December 3, 2007
Volume XX, Issue 2
P2P MEDIA SUMMIT LV Registration
Don't miss the P2P MEDIA SUMMIT LV, the DCIA's first-ever day-long Conference within CES on January 6th - leading up to Bill Gates' evening keynote address.
This seminal industry event will feature keynotes from top peer-to-peer (P2P) companies; tracks on policy, technology and marketing; panel discussions covering content distribution and solutions development; and more.
There will be a continental breakfast, luncheon, and networking cocktail reception with live entertainment.
Please click here for more information and click here to register. Early registration rates, which save attendees up to $300, end December 6th.
Peer-to-Peer: Sin-or-Savior
Register now for the free live web broadcast Peer-to-Peer: Sin-or-Savior this Thursday December 6th at 2:00 PM ET sponsored by Streaming Media Magazine.
Consumer adoption of P2P file sharing has quickly outpaced the previous most widely accepted Internet-based software, instant messaging (IM), and the popularity of P2P continues to soar.
Meanwhile, the entertainment sector is still scrambling to catch up with business models and technological solutions that will effectively harness the enormous power of P2P.
Commercial P2P, exemplified by VeriSign's Kontiki-based suite of broadband content services, is now able to deliver a superior consumer experience while supporting the rights of content owners.
Commercial P2P can also radically improve the efficiency of content delivery networks (CDNs).
Tune in to understand how adding commercial P2P to CDN environments can enable media and entertainment companies to engage and delight their consumers while generating significant new sources of revenue.
Report from CEO Marty Lafferty
 We are especially pleased to announce speakers and sponsors for the upcoming P2P MEDIA SUMMIT LV.
This first-ever DCIA Conference within CES is scheduled for January 6th in Las Vegas, NV in conjunction with the 2008 CES International trade show. The DCIA is an allied association of the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) .
DCIA Members now offer a panoply of solutions to help content rights holders, Internet service providers (ISPs), client applications, consumer electronics manufacturers, and other participants in the rapidly emerging P2P and social networking channel distribute material at astonishingly low costs and with astoundingly high quality of service (QoS) and security.
P4P Working Group (P4PWG) Co-Chairs Laird Popkin of Pando Networks and Doug Pasko of Verizon Communications, and the National Association of Television Arts & Sciences' (NATAS) Shelly Palmer will be our luncheon speakers; and our keynotes now include AHT International's Ron van Herk, BitTorrent's Ashwin Navin, Cisco Systems' Mark Carroll, Financial Dynamics' Hollis Rakfin-Sax, LimeWire's George Searle, Motorola's John Waclawsky, Pando Networks' Robert Levitan, Veoh Networks' Jennifer Betka, VeriSign's Jeff Richards, and Vuze's Gilles BianRosa.
P2P MEDIA SUMMIT LV sponsors now include AHT International, FTI Consulting, the IEEE's CCNC, Javien Digital Payment Solutions, and Nettwerk Music Group. Please click here for more information and click here to register. Early registration rates, which save attendees up to $300, end December 6th.
The day-long Sunday January 6, 2008 Conference features keynotes from top P2P software distributors, panels of industry leaders, and valuable workshops. There will be a continental breakfast, luncheon, and networking cocktail reception with live entertainment.
The Policy Track features Bennett Lincoff Law's Bennett Lincoff, Bingham's Joshua Wattles, CEA's Michael Petricone, MasurLaw's Steve Masur, and YuMe Networks' Jayant Kadambi, and will address the post MGM v. Grokster world - new rules for P2P.
The Technology Track features CacheLogic's John Dillon, Digital Containers' Chip Venters, Javien's Leslie Poole, Oversi's Eitan Efron, and Thomson's Todd Beals, and will address P2P file sharing - the evolving distribution chain.
The Marketing Track features Brand Asset Digital's Joey Patuleia, BUYDRM's Christopher Levy, Rebel Digital's Robin Kent, SafeNet's John Desmond, and Ultramercial's Dana Jones, and will address P2P business models - what's working and what's not.
The Content Distribution panel features DeviantART's Steve Gonzalez, MediaPass Networks' Daniel Harris, Nettwerk Music Group's Brent Muhle, Paramount Pictures' Derek Broes, and ROK Entertainment's David Lee, and will address the perspective of artists and rights holders - P2P for content creators.
The Solutions Development panel features Abacast's Michael King, GridNetworks' Jeffrey Payne, PeerApp's Eliot Listman, Peer Innovations' Steve Lerner, and Raketu Communications' Greg Parker, and will address advancement - creating the commercial P2P ecosystem.
Please click here to register or call 410-476-7965. For sponsor packages and speaker information, please contact Karen Kaplowitz, DCIA Member Services, at 888-890-4240 or karen@dcia.info. Share wisely, and take care.
P2P Dominates Global Internet Traffic
Ipoque, a provider of solutions for Internet traffic management, analyzed five regions of the world between August and September 2007. The results are now published in a study with comprehensive statistics about user behavior. Ipoque's report provides a unique overview of the Internet's current state.
Three petabytes of anonymous data representing over one million users in Australia, Eastern Europe, Germany, the Middle East, and Southern Europe were analyzed. The results for the different regions vary considerably.
P2P file sharing generates by far the most Internet traffic. Its average share varies from 49 percent in the Middle East to 84 percent in Eastern Europe. At night, P2P increases to 95 percent. Every fifth Internet user accesses file-sharing software. BitTorrent is the most popular P2P protocol. Only in Southern Europe, eDonkey still dominates.
Ipoque's analysis also covers encrypted P2P protocols. About 20 percent of BitTorrent and eDonkey traffic is encrypted.
The P2P content analysis revealed little changes compared to last year's study. Videos make up the largest proportion. The most popular titles are current movies, adult content, and music. Remarkably high is the share of eBooks in the Middle East and computer games in Southern Europe.
Voice over IP (VoIP) is used by 30 percent of all users. 95 percent of all Internet telephony is attributable to P2P service Skype.
The popularity of instant messaging (IM) varies heavily from region to region. In the Middle East, 60 percent of all Internet users also use IM, in Germany, however, the figure is only 17 percent.
Joost does not yet have a significant relevance, despite its high media presence. Quite the opposite can be said about Flash movies and other forms of video streaming, which generated 8 percent of Internet traffic during the measurement period.
A relatively new file-sharing phenomenon is the emergence of file hosting services, also known as one-click file hosters, such as RapidShare and MegaUpload. These are operators of web servers where arbitrary files can be uploaded. The user gets a URL pointing to the uploaded file - the so-called "Direct Download Link" (DDL). This link can then be provided to other users for instance in web forums or via e-mail. Although file hosters are only used by a relatively small number of Internet users, they are responsible for between 4 and 9 percent of all Internet traffic.
Please click here for an extended abstract of the study.
Uploading Speeds Slowly Catch Up
Excerpted from Wall Street Journal Report by Dionne Searcey
Uploading is getting an upgrade.
After years of cranking up the speed of downloading material from the Internet, which made it faster to surf the web and play music and videos, Internet service providers (ISPs) are finally starting to boost the speed of files moving onto the web from your personal computer.
The acceleration is being spurred by the rise of social-networking sites like Facebook and video-sharing sites like YouTube, where a growing number of people are posting their own music and video clips online. Upload speeds have long been a fraction of the speed of downloads, forcing most users to wait several minutes to upload a photo, for example, that they could download in seconds.
But in recent months, companies have been ratcheting up their upload speeds - for consumers willing to pay a bit more. Verizon Communications announced recently that it would start offering upload speeds of 20 megabits per second - roughly 25 times as fast as what its most popular DSL service offers - in some markets for customers of its new fiber-based network, called FiOS.
Verizon's rivals have also been increasing their upload speeds, offering special features that allow for quicker capabilities. Comcast this year began offering subscribers a temporary "turbocharge," or boost in speed, which kicks in when it detects very large uploads. When the PowerBoost feature is activated, Comcast subscribers can receive upload speeds of up to two megabits per second.
Last year, Cablevision Systems doubled the upload speed of its most popular high-speed Internet service to two megabits per second and added a premium tier of service that offered five megabit-a-second uploads.
Verizon's new offering costs $64.99 a month, compared with the $45 a month that Verizon charges FiOS customers in some markets for slower five megabit-per-second uploads. But Verizon's service is less expensive - and slower - than another offering from Cablevision, which charges $200 a month for upload speeds of 50 megabits per second. That service is intended mainly for businesses and homes that use the Internet extensively.
At the new speeds Verizon's FiOS is offering, consumers could upload 200 photos in about 90 seconds. The same upload would take 47 minutes over Verizon's most popular DSL service, which offers uploads at 768 kilobits a second. Verizon says a three-gigabyte file, such as a one-hour family video shot with a high-definition video camera, could be uploaded in around 20 minutes, compared with more than nine hours at the slower speed. The FiOS service offers 20 megabits a second for downloads as well.
Verizon's announcement could prompt other phone and cable operators to more aggressively boost upload speeds. Until now, most cable and phone companies have only incrementally raised uploads, even as they've lifted download speeds.
Comcast's fastest upload speed, for instance, is available only to customers who take its more expensive high-speed offerings, with downloads of up to 16 megabits a second. Comcast charges $52.95 a month for that broadband service when customers subscribe to other services. Subscribers to Comcast's lower-price offerings get much slower upload speeds of either 384 or 768 kilobits a second, though they also can get a boost up to two megabits per second.
AT&T, likewise, offers an upload speed of 768 kilobits a second on its fastest DSL service, paired with a downloading speed of six megabits a second. AT&T offers a faster upload, of one megabit a second, to customers in the limited areas where it sells its "U-Verse" TV service.
Fast uploads appeal to a niche of web users, but cable and phone companies want to accommodate them because such users are willing to pay more for the service, says Bruce Leichtman, President & Principal Analyst of Leichtman Research Group in Durham, NH. Among the consumers demanding faster speeds are people working at home who want to share large files with co-workers in the office.
Telecommuters also want faster uploads because the higher speed makes videoconferencing much easier.
Faster upload speeds will also please users of P2P networks, which allow users to share music, videos, software, and photos. Some P2P networks are used for sharing unlicensed movies. Verizon, for one, acknowledges this but says it is working with Hollywood studios to look for ways to block copyright infringement on its network.
High-speed networks aren't always as fast as promised. Heavy network traffic and other issues can sometimes cause delays. But any speed boost at all is welcome to some customers.
Among Verizon's new customers is Scott Shapiro, a music composer for TV shows, films and games who is based in Westchester County, NY. He uses his Internet connection to deliver video and large audio files to his customers. He had been subscribing to Cablevision's service with five-megabit uploads, as well as the company's cable TV service. Now he says he pays less than $150 for Verizon's new service, which includes TV and phone service and is slightly less than what he paid Cablevision. (Prices for both companies vary depending on the services ordered and promotions.)
"The Internet and files are only getting larger," he says. "The faster, the better."
Verizon Communications' Doug Pasko, Co-Chair of the P4P Working Group (P4PWG), will be a conference luncheon speaker at the P2P MEDIA SUMMIT LV.
Akamai Reveals P2P Service
Excerpted from Sat News Publishers Report
P2P networking is becoming more and more in favor as the Internet becomes more and more saturated with video traffic. P2P is a form of file sharing which finds users trading files with each other, versus downloading them from a centralized server.
Each user can see the files that every other connected user has to share, using their own computer's processing power rather than relying on remote serving.
To prove the point, Akamai has apparently revealed, to a selected few, its own P2P service. Initially it'll only be for HTTP delivery with a corresponding reduction in pricing than is usual for content delivered traffic.
Imagine, if a company as well respected as Akamai is considering P2P, others may well engage this technology as well - and rather quickly, at that!
After all, Akamai operates a global platform of thousands of servers to help the Internet withstand the crush of daily requests for interactive content, transactions, and apps - billions of interactions, each and every day.
BitTorrent Shares Movies, TV shows, and More
Excerpted from Dallas Morning News Report by Andrew Smith
As the ongoing writers' strike starts sending many television shows into repeats, entertainment-starved people should walk over to their computers and take a look at BitTorrent.
Yes, the name sounds technical. Frankly, BitTorrent was pretty technical when it debuted a few years back.
But BitTorrent enthusiasts have since created a very simple system for file sharing, one that connects you to nearly any movie, television show, song, photograph, or videogame you can imagine.
If it can be stored on a computer, you can find it, download it, and enjoy it. BitTorrent users can now find far more licensed content than they could a couple years ago, and the offerings expand daily.
"BitTorrent transfers, by some estimates, already account for more than half of all the traffic on the Internet, and total traffic is growing steadily," said Eric Klinker, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at BitTorrent.
"I think that's a pretty strong testament to the power and usefulness of this technology," he said.
Imagine that several thousand people want to download a movie over the Internet at roughly the same time. A huge movie company would probably own enough computers and bandwidth to serve them all, but an average Joe with a laptop computer and a cable modem would be overwhelmed. It would take weeks or months to fulfill all those requests - assuming they didn't just keep crashing his computer.
However, if the first person to download the movie could send along small pieces of the movie as soon as they arrived, the movie would spread quickly without overloading any one person's computer. Plus, once a fair number of "seeders" started offering the movie, it would forever be easily available.
This second example describes, in highly simplified terms, how BitTorrent uses P2P networks to make enormous amounts of content available to anyone. The people who get content through BitTorrent are also the people who supply the content.
To start using BitTorrent, viewers need to download small programs called BitTorrent clients. Dozens of these free programs exist for every operating system. Reviewers generally praise uTorrent for Windows, Transmission for Mac, and KTorrents for Linux-based computers.
In addition to BitTorrent, other good sites with strictly authorized content include Azureus , and Vudu. The biggest sites with a mix of content include btjunkie, isoHunt, MiniNova and the Pirate Bay.
You can also search for the name of a particular program or song by typing the title and the word "torrent" into one of the major search engines. After using the search boxes to find something interesting, click on the download link. If a pop-up box asks, tell it to open the file by using a BitTorrent client.
Transfer speeds vary with the number of "seeders," who are sending the file out, and "leechers," who are downloading the file. The more seeders and the lower the ratio of leechers to seeders, the faster the file arrives.
The torrent tracking sites mentioned above help users maximize download speeds by gauging the "health" of various torrents and listing the number of seeders and leechers. A healthy torrent can transmit an entire movie in a few hours; a sickly one takes days to transfer all the information. As users begin exploring the possibilities of BitTorrent, they quickly realize that the only limitations are those they put on themselves.
BitTorrent COO & Co-Founder Ashwin Navin will deliver a keynote address at the P2P MEDIA SUMMIT LV.
UTorrent Upgrades - BitTorrent in Process
UTorrent has upgraded its popular BitTorrent P2P client to provide greater value to users by enhancing their security. And mainline BitTorrent is in the process of doing so as well.
The new version of UTorrent includes an additional warning message to consumers who attempt to share their entire My Documents folder.
The consumer alert, which appears if a user should select his or her My Documents folder and attempts to move it into the Shared Folder Directory, reads:
"You have selected to share your entire My Documents folder and all its files. It is not advisable to do so unless you are certain you want to share all the contents, including possibly private documents.
Are you sure you want to proceed?"
The warning also features a dotted/shaded line by default around the "No" button (rather than the "Yes" button) on the warning screen message when consumers attempt to share their My Documents folder.
If a consumer presses the "enter" key during this process, it will result in the default action choice - and that such choice will be "No."
BitTorrent will continue to introduce software enhancements and support the global BitTorrent developer community to optimize the value of their offerings and safety to consumers.
BitTorrent COO & Co-Founder Ashwin Navin will deliver a keynote address at the P2P MEDIA SUMMIT LV, the DCIA's Conference within CES on January 6th.
VeriSign Leads High-Tech Vendors for Value
Excerpted from CNN Money Report
Internet technology (IT) executives have ranked VeriSign, the leading provider of Internet infrastructure for the networked world, as one of the industry's highest value vendors, according to CIO Insight's recently published 2007 Vendor Value Study. VeriSign ranked number one in the security category and tied with Google and HP for second place, overall.
VeriSign was also ranked number one in two Value categories: "Meeting Expectations for Increasing Revenues" and "Meeting ROI Expectations." VeriSign's score improved nine percentage points over last year, receiving top scores in value, reliability and customer loyalty in the security category.
"Vendors are only as good as their ability to deliver on the expectations they set in the sales process, and these results show that VeriSign has worked hard to meet or exceed those expectations, every day," said Bill Roper, CEO, VeriSign. "We're honored to rank so highly in CIO Insight's latest Vendor Value Study, particularly as these rankings are based on the experiences and opinions of customers. We'll continue to do everything we can to earn their respect and loyalty."
"VeriSign's rise shows security pays off," noted the CIO Insight article summarizing the study's findings. "CIOs feel most security vendors are doing an even better job of protecting them than last year. No category scores higher on average at 'solving the business problem paid to solve.'"
Please click here for the study results.
VeriSign VP of Broadband Content Services Jeff Richards will deliver a keynote address at the P2P MEDIA SUMMIT LV.
Cisco Tops Content Security Segment
Excerpted from Cert Cities Report by Stephen Swoyer
Cisco Systems is one of the mindshare leaders in the content security segment. And that's a good thing, according to industry watchers, because as organizations get more serious about content security over the next few years, the vendors that have the broadest portfolios will capture the most customers.
That's one upshot of a new study from market watcher Infonetics Research. The study, "User Plans for Content Security," says that the vendors who offer the widest variety of device types - including unified threat management (UTM), intrusion prevention system (IPS), standalone and network-integrated devices - will, in all likelihood, snag the lion's share of potential customers.
"Most organizations cobble a content security solution together over time from a variety of different components, typically as a reaction to new threats, and while this may give them good protection at the time of implementation, it's expensive and unmanageable over the lifetime of the products," said Jeff Wilson, Principal Analyst for Network Security at Infonetics Research.
Infonetics' study features scorecard ratings of six leading content security manufacturers: Cisco/IronPort, IBM/ISS, Juniper, McAfee, Symantec, SonicWALL and Trend Micro. It ranks Cisco and Symantec as dual mindshare leaders in the content security space - although according to Infonetics there's plenty of opportunity for new competitors to enter the fray, in part because of a pressing need for highly integrated and higher-performance products.
Elsewhere, the market watcher found, data leakage protection and application visibility and control are the two most exciting emerging areas in the content security segment. The top content security drivers, on the other hand, are data loss, business continuity, and regulations and/or compliance.
Spam protection is a key driver in both small and medium-sized organizations, although fewer large organizations rate that problem as "critical." Not surprisingly, cost is the No. 1 barrier to customer deployments of new content security solutions.
Cisco Systems Senior Director Mark Carroll will deliver a keynote address at the P2P MEDIA SUMMIT LV.
CacheLogic is Finalist for 100 Global Award
CacheLogic, provider of the world's leading Digital Asset Delivery Network, has been selected as a finalist for the Red Herring 100 Global Awards 2007, which recognize outstanding achievements in financial performance, innovation, management, global strategy, and ecosystem integration. CacheLogic was previously recognized on the prestigious Red Herring 100 Europe list in 2006.
CacheLogic has revolutionized both the 'mechanics' and economics of content delivery, enabling the Internet to become the preferred delivery mechanism for large digital assets such as video, computer games, and software.
Red Herring 100 finalists will be celebrated at an event in Seattle, WA with winners announced at an award ceremony on December 4th. Only winners and finalists from previous Top 100 lists were eligible for this exclusive award.
"The finalists we selected from around the world are all excellent contenders," said Joel Dreyfuss, Editor-in-Chief of Red Herring. "They are exceptional companies with smart and innovative platforms that attest to the importance of technology in today's global economy. CacheLogic has made the final group because of its outstanding achievements, and Red Herring Magazine is honored to announce it is one of the most promising technology firms in the world."
Added Phill Robinson, CEO, CacheLogic, "We are delighted to be rubbing shoulders with the cream of cutting-edge global technology companies, including several of our customers who have also been nominated as finalists this year. It's extremely encouraging to see so many finalists listed that focus on the delivery of video over the Internet."
"This confirms the tremendous growth in demand and interest that we have witnessed in this sector over the past 12 months. Red Herring's 100 Global Award is hugely respected in this industry and it is an honour for us to have reached the finals. This year has been a great success for us in terms of launching new products, investment in our network infrastructure, customer wins, management appointments and company expansion, and we're looking forward to further growth and an exciting year ahead in 2008."
CacheLogic Chief Marketing Officer John Dillon will be a featured speaker at the P2P MEDIA SUMMIT LV.
TubeMogul Adds Veoh to Video Options
Excerpted from Reel SEO Video Marketing Report by Mark Robertson
TubeMogul has added Veoh Networks, the world's leading innovator in peer-to-peer television (P2PTV), as a distribution option in its popular Load & Track service that allows video creators, advertisers, and marketers to upload videos once and have them automatically deployed to multiple top video-sharing sites.
With the addition of Veoh, users of TubeMogul - the leading online video distribution and analytics company - can now choose over ten different sites where TubeMogul will post their work for them so they don't have to waste hours upon hours doing it manually one-by-one.
Through this relationship, Veoh's more than 85,000 video publishers - from independent producers to some of the best known brands in music, sports, politics, and entertainment - get free access to Load & Track's integrated analytics.
This powerful analytics solution aggregates video-viewing data from multiple sources to give video creators improved understanding of when, where, and how often their videos are watched, track and compare what's hot and what's not, measure the impact of marketing campaigns, gather competitive intelligence, and share the data with colleagues or friends.
"Providing distribution on Veoh is right on strategy for us," said Brett Wilson, TubeMogul Co-Founder & CEO. "The deal furthers Veoh's mission to provide the best and most comprehensive selection of video content on the Internet, and it furthers our mission to provide tools that empower video creators. What's not to like?"
Todd Leeloy, Vice President of Product at Veoh Networks, said the relationship with TubeMogul helps Veoh further expand its large library of compelling video content. "We are very excited to work with TubeMogul to make it even easier for professional creators to reach Veoh's vast and growing audience of viewers," said Leeloy.
Veoh Networks SVP of Marketing & Programming Jennifer Betka will deliver a keynote address at the P2P MEDIA SUMMIT LV.
P2PTV Service Captures Moral High Ground
Excerpted from Times Online Report by Rhys Blakely
A peer-to-peer television (P2PTV) service backed by a number of British Internet entrepreneurs and powered by Microsoft, the software giant, made a celebrity-adorned debut this week.
A plethora of "extraordinary individuals" including actor Kate Bosworth and Nelson Mandela were lined up to feature in the first slate of programming offered by The Fifth Medium (t5m).
Created to produce original "socially conscious" video content and to eschew the "junket circuit," where stars puff forthcoming films and books, t5m.com launched with bureaus in London, Los Angeles and Delhi.
If YouTube, the most popular video website, can be likened to a daily tabloid newspaper, "t5m" wants to become the P2PTV equivalent of a high-brow glossy magazine such as Vanity Fair. The service's name stands for "the fifth medium" - the first four being print, radio, TV and the first incarnation of the web.
Mr. Mandela's HIV/Aids campaign, 46664, is the first charity to work with the service. Under that partnership, t5m had exclusive backstage access to the World Aids Day concert in Johannesburg this week. "It is about high-quality, beautifully presented material unavailable anywhere else," Ms. Bosworth said.
The venture has been dubbed "a brave vote of confidence in editorial craft", by Charlie Muirhead, the t5m chief executive. He made his name when he founded Orchestream, an Internet network company that was briefly worth £1 billion in the heady days of the dot-com boom. It is now part of Oracle, the US technology giant.
Ray Winstone, the British actor, said, "T5m is a great alternative to some of the rubbish in the media, and a great way to educate yourself."
The service's financial backers include Brent Hoberman, a co-founder of LastMinute; John Taysom, the founder of the Reuters Greenhouse Fund; and Rattan Chadha, founder of Mexx, the clothing company.
The new media company will deliver regular interviews with high-profile names, filmed in high-definition and produced by journalists including Jo Craven, the former features editor of Vogue and Rachel Zalis, of Glamour's American edition.
It has invested in a proprietary screen-in-screen user interface that displays thematic links between different pieces of content on the service. "We want our users to become pleasurably lost," Mr. Muirhead said.
T5m will be a test-bed for Microsoft's Silverlight P2P technology, the platform for creating and distributing video online content that is going head-to-head with Adobe's Flash offering. T5m hopes advertising and syndication fees will drive revenues, and joins rivals planning to harness a shift in TV consumption habits including P2PTV leaders Joost and Babelgum.
Reeltime and Fun Little Movies ROK Online TV
ReelTime has entered into a multi-tiered agreement with Fun Little Movies (FLM), the specialist in mobile content distribution. FLM was recently acquired by ROK Entertainment Group, the UK-based mobile technologies, applications, and entertainment development company, to jointly offer made-for-mobile content to network operators worldwide.
FLM specializes in the development, production and distribution of original mobile-oriented comedy for global distribution. Its award-winning productions have been on HBO, Showtime, CBS, Playboy, MTV and Comedy Central. FLM also "pioneered the advertiser-funded concept" for mobile video.
In a cooperative agreement, FLM via ROK will distribute ReelTime's programs to its network of mobile partners worldwide. FLM's mobile partners currently include Sprint, Verizon, and AT&T, as well as mobile operators from China and Japan to Europe, Africa and South America. ROK is distributed around the world through Vodacom South Africa, Avea Turkey, Telenor Pakistan and AIS in Thailand, and is also available direct-to-consumers via Nokia Downloads on the Nokia E series handsets across Europe.
"Beverly Zaslow and Reeltime are ahead of their time with high resolution streaming video. We love how easy it is to watch feature films on their site, and we're thrilled you'll soon find our Fun Little Movies there as well," said Frank Chindamo, FLM's President & Chief Creative Officer. "We're also delighted to begin delivering ReelTime's films on our mobile channels worldwide."
According to Beverly Zaslow, President & COO of ReelTime, "This all-encompassing agreement with Fun Little Movies is just the beginning of our strategy moving forward to branch out into other business models." Zaslow added, "We're sure our viewers will enjoy FLM's library of films. Shorts have become a genre unto themselves, and Frank Chindamo is one of the pioneers of this art form in the digital space."
FLM CEO David Lee will be a featured speaker at the P2P MEDIA SUMMIT LV.
DivX & DeviantART Offer Video Solutions
Excerpted from Business of Cinema Report
DivX and DeviantART, the art-focused community site have launched deviantART Film, a new video category within deviantART. This new category features the DivX media format as the default high-quality viewing option for users.
The new film offering allows deviantART members to easily upload and view DivX video content. Users can watch DivX videos in full-screen on the PC or download videos to playback on any DivX Certified consumer electronics device. Over 100 million DivX certified devices, including DVD players, mobile handsets, and portable media players, have shipped to the marketplace to date.
DivX video solutions power the distribution of content across a number of third-party sites, enabling online publishers and content providers to easily offer a high-quality video experience that extends beyond the PC. With over 17 million unique monthly visitors and over five million registered users, deviantART is one of the most popular sites for independent content creators to share their artistic works with global audiences.
"DivX is an ideal partner for us. They are actively committed to providing independent creators with the necessary tools to create and distribute meaningful content at the highest level of visual quality. deviantART Film participants choosing DivX can share their artistic vision with a global audience in a high quality interoperable format that can be easily watched through low cost devices in the home environment," said deviantART, Director of Artist Relations, Danielle McKay.
DivX Vice President and Group Business Manager, Media Languages, Patrice Lagrange added, "deviantART is an innovative site that offers serious content creators the ability to engage with a large and dynamic community of users, and represents a strong addition to the existing universe of high-quality DivX content. With our 'powered by DivX' content approach, we offer third parties like deviantART a strong enabling platform to easily add high-quality video distribution capabilities to their sites."
DeviantART VP of Business Development Steve Gonzalez will be a featured speaker at the P2P MEDIA SUMMIT LV.
Animation Procreation Contest on P2PTV
Dailymotion, the world's largest independent P2PTV service, based in France, this week announced the launch of its Animation Procreation contest. The competition, which runs until January 4th, invites animators to upload original videos for a chance to win a development deal with renowned producer Loren Bouchard.
Every day, 15,000 new videos are uploaded into Dailymotion's global network of localized video entertainment sites, where a programming team turns the user generated and licensed content into a high quality, entertainment experience for the 3 million daily visitors.
Contestants will be part of Dailymotion's MotionMaker program for its most active creative users. The winning animator will receive mentoring from Mr. Bouchard, whose producer, director, and writer credits include current Adult Swim hit, "Lucy: The Daughter of the Devil" as well as a acclaimed animated series such as "Home Movies," "Science Court" and "Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist."
"We are constantly delighted by the high-quality and imaginative original video contributions submitted by our MotionMakers," said Joy Marcus, General Manager of Dailymotion in the US. "We believe these brilliant individuals should be rewarded. That is why Dailymotion is dedicated to helping these creative individuals get the recognition they deserve."
"Because of the digital tools available today, there's a whole new crop of animators out there doing great work - some of them very much on their own," commented Bouchard. "I'm looking for artists and storytellers with talent, ideas, and unique points of view, who could benefit from a big-brother-type mentor. Dailymotion is a fantastic way to connect with this new breed of animators. I look forward to meeting them."
The "Animation Procreation" is co-sponsored by Animation Magazine, the most comprehensive source covering the art and business of animation, including technology, film, television, gaming, commercials, conferences, events, and trends.
P2PTV Zattoo Looks to Stream Live TV
Excerpted from Michigan Daily Report by Charles Gregg-Geist
Sugih Jamin, an Associate Professor of Computer Science, is trying to redefine television-streaming technology. Jamin hopes that his small Ann Arbor-based company Zattoo will be the first to popularize live television on the Internet in the United States.
Zattoo has been available in parts of Europe since Jamin launched the company in 2005 and aims to reach the United States next year. So far Zattoo has roughly 1.2 million users, most of them in Switzerland.
Jamin has expanded the project from a student's doctoral dissertation to a company with 22 employees in Ann Arbor and five overseas. All but two of the employees in the United States are University of Michigan graduates.
Zattoo uses a P2P file-sharing system similar to BitTorrent, a popular protocol used to exchange music, episodes of television shows, and films.
Jamin said the technology streams television from satellites to users' computers and then among computers "like a mesh." The technology is well-adapted to streaming live television because it's able to broadcast with a much shorter delay than comparable programs, Jamin said.
Rackham Graduate School student Roy Arsan, who studies Internet media networking, said programs like Zattoo should provide faster service than traditional video sites like YouTube.
"YouTube just has a server and a client, as opposed to a P2P system," Arsan said. "Zattoo should be faster because you're distributing among all the peers."
According to the program's website, Zattoo becomes ten times as efficient as current live-broadcasting technology when thousands of users are logged on. Its boosters also claim it switches from channel to channel faster than comparable programs.
Zattoo plays short advertising clips while the programs are being loaded. The clips often contain hyperlinks to advertisers' websites.
Copyright infringement is not a concern because Zattoo's technology prevents recording of its programming, according to the company's website.
Jamin is optimistic that broadcasters will be eager to contract with the company to reach young, tech-savvy consumers.
"The market is wide open for streaming media," said School of Information Prof. Thomas Finholt, Director of the Collaboratory for Research on Electronic Work.
While it has been more difficult for the company to negotiate with American broadcasters than European companies, Jamin said that the company is working to carry as many channels as possible when Zattoo launches in the United States.
"We'd like to carry all the main channels, but which channels we actually get is still uncertain," he said.
The project that became Zattoo began in 2000 as the doctoral dissertation of Wenjie Wang, who was one of Jamin's students at the time and is now the chief architect of the company.
While not designed to be marketable, the software immediately lent itself to broad commercial use.
"We were initially using the program for distributing live conferences on the Internet," said Jamin, "I got phone calls from people who wanted to use it. I figured if we were going to do it, we might as well do it right."
China P2PTV Receives US Cash Infusion
Excerpted from MediaPost Report by Gavin O'Malley
It might take a bit longer for YouTube to rule the world now that Youku.com, a P2PTV service and one of China's rising upstarts, has received another $25 million in private equity funding. China now has the fastest-growing online population worldwide. Second only to the US, China's 160 million web users represent the second-largest global market.
The investment will go toward expanding the company's sales and marketing efforts, along with research and development, and improved video service standards.
Unlike social networking sites - which are now a dime a dozen in China - P2PTV services like Youku face major barriers to entry. Along with higher infrastructure costs associated with video storage, the Chinese government is scrutinizing online video as harshly as it oversees TV programming.
Thanks to strategic partnerships like its deal with Baidu, China's most popular search engine, Youku has established an early lead since its launch last December. Indeed, the service now streams over 70 million videos daily, according to its Founder & CEO Victor Koo.
As a result, Youku has attracted a long list of foreign and domestic brands, including Ford, Hewlett Packard, Dell, Samsung, and Chinese game developer Shanda Interactive Entertainment.
"Online video is rapidly changing the media landscape both in the US and China," says Len Baker, Managing Director of Sutter Hill Ventures, which first invested in Youku one year ago. "We are confident that Youku's management team will execute its business plan and capitalize on this tremendous opportunity in China."
Other firms participating in this latest round of investment included Brookside Capital Partners, Bain Capital, Farallon Capital, and Chengwei Ventures.
Prior to this latest round, Youku completed two rounds of venture financing of $15 million in total from Sutter Hill Ventures, Farallon Capital, and Chengwei Ventures.
New P2P Program from Zoom Developers
Zoom Developers, a company specializing in P2P file-sharing software development, has recently launched a new software program called P2P Muzic. It is a powerful file-sharing software program with no restrictions that one can use to download MP3s.
The P2P Muzic software is a one-of-a-kind online P2P application that lets users download all types of quality audio files. Specifically, P2P Muzic is compatible with MP3, MP4, wav, wma, aiff, aac, ogg, dct, flac, gsm, raw, vox, ram, m4p, and au files.
P2P Muzic is easy to download and install. The software itself is easy-to-use with a quick search feature for fast music downloads. Users can download music while browsing the net or working on their PCs without interruption.
UK Company Buys Stake in Nettwerk
Excerpted from Vancouver Sun Report by Derrick Penner
Nettwerk Music Group, the manager of high-powered acts such as Avril Lavigne and Sarah McLachlan, has struck a deal that will give it bigger inroads into the United Kingdom market.
UK-based MAMA Group, which operates media companies and a network of live venues, and represents its own stable of prominent acts and producers, said today it's buying stakes in several Nettwerk businesses for up to $14 million US.
Ric Arboit, President of the Nettwerk Label, said the deal evolved in discussions with MAMA executives over about a year-and-a-half. Arboit added that for Nettwerk, it was about breaking into the world's second-largest music market.
"Our reach today is a lot greater than it was yesterday," Arboit said in an interview.
MAMA Group said its intent is to create the world's largest artist management collective with more than 60 artists. MAMA is buying 20 per cent in each of Nettwerk's management and record label entities along with a stake in the publishing business, which would make the firm an equal partner with Nettwerk's partners.
MAMA, headed by co-chief executives Adam Driscoll and Dean James, said the alliance "creates one of the most exciting opportunities in the music industry, not by creating the biggest music business, but by combining our skills and assets to become the best."
The transaction is staged with MAMA paying an initial $6 million US, $3 million in cash and $3 million in MAMA stock, which trades on the London Stock Exchange's Alternative Investment Market.
The remaining $8 million in payments will be subject to Nettwerk's companies hitting certain profit targets in 2008 and 2009, and also be made in combination of cash and stock.
MAMA also granted Nettwerk's partners options to purchase more than 10 million additional shares at 5.75 pence per share, which will vest over five years.
Nettwerk VP & GM Brent Muhle will be a featured speaker at the P2P MEDIA SUMMIT LV.
Study Suggests P2P Users Buy More Music
Excerpted from DailyTech Report
The music recording industry would like for you to believe that P2P file sharing negatively affects CD purchasing, but "not so," claims a study commissioned by Industry Canada.
According to a report by University of London researchers Brigitte Andersen and Marion Frenz, music downloads have a positive effect on music purchases among Canadian downloaders but that there is no effect taken over the entire population.
"The analysis of the entire Canadian population does not uncover either a positive or negative relationship between the number of files downloaded from P2P networks and CDs purchased," the researchers wrote.
"However, our analysis of the Canadian P2P file-sharing subpopulation suggests that there is a strong positive relationship between P2P file sharing and CD purchasing. That is, among Canadians actually engaged in it, P2P file sharing increases CD purchasing. We estimate that the effect of one additional P2P download per month is to increase music purchasing by 0.44 CDs per year."
The study has come under fire from a Texas economics professor, who criticized the original study's presentation of two separate results, one for the entire sample and one just for downloaders - to which one of the original study's authors responded.
Further noted by Dr. Michael Geist of the University of Ottawa is a response from George Barker and Richard Tooth stating that a more likely explanation for the relationship between P2P music sharing and CD sales is "that those who download more are more interested in a variety of music and so purchase more CDs."
CBS to Pirate Bay: You're OK
Excerpted from The Register Report by Chris Williams
Last.fm, the music recommendation site owned by US media conglomerate CBS, has given Pirate Bay the thumbs up to use its servers to add radio streams to BitTorrent searches. The Swedish anti-copyright site has added a Last.fm widget to results pages as part of a new drop-down of extra information on artists.
A spokesman for London-based Last.fm said that while it would not seek to endorse Pirate Bay, it has no control over who uses its application programming interface (API). Even if it did, to stop Pirate Bay wouldn't be "in the spirit of" the API, he said.
Last.fm's main service is providing music recommendations which it does by matching similar users' tastes, and creating bespoke radio streams around them. The use of its servers by Pirate Bay marks an interesting test of the trend for websites to offer their own API.
The API acquiescence is unlikely to win fans in the beleaguered record industry. The site spent months itself courting labels to assure its own legal status, while its parent company CBS is a major owner of US music radio stations.
Pirate Bay's outspoken stance against rights holders meanwhile, as well as publicity-seeking antics, have marked it out for special resentment from record industry bodies such as the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Servers were seized by Swedish authorities following US pressure last year, but the site quickly reemerged.
As well as its main broadcast television network, CBS also runs a TV channel with Warner Bros. in the US called The CW. Warner Bros. sits on the board of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), which has alleged that the operators of the Pirate Bay are profiteering criminals.
CBS paid $280 million for Last.fm in May this year, but these are choppy waters for the site to navigate.
At the time of the CBS takeover, its founders pledged to continue under its original principles of openness and sharing music. They also welcomed the massive cash injection.
A Google P2P Network?
Excerpted from WebProNews Report by Aaron Wall
Is Google contemplating a P2P network? Google, already has a near infinite number of data points to compute relevancy for the active parts of the web, and is looking to gather even more user data information.
In addition, Google will likely have to address copyright issues. Allowing consumers to share different types of files such as music with other users could trigger the sort of copyright complaints the company already faces over videos on its YouTube video sharing site. One person familiar with the matter says Google is discussing with copyright holders how to approach the issue and has some preliminary solutions.
This is going to move Google up the value system by giving it a unique data source, giving it unique relevancy signals, keeping users locked into its services and using its services longer, shift power from copyright holders to Google, and eventually allow Google to sell content.
But there will also be a big upside, especially to marketers and content creators who are willing to give away high-value content to gain mind-share and market-share. By creating content that people would want to store and share on Google, advertisers would get cheap or free exposure for their business interests.
Google eventually has to move away from links because links are too polluted. What better relevancy signals can they come up with than attention data and how often people cite and share data on its network? Feedburner, Google Reader, iGoogle, Gmail, and Youtube are already part of the Google network. Soon your hard drive will be, too.
Coming Events of Interest
P2P - Sin or Savior? - December 6th at 2 PM ET free webcast sponsored by VeriSign, presented by Streaming Media, and featuring Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen, Editor-In-Chief, Streaming Media; Stephen Condon, Vice President, Media and Entertainment, VeriSign; Marty Lafferty, CEO, Distributed Computing Industry Association (DCIA); and Guy Nouri, CEO/Founder, Dragonfly.
FutureMedia 2007 - December 13th at BAFTA in London, England. Joost CEO Mike Volpi has added his name to C21's FutureMedia 2007 keynote speaker line-up, joining the BBC, Bebo, and MySpace at what promises to be a definitive digital media event.
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.
IPv6 - Connectivity, Community & Consumer Electronics - Monday January 7th from 3-4 PM at The Venetian, Las Vegas, NV. This CES panel will discuss how the new IPv6 protocol will impact the consumer and enterprise experience of a connected world. Topics will include mobility, interoperability, media content distribution, and what IPv6 means for consumer electronics manufacturers.
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.
Digital Music Forum East - February 26th-27th in New York, NY. Major and indie music label executives, artists and their representatives, and technology and consumer electronics leaders come together for this "must attend" event. Now in its 8th year, Digital Music Forum East is the leading event focused on the intersection of technology and music. Don't miss the opportunity to be part of the industry's future.
P2P ADVERTISING UPFRONT NY - Sponsored by the DCIA March 11th in New York, NY in conjunction with the Media Summit New York (MSNY). The industry's premiere 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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