February 4, 2008
Volume XX, Issue 11
Vuze Rocks the P2PTV World
Excerpted from Beet.TV Report by Andy Plesser
Vuze, the peer-to-peer television (P2PTV) high-resolution video platform has reached 4 million monthly registered users, half of which watch videos on the desktop application daily, Jim Diaz, head of strategy for the Palo Alto-based start-up said this week.
He said his company is like "Joost with an audience," adding that Joost, which is still in beta, has approximately 300,000 registered users.
The high-definition (HD) Vuze video player has been downloaded some 14 million times since the company launched last year. Vuze is an evolution of Azureus, an open-source BitTorrent-based application that has been widely installed over the past five years. Vuze, the platform for licensed content, launched last April with 2 million existing Azureus users.
The company creates channels for licensed content from large and medium-sized video publishers. Showtime and BBC are some of the better known. Diaz sees the target universe of video publishers at around 10,000.
He said that advertising programs are being managed by the content creators as well as a Vuze advertising platform. Popular content on Vuze is generally short-form. Music video and extreme sports are widely watched. One of the most popular shows is the BBC's Top Gear.
Vuze CEO Gilles BianRosa said this week at NATPE that half the downloads are in HD, although only 20% of the content on Vuze is HD. Coming soon will be streaming HD video.
The company is well funded, having closed its $20 million Series C round in December with NEA, Redpoint, Battery Ventures, and other top tier investors.
ROO Offers P2P Delivery via Abacast & Pando
ROO Group announced that it has formed a tripartite business alliance with Abacast and Pando Networks to offer P2P streaming solutions to its current and future customers. The alliance will provide live streaming and video-on-demand (VoD) through the ROO Media Player.
By combining forces with Abacast and Pando, ROO will be able to offer these P2P products as white-label solutions to its global network of customers - increasing streaming quality while reducing associated bandwidth costs.
The companies will work with ROO to integrate their respective technologies into the ROO Media Player environment to facilitate a seamless end-user experience - offering both solutions through the single ROO client application.
The alliance is consistent with ROO's previously announced intentions to create content delivery network (CDN) capabilities for its clients. Through the partnership, Abacast will supply its hybrid P2P/CDN solution for live streaming content while Pando will provide managed P2P distribution services for VoD content.
Abacast and Pando have a combined installed base of approximately 62 million individual customers today, which in conjunction with the 1,100+ ROO Media Players currently deployed on the Internet will form the basis of ROO's newly formed hybrid CDN/P2P content delivery model.
"P2P is the most efficient way to transmit rich media or bandwidth-intensive content to a broad base of end-users, and we feel that Pando and Abacast represent the best-of-breed solutions available in the market," said Kaleil Isaza Tuzman, Chairman & CEO of ROO Group.
"ROO gives Abacast a great opportunity to increase the deployment of our hybrid P2P technology on a global scale," said Michael King, CEO of Abacast.
"This is a very exciting three-way partnership, which allows Pando to focus on our expertise in file-transfer technology while becoming part of a holistic solution for global web-based video delivery," said Robert Levitan, Chairman & CEO of Pando Networks. "As the boom in online video usage continues, we want to be part of a team that can meet any corporate customer's needs. ROO, Pando, and Abacast form that team."
Javien Unveils New Media Payment Gateway
Javien Digital Payment Solutions this week unveiled the Javien New Media Payment Gateway, the first transaction payment gateway tailored specifically to the needs of companies that sell digital assets like music, movies, games, and software, whether sold via the Internet, or to mobile phones.
For the first time, these companies can access a total commerce solution for all they require to sell digital content, via a single log-in.
Before this release, companies faced a considerable challenge when it came to selecting and managing all the vendors and partners needed to deliver digital content successfully to their customers. Even if they were able to gather and implement the best technologies and payment gateway providers for their unique needs, ongoing management became an administrative burden, requiring more manual reconciliation of reports from various systems.
The integration of the Javien New Media Payment Gateway within Javien's Total Commerce Solution has reduced these burdensome requirements while also providing a merchant portal that centralizes customer care.
"Our platform doesn't just deliver the full breadth of technology needed to successfully sell music, movies and games - it also streamlines the entire range of merchant processes by providing a central management point for administering billing and customer care," said Leslie Poole, Javien CEO.
"When a merchant is encountering an issue with processing a purchase, it needs more from its payment processing partners than an e-mail form and a response 48 hours later. If the merchant is using our platform and payment gateway, it can access an actual person who will help address the issue as well as a way to track its resolution."
The Javien New Media Payment Gateway, with payment processing handled through Optimal Payments, provides real-time authorization for VISA, MasterCard, American Express, Discover, Diners, debit cards and electronic check payments while delivering purchase response in less than three seconds. A range of choices for financial institution and payment schedules promotes quick settlement of funds, and the ability to accept, process and settle multiple currencies eliminates exchange fees for consumers. The gateway also includes fraud protection capabilities utilizing the 3-D Secure protocol developed by Visa.
"The range of capabilities that Javien provides within a single offering is impressive to say the least," said Marty Lafferty, CEO of the Distributed Computing Industry Association (DCIA), the leading global P2P industry trade organization. "Given its flexibility in terms of both payment options and currencies, the potential for its international use by commercial file-sharing networks is immense."
Report from CEO Marty Lafferty
 Paul Zilik, Dominique Leguern, and the entire MidemNet/Midem team are to be heartily congratulated for producing a well orchestrated, stimulating, and immensely valuable 42nd annual conference in Cannes, France this week.
An extensive panoply of exhibits, keynotes, panels, concerts, awards programs, and special events portrayed the music industry in a very positive light, executed to the most minute detail in world-class fashion. Even the weather cooperated at this beautiful seaside resort, with unseasonably warm temperatures and sunny skies throughout.
The DCIA was thrilled late last year to learn that QTRAX had chosen this year's MidemNet/Midem to officially launch. Since our trade association's inception, we have been very impressed with QTRAX, as it has steadily developed its business model, relationships, technology, and marketing plans.
As DCINFO readers know, we have long held the view that an important step in fostering advancement of the P2P distribution channel for copyrighted musical works will be the conversion of currently un-monetized infringing traffic into an advertising-supported environment for music discovery. And this is exactly what QTRAX has positioned itself to do.
Its acceptance will also spur a host of new brands to seek to compete in this space, including some that until now may have lacked the means to contribute revenue to the music industry. This in turn can help bring about a robust commercial file-sharing marketplace and genuine renaissance for the recorded music business.
A solid base of advertising support for digitally redistributed music can also create a platform upon which to expand hybrid models, where consumers and advertisers contribute to a dual revenue stream (similar to cable television) as well as more efficiently and effectively promote fully consumer-paid downloads, which have demonstrated promising initial growth during the past couple of years.
The DCIA offers our full support for this direction. And previous public statements by music industry leaders have been encouraging regarding their progress in this regard with QTRAX.
Reaction to QTRAX's high-visibility launch at MidemNet/Midem, however, has raised key questions: is the music industry ready to allow an ad-supported P2P music service to exist; will consumer acceptance demonstrate that this is an effective antidote against copyright infringement; and can the service's implementation live up to its leaders' ambitious vision?
If industry leaders are now willing to formalize their preliminary support, this could herald a real turning point for the music sector - establishing a potentially significant new revenue stream, inaugurating a commercial alternative to online copyright infringement that will complement existing legal remedies, and perhaps most important, open new doors for additional innovation.
In the period immediately following its availability this week, QTRAX software downloads skyrocketed, suggesting that fully-licensed ad-supported P2P music can be a big winner with consumers. And by extrapolation, a truly compelling alternative to online music piracy.
If the look-and-feel, functionality, and feature-set of the V.2 QTRAX beta software that launched Monday, on the one hand, and the promotional activities, materials, and excitement of the QTRAX launch campaign, on the other, reveal anything about the company's ability to implement, the capable QTRAX team should be able to successfully fulfill the compelling vision articulated by its company's leaders - again, provided the record industry will sanction this effort.
The DCIA is optimistic that the positive momentum of the groundbreaking substantive work done already by QTRAX and the music sector will continue; the clouds of uncertainty will clear; and the vision presented with such high energy and enthusiasm during the QTRAX launch events at MidemNet/Midem will be realized. Share wisely, and take care.
Ad-Supported: The Next Step in Digital Music
Excerpted from eFluxMedia Report by Max Brenn
Last.fm, SpiralFrog, Imeem, and QTRAX are only a few of the companies that have launched websites over the past six months where music is provided for free, either to be listened to or to be downloaded.
The approaches are different though. Imeem for example allows its users to save tracks on personal web pages. Last.fm allows users to listen to one song three times, after which they are invited to purchase the track from iTunes or Amazon MP3.
SpiralFrog gives users the possibility to download songs protected through digital rights management (DRM) technology. Users have to visit the website once a month to watch more ads. Otherwise, digital locks on the music will make it inaccessible.
QTRAX offers all the music available on the various P2P websites, but DRM-protected. The songs you download can be played on a QTRAX ad-supported player. The player expands to fill the user's screen, and you can surf the web with a Mozilla-based browser inside the player.
QTRAX may have rushed its launch, as there are reports that contracts were still to be signed. But other than these problems, which are probably just temporary, the practice of offering music for advertising seems to have caught on.
According to the INTENT MediaWorks sponsored "P2P Usage Survey" conducted in May 2007 (INTENT subsequently merged with Beyond Media into Brand Asset Digital), nearly three-quarters of US Internet users are willing to view ads in exchange for free or discounted downloads. The study was fielded by InfoSurv among Internet users ages 16 to 40, all of whom used multiple online services for searching, downloading, and sharing music.
Should services such as QTRAX and SpiralFrog begin to gain some ground, we may just witness a spectacular decrease of piracy levels in digital music. What would be the point of taking a risk for something that is free anyway, even if with some small restrictions?
Music Industry Tries Carrot after Years of Stick
Excerpted from Reuters Report by Kate Holton
Away from the headlines of job losses, grumbling artists, and falling global sales, the music industry is trying new business models to boost digital sales and offset the decline in CDs.
At the annual industry meeting on the French coast this week, much of the talk was dominated by a new service called QTRAX, which plastered all available space with huge posters declaring the CD dead and estimating that over 1.2 billion illegal downloads would be made during the event itself.
QTRAX plans to offer millions of tracks for free with the backing of the music industry, though on Monday it was still in talks for deals.
It plans to act as a legal online file-sharing site, funded through advertising, and it is one of several services that have been launched after criticism that the music industry has been distracted by the fight against piracy, when it should have been developing alternative services.
Janus Friis, who once terrified the media industry with file-sharing network Kazaa, told the Midem conference that the industry was beginning to move from the "stick" to the "carrot" approach, citing legal online services Last.fm and Imeem as leading examples.
"You have the carrot and you have the stick, and you kind of need to use both, but the carrot has become much more important," he said. "Last.fm and Imeem are beginning to be great Internet services."
London-based Last.fm has more than 15 million active users and is known for its song-recommendation system among fans. It announced a deal last week to allow users to stream a song free, up to three times, while a link connects a user to a legitimate music store such as Amazon or iTunes.
Social network Imeem is also built around music, is supported by advertising and boasts 20 million users. Steve Jang, Imeem's Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), told Reuters the site commanded great loyalty from its users because it was much more than just a retail offering.
As part of the transition, U2 manager Paul McGuinness told the conference that the time had come for new thinking on how the music and technology sectors worked together.
He touted the idea that music could be provided as part of a subscription service for an Internet service provider (ISP) in the same way that some mobile phone companies have worked, with the revenue being shared.
But it is not just the payment systems that are changing.
Veteran music promoter Harvey Goldsmith told Reuters that the idea of combining musicians with a brand was not new, but warned it had to be handled carefully.
"Some acts like the Arctic Monkeys would think their street cred was under attack," he said. "But the truth is it's an opportunity. You have to remember that a band is also a brand, and if you can link the two and it makes sense, then it's cool."
"But it's just as valid for new, up-and-coming acts as the established ones, because what better credibility can a big brand have than discovering a new band."
Restrained Tone Permeates Midem
Excerpted from Financial Times Report by Ben Fenton
It would be easy to conclude that music industry executives patrolling the Croisette in Cannes all wear a haunted look. Revenues from recorded music are crumbling before their eyes. The growth of digital music is far too slow to make up for it. And the immediate future looks horribly like the recent past, only worse.
The reality is, of course, that their one-thousand-mile stares probably derive from sleeplessness; the inevitable toll of tumbling from hotel to hotel along Cannes' palm-lined, moonlit seafront in search of the next decent cocktail.
Normally, business at Midem is conducted from yacht to yacht, but seasoned veterans of the industry's most prolonged schmooze have already detected a certain restraint in spending.
Everything at this year's event hinges on the digital future, of course. That was true last year: the only difference is that 12 months have past and all those executives, whether minor chiefs of the majors or major chiefs of the minors, have still failed to figure out how to make money from that digital future.
From the opening MidemNet presentations, with Professor Lawrence Lessig of Stanford, pleading with the industry to set the children free - well free to download, anyway - to the final session with Chad Hurley of YouTube and Joanna Shields of Bebo, the business models of the past have been hunted into dark corners.
Estimates of how many illegal downloads are taking place every year vary according to the commercial interests that the person speaking has in inflating or deflating them. But everyone agrees it is billions.
Robin Kent, former CEO of SpiralFrog, the first serious attempt at an ad-supported download service, and now chief strategy officer of QTRAX, the next and rather more heavyweight effort, told me that whichever single is number one in the US is having five million songs a day stolen.
And each one takes a little more blood from the old body.
The music industry in Cannes is speaking in quiet tones, avoiding antagonism. Some - like Prof. Lessig and Mr. Kent or David Pakman of eMusic - say the answer lies in taming the wild market and persuading it at least to watch a couple of adverts in exchange for a lifetime of free gifts.
The only clarity in Cannes - although whether anything results from it remains to be seen - is that something has to be done fast.
James Blunt Stirs Souls at Midem
James Blunt has gone from playing small London clubs to headlining UK tours, from obscurity to quadruple-platinum status in much the way that QTRAX hopes to advance music distribution in competition with unauthorized file-sharing networks. QTRAX sponsored James Blunt's live performance Sunday night at Midem.
But far from being a rising pop product, James Blunt is the anti-hero of mass marketing. Just as QTRAX is not your average online music store.
James Blunt is an artist whose audience has found him, embraced him, and spread the news; an artist who has become an unlikely chart-topper, drawing comparisons to the likes of David Gray and Damien Rice; an artist who has built his following the old-fashioned way, by constant gigging and contagious word-of-mouth - fan by fan, week by week, month by month.
QTRAX is poised to revolutionize the music industry through a similar process. Peer by peer, hour by hour, day by day.
James Blunt's compelling songs, captivating voice, and charismatic presence are his own best salesmen, and once again this week his audience found him in Cannes.
LL Cool J Hip Hops in Cannes
Since his auspicious emergence, LL Cool J has catapulted from over night hip-hop sensation to bona fide cross-cultural phenomenon in much the way that QTRAX, which sponsored his Monday night appearance at Midem, ultimately intends to make its stand in the digital music marketplace.
Hip-hop is notorious for short-lived careers, but LL Cool J is the inevitable exception that proves the rule. Releasing his first hit, "I Can't Live Without My Radio," in 1985 when he was just 17 years old, LL initially was a hard-hitting, streetwise b-boy with spare beats and ballistic rhymes. He quickly developed an alternate style, a romantic lover's rap epitomized by his mainstream breakthrough single, "I Need Love."
LL's knack for making hip-hop as accessible as pop has been one of his greatest talents. QTRAX similarly will prove its staying power by expanding and refining its brand, adapting to consumer tastes.
LL is not only known as one of the greatest MCs of all time, but also as a great actor. Having started this aspect of his career in TV sitcoms, he has earned bigger and better film roles, and has acted alongside such stars as Whoopi Goldberg, Samuel L. Jackson, Jamie Lee Curtis, James Woods, Al Pacino, Omar Epps, Pam Grier, Stanley Tucci, and Dennis Quaid, to name a few.
QTRAX understands it must work very hard to be able to earn its way to industry acceptance and ultimately to the stardom it seeks as an online service.
Even though his film career has taken off, LL hasn't forgotten his love of hip-hop music. His insatiable ambition is admirable, especially considering his already mythic status in contemporary culture. With over 20 million albums sold he's the most successful hip-hop artist in history, yet his fame has not overshadowed his artistic achievements.
Now with his music and acting careers firmly on track, LL finds himself poised on the precipice of multimedia superstardom. Through his music, movies, writing and philanthropy, LL Cool J continues to share with his audiences an upbeat and positive philosophy - and give a floor-shaking performance - that made for a terrific event in Cannes.
Don Henley Makes Memories in France
Don Henley and Glenn Frey formed the Eagles in 1971, a group that pioneered and personified a unique musical style blending country, folk, R&B, rock, and pop sensibilities. In much the same way, the sponsor of Don Henley's performance Tuesday night at Midem, QTRAX, will combine best-of-class attributes of current online music offerings with its own special features.
The Eagles would go on to become one of the most creatively and commercially successful bands of all time, selling over 100 million albums worldwide. They won four Grammy awards, topped the album charts five times and became one of the top concert draws of their time. The Eagles were the first band in history to rack up domestic unit sales of over 10 million for two separate albums - Hotel California and Eagles Greatest Hits, which, at 26 million copies, stands as the best selling album of all time in the US.
It is this kind of excellence that has inspired QTRAX to reach for the stars with its own aspirations for success in the digital music marketplace, starting with the largest catalog of music tracks of any service - by an order of magnitude.
Don Henley's subsequent solo career has propelled him into one of the most relevant, and resonant, musical voices of our time - with a gift for melody and lyric in the service of passionate conviction and incisive, socio-political observation.
QTRAX is similarly attuned to its role as a responsible participant in the music industry.
Don Henley's career as a musician and an activist continues to roll on. He has lent his name and talents to environmental and restoration projects, the preservation of wildlife and wetlands, and numerous other fundraising efforts.
QTRAX from its launch will give something back through its association with World Hunger Year (WHY) Artists Against Hunger & Poverty.
On a personal note, Don Henley says, "My marriage and the birth of my children have had a profound effect. Despite all the sham and selfishness, life is still good. Children constantly rekindle hope and appreciation - and they have excellent bullshit detectors. It's a wonderful thing." And so was having Don Henley perform in Cannes.
P2P Downloading a Top Choice for Kids
Excerpted from Slyck.com Report by Thomas Mennecke
Armed with their parents' credit cards and an iTunes account, preteens are finding that iTunes offers a decent enough avenue for digital music. And since the iPod is closely associated with iTunes, it stands to reason that Apple's iTunes has managed to carve an impressive niche among the younger generation.
The NPD Group's latest study seems to at least partially support this concept. However, the surprising reality is that among the 9-14 age group, iTunes is only a competitive, not dominant, player. According to the study, 49% of preteens used iTunes, 26% used LimeWire, while 16% traded music via MySpace. The remaining 7% was unaccounted for in the study.
The NPD Group's somewhat pro-industry reaction to this study confirmed suspicions that downloading from P2P remained a substantial component of the overall downloading picture in this age group.
"It's encouraging that so many young consumers are acquiring digital music the legal way - by paying for it," according to Russ Crupnick, Vice President and Entertainment Industry Analyst for The NPD Group.
"On the other hand, it's surprising how unsupervised they are. The music industry hoped that litigation and education might encourage parents to keep better tabs on their kids' digital music activities, but the truth is many kids continue to share music via P2P."
With their parents' credit cards and money, and the simplicity of iTunes and iPod, it would appear there would be little incentive for preteens to use anything other than Apple's music store. However, this convenience appears to only have a limited impact on the downloading habits of children. Additionally, the study doesn't take into consideration BitTorrent's impact on music acquisition - only P2P.
Another interesting point to extract is the age group of those studied.
The adults who are now charged with raising 9-14 year olds grew up a decade ago in the online environment. Those teenagers are now 20 or 30 somethings with children. This is especially significant considering that 14 years ago, the digital revolution was just emerging from its infancy. And only 9 years ago, Napster launched its first release.
The NPD group argues that parents should have deeper vigilance; however, this ideal could be difficult to enforce considering many young parents are file sharers themselves.
RIAA Chief: No Need for Mandatory ISP Filtering
Excerpted from Ars Technica Report by Nate Anderson
U2's manager might love the idea of legally-mandated filtering, but the head of the RIAA says that there's no need for such an approach in the US. The RIAA still wants to see a thousand filters bloom, of course, but it holds out hope for a "marketplace solution" to the issue.
Cary Sherman, the RIAA chief, made his comments at a Washington, DC technology conference where he expressed his differences with U2 manager Paul McGuinness. McGuinness generated applause in Cannes this week at a music industry event by calling for mandatory content filtering at the ISP level.
"Paul is European," said Sherman, according to CNet, "and in Europe there has been much more of a regulatory approach to these issues."
The RIAA does not support this approach in the US, opting instead to back the tradeoffs of the DMCA. That law allows ISPs a "safe harbor" for the content passing through their networks so long as they respond to takedown notices and legal requests in a timely fashion.
But the group welcomes voluntary filtering of the kind promised by AT&T. This is sometimes said to be in the best interests of ISPs because it can help them control bandwidth. Verizon, which has bandwidth to burn, though, has showed no interest in becoming a copyright cop.
Tom Tauke, who heads Verizon's lobbying efforts, said at the same conference that his company had no interest in following AT&T down the yellow brick road to Filtertown. "We don't want to get into the business of inspecting the bits and figuring out what is and is not appropriate traffic," he said, according to CNet.
Tauke also gave voice to the obvious downside of voluntary filtering, one not often mentioned by pro-filtering groups like the RIAA.
In addition to obvious worries about customer privacy (and outright anger) at deep packet inspection (DPI) of all their bits, Verizon understands that becoming a copyright cop carries a high price: it's only a matter of time before the company would face pressure to police other industries.
As commerce and leisure activities increasingly go online, such a move could burden ISPs with the need to police all sorts of traffic for all sorts of behaviors.
With its fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) strategy, open network initiative, and opposition to filtering, Verizon seems headed down a different path from AT&T.
EU Court: Downloaders Can Stay Private
Excerpted from Associated Press Report by Aoiff White
Record labels and film studios cannot demand that telecommunications companies hand over the names and addresses of people who are suspected of sharing copyright-protected music and movies online, the EU's top court ruled Tuesday.
But European Union nations could if they want introduce rules to oblige companies to hand over personal data in civil cases, the European Court of Justice said.
The court upheld the Spanish telecom company Telefonica SA's right to refuse to hand over information that would identify who had used the file-sharing program Kazaa to distribute copyright material owned by members of Promusicae, a Spanish trade group for film and music producers.
EU law does not require governments to protect copyright by forcing companies to disclose personal data in civil legal actions, the Luxembourg-based court ruled.
They could draft national rules to change this, but they will then have to balance the right to privacy against property rights, a court statement said.
Both are fundamental rights, the court said, and governments will need to find ways to reconcile them and allow copyright holders seek some kind of compensation.
A Spanish court had asked the European court to give guidance on the case after Promusicae complained of Telefonica's refusal to hand over details identifying the people who used the computer addresses linked to the unauthorized downloads.
Telefonica claimed Spanish law only allows it to share personal data for criminal prosecutions or matters of public security and national defense.
The EU ruling is important because courts across Europe have been moving in different directions.
A Belgian court last July said a local Internet provider should install blocking software to stop unlicensed downloads within six months while a German court in August refused to order Internet providers to give record labels information identifying file sharers.
A music industry group, IFPI, said record labels would push on with their campaign against Internet piracy and the court had confirmed the need to have effective tools to tackle unauthorized copying.
P2P Users Blast Comcast in FCC Proceeding
Excerpted from Ars Technica Report by Matthew Lasar
"On numerous occasions, my access to legal BitTorrent files was cut off by Comcast," a systems administrator based in Indianapolis wrote to the FCC shortly after the proceeding began.
"During this period, I managed to troubleshoot all other possible causes of this issue, and it was my conclusion (speaking as a competent IT administrator) that this could only be occurring due to direct action at the ISP (Comcast) level."
The comment cycle began on January 14th. It came at the request of net neutrality advocates whose petition to the FCC cited an Associate Press investigation concluding that in some instances Comcast "hindered file sharing by subscribers who used BitTorrent."
The cable giant claims that it has delayed access when usage was high, but has not deliberately singled out any sites or services. But Free Press, Public Knowledge, and others groups want the Commission to issue a declaratory ruling on whether the practices with which Comcast and others have been charged violate the FCC's Internet Policy Statement.
That declaration, issued in August 2005, said that the FCC "has jurisdiction necessary to ensure that providers of telecommunications for Internet access or Internet Protocol-enabled (IP-enabled) services are operated in a neutral manner."
So far most of the filers in this proceeding have written their own comments rather than rely on web auto forms. They say they want the Commission to find out what Comcast is really up to.
"If you so much as open a BitTorrent client on a computer on the Comcast network, your entire connection drops to almost a crawl," one filer complains. "Comcast is throttling my connection speed when I am transferring files from work to home," another reports. "They are also interrupting my connections."
And a third: "I have experienced this throttling of bandwidth in sharing open-source software, e.g., Knoppix and Open Office. Also I see considerable differences in speed ftp sessions vs. html. They are obviously limiting speed in ftp as well."
And a fourth: "Late during the summer of 2007, I experienced that Comcast's bandwidth throttling system was affecting Lotus Notes traffic. Several users at my company experienced an inability to communicate with our Lotus Notes e-mail servers if they were uploading over 1mb of data. This problem caused a lot of headache for my company."
Some commenters corroborate charges that the ISP inserts RST packets-the equivalent of a telephone hang-up signal-into large file streams that the company doesn't like.
"I believe that Comcast Communications is using an application called Sandvine to insert a proverbial 'dial tone' into a data stream," a commenter writes. "There are security measures put in place to prevent a hacker from sneaking data into a data stream, but as Comcast can monitor those streams they can perfectly forge an RST packet that will be interpreted as coming from the other party."
Another filer agrees:
"I personally feel that Comcast is inserting RST packets into other TCP protocols, not just BitTorrent," he writes. "We run a custom chat server on port 2001. The connection will never stay up for longer than an hour before the connection is reset. A year or so earlier, this was never the case, and our connection would stay up for days on end. When the traffic is encrypted (in an SSH tunnel), the connection stays up, fine."
Ditto, says yet another sysop:
"I suggest that they have selected specific ports that are known to carry sustained high-bandwidth traffic and destinations or origins that could not possibly afford to enforce a restraining order and limited that traffic as best they could by rewriting packets to disturb the flow of traffic."
And several filers argue that Comcast's alleged practices already fall under the jurisdiction of a federal law: the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
"I suspect that violating criminal law is sufficient reason for the FCC to regulate Comcast's actions," one supporter of this argument writes. "Need we also mention false advertising, and terminating users accounts for passing an invisible and undocumented monthly bandwidth quota?"
Others are less certain of how exactly the FCC or the courts should regulate Comcast's ISP behavior, but they are sure that the Commission-or somebody-should force the company to be honest with consumers about its practices.
"If Comcast's technology is unable to meet the demands of its users and Comcast is forced to slow popular traffic, then maybe they are over-selling the service," a commenter says. "This calls into question their advertising model. If they advertise X rates, but only delivery Y rates, then it should be sold as Y."
Another consumer argues that honesty would only be fair, given that "in many places, Comcast (and other cable companies) may be the only high speed provider as DSL is not always available. Until competing services such as Verizon FiOS can reach out, many users are stuck with this level of service."
"I don't like the idea of making an example out of Comcast," he concludes, "but a hefty fine and requiring them to publish their bandwidth caps may mitigate much of this down the road."
Comcast has yet to file a response to any of these user complaints and suggestions. The corporation will probably wait until the comment period of the proceeding ends and the reply-to-comments window opens on February 14th.
February 28th will be the last day to participate in this proceeding. The docket number is 07-52.
How Tiered Internet Pricing Could Facilitate P2P
Excerpted from Circle ID Report by Brough Turner
Time Warner Cable's planned experiment with tiered charging for Internet access has generated a flurry of coverage in the blogsphere, but no new insights.
The primary problem ISPs complain about is that 5% of their customers use 90% of the available bandwidth and when they examine this traffic, it's mostly P2P file sharing. A reasonable question is how to allow as much of this traffic as possible without increasing an ISP's variable costs or slowing down their other users.
This may not be as difficult as it appears. Indeed if Internet access was as competitive as mobile telephony, we might already have seen what I'm about to propose - a combination of bundled pricing equivalent to mobile's "free nights and weekends" and "free on-net calls" with a way to facilitate P2P traffic that leverages exactly these "free" periods.
ISPs have some costs which are relatively fixed and others that are tied to usage. A network is a relatively fixed cost and when it's not full, the incremental cost of adding traffic is zero! This is the reason mobile operators give away free nights and weekends. They've built their mobile network for the peak daytime traffic, so it costs them nothing to run promotions that add incremental traffic at off hours. Peak hours and off hours may be different for an ISP, but the concept is the same.
When a data pipe is lightly loaded the ISP's cost of adding incremental traffic is zero. On the other hand, some ISP costs are usage based, for example "IP Transit" or more properly, Internet Transit. This is the ISP's upstream cost to send and receive traffic to/from the rest of the Internet.
However, even here, usage-based costs occur at heavy usage. Light usage periods don't save money. To understand what's happening, it's worth a digression on Internet Transit.
Internet access is monopoly or duopoly or a heavily regulated industry. The middle mile connections from the local network to the Internet backbone may or may not be competitive depending on where you are. But the Internet backbone itself is extremely competitive. If you can get to a major Internet Exchange Point in the US or Europe, there are many providers offering extremely competitive rates for Internet Transit.
Typically these services are priced on a megabit per second per month basis (Mbit/s/Mo) with lower rates for higher volume commitments. The other key idea is that charges are based on the 95th percentile of all the five minute data rate samples taken during the month. So an ISP can have a few bursts above their typical rate, as long as they represent less than 5% of the sampled intervals.
But this also means there is no extra cost to run at or near the typical rate at all times.
Even more important, if file sharing is done with other computers on the same ISP's network, then there is no need to pay for Internet Transit at all. The question is how to figure out which potential peers are "on-net" and which are "off-net."
Most P2P file-sharing software has relatively little knowledge of locality. Some P2P software practices "prefix awareness," for example, Joost gives preference to peers in the same /24 IP address block when they are available. But if a major operator provided an automatic way for P2P client software to determine whether a prospective peer's IP address was currently reachable "for free," it seems likely the file-sharing community would leap on it, and if there's money to be saved, active file sharers would download the new clients immediately.
A standard way to present such information might be via an extension to the XML-based response codes in one of the who-is information exchange proposals, e.g., from ICANN or from APNIC. Also, while what I'm proposing might start as a pricing plan rather like a mobile operator's "free nights and weekends" and "free on-net calling," it's not hard to see extensions where an ISP could offer dynamic access to underused capacity to those programs that were prepared regularly interrogate an ISP's server and use just the advertised off-hours capacity.
People like fixed-price deals. Unlimited is great, but there's plenty of experience with bundles of minutes and the idea of data bundles has already shown up in 3G mobile data plans. The combination of several tiered data bundle prices with the availability of "free" connectivity for "on-net" peers and during off-peak intervals is likely to appeal to file sharers and produce better results for both the sponsoring ISPs and file sharers alike.
NRK Shares TV Series via BitTorrent
Excerpted from Afterdawn Report by Matti Vahakainu
Norsk RikskringKasting (NRK), Norway's national broadcasting company, has made one of its most popular TV shows available via BitTorrent. The series called "Nordkalotten 365" follows a hiker, Lars Monsen, through his year-round trip in the north of Scandinavia. The first two episodes are online, and the rest of the episodes will follow as they are encoded.
"Nordkalotten 365" had an average of nearly a million viewers through traditional broadcast, which makes it a rather popular in a country with the population of roughly 4,5 million. The show was downloaded more than 8,000 times in the first 24 hours after the BitTorrent release, and NRK received lot of positive feedback which might encourage the company to release other series via Internet as well.
The episodes are in MP4 file format without DRM protection, and are encoded with MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 (at 3Mbits/s) using a resolution of 1024x576 at 25 fps.
A New P2P for Live Internet TV
Excerpted from Red Herring Report by Justin Moresco
The Louisiana startup Network Foundation Technologies (NFT) believes it is revolutionizing the way live video is broadcast over the Internet.
NFT President Marcus Morton said its peer-to-peer television (P2PTV) technology reduces by more than 50% bandwidth needs, one of the biggest costs for companies looking to broadcast live over the Internet. That means companies can more easily pay for the cost of broadcasting through advertising, he said.
"This is a TV model brought to the Internet," said Mr. Morton.
At least a handful of companies appear convinced. NFT on Tuesday announced that beginning in March, Arena Football 2 will broadcast the league's games for free over the Internet. The Central Hockey League and the International Baseball Federation are already clients.
Mr. Morton said sports leagues are their "low-hanging fruit" because their content - sporting matches - are best watched live.
Viewers must first download a video player, custom-built for each content owner. But then fans get to kick their feet up and watch for free - like the old days of broadcast television.
Other companies, like Akamai and Brightcove, also have live broadcasting services for the Internet.
NFT received its first funding round in early 2007 from private investors. The startup was founded by Mike O'Neal, who is its current chief scientist and is the former chair of the computer science program at Louisiana Tech University.
Manage BitTorrent Downloads Remotely
Excerpted from Wired News Report by Michael Calore
A new open-source application lets you remotely manage your BitTorrent downloads using a web browser.
Clutch, a free download for Mac OS X and Linux, adds a simple web interface to the popular Transmission client. Install all of the bundled software and you can manage your active shares in Transmission from any computer on the Internet.
Clutch uses a simple Ajax interface to display real-time data, so you'll be able to control all of your torrent sharing in any modern browser that can handle Ajax. You can set per-torrent preferences, too. It's remarkable - the web interface looks just like Transmission running in your browser. All without Flash or Java.
Please note that you're required to run Transmission (also a free, Mac/Linux-only download) on your home machine to get Clutch's remote management capabilities.
Transmission is an open-source BitTorrent client beloved by Mac users. It uses a daemon for remote control, and Clutch is simply a web-based UI wrapper for the Transmission daemon. Other torrent clients use similar means for remote control, but this is one of the slickest we've seen and definitely the best option for Mac users.
Miro Attracts Revision3 for Co-Branded Player
Excerpted from Red Herring Report by Justin Moresco
Miro, which dubs itself an open-source peer-to-peer television (P2PTV) platform, on Thursday picked up San Francisco-based Revision3 and others to distribute online video content with a co-branded player.
Miro's so-called open platform-which Facebook has shown can be a boon-is laudable, but it says it's offering what amounts to a free-speech TV movement in distribution, something of a cliché among Internet video hounds.
As P2PTV industry leader Veoh founder Dmitry Shapiro said, "All of us these days are for free-speech TV."
Still, Miro is pushing hard to get more websites to adopt its platform, which acts like an RSS reader for video by downloading to the desktop the content from selected "channels." People using a Revision3 Miro player, for example, automatically will be subscribed to Revision3's feeds, but they'll also have access to all of Miro's 3400 channels.
Chief executive Nicholas Reville said that he's hoping the co-branded players will help drive up audience numbers and generate revenue.
Miro-developed by the non-profit Participatory Culture Foundation based in Worcester, MA-is aiming to make a buck. The group doesn't aspire to Google-like revenue, just enough to be "self-sustaining."
While content owners can place ads, Miro will share in the revenue when videos are watched through its player. This may have attracted Revision3 as well as German broadcaster Deutsche Welle and entertainment group TED, who also adopted the player.
There is, of course, enormous competition in online video. Reville believes Miro's open platform and emphasis on giving a medium to any content maker who wants it will make his system thrive.
Babelgum Names Director of Content Acquisition
Excerpted from Animation World Network Report
Mark Cranwell has been named Director of Content Acquisition for Babelgum, the next-generation P2PTV network, it was announced today. In the newly created position, Cranwell will be responsible for leading Babelgum's outreach efforts to producers, filmmakers and content creators in support of the new platform's content strategy. He will report directly to Simon Kenny, Babelgum's Head of Content Strategy and Advertising, in the company's London operation.
Most recently, Cranwell was Director, Business Affairs, for BT Vision, the broadband-delivered video-on-demand offering launched in the U.K. in December 2006. While there, he was part of the company's senior management team and responsible for the acquisition of major content for the platform. Cranwell also oversaw various regulatory issues on behalf of BT Vision and was on the board of directors of the Association of Television Video on Demand (ATVOD), the self-regulatory body governing the video-on-demand operators in the U.K.
Cranwell is a regular panelist and speaker on digital rights at such major industry events as MIPCOM, PACT and numerous other seminars, and is the author of several articles and interviews on the subject of digital media and intellectual property. He also wrote a chapter on copyright in the book Law and the Media. He is dual qualified to practice law in Alberta, Canada, as well as in England and Wales.
CHIC.TV Selects CacheLogic for Streaming Video
CacheLogic, provider of the world's leading Digital Asset Delivery Network, announced that it is delivering high quality Internet video streaming services to premier lifestyle media and technology provider CHIC.TV.
CacheLogic's flagship Velocix Video delivery service is used to provide on-demand access to CHIC.TV's video lifestyle magazine, offering fashion, dining, and cookery advice and information to its viewers around the globe. In a move to extend its audience reach, CHIC.TV also recently launched its service on social networking platform Facebook, offering the same high quality streamed video services, all delivered by Velocix.
Additionally CHIC.TV is using the Velocix Network for its "Your Brand" TV service. This service provides an enabling platform that can be used by other commercial brands to rapidly create and launch their own on-line video presence.
"We chose Velocix because it offered the most reliable, scalable solution for our needs, allowing us to stream CHIC.TV's lifestyle media across any platform, anywhere, anytime," said Rami Rinot, CEO, CHIC.TV.
"Velocix Video services provide us with flexibility and control, allowing us to balance our delivery needs with our budget. Using the Velocix Class of Service delivery options, we have been able to set delivery speeds just ahead of the video encoding rate, dramatically reducing our delivery costs. This has allowed us to stretch our budget further and open up a broader range of services than we had originally planned. We are looking forward to providing even more sophisticated on-line and interactive programming solutions in the near future using Velocix."
"For online content providers, scalability issues can make or break the company," said Phill Robinson, CEO, CacheLogic. "We are proud to offer the most flexible and scalable solution on the market, helping our customers successfully grow their business with new services and manage peaks in user demand. We're looking forward to working with CHIC.TV as they continue to build their service offerings and deploy new and exciting offering for their viewers and customers globally."
CacheLogic's Velocix network is designed to enable content owners, movie studios, and broadcasters to deliver video and other large digital assets, such as software and games over the web, with unprecedented performance, breakthrough economics and an asset delivery life cycle management system that provides content owners the control, analytics and reporting they need to manage their asset libraries through the digital distribution chain.
KlikVU Gets Support from Kefit
KlikVU, a media broadband Internet distribution company based in New York City, has entered into an agreement with the Kefit Corporation, a business technical consulting company. This alliance will strengthen KlikVU's media technology and push it's innovations to the forefront of the industry. Kefit's CEO Edward Kanchik will serve as an executive and a board member of KlikVU, while providing resources and technical support from Kefit.
Founded in 2003, KlikVU's distinctive technology allows for TV-like reception of Windows Media Video programs on computers, wireless devices and TV. The Company is a content distribution, syndication, management and commercialization platform for broadband video content worldwide, at the highest quality possible.
Pirate Bay Musters 10 Million Users
Excerpted from TechRadar Report
BitTorrent tracker site The Pirate Bay has become the largest of its kind with 10 million users regularly exchanging up to one million individual torrents.
The figures are mind-boggling. To put them into perspective: there are now more people swapping torrents on The Pirate Bay than there are people living in Greater London. The Pirate Bay now boasts more users than the entire population of Sweden, where the service happens to be based.
Commenting on the figures, The Pirate Bay's Peter Sunde said, "We're very happy to be part of all of this, and hope our users keep sharing those files. We're looking to break 20 million as well."
Of course, if Swedish prosecutors get their way, it won't go that far. While previous police raids on The Pirate Bay's servers in 2006 achieved little, the Swedish public prosecutor is reported to be preparing criminal charges against the site to be delivered later this week.
Reuters reports that Swedish public prosecutor Hakan Roswall is set to charge the site's owners with accessory and conspiracy to break copyright law.
"It's not merely a search engine. It's an active part of an action that aims at, and also leads to, making copyright protected material available," Roswall told Reuters.
However, The Pirate Bay's Peter Sunde replied by branding the charges "ridiculous," adding that he believed there was "no legal ground" for the charges.
Sunde has vowed to keep the site up, regardless of any verdict, claiming that The Pirate Bay's servers and infrastructure are now scattered around the globe to prevent any one country from being able to shut it down.
But regardless of whether the Swedish prosecution proves successful, the site could eventually end up facing a more general backlash - especially if it continues to grow at its present rate.
Given that many broadband customers enjoy a less-than-speedy connection due, at least in part, to present levels of BitTorrent activity, things could eventually come to a head.
Whereas a lack of sympathy for the film studios and record labels directly affected by copyright infringement is unlikely to stir many people into action, the thought of 20 million teenage "pirates" hogging all available bandwidth might.
Coming Events of Interest
Digital Music Forum East - February 26th-27th in New York, NY. Major and indie music label executives, artists, 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.
P2P ADVERTISING UPFRONT NY - 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).
Media Summit New York - The fifth annual MSNY, March 12th-13th in New York, NY. Jointly produced by Digital Hollywood, McGraw-Hill, Business Week, and Standard & Poor's. Keynoting this year will be Robert Iger, President & CEO, The Walt Disney Company.
P2P MEDIA SUMMIT LA - May 4th in Los Angeles, CA. The third annual P2P MEDIA SUMMIT LA. The DCIA's flagship event featuring keynotes from industry-leading P2P and social network operators; tracks on policy, technology and marketing; panel discussions covering content distribution and solutions development; valuable workshops; networking opportunities; and more.
Digital Hollywood Spring - May 5th-8th in Los Angeles, CA. With many new sessions and feature events, DHS has become the premiere digital entertainment conference and exposition. DCIA Member companies will exhibit and speak on a number of panels.
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