June 4, 2007
Volume 17, Issue 12
P2P MEDIA SUMMIT LA on Monday June 11th
P2P MEDIA SUMMIT LA and Digital Hollywood Spring (DHS) kick-off next Monday, June 11th. Please click here for the full P2P MEDIA SUMMIT LA agenda, here for a list of speakers, and here to register.
To reserve your room for P2P MEDIA SUMMIT LA & DHS at Doubletree Guest Suites Santa Monica, please call 310-395-3332 today with the booking code "P2P MEDIA SUMMIT." Your rate will be $239 + tax per night for a 2-room king suite, high-speed Internet included. Doubletree Guest Suites are ideal for accommodating your private business meetings while at these events.
Act now to register for P2P MEDIA SUMMIT LA & DHS.
NY P2P 2.0 Meet-Up Wednesday June 20th
Immediately following the P2P MEDIA SUMMIT LA, the NY P2P 2.0 June Meet-Up has now been set for Wednesday June 20th at 7:00 PM in Alston & Bird’s headquarters.
Pando Networks’ CTO Laird Popkin will kick-off the program with a "Brief History of P2P Networks."
Pando has just been honored with this year’s Supernova Connected Innovator award, along with twelve other companies that Techcrunch and Supernova consider to have this year’s most innovative new products.
Presentations will also be made by INTENT MediaWorks’ Andy Cooper and CacheLogic’s Marco Parente.
RSVP now so you don’t miss out on the very latest in the rapidly growing P2P industry.
Babelgum Gets GONG Channel
The new anime network, GONG, dedicated to teens and adults, is launching as the first international on-demand, online Japanese animation channel on Babel Networks’ new P2PTV service Babelgum.
GONG is the only on-demand anime channel, available anywhere, anytime, on any screen (TV, mobile, Internet, VOD) offering manga and anime fans top-rated and popular anime series and movies.
Babelgum blends the lean-back experience of traditional TV with the interactive and social power of the Internet by using cutting-edge P2PTV technology to stream video to PCs safely and efficiently at near-TV resolution.
Babelgum empowers viewers to create their own TV channels with niche-to-mainstream content from around the world tailored to individual interests. With use, Babelgum learns what viewers like and their experience gets better and better. Babelgum is creating a whole new medium for viewers, content owners, and advertisers.
Benoit Runel, former Head of Acquisitions at TF1 and EVP of Programming, Acquisitions and Co-Productions at Fox Kids/Jetix Europe (a Walt Disney company) and Andre de Semlyen, former Turner Broadcasting System VP/Channel Manager for Cartoon Network, Boomerang, and Turner Classic Movies (a Time Warner company), came up with the pioneering GONG project.
They commented, "Traditional TV still works, but has lost touch with many target groups. TV consumption behavior has completely changed. Time has come for a new generation in the new media space. Manga fans and Japanese animation geeks have been waiting for it."
GONG’s look, feel, and content suggest a perfect match between Babelgum and the core community of anime fans, offering quality, flexibility, mobility and accessibility.
Report from CEO Marty Lafferty
 We are very pleased this week to announce details of the Conference Luncheon for the upcoming P2P MEDIA SUMMIT LA. Please see last week’s DCINFO for details of the afternoon agenda and the May 21st issue for our morning schedule.
This second annual DCIA Los Angeles Conference is being held in conjunction with Digital Hollywood Spring, and is scheduled for June 11th in Santa Monica CA.
Our focus will be on P2PTV, the industry’s newest high-growth phenomenon.
P2PTV refers to video distribution on the Internet using P2P technologies.Many DCIA Member companies now offer solutions to help content rights holders, ISPs, client applications, and other participants in this rapidly emerging distribution channel, accomplish this at astonishingly low costs and with astoundingly high quality of service (QoS).
The P2P MEDIA SUMMIT LA will take place at the Doubletree Guest Suites Santa Monica. Following the morning tracks and keynotes, the FTI Consulting sponsored Conference Luncheon will take place at 12:30 PM in the Carousel Ballroom.
BitTorrent CEO & Co-Founder Bram Cohen and National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (NATAS) President Shelly Palmer will be our featured luncheon speakers.
Bram Cohen is the creator of the BitTorrent P2P file distribution protocol. Bram is also the co-founder of CodeCon and the co-author of Codeville. Prior to the creation of BitTorrent, Bram worked at MojoNation. MojoNation allowed people to break up confidential files into encrypted chunks and distribute those pieces to other computers running MojoNation’s software. This concept served as the inspiration for Bram’s development of BitTorrent. Before MojoNation, Bram was a quintessential dot-commer, working for several Internet companies through the mid-to-late nineties.
Shelly Palmer is host of Media 3.0 with Shelly Palmer and the author of Television Disrupted: The Transition from Network to Networked TV. Shelly is one of the experts leading the industry’s rapid evolution. From developing advanced television services to implementing new distribution technologies, his pioneering efforts have made him the successful creator, producer, composer and television Renaissance man he is today. Along with his contributions to the advancement of television, Shelly is also a pioneer in the field of Internet technologies.
In a special pre-luncheon presentation, Bruce Benson, FTI Consulting’s Senior Managing Director of Entertainment and Media, will speak on how networks compete. All P2P MEDIA SUMMIT LA attendees will receive the second installment of FTI’s "Couch Potato Famine: Prospering through an Era of Disruptive Change in Media."
The goal of this four-part series is to help media and entertainment executives understand the underlying causes of the disruptive change afflicting their industry and to lay out broad strategies for adaptation.
In Part I of this series distributed initially at P2P MEDIA SUMMIT NY, FTI discussed the three titanic forces that are disrupting the industry. They are the rise of open standards, the proliferation of broadband, and the emergence of many-to-many networks, including those created using P2P technologies. Because these many-to-many networks are a new form of content distribution, the second part of FTI’s series is focused on the economic behavior of these networks.
Many-to-many networks are now disrupting conventional broadcast and retail distribution. In Part I, FTI described the power of these networks in terms of the speed in which content can be shared and the shear number of people who can interact. FTI also noted that these networks have unique economic properties, which the firm promised to explore in the second part of its series.
Economists have been studying the behavior of networks for quite some time in a field they call network economics. By network economics they don’t mean the financial mechanics of, say, TV broadcasting.
Instead they mean the study of goods and services whose usefulness is determined, in whole or in part, by the number of other consumers that use them. They say such goods and services exhibit "network effects" or network externalities. A lot was written during the first dotcom era about network economics. Several bestsellers such as "Information Rules" and other books brought the concept of network economics into the spotlight.
However, these books did not anticipate the emergence of these many-to-many networks. Consequently the goal of Part II is to resuscitate some of these principles, bring in some of the newer thinking from economists, and describe a few principles of FTI’s own.
Rupert Murdoch understood the importance of network economics when he bought MySpace. MySpace is a very popular service with the tools to allow like-minded people to find and affiliate with each other semi-privately. Since buying this large and growing network, he has begun to systematically infuse it with media – first music, and now news and video. Indeed, it is not too much to suggest that those media companies that master these new network effects are the ones most likely to prosper on the Internet.
In Part II of the series, FTI sets out 10 principles that it believes are the foundations of competition and partnering with these large networks. FTI develops these principles throughout the first two sections which describe the special economic behavior of these networks and how they compete. In the third section, FTI discusses some of the strategies available to the various segments of the media and entertainment industry in coping with these networks.
In addition to FTI Consulting, P2P MEDIA SUMMIT LA sponsors include INTENT MediaWorks, Altnet, Nettwerk Music Group, and Javien Digital Payment Solutions.For sponsor packages and speaker information, please contact Karen Kaplowitz, DCIA Member Services, at 888-890-4240 or karen@dcia.info.
To register, please visit www.dcia.info/P2PMSLA2007/register.html or call 410-476-7965. For general information about the P2P MEDIA SUMMIT LA, please visit www.dcia.info/P2PMSLA2007. Share wisely, and take care.
Nat Geo Seeks Boost from Joost
Excerpted from C21 Media Report by Jonathan Webdale
One of the world’s greatest wildlife and natural sciences brands is also one of the swiftest adopters of new technologies and has recently put programming on the new P2PTV services Joost and Azureus’ Vuze.
National Geographic Ventures VP and Head of Corporate Strategic development Paul Levine said gaining distribution on these new platforms is in keeping with the organization’s mission of inspiring as many people as possible to care about the planet.
The deal with Joost happened first and is initially limited to the US, a decision Levine said was related to the newness of the service and its free-to-view model - one that contrasts with Nat Geo’s pay-TV principle.
What he finds particularly intriguing about Joost, however, is the potential to create any number of content propositions. While Levine refuses to say whether Nat Geo would use the service to launch new channels, the potential is clearly appealing.
"When you look at Apple iTunes everything is à la carte. Unlike a lot of media companies that produce content we are essentially thematic storytellers, so it’s very interesting to us when a service comes out that allows us to bundle and program content around various themes," said Levine.
Vuze, although closer in keeping to Nat Geo’s pay-TV emphasis, based as it is on downloads, similarly offers scope way beyond mere linear broadcast. "With Azureus you have the ability to share, search, browse, and tag, and when you overlay broadband-specific ‘web 2.0’ functionality onto content it is a very powerful way to build audience. That’s not something you can do over television," says Levine.
But this doesn’t mean Nat Geo is prepared to partner with any new media distributor that comes along: "We’re approached by a large number of people. We look at what is the service, what’s the user experience, what’s the platform. Then we make decisions based on that so the content we serve on those services in those territories speaks to the audiences there and makes the most sense for us," he said.
"We’re not willing to do deals with anybody. Not every platform is right for every brand and every property. Remember, we are a mission-based company first and that mission is to inspire people to care about the planet. A lot of people approach National Geographic to essentially associate themselves with the brand. If a service does not dovetail nicely with our mission and our brand we don’t do it."
Grooveshark Signs Magnatune
Grooveshark, the very promising new P2P music brokerage, has signed an agreement with Magnatune, dubbed "the first Internet-era record label."
This is the third label to enter into a licensing agreement with Grooveshark since March. Magnatune joins London-based V2 Music Group and Naxos, the world’s largest classical music label. As a P2P music-sharing network that compensates copyright holders as well as users, the company aims to revolutionize the music industry by combining the best of P2P file sharing and online music purchase sites into one service.
"At Grooveshark, we believe in the progressive approach that Magnatune has taken as a label," said Sam Tarantino, Founder & CEO of Grooveshark. "This is a mutually beneficial partnership that can help them grow and allow us to expand our ever-growing catalog of artists."
"The indie music world is perhaps the hardest hit by unlicensed music sharing," Tarantino continued. "By partnering with Magnatune, we hope to stem the tide and provide a safe haven for the young and independent musicians out there who want to have their music heard by their fans, yet still get paid so they can pay their bills. We also will be strengthening that intimate direct connection between fan and artist, right to the point of musical conversation."
Founded in 2003, Magnatune is an independent, online record label and music store that sells and licenses its entire catalog of over 200 independent recording artists in every genre. Magnatune supports fair-trade music and shares equally all revenue with recording artists. All music can be previewed in full, free-of-charge with a "try before you buy" philosophy.
"We applaud Grooveshark’s approach of making the largest possible catalog of music available while compensating artists and the members of their community," said John Buckman, Magnatune Founder & CEO. "It’s clear to us the music industry needs to change, and that’s why we founded Magnatune, and we’re excited to see a unique distribution channel like Grooveshark to complement our efforts."
Visitors to Grooveshark can browse songs uploaded by other members and pay to download MP3 files with no digital rights management (DRM) technology. Songs vary in price, but cost no more than 99 cents. Grooveshark will pay appropriate royalties to copyright holders by taking commissions from users’ transactions and also compensate users with free music for community participation such as uploading songs, fixing song tags, flagging unwanted files, or reviewing music. Members will be rewarded based on their level of contribution to the community.
Grooveshark’s Founder & CEO Sam Tarantino will be a featured speaker at next week’s P2P MEDIA SUMMIT LA.
Broadband Base to Double by 2011
Over the past twelve months, approximately 65 million new broadband subscribers signed up for high-speed access to the Internet, reports In-Stat. By 2011, total worldwide broadband subscribers will number 567 million, almost double the current 285 million subscriber base, the high-tech market research firm says.
The principal market driver for the adoption of broadband service is pretty straightforward: people want to access the Internet with a higher-speed connection. Beyond this basic desire, the emergence of online applications such as viewing video clips or TV programming, downloading music files, and even playing online games, is fueling end-user demand for "fatter pipes."
Recent research by In-Stat found the following: DSL and cable modem services are the top access technologies, providing 92% of worldwide broadband connections. By 2011, worldwide DSL subscribers will account for 58% of all worldwide broadband connections. By 2011, there will be over 55 million households using a fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) architecture to provide broadband access.
The research, "Broadband Gets Big: Global Broadband Subs Hit 285 Million," covers the worldwide market for broadband services. It provides forecasts for broadband subscribers by technology and by region through 2011. It also contains analysis of market drivers and barriers for each of the access technologies.
Studios Seek Geek Aid
Excerpted from Variety Report by Scott Kirsner
The six major studios are holding an open casting call for geeks with good ideas.
The MovieLabs Technology Open Challenge, running through the end of September, will provide grants of up to $100,000 for technologists working on solutions to problems like improved security for Internet content, converting a single piece of digital content so that it can be played on various consumer devices, or developing a movie screen that works equally well for 3-D and 2-D projection.
MovieLabs, based in Palo Alto, CA is a research-and-development group founded by the studios in 2005 with a $30 million bankroll. Silicon Valley tech veteran Steve Weinstein was hired to run the five-person group last July.
"There were some problems we were thinking about where we said, ‘Why not get the industry thinking about some of these things?’" Weinstein said. "This is going to be a rolling list of problems that we’ll add to."
He said the competition is designed to identify teams at universities, startup companies and larger firms that are working on potentially useful solutions and begin working with them. Some ideas may start out as little more than concepts on a whiteboard but be developed into products in partnership with MovieLabs, Weinstein said.
One problem MovieLabs is seeking help with is what it calls the "remote content access challenge" – essentially, giving a consumer access to her collection of movies on various viewing devices while also verifying that she’s the lawful owner of that content. "Why, if you’re in a hotel, shouldn’t you be able to access your movies on the TV in your room?" Weinstein asked.
Challenge is the first public initiative of MovieLabs. Weinstein says MovieLabs has thus far been working on helping studios evaluate new technologies like content recognition software, which would enable a content owner to track a piece of content, regardless of where it popped up on the Internet. "The idea for MovieLabs is to be a catalyst and help technologies get adopted," Weinstein said.
Whether MovieLabs will garner continued funding from the studios, Weinstein says, is "about us delivering value on the dollar."
New Breed of P2P Delivery Networks
Excerpted from Streaming Media Online Report
There have been numerous comments to the recently posted "List of P2P Delivery Networks."
Stevan Arychuk from HP commented that, "BitGravity is a CDN service with a twist. Its website says BitGravity’s technology is "the next generation of content distribution." Move Networks is classified as a P2P provider. Its website says Move Networks’ technology is based on "quantum streaming." Grid Networks has a hybrid approach that overcomes the challenges faced by P2P-only and traditional CDN networks. Swarmcast calls its technology "grid-delivery" that allows you to "always achieve the maximum possible download speed." Itiva calls its technology "quantum transport" and says it works "by taking every advantage of proxy and node contribution". Its website says that Itiva’s quantum transport technology "is similar to that of a controlled P2P model."
Value propositions are posted on their websites: Move Networks: High Quality, Scalability, Low Cost, Reliability. BitGravity: Performance, Reliability, Service, Price. Grid Networks: High Quality, Performance, Scalability, Low Cost. Swarmcast: High Quality, Reliability, Speed, Low Cost. Itiva: High Quality, Low cost.
It’s great that there are new companies in the space looking to improve the user-experience for video based on a different way of delivering content. Success will be a function of the value they can show in their technologies, translated into terms that are valuable to the customer.
Delivery networks needs to do a better job of educating the market and customers on exactly what they do and don’t support. How do they deliver content? What forms do they deliver it in? What formats can they deliver? Can they support live or just on-demand? These are the types of questions customers are asking.
Vendors need to help customers cut through the confusion. Make it simple. Deliver a clear message. Give them the information they need to make informed and educated decisions.
P2P: The IPTV Answer for China
CCID Consulting, China’s leading research, consulting, and IT outsourcing service provider, recommends a new development direction for IPTV in China: P2P.
Since 2003, fixed network operators have pushed forward IPTV services in an effort to step out of a difficult situation of falling revenues from traditional communication services. Currently, there are over 600,000 IPTV subscribers in China. In many regions, carrying networks have covered province-wide areas. IPTV operations, which carriers provide on the manageable IP networks that support multicast, mainly involve services such as relay broadcast TV, time-shift TV, and video-on-demand (VOD).
For network infrastructure, IPTV systems in China currently use a client/server model and provide unicast and on-demand services. To let hundreds of thousands and even millions of users concurrently receive and view broadcasting programs, existing networks will have to be reconstructed or upgraded to support multicast. This involves heavy infrastructure cost. Moreover, IPTV can only provide broadcasting services within reconstructed local networks. For network coverage in wider areas, the client/server model cannot provide adequate support.
In addition, due to its inherent architectural shortcomings, traditional CDN can hardly meet the program requirements of IPTV services. It cannot carry all the functions of IPTV, and may lead to traffic bottlenecks. Currently, CDN technology is adopted for VOD services to place servers close to customers to reduce network load. However, as the existing CDN networks evolve from PC-based streaming media services, technical issues such as reduced efficiency and complicated reorientation mechanisms are likely to happen when large numbers of subscribers select the same content. The media delivery system only offers limited support for relay broadcast TV, time-shift TV, and various value-added services.
P2P technology, which has been widely used on the Internet, provides a rather good solution for the above problems. During broadcast, VOD, and push-VOD video programs, P2P can transmit video content through active or automatic mutual transfer among end-users, thus avoiding network congestion when all content is transmitted from one or a few servers.
With a P2P distribution network, participants who share hardware and network resources are both resources providers and resources recipients. This not only solves the problem of low utilization efficiency resulting from the client/server network infrastructure’s over-reliance on servers, but also enriches program sources and offers users more choices.
P2P makes streaming services evenly distributed in the whole network, thus avoiding congestion on edge servers. Using P2P technology to establish new media-payment and distribution systems can include streaming program content in advance and storing it in several edge servers in blocks. The scheduling server will then perform centralized control in line with the principles of proximity and load balancing. It is possible to real-time select and rotate edge servers to provide streaming services to users based on the network situation.
To successfully apply P2P technology in telecom-level IPTV networks, operators must address issues of service delay, bandwidth asymmetry, network controllability, and manageability; and build truly reliable and secure telecom-level IPTV networks. Also, IPTV is now still restricted by the development of DTV in the radio and TV industry. P2P-based IPTV or P2PTV has yet to greet its period of fast expansion.
P2P Sites Partner for Online Broadcast
Excerpted from Pacific Epoch Report by Hattie Lee
Chinese P2P streaming media provider PPStream announced a partnership with download accelerator and P2P file-sharing software Xunlei (Thunder) to jointly broadcast the new movie "Ming Ming."
Users can watch the movie on PPStream for free or download the movie from Xunlei for two Yuan. "Ming Ming" is directed by Hong Kong director Susie Au. Beijing Poly-Bona Film Publishing Company owns the exclusive online publishing rights to the movie. Xunlei received permission from Poly-Bona to offer the film.
Exetel Mulls P2P Caching
Excerpted from Whirlpool Report by Phil Sweeney
Exetel has declared its P2P shaping trial a success, and says it is investigating the expansion of the program with a P2P caching solution.
The popular ISP began shaping P2P in November last year, with users reacting strongly to the announcement. But Exetel said it was the only ISP being completely up-front about its shaping policies.
"It’s interesting that only Exetel has been open about its purchase and deployment of a P2P control process", it said, stating it was "by no means the first Australian ISP to purchase from Allot and certainly a lot of other ISPs had purchased similar devices from Allot’s competitors."
After running the existing system for six months, Exetel believes that users were not significantly affected, and felt it could be further improved.
"Some time between early August and late October we will gradually phase out the Allot NE 2020 and replace it with a P2P caching solution," said the announcement. The caching solution will work by "delivering P2P data that has previously been retrieved by another customer directly from an Exetel "mirror" and only using external sources for data that isn’t available from the local disks." A successful implementation will see bandwidth usage drop and possibly even increased speeds for customers.
P2P caching is not new to Australia, however, with Optus using PeerCache technology since 2003. PeerCache support is built into many popular P2P clients such as Azureus and eMule. Exetel has not revealed which caching solution it is investigating, however.
UK ISPs Muzzle VOD Service
Excerpted from Marketing Vox News
Britain’s Channel 4 now offers VOD through its 4oD service, but its use is being heavily restricted by UK ISPs, reports CNET UK.
The service runs on VeriSign’s Kontiki, a P2P service similar in its use of highly efficient P2P delivery technology to BitTorrent or LimeWire. ISPs, however, automatically limit its use through "packet shaping," a tactic that limits download speeds by up to 500 percent.
P2P use in Britain is restricted in an effort to combat copyright infringement. Since television is subscription-based, people turn to services like BitTorrent to watch their favorite programs and movies for free.
Although Channel 4 is a legitimate network, its use of Kontiki to disseminate free content places its VOD service in the same net as infringing activities.
4oD, Channel 4’s VOD network, is a premiere offering for the UK that allows users to catch-up on missed programming provided by the station.
VeriSign Shares Gain in Exec Shuffle
Shares of VeriSign climbed as a First Analysis Securities analyst predicted the company could benefit from senior executive changes.
VeriSign, which manages the .com and .net domain names registry, saw its stock gain $1.12, or 4 percent, to $29.06 in Wednesday afternoon trading. Earlier in the day, the shares rose to a new year-high of $29.79. VeriSign has traded between $15.95 and $28.13 in the past 12 months.
In a note to clients Wednesday, analyst Lawrence Berlin wrote that CEO Stratton Sclavos’ resignation may be good for VeriSign because it brings in two new executives.
VeriSign announced the change Tuesday, naming William Roper Jr. to replace Sclavos as CEO. Berlin applauded the choice of Roper, a former finance chief at Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC), saying he brings knowledge of VeriSign’s domain name registry and related business to the company.
Berlin, who rates the company "Equal-Weight," also wrote that the naming of company’s new, independent Chairman, Edward Mueller, a former Williams-Sonoma executive, "is a positive sign for VeriSign."
"In our view, success in reorganizing could lead to improved stock performance," the analyst wrote, though he noted the company might do best if it cuts itself into smaller units and then sells them or spins them off.
DCINFO Editor’s Note: See Also Forbes’ VeriSign Rises on Upbeat Analyst Note.
Kyte Melds Networking & Media Sharing
Excerpted from Associated Press Report by Rachel Metz
Fingers all tired from typing web addresses from Bebo to Zebo to hit all your social networking and media sharing sites?
Daniel Graf believes he has an all-in-one solution — one you can put in your pocket.
Graf runs Kyte, a free service that lets users create, share and view personalized, interactive "TV" channels through their computers and cell-phones. A channel can contain videos, interactive polls, pictures, and slideshows, all hosted on Kyte; some can be live, such as sequences of photos in almost-real-time from a cell-phone.
Several venture capital firms are betting Kyte will take flight, including Atomico, which was founded by Niklas Zennstrom, one of the pioneers behind the Kazaa file-sharing software and the Skype Internet phone service.
The Kyte service has been in a "beta" test mode at Kyte.tv since late April.
Once you’ve produced a channel, you can see how many people are watching it and chat with viewers live.
"You share a picture of a dog and within a second or a minute or two, five people are chatting with you, ‘Oh where is that? Cute dog!’" Graf said. "It’s this instant connection that makes it powerful."
Users can embed their channels in various online locations, too, including MySpace and personal websites.
Graf wouldn’t disclose the number of users, but said the site now has 4,230 channels. He said users are split between Europe and the United States, where people haven’t been accustomed yet to using their phones for more than talking and texting.
Yet Graf is optimistic that Americans will come to embrace mobile data services.
"We’re part of the new wave of mobile services that will drive, of course, the adoptions of more data plans," he said.
More Juice for Jajah
Excerpted from PC World Report by Mark Sullivan
Jajah is starting to look like VoIP’s "It Girl" as interest and support for the Israeli company builds in telecom circles. The company announced $50 million in financial backing from a group of investors led by Intel in May, and announced earlier this week that T-Mobile parent company Deutsche Telekom has invested an estimated $5 million. The DT investment marks the first time that a major telco has invested in a VoIP start-up. Look for more hook-ups between VoIP 2.0 companies and big telco in the coming months.
So why is big telco just now beginning to invest in innovative VoIP start-ups like Jajah? Why will they invest in Jajah and not earlier services like Vonage and Skype?
The answer lies in the way Jajah works. In some ways, Jajah is a telco-friendly VoIP service. It sets up calls in a web-based client, but utilizes existing landline phones and cell-phones to conduct the calls. That gives the telephone company a role to play.
Vonage and Skype, and many other services like them, seek to circumvent the phone company’s network whenever possible. It’s had an effect. Telephone companies around the world have seen their landline service revenues – especially long distance – eroded in recent years by the increasing use of VoIP and cellular long distance services.
Telephone companies know they must embrace VoIP is some fashion at some point in the future. They are simply waiting for the technology that will let them introduce VoIP in a way that is non-disruptive to customers. They don’t want to ask people to make calls using a PC mic, nor do they want to ask people to disconnect their phones from the walls and rewire to a broadband connection.
Jajah, by the looks of things, might be the flavor of VoIP the telcos have been waiting for. The service connects calls behind the scenes; when the connection has been made, the user’s desk-phone or cell-phone rings. No additional equipment is required.
Global 500 Companies Benefit from P2P
ORSYP, worldwide provider of enterprise job scheduling solutions and services, enables Global 500 enterprises to manage and optimize their IT operations with a service-oriented approach thanks to its powerful and leading P2P architecture.
ORSYP developed the first job scheduler based on P2P technology and today ORSYP remains a leader in the IT automation space thanks to its unmatched technology. This architecture enables Dollar Universe, ORSYP’s flagship enterprise job scheduling solution to leverage the power of distributed computing by spreading job scheduling functions across the entire network and avoids the main problems encountered with other solutions based on traditional Master-Agent architecture such as availability, scalability, performance or costs.
The P2P architecture (versus Master-Agent architecture) perfectly suits the complex and heterogeneous environments of Global 500 companies allowing them to adapt and react to IT and business dynamics both rapidly and cost-effectively. This architecture provides a service/object-oriented framework to build, maintain, and expand their automation footprint, while retaining the advantages of centralized monitoring and control.
Please click here to learn more about ORSYP’s flagship IT automation solution, Dollar Universe.
Music Industry Overstates Threat
Excerpted from Ars Technica Report by Nate Anderson
A recent study from the NPD Group found that licensed music downloads surged in 2006, and the company predicts that authorized services will have more users than unlicensed ones by the end of 2007. But that doesn’t mean the music industry isn’t threatened.
"Unfortunately for the music labels," said Russ Crupnick, Vice President and Entertainment Industry Analyst for the NPD Group, "the volume of music files purchased is swamped by the sheer volume of files being traded without authorization, whether on P2P or burned CDs sourced from borrowed files."
NPD thinks old-fashioned CD sharing is a massive threat: "The ‘social’ ripping and burning of CDs among friends – which takes place offline and almost entirely out of reach of industry policing effort – accounts for 37 percent of all music consumption, and more than file sharing."
If true, that’s a huge number. So why aren’t we hearing more about CD swapping from the RIAA?
For one thing, lending a CD to a friend is permissible, and it’s all but impossible to keep people from ripping borrowed CDs. Hence, the RIAA’s focus has largely been on P2P sharing instead, with the music industry going so far as to pressure colleges to cut off all P2P access. This level of attention to P2P networks makes less sense if CD swapping-and-ripping is actually a bigger issue.
Media Rights Technologies (MRT) threatened Apple, Microsoft, Adobe, and Real in early May, claiming that the companies were not using enough DRM. MRT claimed that, based on internal studies, stream-ripping (saving the bitstream from Internet radio or other streaming services) is actually the number one source of infringing copies.
MRT CEO Hank Risan last week confirmed the claim, saying that stream-ripping was also one of the reasons behind the recent decision to raise rates on Internet webcasters. The company has said that it would file lawsuits against Apple, Microsoft, Adobe, and Real within ten days if they did not license MRT technology.
If stream-ripping truly is a bigger threat than CD-swapping and P2P use, it must account for at least 38 percent of all music consumption, leaving only a maximum of 25 percent for both all forms of licensed distribution and all unauthorized P2P acquisition of music. If true, it seems downright amazing that the music industry has spent so much time focused on P2P file sharing.
Or perhaps it’s not all that amazing. A more likely explanation is that the numbers aren’t even right.
As Canadian law professor Michael Geist showed a few weeks ago, claims about piracy rates can be wildly variable and downright fictional. High numbers are often used to support legal threats or calls for Congressional action, as in the MRT case. MRT has a lot to gain by overstating the threat of stream-ripping and, so far, has not showed its numbers.
Both MRT and NPD agree, though, that P2P is hardly the music industry’s biggest problem.
Copyright Office Seeks Beta Testers
The US Copyright Office announced Friday that it will launch a public beta test of its new web-based copyright registration system, electronic Copyright Office (eCO), next month. Interested parties can register for the beta test by filling out the form here.
Coming Events of Interest
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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 monetizing content using P2P and related technologies. Keynotes, panels, and workshops on the latest breakthroughs. Held in conjunction with the new Digital Hollywood Spring conference and exposition.
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Digital Hollywood Spring – June 12th–14th in Santa Monica, CA. Now expanded to Le Merigot as well as Loews Anatole Hotel. With many new sessions and feature events, this has become the premiere digital entertainment conference and expositions. DCIA Members will exhibit and speak on a number of panels.
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NXTcomm – June 18th–20th in Chicago, IL. The next-generation global forum and marketplace for the business of information, communications, and entertainment technology. The forces that drive communication and the solutions to harness it converge here. The DCIA will participate with Digital Hollywood.
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NY P2P 2.0 June Meet-Up – June 20th in New York, NY. Pando Networks’ CTO Laird Popkin will present a "Brief History of P2P Networks." INTENT MediaWorks’ Andy Cooper and CacheLogic’s Marco Parente will also speak. RSVP now so you don’t miss out on the very latest in the rapidly growing P2P industry.
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Web Video Summit – June 27th–28th in San Jose, CA. This workshop is about video distributed over the Internet, bringing together the pioneers of an exploding industry. They'll explain what you need to know about shooting, editing and encoding, distributing and promoting your work, and claiming your rewards. Real choices, working techniques, and field-hardened creators.
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Edinburgh Television Festival – August 24th-26th in Edinburgh, Scotland. Janus Friis, Co-Founder of P2PTV service Joost, will deliver the inaugural Futureview Lecture at this year’s festival. The aim of this year’s event is to assemble a cast list from the hottest shows, the most exciting new technologies, and the biggest TV controversies of the year.
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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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