September 3, 2007
Volume 19, Issue 1
The Growing Popularity of P2P
Ipoque will present the results of its 2007 survey on the usage of peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing networks at MIT’s Emerging Technologies Conference later this month. The survey is due to be released at the end of September. While the 2006 survey largely focused on file-sharing networks, the 2007 edition will also include statistics about novel applications such as Skype, Joost, media-streaming, and one-click hosting.
Preliminary results show P2P traffic now ranging between 50% and 90% of all Internet traffic. The 2006 survey saw BitTorrent slowly surpassing eDonkey as the most popular P2P network. This trend has continued. BitTorrent has become the globally dominating P2P protocol with a share of 50%-to-75% of all P2P traffic.
EDonkey exhibits a regionally varying popularity with shares between 5% and 50% of all P2P. In certain regions, other protocols have gained a significant importance. In the Baltic States, for instance, DirectConnect has a proportion of about 30% of P2P.
As P2P continues to dominate, other applications have risen in popularity. While Joost does not yet cause the traffic volume many Internet service providers (ISPs) anticipate, Skype, although being a low-bandwidth application, generates up to 2% of the overall traffic in certain networks.
Media-streaming services, such as YouTube, and one-click file-hosting services, like Rapidshare and Megaupload, which provide direct download links as a means to distribute content using web server farms, have also seen a huge popularity surge.
Ipoque’s 2006 P2P survey provided the first globally derived statistics about the exchanged content in file-sharing networks. Detailed data acquisition and analysis were conducted by ipoque for the eDonkey and BitTorrent networks. The 2007 report will update these findings.
Report from CEO Marty Lafferty
 The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) this week issued a twenty-five page white paper on the recording industry’s copyright enforcement campaign, entitled RIAA v. The People: Four Years Later. The report is timely with college classes resuming and the fourth anniversary of the Recording Industry Association of America’s (RIAA) first legal action coming this week.
EFF’s study traces these actions from their beginnings in 2003 against a small number of students at three universities to their current expanded and systematized level, which involves delivering more than 500 pre-litigation settlement letters per month to educational institutions nationwide and offering alleged infringers fast $3,000 credit-card settlements online.
With the cumulative number of infringement actions brought by the RIAA against consumers now exceeding 21,000, this is a good time to assess the efficacy of this effort. The RIAA notes that 73% of consumers now recognize that making music available from a computer without authorization is unlawful – up from 37% in 2003. However, US sound recording revenue has also declined to $11.5 billion in 2006 from its peak of $14.6 billion seven years ago.
The EFF asserts that file-sharing volumes have steadily increased during the past four years, even as the RIAA’s litigation campaign intended to reverse that trend has escalated, and that digital music revenue has so far failed to significantly materialize.
Citing figures from new-media tracking firms BigChampagne and BayTSP, the EFF says that the average number of simultaneous users on open P2P networks has nearly trebled from 3.3 million in August 2003 to 9.4 million in recent months. And while iTunes sold 2 billion downloads in total from April 2003 to January 2007, 5 billion tracks are now distributed via open P2P networks every month.
The International Federation of Phonographic Industries (IFPI) estimates that there are 40 unauthorized downloads for every licensed one, supporting EFF’s claims.
According to EFF, “Authorized music services together do not yet amount to a drop in the digital music downloading bucket.”
“Today, downloading from P2P networks is more popular than ever, despite the widespread public awareness of lawsuits,” it goes on.
“One thing has become clear: suing music fans is no answer to the P2P dilemma,” the report declares.
The EFF argues that each successive attempt to curb infringement with litigation not only has failed to impact its growth, but also has driven this behavior further underground: “In response to the RIAA lawsuits, many file sharers are beginning to opt for new file-sharing technologies that protect their anonymity,” the EFF writes, “and infiltrating these private P2P circles is much more difficult than simply trolling public P2P networks.”
As an alternative, the EFF proposes a system based on voluntary collective licensing. This approach would allow users to download and share unlimited quantities of music for a reasonable monthly fee, such as $5 per college student per month for example.
“This is about money, not morality,” says EFF Senior Staff Attorney Fred von Lohmann. “With a blanket licensing solution, the RIAA can call off the lawyers and the lobbyists, and universities can get back to education instead of copyright enforcement.”
Previous collective licensing proposals have been rejected by the music industry. The principal reason given has been that such regimes tend to commoditize creative works, failing to distinguish among more and less popular works or otherwise variable measures of relative value, failing to support flexible pricing and packaging schemes, and most importantly, failing to derive the full value from music content so distributed.
Indeed, the EFF proposal itself was rejected earlier this year at a DRM conference by major label representatives, who retorted that it would incentivize users to pay only once, rather than on a recurring basis.
The DCIA believes that P2P can be harnessed and embraced by the music industry for licensed distribution on a far more robust basis than collective licensing. In fact, P2P can simultaneously support promotional, advertising supported, sponsored, packaged, subscription, and a la carte paid downloads of music.
The necessary P2P interactive advertising solutions, P2P digital rights management (DRM), and P2P payment services have all been developed and proven individually to work in the marketplace.
What we need now is greater participation on a truly collaborative basis by the music industry. In addition to education and enforcement activity, which will continue to be necessary, a comparable amount of attention needs to be paid to leadership and coordination on the commercial development side.
Leadership to help define the new P2P distribution channel and identify each participant – and how each will be recognized and rewarded for its contribution. This includes a comprehensive P2P distribution channel architecture: P2P software distributors, Internet service providers (ISPs), and service-and-support companies that touch content files and play a role in facilitating their authorized distribution via P2P and/or in preventing their unauthorized distribution.
Coordination to establish integration of what the DCIA has previously described as the three “Fs” needed for P2P distribution of licensed music: file protection, client filtering, and network forensics. This includes P2P business practices and systems: licensing, tracking, revenue sharing allocations, reconciliation, etc.
Specifically, as two post Labor-Day initiatives, we encourage, first, a renewal of our content protection working group with a new focus on music; and, second, the establishment of a new P2P music distribution working group.
The first effort should include P2P digital watermarking, fingerprinting, hash-code, metadata, and overall DRM tailored to the special needs of music content and involving music industry leadership participation.
The second should have as its mission to define at a high level the commercial P2P distribution channel for music as outlined above, and likewise involve music interests along with relevant technology solutions representation.
We look forward to making real headway in authorized P2P distribution of music. Share wisely, and take care.
P2P-ISP Peace Could Ease Bandwidth Crunch
Excerpted from Wired News Report by Michael Calore
Peer-to-peer (P2P) is under the gun again.
Faced with a surge in network usage, Internet service providers (ISPs) are grumbling about rising traffic levels. The increase is driven so far mostly by Internet video from YouTube and similar services, which don’t actually employ P2P technologies.
But ISPs say the looming growth of true P2P applications threatens to overwhelm them. Some ISPs have even started sniffing out P2P traffic on their networks and curbing it, either slowing file sharing to a trickle or bringing it to a halt.
Responding to this adversarial relationship, some P2P companies are adopting a posture of engagement with ISPs, and have formed a new industry working group to help broker relationships that, they say, will enable ISPs to better manage and distribute traffic loads on their networks.
The P4P Working Group (P4PWG) consists of content-distribution-technology providers like Abacast, BitTorrent, Pando Networks, LimeWire, and VeriSign’s Kontiki, as well as broadband companies like Verizon and AT&T, and hardware makers like Cisco Systems. There are close to a dozen members so far. The P4PWG operates under the guidance of the Distributed Computing Industry Association (DCIA), a group that wants to foster legal P2P content distribution.
P4PWG’s plan: Get ISPs and P2P-technology providers working together, to ensure that P2P traffic continues to flow and that users of P2P technologies don’t overload ISPs’ networks with too much sharing.
P2P companies’ fears are justified. Last week, users suspected that Comcast, the second-largest US ISP, was limiting subscribers’ use of BitTorrent, a popular file-sharing application, and was penalizing heavy downloaders by suspending their Internet service. Comcast declined to comment on its download-capping or traffic-shaping practices. However, the websites Broadband Reports and TorrentFreak have uncovered evidence of the practices.
Earlier this month, two British ISPs stated their reluctance to carry traffic from iPlayer, a P2P application the BBC uses to distribute audio and video programs. And in June, Time Warner Cable announced it would begin slowing down bandwidth-intensive P2P traffic during peak hours on its RoadRunner network.
“P2P is the biggest pain point for ISPs right now,” says Laird Popkin, CTO of Pando and Co-Chair of the P4P Working Group. “On one hand, it’s the main reason people buy broadband, but on the other hand, it’s costing (ISPs) a fortune because they’re providing a flat-rate service, and this one application is consuming a huge chunk of their infrastructure.”
In theory, the P4PWG’s idea is simple: Show us your secrets, and we’ll show you ours. By better understanding how a network is laid out and who’s using it, P2P-technology providers can use that network much more effectively and minimize strain on the ISP infrastructure.
It’s an invitation the group hopes will result in a cultural shift, a new era of collaboration between industries long at loggerheads.
P2P’s original killer app was Napster, the software application that introduced millions to file sharing a decade ago. But while Napster was illicit and underground, P2P technologies these days are being adopted by corporations and used for legitimate purposes.
“Because of where it started, P2P had this absence of input from the carrier world,” says Verizon’s Doug Pasko, who co-founded the P4P Working Group with Popkin. “Now it’s a full-fledged Internet application platform that’s operating in an information vacuum. We want to give guidance to the technology, so it works better in the same environment, rather than in opposition.”
Evidence of that opposition is clear. For example, most P2P technologies pay little attention to geographical considerations: The clients connect to peers regardless of how far away they are or how many hops are required to reach them. This increases the distance over which content is distributed, which has side effects of maximizing the hit to the network infrastructure and driving up ISPs’ operating costs.
The P4PWG’s Laird Popkin says that by encouraging P2P companies to drop such poor practices and by getting ISPs to share some of their topographical information, many of the headaches ISPs and their users now suffer would be alleviated.
“We’ve been talking to both ISPs and P2P companies, and everyone is excited to work together,” says Popkin. “They see it as an obvious win-win.”
One thing that may motivate ISPs is that a growing user demand for content – especially video – means the bandwidth crunch is only going to get worse.
According to Fred Sammartino, a Vice President with traffic-analysis equipment-maker Ellacoya, Internet traffic has been doubling steadily for the past several years, but has recently spiked upward, nearly tripling in the past 12 months.
“That’s clearly due to the growth of video streaming, meaning YouTube,” says Sammartino.
Most of the recent growth in video traffic has been based on the web protocol HTTP, rather than on P2P technologies. That’s because streaming-video sites like YouTube use HTTP to deliver their video to users’ browsers – through a process known as progressive downloading. The result is that P2P traffic has shrunk from 65% of Internet traffic in 2002 to just 35% today, while HTTP traffic has grown from less than 30% in 2002 to 40% of overall traffic today, according to Ellacoya’s analyses.
But experts believe that P2P data traffic will soon start to grow again, particularly as P2P video applications like Joost begin delivering high-definition content to large audiences.
Despite the increase in overall traffic, P2P companies say they can mitigate the load on ISPs by delivering traffic more intelligently. For instance, Pando – like VeriSign’s P2P Kontiki technology – automatically detects peers on the same network, such as employees of the same company, or residents of the same neighborhood who share the same DSL loop. Content distributors call this strategy “edge-of-network distribution” because it uses the “edges,” or low-traffic back roads of the Internet, rather than the crowded backbones.
But such optimization currently involves a lot of guesswork, says Popkin.
“All of the efforts to try to reverse-engineer the structure of the network are pretty flawed,” he says. “Possibly they’re better than doing nothing, but they’re nowhere near as good as knowing what’s going on in the network.”
Even if P2P companies can optimize their software to run faster and better on the near-infinite maze of broadband’s back alleys, P2P isn’t necessarily a panacea.
That’s because users’ upload speeds tend to be much slower than their download speeds, and because less-popular clips have fewer peers available to host them. With a library containing thousands (or even tens of thousands) of video offerings, the likelihood that another peer has the particular content you want -- and has enough upload speed to deliver it to you -- becomes very small. Joost and iPlayer, like Pando, have to make up the difference by supplying bits from their own servers.
Verizon’s Pasko sees a hybrid mixture of P2P and traditional client-server distribution as the only solution.
“You have to have some sort of central server component for that ‘unpopular’ content that you can’t get from your local peers, as well as a way to seed the more popular content across the network,” he says.
And whatever positive outcome lies on the horizon for large-scale, bandwidth-friendly content distribution over broadband, the young working group is confident that transparency and cooperation are the most effective tools to get there.
“If we’re successful, we’ll change the whole climate among the carriers of how they’re approaching the P2P space,” says Pasko. “A much more cooperative environment would be more beneficial to everybody.”
Companies Offer Web TV Powered By P2P
Excerpted from MediaPost Report
In an AP report, Veoh founder Dmitry Shapiro confirms that “the experience of online video is still very poor,” which is precisely what’s driving companies like Shapiro’s Veoh and rivals like Joost and Babelgum forward. Each is looking to provide a viewing experience that’s as good as TV; each uses peer-to-peer television (P2PTV) technology to circumvent the bandwidth limitations that plague the quality of the video experience in the US.
The business models of these P2P services are what set them apart. Joost, still in beta, is looking to play it straight, striking content deals with Viacom, CBS, CNN, and Sony. Founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis envision a video experience that marries on-demand TV viewing with social media tools like IM chat. In its latest social media announcement, Joost opened its application programming interface to third-party developers, allowing them to create mini software programs, or widgets, to run inside the video application.
Veoh TV, on the other hand, bills itself as a kind of “Google for video.” Instead of waiting for content deals (although it is working on partnerships with major media companies and Hollywood studios), Veoh TV will crawl the web to bring all its available video to one place, similar to how Google brings news articles to Google News.
Babelgum’s business model is like Joost’s, but it’s mainly focused on independent rather than mainstream content. The company also plans to embed its platform in set-top boxes, similar to Apple TV. Please click here for the full report.
The Top Five P2PTV Players
Excerpted from Makeuseof.com Report by Aibek
Here you go, a quick P2PTV round-up: the top players for your desktop, major directories to watch popular TV content, and a bunch of websites to stream live TV channels. The leading P2PTV players follow.
Joost offers over 100 high definition (HD) TV shows (Comedy Central, Punk’d, Super Cars, Nat Geo, etc.) and channels from various categories (cartoons, film, comedy, music, documentary, entertainment, sports, and lifestyle).
Zattoo provides excellent picture quality and viewing experience. Its service is mainly focused on European channels and offers almost 50 live TV channels (some channels are limited to particular geographical locations).
Babelgum provides a nice easy-to use TV player but unfortunately doesn’t yet have many channels to choose from. When it comes to P2PTV, the amount of available programs a service has to offer is definitely the most important factor.
Veoh TV lets you watch and record Internet video from thousands of video sources, including YouTube, Google Video, and MySpace. You can also enjoy certain full-length episodes from traditional TV channels (e.g., ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, etc.) You can search for channels, browse channels by category, record favorite episodes, add desired channels to favorites, and more.
Miro (formerly Democracy Player) is different from the tools mentioned above. It’s an all-in-one player that lets you navigate though and subscribe to over 1,500 web shows, vlogs, and podcasts. Additionally, Miro can be used as a BitTorrent client, video downloader (YouTube, Google Video, DailyMotion, etc.), and video player (QuickTime, WMV, MPEG, XVid, AVI, etc.).
While most of the above P2PTV applications excel in quality and interface, they still lack an abundance of popular and mainstream TV content because they don’t yet have distribution rights. Here is list of top directories for such offerings.
TV-Links - movies, TV shows, cartoons, documentaries, anime, and music videos. Alluc - TV shows, cartoons, anime, movies, music, and sport videos. Sidereel - movies, TV shows, and wiki style editing. TV-Video - TV shows. AllOfTV - anime, cartoons, music videos, and TV shows. VideoHybrid - movies and TV shows. And Peekvid – TV shows, movies, cartoons, and sports.
There are also dozens of websites that aggregate, categorize and rate TV channels. In most cases, users can stream traditional TV channels (CNN, BBC, ABC, ESPN and lots more): Viewmy.tv, ChooseAndWatch, Live-Online-TV, ChannelChooser, Streamick, FreeTube, and WwiTV.
Joost Becomes Widget Platform
Excerpted from GigaOM Report by Om Malik
Joost just released version 0.12.0 of its P2PTV client this week. The new release offers end-users a bunch of bug fixes, but developers get a special treat: Joost has opened up its API and now makes it possible to develop third-party widgets that can be installed within the client.
Joost users have had access to a few select widgets from within the client since the beginning. They can chat with each other, read RSS feeds, and watch the time go by with a simple clock widget. The new API will greatly enhance these capabilities and help to make Joost more social.
The Joost team soft-launched its API with a low-profile announcement in the product forums. The official API website is still password-protected, but the access code can be found within the announcement. The API site features a couple of sample widgets that can be installed through the widget manager, which itself has to be activated through the “Advanced Settings” entry in the widget menu. Somewhat complicated, but hey, this is why they call it beta.
The sample widgets themselves aren’t too surprising, but they give us some ideas where things are going for Joost. There is a simple RSS reader that just displays headlines and short abstracts from the Joost blog, a Wikipedia reader, and an alarm clock. A little more exciting is the “What’s Similar” widget that offers recommendations for clips similar to the one you are watching right now. Improve on this, and Joost could become the TV version of Last.fm.
There’s also a lot of potential in the Joostmarks widget. Right now it’s barely usable – you can’t read anything most of the time because someone apparently thought black fonts were a good choice for a TV experience. The widget does however make it possible to bookmark single scenes within a TV show or even a music video and jump right to that point the next time you use Joost. Make those bookmarks shareable, and you’re pretty close to the social tagging features that will eventually help platforms like Joost to truly revolutionize TV.
The good thing is that we don’t have to wait for Joost to develop this stuff on its own. Outside developers just need some basic knowledge in XML and Javascript to get started. All of the sample widgets are distributed with their source code under a BSD-like license, so you can incorporate that code as well. There are also some sample widgets that are more targeted towards developers, like an Engine Dump widget.
The tutorials also mention some other bugs that still have to get ironed out. Let’s hope the Joost team gets to fix those things quickly, because there are a lot of exciting possibilities for widgets on Joost, and I can’t wait to see what third-party developers come up with.
Festival Fan’s Latest Internet Treat Babelgum
Excerpted from Chemical Toilet Report by Sophie Bruce
Techno savvy festival fans, sit up and listen. First the Internet gifted you iTunes. Then YouTube. Now into the arena steps Babelgum – a self-styled “new generation global Internet TV network.”
UK, US, and European-wide Babel Networks has been developing the service since 2005, giving viewers the chance to create their own personalized TV channels. But now for the first time viewers can add festival feeds to their pick of favorite videos, sport and programs. Obviously not all festivals are available to view – only those that sign agreements with the service. However the footage Babel does have is varied and some is completely exclusive, such as coverage users can now access online from Spain’s massive Bencassim festival.
With the 2007 festival season coming to an end, here’s an opportunity to view and relive favorite festival moments. For Babelgum chiefs, it’s a chance to share festival highlights with people who can’t physically be there. So what’s in it for the festival organizers? Bencassim’s producer Vince Powers explains, “Although our popularity has grown dramatically over the years, our audience will still be limited. Babelgum solves that problem in an instant with a secure platform that creates a global audience for the musical talent we offer.”
Now I’m notoriously impatient with uploads and downloads, wanting everything to be done at the click of my fingers. So when I went to www.babelgum.com and clicked ‘Try Babelgum’, I wasn’t expecting big things. But following the prompts the application was downloaded to my PC in just over a minute, and registration took about 20 seconds. From there it merely took a quick type of ‘Go Team’ into the search box to bring up high quality footage of the band live from the stage. It was a better view than I’d have had from the front row, all for free in less than 4 minutes. I was impressed!
So if you’re depressed the season is over or just intrigued at a legendary performance you may have missed, head to Babelgum!
And stay tuned for the Babelgum Film Festival, whose jury will be led by director Spike Lee.
Veoh: Different Approach, Same Goal
Excerpted from IP Development Network Report by Jeremy Penston
Joost and the BBC’s iPlayer have hogged many of the headlines around P2PTV in recent months. These two high profile platforms work in markedly different ways to the point where they are almost mutually exclusive. I was critical of the iPlayer’s lack of streaming functionality, while Joost is also struggling for content because of its ring-fenced system design.
It is worth looking at Veoh, not because it is set to take on the world, although it might just get lucky. The reason is that there are bits of its service which others could learn from and, if nothing else, the Veoh model challenges the establishment in a number of ways.
Veoh has an existing YouTube clone that seems to be finding its niche in 18+ rated content. Of the most popular 20 videos yesterday, 13 were rated 18+. I could go on to explain the inadequacies of the family filter, but that is not the point of this article.
Perhaps Veoh’s new service, VeohTV, is an attempt to move out of the gutter - it certainly has a lot more respectable content - with its new interface that challenges some of the boundaries of existing services. If it can make its recommendation engine work as promised and if its open network philosophy wins, it could indeed justify its own hype of being a “Joost Killer.” There is a game going on between the content owners too, you know.
Everyone has heard of YouTube and Joost. Even Babelgum has managed to get itself on the radar by virtue of its “alternative” approach to content. Many people outside the US won’t have heard of Veoh though, because it is so small. Alexa ranks its website as the 27th most popular in the US, in the UK it is number 67. Globally it’s down at number 107.
Nielsen/NetRatings shows that there are now nearly 140 million viewers of online video, up from just under 60 million a year ago. YouTube has managed to grow its share of the market (37% up from 33%) in spite of advances by Yahoo (11% up from 5%) and AOL (11% share in 2007).
Veoh’s share is only 1.8%, up from 1.2% last year. Yes, they are growing but where Google has 69 million viewers, Veoh only has 2.5 million. However, there is something about the brashness of it all that is worth noting. VeohTV is an interesting evolution.
Currently, veoh.com is a YouTube like service for a combination of user and professionally created content. It has two advantages over YouTube, although on the face of it, these have not been particularly effective.
For viewers, it offers download-and-store PVR functionality (like iPlayer) as well as streaming of videos (like YouTube & Joost). Publishers in veoh.com have their content automatically added to YouTube and Google Video as well. Publish through Veoh and you get Veoh + YouTube. Publish on YouTube and you just appear on YouTube. Clever, if sneaky.
VeohTV is a very different service - although the philosophy is the same. The VeohTV play is to rise above the content owners and emerge as Your Online Video EPG. VeohTV is a video browser - users are presented with a consolidated list of hundreds of websites in a wide range of categories that already host free video on the Internet.
The VeohTV Video Browser is a step up, tailored to improve video playback over standard web browser capabilities that power veoh.com and YouTube. Veoh’s value-add is the personalization that its overall set of services learn from the user’s behavior. This means that in the long run, the service increasingly recommends content to you that you are likely to enjoy.
Azureus Vuze BitTorrent Client
Excerpted from Pocket Lint Report by Stuart Miles
One of the newest kids on the P2PTV block is Vuze from Azureus. Free-to-download and available for both Mac and Windows, the BitTorrent client is a stylish interface that allows you to manage your files for sharing once you’ve downloaded them.
There are four main tabs to the software: Home, Browse Content, My Library, and Publish.
The Home page is your main control center showing you what you are currently downloading, your last couple of downloads and a selection of top picks of free stuff like Pink music videos or HD trailers of latest blockbusters.
The Browse Content window gives you more ways of finding content and there are a plethora of channels from big name brands like the Sci-Fi Channel, the BBC, and specific programs like “The L Word” and “Weeds.”
You are also able to sort clips by what’s hot, what’s new, and most downloaded, as well as things that are free, are for sale, and even for rent.
Choosing and playing a file is as easy as clicking on the link and everything starts downloading for you from the start.
The My Library tab is as it sounds, your library of downloaded files be it software, movies, music, or images. All are displayed neatly and orderly with icons alongside size, quality, and rating details for you to see at a glance.
Of course torrents are all about sharing and so you can, once you’ve set up an account (which is also free) publish your own content to share, making this a fantastic platform for budding videocasters - yes Megawhat has its own channel.
For the more knowledgeable there is the option to view an advanced tab which shows stuff like Seeds and Peers as well as download speeds and a rough estimate of when you can expect your download to finish – be it 5 minutes or 10 days.
With such a wealth of HD trailers available alongside other free TV shows, including Pocket-lint’s very own Megawhat, Vuze is worth the download if you are into movies alone. The BitTorrent P2P file sharing system means downloads are quick and on all the content we’ve downloaded it has taken minutes rather than days.
A really simple to use software package that, if you are into sharing, is worth checking out.
Raketu Sees 50% Jump in Subscribers
Raketu, a leading global P2P communications, information, and entertainment company, this week announced that the company is realizing an over 50% increase in the number of consumers subscribing to its voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) service.
“Raketu has realized and continues to realize an over fifty percent jump in customer sign-ups in the wake of the Skype outage that left millions without VoIP phone service globally,” said Greg Parker, President & CEO of Raketu. “While some have been concerned about the stability of Skype’s platform, a few have cited security concerns over Skype’s use of super-nodes as their reason for switching.”
According to one news source, Skype’s outage was due in part to the company’s reliance on its users’ computers to act as super-nodes in routing traffic for other, less well-connected, users. As Skype customers tried to reconnect, many of those super-nodes were themselves in the process of rebooting. A bug in Skype’s software did not efficiently allocate the network resources available, and the remaining super-nodes were soon overwhelmed resulting in the outage.
Raketu uses a unique P2P architecture that does not use super-nodes. This architecture allows the highest quality VoIP calling and highest call-completion in the industry. More importantly, consumers who choose Raketu do not have the security risk and performance problems associated with other services.
Raketu runs over any Internet connection from broadband to dial-up service. Anyone with Internet access can start using Raketu immediately. The service can be accessed via Raketu’s LaunchPad downloadable desktop application currently available to Windows and Vista users, and via RakWeb, Raketu’s web-based client requiring no software downloads.
Free Music Revolution Coming in October
Excerpted from the Entertainment Spot Report
If you’ve got some extra cash in the bank, seriously consider investing in the stock of this company: QTRAX.
Ever wish there was an authorized way to download licensed music for free?
Well, there will be as soon as two months from now if everything goes according to plan.
When it is launched this October, QTRAX will be the first file-sharing service sponsored by the four major record labels. That means you will be able to download much of the music catalogs of EMI, Sony BMG, Universal Music Group, and Warner Music Group, absolutely free.
The labels (and thus the artists) will gain money through advertising and sponsorships, meaning QTRAX users will need to watch short ads for various products before they get their downloads. It is expected that between 20 and 30 million songs from the biggest artists will be available for free the day the site launches.
“Consumers clearly aren’t willing to pay for music, but advertisers are the one group that still will,” said QTRAX parent company Brilliant Technologies CEO Allan Klepfisz, who added that Internet advertising is growing at a 30 percent clip per year.
QTRAX’s initial revenue projections range from a low of $20 million to a high of $175 million. Record labels will get an equal split of advertising revenue in addition to upfront royalty fees they collect from QTRAX.
ASR MediaCast Adds Music Downloads
Blue Maze Entertainment has produced a Virtual-CD (VCD) for The ASR MediaCast, presented by Oakley, Hurley, and Billabong. The ASR MediaCast presents photos, videos, and music content directly from the Action Sports Retailers trade show in San Diego, CA. The VCD includes free music downloads from top emerging rock artists, within a branded player designed for the trade show and its sponsors.
“The ASR MediaCast is a perfect home for music that targets the action sports culture and lifestyle” said Evan Shapiro of Blue Maze Entertainment. The ASR show, which takes place September 7th-9th, brings together retailers, buyers, executives, and various celebrities from the worlds of surf, skate, snow, and fashion. Viewers around the world will have access to media features from the show floor on www.asrmediacast.com. There will also be a photo gallery of styles, personalities, and events continuously updated throughout the 3-day show.
The MediaCast is being syndicated on an array of action sports websites geared toward consumers. MediaCast partner sponsors include: Oakley, Hurley, and Billabong. MediaCast Media partners include: Surfline, Transworld, Primedia, Big Daddy Media, and ActionWhere. Viewers can download featured music on the site’s music link courtesy of Blue Maze Entertainment. Viewers can access video features on asrbiz.com, ActionArchives.com, iTunes, Google Video, and other affiliated sites.
Public Display of Expressions
Excerpted from Online Media Report by Seana Mulcahy
I don’t know, maybe it’s the time of year. Or perhaps it’s all the back-to-school ads. It could be because I am a new mom. Whatever the case may be, I have kids on my mind. If you’ve followed my writings you know I have a strong affinity to the tween (8-12 years old) and teen market on many levels: safety, privacy, ethnography, etc.
This digital generation fascinates me. Want to know where to download music, find cool apparel, watch movies and clips, change expressions, personalize your IMs, e-mails, blogs, anything... just ask a tween or teen. Sure they may give you an eyes-rolling-in-the-back-of-the-head look, but, hey, go directly to the source.
Let’s take a look at this demographic online. According to eMarketer’s report, Tweens and Teens Online: From Mario to MySpace, some 20 million of them use the Internet. And by 2010, 71% of kids ages 8-11 will be online.
They will tell you what they want, how they want it, and where they want it. They navigate from device to device with ease and are constant communicators. You may think they cannot process information in such large quantity and with such speed, but they can.
Most will tell you they hate advertising. This makes the bulk of all marketers and advertisers shriek in horror. I’ll let you in on a little secret: they are the most brand-loyal. Tweens and teens spread positive (and negative) conversation about brands online all the time.
MTV and the Associated Press recently released a study of Young People and Happiness. If you want to market and/or advertise to the tween and teen market online, you should check the study out. The study surveyed a total of 1,280 youths consisting of 618 13-17 year-olds and 662 18-24 year-olds.
They had a lot to say about technology: nearly two thirds of today’s young people say that cell phones, the Internet and other technologies make people happier; half of the youth polled said the Internet helps them feel happier; many young people said they’d be more stressed out without technology; and nearly half said they never turn off their cell phones, “even when they are trying to chill out.”
Another eMarketer study points out that youths 8-to-18 spend fully one-quarter of their media time multi-tasking among media. EMarketer senior analyst Debra Aho Williamson commented, “You simply cannot separate young people from technology; it is part of who they are.”
These studies can arm you with some great facts: the younger audience plays more games online; almost all digital youth prefer IM to e-mail; tweens heading toward teen years begin and continue to download music; more than a third of youth ages 12-14 frequent MySpace; and most own a mobile phone.
Some 71% of online teens and tweens visit social-networking sites weekly, and more than half of all teens – and nearly half of all online 9-17 year olds – reported participation in advertiser-branded interactive activities in the previous month, according to findings from an Alloy Media+Marketing white paper, reports MarketingCharts.
Topline findings include: nearly half (47%) of 9-17 year olds, including more than half (55%) of teens, report participation in one or more advertiser-branded activity types in the last month; when asked where their mindshare goes while they multitask between TV and online, by more than 4:1 teens say they focus mainly on online; some 64% of teens upload photos and 42 percent of teens create characters, avatars, or anime to express themselves across their personal profiles; more than 90% of tweens and teens say they’d like to hear about one or more types of entertainment products in social-networking sites; close to half (45%) say they’d like to hear about enthusiast or special interest products, such as technology, sports, and automotive.
So as you can see, today’s digital youth aren’t too hard to figure out. Spend time on any social networking site and you’ll be able to see how they interact, communicate virtually, personalize backgrounds, their online personality, icons, music, etc. The bottom line is, tweens and teens online are expressive. Watch and learn before you do a deep dive trying to advertise to them. Do it right and they’ll “heart” you.
File Sharers Forced to Play Fair
Excerpted from BBC News Report by Colin Barras
Researchers have found a way to enforce good manners on file-sharing networks by treating bandwidth as a currency. The team has created a P2P system called Tribler in which selfless sharers earn faster upload and download speeds but leechers are penalized.
The technology is being assessed by a European broadcasting body looking at ways of piping TV across the net. Tribler has also been used to turn Sony’s PlayStation 3 into a video-sharing device.
While file-sharing networks are good ways to help lots of people get hold of large files, often they have far more people taking from the system than they do giving. P2P networks can become sluggish if too many users download content without sharing with others.
Using bandwidth as a kind of currency helps to encourage better habits said Dr. Johan Pouwelse, an Assistant Professor at Delft University of Technology, Amsterdam and co-creator of Tribler.
Dr. Pouwelse has been working with associate professor David Parkes from Harvard University to add an accounting system to Tribler to encourage users to upload as often as they download.
“In our model your TV would use “TV watching minutes,” our form of P2P currency, to download content,” said Dr. Pouwelse. “The TV would connect directly to the Internet and provide video on demand in HDTV quality.
“After you watch a program on TV, the system would automatically share this program during the night with other people, until your ‘TV watching minutes’ credit is healthy again,” he said.
“If we get this right, it would mean quite a change in the TV business,” said Dr. Pouwelse.
Using bandwidth as a currency can remove some of the problems seen in file-sharing systems such as BitTorrent, said Dr. Parkes. “In peer-to-peer, I can build up credit by offering upload capacity and then use the credit for download in the future,” he said.
“There is still a balance, but the balance is on the order of days rather than seconds and this time-shifting can be welfare enhancing, said Dr. Parkes.
Tribler has already caught the attention of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), which is trying to create a standardized Internet broadcasting system across Europe.
“Tribler is a good candidate,” said Franc Kozamernik, Senior Engineer at the EBU. “We are in the process of testing it and checking whether it fulfils our requirements or not,” he said.
The EBU has already tested a number of other P2P systems and is in the process of building a media portal which will allow EBU members to publish their radio and television channels across Europe.
Overlaid on Tribler is social networking technology that helps to police the system and encourage fair sharing. A passionate community was as effective at policing content as a central administrator, said Dr. Pouwelse.
“I was doing research back in 1999 looking at an obscure website called Slashdot,” he said. “It was a technology-related news website controlled by volunteers and it actually worked. A few people would post bad things but 99% of users were nice.”
Peers can “gossip” or report on the behavior of malicious users. And because content is not stored on a central server, it is harder for malicious users to attack a P2P network, said Dr. Pouwelse.
“One user cannot bring the network as a whole down,” he said. “Just as the electric grid has no central elements, Tribler has no central element and should be more robust.
“The only danger is what is sometimes called a ‘cascading failure’. It happened to Skype a few days ago. But in four years, Skype broke down just once.”
IPv6 Passes First Test on Applications
Excerpted from GCN Report by William Jackson
In the first large-scale test of basic enterprise networking with Internet protocol version six (IPv6), applications using the next-generation IP in real-world conditions passed muster. Until recently, most of the attention on IPv6 has concentrated on the network backbone, but this summer’s tests at the University of New Hampshire’s InterOperability Laboratory (IOL) focused instead on applications.
“We’ve hit the core, but we’ve only scratched the surface of IPv6 for enterprise information technology (IT) systems,” said Erica Johnson, IPv6 Consortium Manager at IOL. “As we keep seeing, there are always going to be implementation hurdles, lessons learned, proprietary applications, and devices that don’t support IPv6 yet, so the more testing, the sooner, the better.”
Applications for collaboration, file creation, sharing, and printing worked, but there were a few bumps.
“Most issues were implementations, not the protocols, and this suggests that for system admins there may be something of a learning curve in setting up IPv6,” Johnson said. When setting up services, “there was a distinct difference between IPv4 and IPv6.”
On the other hand, once implemented, the IPv6 network is easier to administer than current IPv4 networks. A key takeaway from the program was that the need for training “is likely to be a human resources issue in bringing IPv6 to the office.”
IOL provides third-party standards conformance and interoperability testing for 200 member companies that fund operation of the 32,000-square-foot facility and provide its $20 million test bed.
A major part of that test bed is the Moonv6 network, a joint project of the university, the North American IPv6 Task Force, Internet2, and the federal government.
Established in 2003 and billed as the world’s largest permanently deployed multi-vendor IPv6 network, the Moonv6 backbone runs from New Hampshire to California with links to Europe and Asia.
IPv6 is the latest version of the IP and is set to begin replacing the current IPv4 infrastructure on government backbones next year.
In addition to providing a much larger IP address space, which will accommodate the rapidly growing number of networked devices worldwide and a host of new applications, it also offers improved security and advanced networking functions, such as automatic discovery and configuration, which could help enable P2P, mobile, and ad hoc networks.
Most operating systems and many applications support IPv6, but most of the attention so far has been on network plumbing rather than the applications riding on those networks.
The tests to begin filling that gap were conducted in June. Participants providing applications included Adobe Systems, Alcatel-Lucent, Command Information, Counterpath, Hewlett-Packard, Hexago, Ixia, Juniper, Konica-Minolta, Microsoft and Xerox.
The applications all support IPv6, but there was little experience with operating them in real-world, multi-vendor enterprise environments with dual-stack and native IPv6 networks.
IPv6 P2P and discovery capabilities will let devices automatically join the network and work together.
RIAA Faces Serious Piracy Lawsuit
Excerpted from Variety Report by William Triplett
A lawsuit recently filed against the RIAA could ultimately force the org to drop or dramatically change the way it uses its principal weapon in the fight against online piracy, according to experts and observers.
The case – filed in Oregon and asserting claims under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) and the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act (RICO) – details the RIAA’s alleged use of “illegal and flawed” methods when investigating people for downloading or swapping copyrighted songs without paying for them.
The plaintiff in the case, disabled single mother Tanya Andersen, claims the RIAA was aware of the faulty methods but has nonetheless filed lawsuits against innocent people in some cases.
Andersen claims she is not the only victim of such tactics and is therefore seeking class-action status for her suit. If the court grants that status, the RIAA could be facing a losing proposition because class-action suits can be extremely risky for defendants, in this case creating the potential for a big payout by the music labels.
“If class action is certified, it’s more likely that the record companies would settle,” said Ronnie London, an attorney versed in class-action law with the firm of Davis Wright Tremaine, which specializes in communications law.
Settlement could also lead to less aggressive legal tactics in pursuit of online pirates.
According to Andersen’s complaint filed with the US District Court in Portland, “For years, the RIAA and its member companies have been using flawed and illegal private investigation information as part of their coordinated scheme and common enterprise to threaten, intimidate, and coerce payment from private citizens across the United States. As such they have clogged and abused the federal courts for many years with factually baseless and fraudulent lawsuits.”
In 2005, Oregon resident Andersen received notice that the recording industry was suing her, claiming it had proof she had illegally downloaded and shared almost 1,300 files of copyrighted music. The notice strongly suggested that she agree to a settlement of $4,000-$5,000 or face prohibitively expensive litigation.
Andersen said she had done no such thing and hired a lawyer to counter-sue.
“Tanya Andersen is not alone,” said Lory Lybeck, her attorney. “Her story is emblematic of the abuse this process has at its core.” Lybeck added that, since filing for class-action status, he’s been contacted “by a number of other people who are in a similar position” and is “confident” that status will be granted.
The significance of class-action status “would be huge,” said Ray Beckerman, an attorney who has represented defendants in illegal downloading lawsuits filed by the RIAA.
“The RIAA’s whole gambit has been economic imbalance: four huge multinational corporations join forces in an even larger cartel and sue Mom and Pop. Class actions are economic equalizers, anathema to the RIAA. If there’s a class action, the court could issue a preliminary injunction that would stop the RIAA’s unlawful practices,” Beckerman added.
“If class action is certified, there would probably be at least a behavioral change on the part of the record companies. They’ll be more circumspect about which defendants they actually pick and may be more amenable to settling for less money,” London predicted.
Defendants can seek dismissal of the case even before the court rules on class action status, and the RIAA intends to do this. Failing that, defendants can also dispute the merits of the application for class action.
Once class-action status is granted, the key is usually whether the plaintiffs are likely to prove they have been harmed as a direct result of wrongful actions by the defendant, but Heidi Li Feldman, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, said that even then, a settlement offer isn’t assured.
Gaining class-action certification is anything but easy. “The courts say classes must be certified narrowly,” Feldman continued. “That means there must be serious overlap in both the facts of each case and the laws that are applicable to all members of the class.” A court decision on certification can take upward of a year.
“We are confident that Andersen’s claims have no merit,” an RIAA spokeswoman said. “We look forward to presenting our arguments in the next few weeks to the court about why this case should be dismissed. In all our cases, we seek to follow the facts and be fair and reasonable in resolving pending claims.”
Since September 2003, the RIAA has filed more than 21,000 illegal downloading suits.
Coming Events of Interest
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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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Broadcasting 2017 – September 27th in London, England. What do the leading players in television and new media across Europe predict for the future of broadcasting? Find out during “Broadcasting 2017” at BAFTA. Join industry giants such as Silvio Scaglia, Founder & Chairman of Babelgum for a day of stimulating sessions.
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Digital Music Forum West – October 3rd–4th in Los Angeles, CA. The seventh annual Digital Music Forum event now at the newly renovated Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. Several DCIA Member company executives will be featured speakers and the DCIA will present a special session on “The Evolution of P2P and Music” with BUYDRM’s Christopher Levy, FTI Consulting’s Roger Scadron, Javien’s Leslie Poole, PeerApp’s Mark Strangio, and VeriSign’s Stuart Cleary.
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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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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).
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Streaming Media West – November 6th–8th in San Jose, CA. Streaming Media conferences have become the premier online video events in the world. Streaming Media West is totally focused on the business and technology of online video. The DCIA will participate featuring industry leading P2PTV providers and support services.
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P2P MEDIA SUMMIT LV – January 6th in Las Vegas, NV. 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. The Conference will take place in N260 in the North Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center and the Conference Luncheon in N262-264. This DCIA flagship event is a Conference within CES – the Consumer Electronics Show.
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CCNC 2008 – The Fifth Annual IEEE Consumer Communications & Networking Conference, January 10th-12th at Harrahs, Las Vegas, NV. Now co-promoted by the DCIA. The latest research developments and technical solutions in the areas of home networking, consumer networking, enabling technologies (including middleware), and novel applications and services. See www.ieee-ccnc.org for details.
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