleasant enough.
Details about BitTorrent’s store are slim, but here’s what we know so far. The company has some heavy hitters lined up as content partners, including Fox, MTV/Viacom and Paramount. But content from these producers will arrive with Windows DRM attached, so you’ll need a Media Center PC, an approved network device, or some such compatible hardware to watch it on your TV.
What’s missing here is wide appeal. There’s a huge difference between watching a movie on an HD television and watching it on a computer screen. Until the delivery systems can bridge that gap and create something better than we have now, until something can totally and truly kill the television, we’re stuck in the boring old present.
VeriSign and Entriq Team
Excerpted from SYS-CON Media Report
VeriSign, the leading provider of digital infrastructure for the networked world, has entered into a strategic alliance with Entriq, a company that provides pay media solutions to manage, protect, and monetize multimedia content.
The new joint offering combines Entriq’s rights-management and commerce solutions with the VeriSign Intelligent Content Delivery Network (ICDN) to offer media companies a comprehensive and cost effective solution for managing and delivering their media assets online. Entriq’s services include customer care, billing, content geographic controls, download controls, and support for a wide variety of business models.
VeriSign’s ICDN, introduced in December 2006, is a market leader in delivering high-quality video over the Internet in a secure, scalable manner utilizing patented peer-assisted technology.
The combined solution offers media and entertainment companies a variety of delivery options for monetizing their valuable media assets, including streaming, download, and progressive download, with the additional advantage of leveraging secure and legitimate P2P when delivery speed and cost advantages are critical business drivers.
"The market for online video is growing at an explosive pace, but we keep hearing customers ask for less complex ways to publish and distribute content online," said Jeff Richards, Vice President and General Manager of Broadband Content Services for VeriSign.
"The combination of the VeriSign and Entriq solutions takes the complexity out of this equation. The Entriq/VeriSign offering utilizes two of the market’s leading content platforms to enable the broadest range of market participants – from large media networks to small start-ups – to deliver and monetize video online."
Entriq COO Scott Crowder said, "Posting Internet video is relatively simple, as anyone who has visited YouTube knows, but delivering high-quality video cost effectively – and then verifying that the digital rights of the publisher are protected and enforced while also offering customers excellent customer care – is another story. By integrating Entriq’s pay media solution with VeriSign’s ICDN we’re providing entertainment and media businesses of all sizes a chance to build scalable new media business. We’ve made it easy and affordable to produce and generate revenue from high-quality Internet video."
According to analyst firm eMarketer, Internet video is exploding. In the United States alone, the Internet video audience will grow 45.8 percent from 107.7 million in 2006 to 157 million by 2010.
The VeriSign ICDN combines the attributes of a traditional CDN with the efficiencies of P2P technology as an end-to-end managed service. The scale of VeriSign’s global intelligent infrastructure, combined with the patented and proven Kontiki P2P technology, enables media and entertainment companies to offer a superior download experience for end-users.
New Weapon in Web War
Excerpted from NY Times Report by Brad Stone & Miguel Helft
As media companies struggle to reclaim control over their movies, television shows, and music in a world of online file-sharing software, they have found an ally in software of another kind.
The new technological weapon is content-recognition software, which makes it possible to identify copyrighted material, even, for example, from blurry video clips.
The technology could address what the entertainment industry sees as one of its biggest problems — songs and videos being posted on the web without permission.
Last week, Vance Ikezoye, the chief executive of Audible Magic in Los Gatos, CA, demonstrated the technology by downloading a two-minute clip from YouTube and feeding it into his company’s new video-recognition system.
The social networking site MySpace, owned by the News Corporation, said last week that it would use Audible Magic’s system to identify copyrighted material on its pages. But not every Internet company is rushing to go along. The video-sharing site YouTube, which Google bought last year, is the major holdout so far.
"This is capable of helping the film and TV studios comprehensively protect their works," Mr. Ikezoye said. "This could put the genie back in the bottle."
Hollywood is growing excited about the possibilities of digital fingerprinting and filtering.
"To the extent you can readily and easily distinguish one film or TV show from the next, it enables different licensing models and the opportunity to protect your content," said Dean Garfield, Executive Vice President of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA).
Hoping to nurture the development of more advanced video fingerprinting, the film association asked technology companies last fall to submit video filtering systems for testing. Mr. Garfield of the association said 13 companies responded; their systems are now being evaluated.
Perhaps not surprisingly, there is now a flurry of interest in digital fingerprinting in Silicon Valley.
Attributor, another start-up based in Redwood City, CA is taking a different approach to filtering. It is developing automated software that will travel the Internet looking for copyrighted text, audio, and video.
Setting up filters for each and every website and P2P network "is not a long-term solution," said Jim Brock, a former Yahoo executive and the chief executive of Attributor. Rights holders "need to have these kinds of solutions across the Internet," he said.
Audible Magic, which is considered to be an early leader in the field, started out with a system to recognize songs played on the radio, so it could offer listeners an opportunity to buy the music online. The company later adapted that technology to create an audio fingerprinting system.
Mr. Ikezoye, a former Hewlett-Packard marketing executive, recently set out to expand into video recognition. Last year, he licensed an invention called Motional Media ID, created by David Stebbings, a former executive at the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
Some experts believe wide adoption of the technology is inevitable.
"As technology companies mature, they are realizing that the rule of law is better than the anarchy in which they were formed," said Paul Kocher, chief executive of Cryptography Research, a company that has studied the security of digital fingerprinting technology.
Getting it Done
Excerpted from SiliconValley.com Report by John Murrell
Ever since it snarfed up YouTube last fall, Google has been telling increasingly impatient copyright holders to hang just a little while longer while it wrapped up work on a filtering system to cleanse its video collection of unauthorized uploads (see "Why so Glum, Chad?" and "Oh my God, They Killed Kenny!"). Well, the work of Google’s cleverest engineers is apparently finishing up now, and they’ve come up with ... an outsourcing deal. The Mercury News reports Google will use technology developed by Audible Magic to spot copyright material, the same technology that MySpace just announced it would use.
Audible Magic’s system, acquired in the 2000 acquisition of Muscle Fish, works by comparing the audio fingerprint of a video to a large database of copyrighted material. At the moment, the company’s database of movie and TV audio is not as complete as its music collection, but execs say that can be remedied within months. Audible Magic is also working on video fingerprinting technology and hopes to have something by the end of the year.
Macrovision Responds on DRM
Excerpted from Fred Amoroso Response to Steve Jobs
I would like to start by thanking Steve Jobs for offering his provocative perspective on the role of digital rights management (DRM) in the electronic content marketplace and for bringing to the forefront an issue of great importance to both the industry and consumers.
There are four key points that I would like to make in response to your letter: DRM is broader than just music. DRM increases not decreases consumer value. DRM will increase electronic distribution. DRM needs to be interoperable and open. As an industry, we can overcome the DRM challenges. A commitment to transparent, interoperable, and reasonable DRM will effectively bridge the gap between consumers and content owners, eliminate confusion and make it possible for new releases and premium content to enter the digital environment and kick off a new era of entertainment.
We are on the verge of a transformation in home entertainment that can be as significant as the introduction of the PC into the home or the invention of the television. Already, consumer equipment manufacturers are introducing advancements in wireless connectivity and the interoperability of devices that are opening the door to new ways for consumers to acquire and view content from many sources.
With such an enjoyable and revolutionary experience within our grasp, we should not minimize the role that DRM can and should play in enabling the transition to electronic content distribution. Without reasonable, consistent, and transparent DRM, we will only delay the availability of premium content in the home. As an industry, we should not let that happen.
Fixing What’s Badly Broken
Excerpted from MusicAlly Report by Paul Brandley
Bennett Lincoff, the former Director of Legal Affairs for New Media at US collecting society ASCAP argues that a radical new rights licensing structure is needed for the digital age:
"The Internet is fundamentally incompatible with the sales-based revenue model for works of popular culture, especially music. Accordingly, an alternative to the music industry’s sales-based revenue model is needed for digital transmissions of sound recordings and the musical works embodied in them.
I recently published a white paper in which I propose such an alternative. Mine is a comprehensive approach to rights licensing and rights management that does not depend on the efficacy of DRM technology for its success. Specifically, I suggest that the rights of songwriters, music publishers, recording artists, and record labels in their respective musical works and sound recordings should be aggregated so as to create a single right for digital transmissions of recorded music. The digital transmission right would be a new right, not an additional right. It would replace the parties’ existing reproduction, public performance, and distribution rights (and, in those territories where it applies, the communication right).
Ownership of the digital transmission right in individual recordings would be held jointly by the songwriters, music publishers, recording artists and record labels who contribute to the recording. Each rights holder would have authority to grant non-exclusive licenses for digital transmissions of those recordings on any terms they and their licensees find to be mutually acceptable. The only limitation on this authority would be the obligation to account to co-owners pursuant to whatever arrangements they make among themselves for the division of royalties earned from this newly-established right.
The digital transmission right would be enforceable only against those directly involved in providing digital transmissions of recorded music. Accordingly, consumers would not incur any liability merely for surfing the web, accessing streaming media, or downloading music files. Neither would copying for personal use require authorization. Similarly, software developers, technology firms, consumer electronics makers, and telecommunications and Internet access providers, as such, would have no liability under the digital transmission right. On the other hand, service providers would need licenses if they operate websites, social networking services, P2P file-sharing networks, or the like that provide digital transmissions of recorded music."
Music Labels Offer P2P Teasers
Excerpted from NY Times Report by Jeff Leeds
The expansion of the online marketplace is now all but forcing the music companies to tread on ground they once viewed as off limits.
Starting this week, Suretone Records, a label distributed by the Universal Music Group (UMG), plans to distribute video files featuring popular acts like Weezer and new bands like Drop Dead Gorgeous on file-sharing networks that the industry has long viewed as illicit bazaars for copyright infringers.
The plan represents one of the latest signs that, after years of suing individual users and file-swapping services, the recording industry is recognizing that it might have to loosen its control to attract the giant audience found in largely unregulated corners of the Internet.
RCA Records, for example, plans to advance its promotional campaign for Avril Lavigne’s new album with the first in a series of short manga — Japanese comic-book episodes — in a storyline featuring the singer.
Terry McBride, CEO of Nettwerk Music Group, a longtime talent manager who represents Ms. Lavigne and other performers, said the campaign was a rare instance of a major label’s agreeing to an uncontrolled release, and that he fully expected fans to post the clips on file-sharing networks. "This becomes public property," he said. "We’re not going to tell the consumer how to consume."
But Mr. McBride predicted that sharing the files would promote the album and set the stage for other ventures, including the sale of higher-quality versions of the video clips, or possibly advertising to go along with them. In any event, he added, the more CD sales suffer, the more pressure will build on record labels to rethink the rules of distribution and to drop limits on copying digital music.
"At the end of the day the whole object should be, let’s fix the problem," said Jordan Schur, who set up the Suretone label last year as a joint venture with UMG after leaving another Universal label, Geffen Records.
Suretone to Use MediaDefender for P2P
Excerpted from Digital Media Wire Report by Mark Hefflinger
ArtistDirect, an independent music destination and provider of anti-piracy technologies, said on Wednesday that Universal’s Suretone Records has signed on to use its MediaDefender platform that encourages users on open P2P networks to download authorized files.
The technology directs users seeking files from Suretone artists to Suretone-branded exclusive files. The deal will also establish a Suretone video channel on ArtistDirect.com, which claims 15 million monthly US visitors and 40 million worldwide.
Coming Events of Interest
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Digital Music Forum East – February 27th–28th in New York, NY. For the past six years, the most influential decision-makers in the music industry have gathered at Digital Media Wire’s annual music conference. They come to network, do deals, and share ideas about the future of the music business. The DCIA will present a session on the Pros & Cons of P2P and Music.
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IPTV World Forum – March 5th-7th in London, England. Mikkel Dissing, CEO of DCIA Member RawFlow, will speak on "TVoverNet: Threat or Opportunity." The company will also demonstrate SelfCast, its revolutionary new live publishing tool for user-generated broadcasting at Booth 70. SelfCast can be built into any existing social community site to allow for live broadcasting of video and audio.
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Cross-Media Metadata Summit for Content Description, Visibility, Search, and Discovery – March 9th at the Frontline Club, London W2, England. The summit will identify strategies and tactics to drive adoption of metadata syndication ecosystems that enable content owners to increase visibility of their content.
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National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) – April 14th–19th in Las Vegas, NV. Whether you’re making the transition to HD; looking to invest in new technologies like P2PTV; seeking new tools to create content and build revenue streams; or just trying to stay ahead of the competition, NAB 2007 is your essential destination. The DCIA is participating.
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P2P MEDIA SUMMIT LA – June 11th in Santa Monica, CA. This is the DCIA’s must-attend event for everyone interested in P2P. Keynotes, panels, and workshops on the latest breakthroughs. Held in conjunction with the new Digital Hollywood Spring conference and exposition.
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International Broadcasting Convention (IBC) – September 6th-11th in Amsterdam, Holland. IBC is committed to providing the world’s best event for everyone involved in the creation, management, and delivery of content for the entertainment industry, including DCIA Members. Run by the industry for the industry, convention organizers are drawn from participating companies.
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PT/EXPO COMM – October 23rd-27th at the China International Exhibition Center in Beijing, China. The largest telecommunications/IT industry event in the world’s fastest growing telecom sector. PT/EXPO COMM offers DCIA participants from all over the world a high profile promotional platform in a sales environment that is rich in capital investment.
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