July 9, 2007
Volume 18, Issue 5
Valerio Zingarelli Named CEO of Babelgum
Former Vodafone Global Director of Networks and Service Platforms, Valerio Zingarelli, has been appointed Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of peer-to-peer television (P2PTV) service Babelgum.
Zingarelli takes over the operational responsibilities of Co-Founder Erik Lumer who will now turn his focus to strategic product development.
Beyond the completion and refinement of the technical platform, Zingarelli will lead Babelgum into the next phase of launch as a new global media platform aimed at delivering targeted content to sharply profiled viewer groups everywhere in the world. This goal requires a complex international organization, new resources, and additional skills. The explicit goal that Babelgum has defined is to grow its employee base to approximately 100 by the end of the year.
Babelgum Chairman & Co-Founder Silvio Scaglia said, "We are now moving to phase two in the development of Babelgum. The core technology has been proven and, while our focus right now is on bringing together compelling content, we will soon turn to user acquisition and advertising. Valerio’s appointment is a reflection of that changing focus."
"I have known Valerio since 1995 when, as Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Omnitel, he built what is still considered by many to be the best mobile network in Europe," added Scaglia. "He was instrumental in developing an organization that grew from nothing to a staff of 1,000 serving millions of customers. His knowledge and firsthand experience in managing the technical and operational demands of rapid and sustained growth are exactly what we now require at Babelgum."
"I can’t think of a more exciting sector to be involved in at the moment," said Zingarelli. "Babelgum is right at the heart of a revolution in television, building a truly personal global medium capable of delivering a huge amount of professional television-quality content to millions of users around the world. It’s a new kind of distribution that is uniquely suited to satisfying individual passions and interests through the innovative Smart Channels concept - channels defined individually by users."
Prior to joining Babelgum, Zingarelli was an independent member of the Board of Directors of Fastweb, the second largest fixed-line telecommunications company in Italy. From 2002 to 2005, he was Global Director of Networks and Service Platforms at Vodafone, in charge of managing all technology activities and strategy, including customer terminals. Zingarelli’s career with Vodafone began in 1994, when he joined Omnitel (later acquired by Vodafone), with the responsibility of CTO.
Prior to joining Omnitel, he worked for Alenia - the main Italian aerospace company - and for Cselt, the research centre of Telecom Italia. Valerio’s management roles are complemented by academic activity as Associate Professor at the Politecnico of Turin, since 1991 to date, on Electronic Communications and Digital Transmission.
Industry Holiday Excitement
To celebrate Independence Day, the Fourth of July, the Spirit of 1776, and the Birth of the USA, BitTorrent made all TV Show Episodes available at BitTorrent.com for just 99 cents each. As the BitTorrent promotion proclaimed, "If our calculators are operating correctly, that means more than 50% off on every single TV episode. Is this a great country or what? A proud American named Philo T. Farnsworth invented television, so it’s your patriotic duty to download-to-own any and every show BitTorrent has – hundreds and hundreds of episodes."
Meanwhile, as two billion people gathered worldwide on July 7th to witness 24 hours of Live Earth concerts, a global audience was empowered to "Answer the Call" to help solve the climate crisis by VeriSign – the leading provider of digital infrastructure for the networked world. Concert goers and home viewers alike could meaningfully interact with the event through a VeriSign-enabled text2screen feature. The Live Earth SMS campaign was designed to communicate solutions to the climate crisis that people could easily incorporate into their daily lives.
"VeriSign is proud to bring our expertise and mobile messaging technology to Live Earth’s global effort to improve the environment," said Todd Johnson, Senior Vice President of Global Marketing, VeriSign. "We provide the digital infrastructure that enables more efficient communication, access to content, and sharing of information, making a positive impact on our environment."
Report from CEO Marty Lafferty
 The new DCIA-sponsored P4P Working Group (P4PWG), Co-Chaired by Doug Pasko of Verizon Communications and Laird Popkin of Pando Networks has announced its mission statement, objectives, call-for-participants, and strategic plan.
The working group, which held its formative meeting in conjunction with NXTcomm and the NY P2P 2.0 Meet-Up, defines "P4P" as a set of business practices and integrated network topology awareness models designed to optimize Internet service provider (ISP) network resources and enable peer-to-peer (P2P) based content payload acceleration.
The mission of the P4PWG is to work jointly and cooperatively with leading ISPs, P2P software distributors, and technology researchers to ascertain appropriate and voluntary best practices for the use of P4P mechanisms to accelerate distribution of P2P content and optimize utilization of ISP network resources in order to provide the best possible performance to end-user customers.
The P4PWG’s objectives include, but are not limited to, these five initial goals: To provide ISPs with the ability to optimize utilization of network resources while enhancing service levels for P2P traffic. To provide P2P software distributors with the ability to accelerate content delivery while enhancing efficient usage of ISP bandwidth. To provide researchers who are developing P4P mechanisms with the support to advance and the ability to publish their work. To determine, validate, and encourage the adoption of methods for ISPs and P2P software distributors to work together to enable and support consumer service improvements as P2P adoption and resultant traffic evolves while protecting the intellectual property (IP) of participating entities. And to establish appropriate and voluntary best practices for the deployment of P4P mechanisms to meet the above identified objectives in a way that can be sustained by all of the necessary participants.
The working group will conduct its activities in an open and inclusive manner, and is now putting out a broad call-for-participants among representatives of five basic areas: ISPs, P2P software distributors, technology researchers, DCIA Member companies, and information technology firms involved in digital media platforms. Qualified and interested parties are welcome to join the working group now and participate in a choice of levels of activity. Please call 410-476-7965 or e-mail P4PWG@dcia.info to sign-up or for more information. The first working meeting of the group will take place during late July in New York, NY.
Finally, the P4PWG has also articulated its strategic plan as summarized in the following path-to-progress. First, to publish the mission and objectives of the working group. Second, to publish a call-for-participants in the working group and recruit a balanced representation of core members. Third, to draft and reach agreement on a P4P pilot study to expand beyond simulation research done to date, including the test plan, timeline, and deliverables. Fourth, to ensure that the test plan emphasizes quantification of performance improvements using to-be-determined (TBD) measurements. Fifth, to organize and conduct the P4P pilot study to ascertain an efficient means for accelerating content distribution and optimizing the use of network resources for content distribution using P2P software programs, and sixth, to prepare and publish voluntary DCIA recommended practices for P4P adoption based on results of the pilot study.
The DCIA is very excited about the potential benefits that the P4PWG can bring to the marketplace. This effort represents one of those rare instances where a triple win is truly possible. P2P companies can win with faster delivery of their content. ISPs can win with more efficient utilization of their network resources. And consumers can win with higher levels of customer service.
We look forward to working closely with the P4PWG on its important mission. Share wisely, and take care.
Azureus to Pull Out the Vuze Stops
Excerpted from NewTeeVee Report by Liz Gannes
Azureus, creator of the popular P2P torrent client, inhabits a bursting-at-the-seams second-floor office in Palo Alto, CA just off the main drag, above Jing Jings and the gelato place. The 33-person company is working to capitalize on its 1.6 million average concurrent users by fashioning a P2PTV destination, but there’s still a lot of tweaking to go, we learned from CEO Gilles BianRosa in an interview Tuesday.
Azureus is somewhat upset about being left out of recent discussion about Joost, Babelgum, VeohTV, and all its other well-funded and well-publicized competitors.
However, Vuze, Azureus’ fast and well-designed platform for uploading, finding, and quickly downloading big video files, is making steady progress, with 5 million unique visitors of its own in June, up from 1 million when it launched in January.
"But you don’t even have a player," was my explanation for the relative lack of inclusion in P2PTV hype, to which BianRosa replied "That’s not something that is hard to change."
Nearly any feature or business model I asked him about, BianRosa replied, "It was in development," or it had recently soft-launched on Vuze without a formal announcement. The company says it is about a month away from a major release with a bunch of new content partners, and it appears to be saving up the news.
What else is in the works? Along with a player (once Azureus figures out whose codec it likes) BianRosa promises streaming, flexible self-service business models, a partnership with YuMe Networks for contextual video ads, direct payment options for independent creators, collaborative filtering (which will eventually turn into personal recommendations), a web-based UI, and – of course – a Facebook app.
"What won’t you do?" was my last question.
"I’m not interested in sub-par quality videos, short pirated videos, or a movie download service for the studios," said BianRosa. "I’m not interested in recreating the TV world with its same limitations."
The app is the core of the business, he said, with its capability to organize content and send it elsewhere. Still, he knows that’s a bet. "I don’t think users will have the appetite to download three P2PTV apps," he said. "That’s different from the web, where you’ll watch video on YouTube and then MySpace."
BianRosa’s theory is that the key to successful video offering is tying together brand-name content, which is inevitably commoditizing but is still a big draw, and "vertical entertainment" that corresponds to a viewer’s specific interests.
Using brand name to attract the audience and then matching it with their specific interests is something that has worked in the past, similar to Netflix and its very popular recommendation system.
Blue Maze Presents Virtual-CD
Remy Martin has taken Black Music Month to a whole new level. The celebrated cognac-maker has recently announced the launch of a program that will bring together ten artists from across the country for "One Interesting Summer" of music. The 2007 celebration will explore the tremendous influence that ten cities have had shaping hip-hop music – looking back at the all-time greats and forward to the stars of tomorrow.
New York and Santa Monica based Blue Maze Entertainment has recently produced a Remy Martin Virtual-CD to help create buzz for the One Interesting Summer music tour. Throughout the summer, visitors can check in at www.GetInteresting.com to learn more about the artists, local events, and Remy Martin products.
As a DCIA Member company, Blue Maze Entertainment supports the authorized sharing and sponsoring of music via its proprietary Virtual-CD technology.
"By marrying brands and artists through our unique Virtual-CD platform, we are enabling a more engaging experience for consumers and connecting brands to music in a more compelling and authentic manner", said Mitch Towbin, Co-Founder and Director of Marketing for Blue Maze.
The self-contained online Virtual-CD format is emerging as a new media standard for both brands and content holders seeking to create a buzz.
The application is currently being used to showcase physical products online, sponsor music and media in a contextually relevant capacity, virally enhance marketing and promotional efforts, tease new products and releases, revitalize previous albums, and to drive traffic to online properties, retail stores, and events.
According to Reggie Mars, CTO for Blue Maze, "The Virtual-CD is becoming a vital piece of the digital marketing mix. As advertising budgets for brands and record labels continue to skew more heavily toward Internet media, the Virtual-CD will continue to secure its role within the interactive entertainment realm as an essential building block for initiating a dialog with consumers."
Zattoo Offers Live P2PTV
Excerpted from Last 100 Report by Steve O’Hear
Zattoo is a P2PTV service which, like Joost and Babelgum, utilizes P2P technology to deliver streaming video to a PC. However, that’s where most of the similarities end. For a start, Zattoo isn’t an on-demand affair, and instead offers live streaming of existing over-the-air and cable channels.
Rather than attempting to re-create the lean-back experience of traditional television, the service is more at home used in a multi-tasking environment, where users watch television in one window on their computer, while accomplishing other tasks in another, such as chatting to friends over IM, surfing the web, or writing e-mail.
The player itself (Mac, Windows, and Linux) is incredibly simple, comprised of one window for the video stream, and a second listing the available channels. Clicking on each channel invokes a few seconds of buffering before the live stream begins playing. Other than that, you have a volume control, a full-screen option, and a play/stop button. And that’s pretty much it.
In terms of picture quality, this isn’t quite on-par with regular digital television, but isn’t far off either. With the window set at quarter size on my laptop, it was great, and at full-screen, still perfectly watchable. Channel line-up varies per-country, but the version I tested had all of the BBC’s channels, along with ITV1, MTV, Bloomberg, and European stations such as Canal and Eurosport.
The downside is – after initially launching in Switzerland where the company claims one in five broadband users subscribe to Zattoo – the service is only additionally available in Spain and Denmark, with the UK currently in a public testing phase.
Zattoo is a nice compliment to other P2PTV services. Despite the trend towards anytime and on-demand content, there’s still a place for live TV, in particular with regards to sports events or breaking news. Another thing lost with on-demand television is the communal viewing experience that often creates those "water-cooler" moments the following day.
Zattoo’s business model is ad-supported. When users first select or switch a channel, they are served a 3-to-5 second advertisement (the time it usually takes for the stream to buffer). The ads are also clickable, with links to get more information.
Grooveshark Surfaces with Enhancements
The private P2P service Grooveshark Alpha was released in May allowing a strategically chosen few people (primarily techies and bloggers) to get a glimpse of the program. Since its initial release, the software has been put through a complete tuning process as the Grooveshark team has worked to make the application smoother, more efficient, better looking, and more reliable.
Major changes include an improved Java interface for increased security; greater ability to match people with tracks resulting in faster, more efficient downloads; the integration of CacheLogic’s VelociX system to enable users to download songs from people who are not online at the time; a revamped Grooveshark music player to allow for quicker, more reliable streaming; a new installer for application feedback; new icons and cleaner visual cues; and more built-in search and music discovery features to help users find exactly what they are looking for.
Another major advancement in Grooveshark development is Moneyshark. Moneyshark will be the system used to pay record labels and publishers. The system will put money from each song sold into an escrow account, which can then be accessed by each particular label. Analytics will also be available allowing record labels to track the sales performance of their music.
Since March, Grooveshark has signed three labels – Magnatune, Naxos, and V2 Music – along with independent artist Kirsten DeHaan. Grooveshark is also finalizing a deal with online music store CD Baby and major independent label Nettwerk Music Group.
Grooveshark’s parent company, Escape Media Group, has partnered with Sinco International Investment, a boutique investment firm in Colorado, which has helped it secure initial financing. Metzger Associates is handling PR for the company. EMG CEO Sam Tarantino was a featured speaker at the recent P2P MEDIA SUMMIT LA.
Microsoft Plays with P2PTV
Excerpted from Business 2.0 Report by Erick Schonfield
Microsoft Research (MSFT) and UK-based Skinkers are developing a P2P software program called LiveStation for streaming live television over PCs. Think of it as a Slingbox without the box –except that TV stations would have to sign up to stream their broadcasts over the service.Please click here to see a demo video.
Using P2P networks is the most bandwidth efficient (and least costly) way to deliver video over the Internet. Joost, Babelgum, and VeohTV also all use P2P distribution techniques in one form or another. But they all deliver videos that are already stored somewhere (their servers or the computers of their members), as opposed to live streams. I’m not sure how difficult it would be for any of these services to offer live streams as well.It doesn’t seem like that big a deal.
Joost, for instance, is working on (or already has) the ability to synchronize the streaming of a particular show so that you and all of your friends can watch it at the same time while chatting over Joost. Making that a live stream should be easy enough.
The bigger question is: On the Internet, does live TV even matter any more? The TV schedule is a product of the historical limitations of broadcast television, where you have to broadcast the same shows to everyone at the same time. But those limitations are falling away. Even in cable and satellite TV, the growth of pay-per-view and on-demand channels proves that if you give consumers more choices, they will grab them.
The Internet is the ultimate on-demand television system, where the choices of what to watch and when have no practical limits.
The concept of live TV almost makes no sense in that context. Why limit your audience only to those people who can tune in at a certain time?
With a few exceptions, such as sports and breaking news, live TV will be a liability on the web unless those streams are also stored for later viewing. On the web, nobody wants to make an appointment to watch TV.
Verizon Technology Chief Talks Fiber
Excerpted from CNET News Report by Marguerite Reardon
Mark Wegleitner, Verizon’s CTO, has been championing this strategy for the past three years. The network, called Fios, takes fiber directly to the side of people’s homes and provides near-limitless bandwidth that can be used to deliver a "triple play" of services including high-speed Internet connectivity, telephone service, and TV. The company already offers Internet service that runs at 50 megabits per second. And it’s testing service at 100Mbps.
The largest phone company in the US, AT&T, has taken a different approach, only deploying fiber farther into neighborhoods and using existing copper to deliver it the "last mile." Wegleitner and other Verizon executives were adamant that a fiber infrastructure, in the long run, would be better. Critics of the strategy said that the budgeted $18 billion to build the network was too expensive. But with more than 1 million Fios Internet customers and nearly 500,000 Fios TV customers signed up, it looks like Verizon’s strategy is working.
Wegleitner recently sat down with CNET News to explain why the company chose this aggressive route, and where he expects the company to go from here. Please click here for the entire interview.
Top OZ ISPs Deny Limiting P2P Traffic
Excerpted from Infoworld Report by Naomi Hamilton
Australia’s leading broadband providers Telstra, Optus, and iiNet, all deny limiting P2P traffic within their networks in order to increase network speeds and save costs. This comes despite a recent admission from Westnet, along with several other ISPs, that it has been using traffic controls to limit P2P traffic for the past year and will continue to do so.
"Customers buy a speed and download quota from us. We don’t examine what they do with it," said iiNet managing director, Michael Malone.
Telstra BigPond’s spokesperson, Craig Middleton, said it does not limit P2P traffic, nor did it have plans to do so in the future.
"We have no policies on P2P file sharing, but as a content provider (BigPond Movies, Games, Sport and Music) we support the authorized purchase of content," he said.
"Optus uses various tools to manage its network and bandwidth to maximize the performance of its customers’ connections," a company spokesperson said.
"Optus continues to review and revise its strategies as usage trends change and technical options evolve. Optus does have the capability to prioritize data traffic and may use this capability in the future."
An increasing number of smaller ISPs such as Westnet, Exetel, and Netspace have recently admitted to limiting P2P traffic - the most notable being BitTorrent files. The topic has garnered much debate on broadband discussion forum Whirlpool in the past month.
"The key purpose of the traffic prioritization tools is to ensure latency sensitive applications, such as online gaming, web browsing, e-mail, and VOIP, are not negatively impacted by P2P applications," said a posting this week on the Westnet blog.
"An important point to note is that Westnet has not enforced a fixed limit on the amount of bandwidth available to P2P applications. The amount of bandwidth available to P2P traffic is dynamically limited only when the bandwidth required to service the other applications exceeds expectations," it goes on to say.
"Traffic is the only cost that an ISP has to deal with, explained iiNet’s Malone. "If customers download lots, then it costs us more money. Customer usage is going up steadily, but the cost of bandwidth is not going down. The combined result is that traffic costs are increasing at a pretty steady rate," he said. "The issue is just cost management."
However, Malone did not believe that throttling P2P traffic has anything to do with perceived legality issues.
"Australian ISPs are protected from liability as common carriers by the safe harbor provisions of the Broadcasting Services Act. I’m not hearing any ISPs saying that the driver is concern about liability. The rules in Australia are very clear. So that’s not it."
The possible limitation of P2P traffic comes on top of download quotas set by Australian ISPs, which may irk many ISP customers. "All ISPs in Australia do limit users who download too much (BigPond is the only ISP in Australia that double dips by hitting uploads as well). We all have some sort of ‘download quota’ for a fixed price per month," said Malone.
"The problem is average utilization. ISPs work out their plans by making an assumption about what percentage of the quotas will get used, on average across the base. In the past, if customers had a 10GB quota for instance, they typically didn’t use all of it – they might have used (say) 30 percent. Today that number could be close to 90 percent on average, but there is no additional revenue. The assumptions have just changed, which has increased costs, but not revenue," he said.
Telstra, Optus, and iiNet deny that the problems associated with P2P use on their networks have occurred as a result of over-subscribed bandwidth.
"If ISPs had over-subscribed, then customers would be getting congestion on everything. That’s not happening at all with any of the ISPs who are de-prioritizing P2P," said Malone. "More bandwidth costs more money. So ISPs don’t buy any more than they need. If you can reduce the amount of bandwidth, then your costs are less and your prices can be more competitive."
Malone added that he considers the issues of P2P traffic to be associated with philosophic argument, rather than reality. "The heavy users of P2P are outraged that their non-time-critical data is treated as lower priority than your web browsing or video conference. And realistically, 97 percent of our customer base don’t even notice. Everyone is happy," he said.
"This is a storm in a teacup," he added.
A Closer Look at P2P Technology
Excerpted from PC World Report by Kelvyn Taylor
The Internet was invented to allow people to easily share files and information. But ever since the original Napster launched in 1999, file sharing has had a bad name.
This is due to the fact that people quickly realized they could easily find and download files that they weren’t supposed to, such as unauthorized copies of music MP3s.
But public demand for the capabilities unleashed by Napster’s P2P technology spawned a host of P2P products and protocols, including Kazaa, Grokster, and Gnutella.
Many of these have now gone to the wall. The Napster brand was reborn as a (non-P2P) music download service, Kazaa seems to be in virtual hibernation, and Grokster was infamously closed down by the US Supreme Court.
But there’s one open source P2P technology – BitTorrent – that has survived and prospered. Invented in 2001 by programmer Bram Cohen, it was developed as a way to efficiently distribute large files without the need for a dedicated file server. This reason alone helped it to become a popular – and authorized – way to make Linux distributions available for download.
You might consider it a niche application, but an awful lot of people are using it – more than 150 million according to BitTorrent.
Statistics published by CacheLogic in 2004 showed that BitTorrent traffic accounted for more than 35 percent of all web traffic worldwide. Bittorrent.com itself is currently ranked in the top 2,000 websites according to monitoring service Alexa.
In 2005 BitTorrent Inc. (the company that Cohen and partner Ashwin Navin created in 2004) executed a deal with the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), agreeing to remove any unlicensed copyrighted works from BitTorrent’s commercial site.
Since then, Bittorrent.com has started offering paid-for TV and movie downloads. In 2006, it signed a breakthrough deal for online movie distribution with Warner Bros. It now seems to be going from strength to strength, featuring video, music, TV, and game content from top media brands such as 20th Century Fox, MTV, Paramount, and Eidos.
BitTorrent, the technology, remains open source and is available for anyone to develop an application around, which is another reason it’s remained so popular, But how does it work, and just what makes it so suited to sending digital movies or huge Iso files around the world? To answer this, first we need to step back and look at some of the basics of P2P technology.
There are two main ways to share a file among lots of users. The traditional and familiar client-server method is to put the file on a central server and allow multiple clients (PCs) to access it directly.
There’s no need for any communications among the clients – all they need to do is talk to the server. But this means that the server has to be able to cope with delivering multiple copies of the file to lots of clients simultaneously, otherwise the server becomes a bottleneck. For sharing via the relatively low-bandwidth Internet this can obviously be a major problem, leading to high costs and congestion at the server.
A P2P architecture simply does away with the central server and allows any PC connected to the network (a peer) to act as both a client and a server. Peers can then communicate directly with each other to obtain the files they need. This gives several benefits, the most important being data redundancy and no need for massive bandwidth on any one peer machine. A peer can limit peer connections or file downloads depending on how much bandwidth it has available.
Napster used a proprietary P2P protocol to organize the downloading among peers and added a central server to register and validate users and store an index of what files were available on which clients.
It then wrapped it all up in an easy-to-use application that enabled users to search for a particular file or even chat to other Napster users.
Napster wasn’t true P2P, but a centralized P2P system, because it relied on a central server for most administrative tasks, and didn’t fully use the computing power of the peers.
A pure P2P architecture doesn’t need any central servers at all, sharing all the indexing and admin tasks among the clients as well. Such an architecture is often called a decentralized (or fully distributed) P2P network. Examples that are still going strong are the Gnutella and eDonkey networks. Kazaa, created by the inventors of Skype, is also a decentralized network.
BitTorrent falls between these extremes, adding new and unique twists that make it a hybrid between pure P2P and a traditional client-server architecture.
In any discussion of P2P, it’s easy to get muddled between application and protocol names, so let’s clear a few names out the way first. Napster was an application based on its own proprietary protocol, Kazaa software uses the FastTrack protocol, and Gnutella is the name of the protocol. eDonkey is also a protocol.
For any particular protocol, many client applications are usually available, offering a variety of different features. For example, Gnutella clients include LimeWire, BearShare and Morpheus. eMule is the most popular eDonkey client.
BitTorrent is the name of the file-sharing protocol, the company, the associated website and the official free software client, but there are dozens of alternative BitTorrent clients available, such as uTtorrent and Azureus.
From day one, Cohen designed BitTorrent and its interface to be easy-to-use, reliable, give fast downloads, and avoid the problem of unfair P2P behavior. In a normal P2P network, once a client has downloaded a file, it has no further incentive to make that file available to other clients. So the P2P network becomes reliant on a few generous clients and becomes very slow and inefficient.
In BitTorrent terminology, clients that are downloading are called leechers, whereas clients that are actively uploading are called seeds. A P2P network with only leechers wouldn’t work for obvious reasons.
BitTorrent tries to prevent this behavior by forcing clients to do simultaneous downloads and uploads and using other tit-for-tat tricks in the protocol. The easiest way to explain this is to look at how you go about downloading a file in practice.
To download a file via BitTorrent, you first need a BitTorrent client. Probably the best one to start with is the official free client from Bittorrent.com. Although it’s a commercial website, you don’t have to register and there’s lots of free content that you can use to see how it all works.
The key to BitTorrent is its unique way of dividing files into small chunks called pieces (typically around 256KB) to download.
A torrent file is a small file (typically a few kilobytes) containing metadata that enables a client to download a file (or a collection of files) over the BitTorrent network.
When a torrent file (with an extension of .torrent) is created, an index of the source file’s pieces and data integrity information (an SHA1 hash number) for each piece is generated so that clients can verify they have received uncorrupted data. The protocol subsequently breaks these pieces into 16KB sub-pieces, to queue up TCP transfers (pipelining) and ensure maximum use is made of bandwidth.
To start a P2P download you first need to find a torrent file for the content you’re after. You can do this via BitTorrent.com’s search engine or any of the torrent search sites, of which TorrentSpy is probably the largest. Be aware that, outside the commercial sites, Linux, and open source download sites such as DistroWatch and SourceForge, there’s no way to tell whether you’re downloading licensed content or not.
Torrent files don’t contain any of the actual file data; the metadata in the torrent file describes how many pieces of the file need to be downloaded, how big they are plus error-checking information to ensure you’re not downloading junk. The file also contains information on the tracker for this file.
Trackers are BitTorrent’s way of letting downloaders find each other. They’re not involved in downloading the files, and they store no files themselves. In theory, anyone can run a tracker, but normally users rely on publicly available free tracker servers.
Many clients now support trackerless torrents, using distributed hash table (DHT) technology. In this scheme, each client effectively becomes its own tracker, so you don’t need one of these tracker servers. The downside is that it only works while your PC is turned on.
When a file’s made available via a torrent file and clients start sharing it, this is known as a swarm. The tracker provides all the members of the swarm with the IP addresses and TCP port numbers of a random selection of other members. Each client then tries to get the full collection of pieces from other clients, which is where the ingenuity of BitTorrent lies.
As soon as you’ve collected a few pieces of the file, the BitTorrent client makes these available to all the other members of the swarm, so you simultaneously download and upload data to get the complete file.
This not only stops most of the usual problems of greedy leechers, but also makes downloads faster the more clients there are in the swarm. With a healthy swarm, it’s quite easy to saturate all your available download bandwidth, even though each of the swarm members may only be uploading tiny amounts of data.
It’s like downloading from a super-fast web server, but without the need for high-end server hardware. This is why it’s such a popular way to distribute large files such as Linux distributions.
We’ve already touched on one innovation – trackerless torrents – but there are several other possibilities waiting in the wings.
One is the idea of BitTorrent media streaming. Streaming is notoriously demanding on server resources for decent quality content, particularly video, so the idea is to try and leverage the power of the swarm to do the task cheaply.
Some companies are now starting to roll-out streaming solutions based on BitTorrent or other P2P protocols.
Another technique called Similarity Enhanced Transfer (SET) claims to be able to speed up downloads by exploiting the fact that identical files are often labeled differently, and tries to spot identical data in different files. Again, there’s no implementation of this yet.
Of more practical interest is the incorporation of BitTorrent clients in hardware such as routers and NAS storage devices. In 2006, BitTorrent announced partnerships with Asus, Planex and Qnap to produce such hardware. We’ve also seen a BitTorrent client built in to the Excito Bubba home server that we will review in our August 2007 issue.
P2P file sharing is now also built into Windows Live Messenger, and Skype is a massive P2P-based VoIP service from the creators of Kazaa.
In terms of security, with BitTorrent, because you’re not downloading a single file from one computer, but lots of verified pieces from different computers, it’s much harder for malicious users to sneak in corrupted, pornographic, or virus-infected files.
If the original file contains malware, there’s no way to check until you’ve downloaded it, though. Standard anti-virus and anti-spyware programs are sufficient protection.
Any P2P application requires peers to be able to connect directly to your PC. If you’re using a firewall, this means enabling port forwarding for the relevant TCP ports.
Many routers now have pre-configured settings for applications such as BitTorrent. If your router supports Universal Plug and Play (UPNP), clients such as the official BitTorrent one, can do all the configuration for you automatically. A decent stateful packet inspection (SPI) firewall will also help ensure your safety.
Finally, you should be aware that when you’re connected to a public torrent tracker and performing either uploads or downloads, your IP address is easily viewable by the whole BitTorrent world via the client software. It’s not designed to be anonymous.
P2P Traffic Shifts Towards Movies
Excerpted from Ars Technica Report by Eric Bangeman
One of the stated goals of the music industry’s barrage of lawsuits against P2P users has been to cut down on P2P traffic. Ars talked to Eric Garland, Co-Founder & CEO of Big Champagne Online Media Management to get a sense of whether the RIAA’s efforts are bearing fruit and to find out what other trends the media measurement company has seen over the last several months.
As it turns out, P2P-based music sharing has remained relatively flat over the past year. During May 2006, Big Champagne reported just shy of 9 million simultaneously connected unique peers sharing music on the popular P2P networks, excluding BitTorrent. One year later, that number had increased only slightly to 9.35 million. "There have been years when we have seen double-digit percentage growth," Garland told Ars. "Compared to that, the last 12 months have been rather flat." In fact, on a month-by-month basis, traffic during 2007 has been flat, and almost all of the growth Big Champagne has seen falls within the margin of error.
It could be that the threat of lawsuits are keeping people from popular P2P networks like LimeWire, driving them instead to outlets like the iTunes Store. It might also be that the market has reached saturation. "It’s like e-mail," said Garland. "For a number of years, the population using e-mail was increasing dramatically. Once everyone who wanted e-mail had e-mail, growth flattened out."
Meanwhile, BitTorrent has become far more popular: "We’ve seen real, dramatic growth in BitTorrent usage," notes Garland. That has resulted in a greater average population of seeders and leechers per torrent. In May 2006, the average torrent had 817,588 people participating. 12 months later, that figure had jumped to 1,357,318 seeders and leechers: a 66 percent year-over-year growth rate.
Curiously enough, Big Champagne is also noticing an increase in music traffic on BitTorrent. "It’s the most popular place to download albums," said Garland. Big Champagne has recently noticed an increased number of torrents consisting of rips of HD discs. "There’s a quite small, but active population that’s downloading the HD features," according to Garland. But when it comes to HD content, TV shows are by far more popular.
The oldest online source for unlicensed files is Usenet, and Garland says his company has seen more activity there as well. Big Champagne’s analysis of Usenet traffic is limited to title-specific analysis, but that venue is "surging," says Garland. "There’s increasing interest in and use of newsgroups."
Garland also believes that the population of darknets is on the rise, but notes that it’s difficult to get a holistic view of what’s going on with underground networks. He doesn’t see a large-scale migration to darknets happening anytime soon, however. "Most people are satisfied by what they find on P2P, even though some of them have had bad experiences with it such as lawsuits and malware," he said. "People are creatures of habit and loath to change."
Overall, file sharing is as popular as ever, and BitTorrent is leading the way as people increasingly look for movies, TV shows, and full albums. Two of the more popular torrent sites, TorrentSpy and IsoHunt, have recently announced plans to begin filtering copyrighted content from their trackers using a hash-based system. Although those two sites are likely to see a dip in traffic if copyrighted content is removed, there are plenty of other torrent sites up and running, including the infamous Pirate Bay.
Big Champagne’s data also points out the difficulty that content creators are having in controlling the spread of file sharing. Despite the many thousands of lawsuits filed by the RIAA, music traffic has yet to show any downward movements. And although IsoHunt and TorrentSpy have plans in place to filter out copyrighted content, that’s not likely to have much of an effect on overall BitTorrent traffic.
What used to be music industry’s problem is becoming the movie and television industry’s problem, and it may take some drastic changes in how the studios and networks do business to bring changes about. So far, the industries have shown little or no inclination to do so, setting themselves up instead for a protracted battle that there are few indications that they can win.
Does Unauthorized File Sharing Build Buzz
Excerpted from CNET News Report by Greg Sandoval
Director Michael Moore’s "Sicko" is coming off a glittering debut weekend at the box office. This despite the documentary’s availability on the web for the past two weeks – distributed widely over the Internet by file sharers who violate copyright law.
It is believed that tens of thousands of copies of Moore’s documentary about the health care industry were downloaded without authorization. The movie has also gone up on YouTube and Google Video, and was viewed by thousands before being removed. As the movie played on theater screens across the country this weekend, the film returned to Google Video and was watched more than 2,000 times.
Nonetheless, the movie opened in 441 theaters on Friday and earned an estimated $4.5 million for the weekend. That was good for ninth place at the box office with Pixar’s "Ratatouille" No. 1. What is encouraging for "Sicko’s" producers, the Weinstein Co., is that while the movie opened on relatively few screens, it averaged $10,204 per theater, according to a story in The Hollywood Reporter. The only other movie this weekend that topped Sicko’s per-theater average was "Ratatouille" with $11,987.
If Moore’s film has been harmed by file sharing, the damage is hard to find.
"File sharing has been going on for years now and yet the movie industry continues to see record profits and revenues," said Fred von Lohmann, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an advocacy group for Internet users. "Clearly file sharing is not killing the movie industry, far from it."
After a slump in 2005, Hollywood saw revenue grow 11 percent to $25.8 billion last year, according to the MPAA, the trade group that represents the top movie studios.
Could file sharing have played any kind of role in the growth?
File sharers often argue that they are among the first to tell friends about a good movie. They say that this stimulates interest in people who don’t share files. This is the kind of buzz building that movie marketers are trying to ignite.
In a May 2005 report on movie marketing by The London School of Economics and Political Science, researcher David Lane found that the secret to stimulating ticket sales "is less about the film itself than about the success of pre-publicity and word-of-mouth recommendations."
Lane found that marketing techniques had changed in Hollywood in the past two decades and that what mattered most was "to get people talking about the film, creating pre-release interest and then to sell tickets – fast."
When Moore’s documentary surfaced on the web, it generated a host of news stories that served as free advertising. But there’s no way to determine how many people learned about the movie from someone who downloaded an infringing copy.
In the end, nobody really knows what effects copyright infringement has on a movie’s earning potential, said Jonathan Zittrain, Professor of Internet Governance and Regulation at Oxford University. Zittrain does, however, see one benefit from the controversy.
"The real benefit of this kind of leakage," Zittrain said, "is that it pressures Hollywood to think outside of the box instead of hoping the Internet will just go away."
The Strange Story of MiiVii
Excerpted from Mobile Digest Report
Now here’s a strange story. A new service called MiiVii.com seemed like a dream for file-sharing Internet users. It offered a bunch of big films free to download, as well as software to speed up the process. Whatever would the movie industry make of it?
Well, er, it seems they built it. At least, MiiVii’s ownership was traced back to a company called MediaDefender, which acts as the investigative arm of the MPAA. In other words, anyone actually using the site to upload or download films could then be hit by a fat lawsuit.
Some might call that lateral thinking, but most would call it entrapment. Either way, MiiVii appears to have been taken down now, once its secret was blown across the blogosphere.
Coming Events of Interest
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
P2P Advertising Upfront – Sponsored by the DCIA October 26th in New York, NY and October 29th in Los Angeles, CA in conjunction with Digital Hollywood Fall. The industry’s first bicoastal marketplace focused on the unique global advertising, sponsorship, and cross-promotional opportunities available in the steadily growing universe of open and closed P2P, file-sharing, P2PTV, and social networks, as well as peer-assisted content delivery networks (CDNs).
|
