March 3, 2008
Volume XXI, Issue 3
Special Rates End Friday for P2P MARKET CONFERENCE
Learn about innovative business models based on the largest and fastest growing digital distribution technologies from the top global leaders in this space at the P2P MARKET CONFERENCE on March 14th at the Princeton Club of New York.
Peer-to-peer (P2P), which now accounts for the lion's share of all Internet traffic, is being monetized from the back-end to the front-end of this exciting new consumer-based channel. Don't miss out on this amazing worldwide phenomenon. Register today and save up to $325 when you also sign up for the Media Summit New York (MSNY) taking place on the 12th & 13th. Pre-registration rates end this Friday, March 7th.
At the P2P MARKET CONFERENCE, you'll meet industry-leading 1-Click Media's Arthur Madrid, Abacast's Mike King, AHT International's Mohan Nihalani, Azoogle Ads' Don Mathis, BitTorrent's Doug Walker, Brand Asset Digital's Joey Patuleia, DigitalContainers' Chip Venters, DoubleV3's Benjamin Masse, Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz's Rick Kurnit, FTI Consulting's Bruce Benson, JamboMedia's Rob Manoff, Javien Digital Payment Solutions' Leslie Poole, KlikVU's Lowell Feuer, Manatt's Bill Heberer, MediaDefender's Chris Gillis, Media Global Intertainment's Jakob Schwertz, MediaPass Network's Daniel Harris, Microsoft's See-Mong Tan, Motion Picture Association of America's (MPAA) Frank Cavaliere, Move Networks' Kevin Conlan, Oversi's Eitan Efron, Pando Networks' Robert Levitan and Laird Popkin, PeerApp's Eliot Listman, P2P Cash's Tom Meredith, QTRAX's Allan Klepfisz, RawFlow's Mikkel Dissing, Rebel Digital's Robin Kent, RightsFlow Entertainment Group's Patrick Sullivan, SafeNet's David Hahn, TAG Strategic's Ted Cohen, Trispen Technologies' Jaco Botha, TVU Networks' Kap Shin, Ultramercial's Dana Jones, VeriSign's Steve Condon, Verizon Communications' Doug Pasko, Zattoo's Sugih Jamin, and more.
In addition to our primary focus at this global gathering on commercial development, we will also invest time to discuss the renewed debate over net neutrality, exploring the latest arguments from content providers and ISPs, as well as current actions by regulators and consumer advocates around the world.
Pando Powers NBC Direct with P2P
Excerpted from NY Times Report by Brian Stetler
An improved version of NBC Direct, the television download service promised by NBC last fall, is almost ready for public consumption.
On Wednesday the P2P content company Pando Networks announced that it had been selected to provide video delivery for the service.
"This will make NBC the first American broadcast television network to use P2P delivery to disseminate their shows," according to the Fishbowl NY.
P2P technology allows files to be distributed rapidly by personal computers. Pando is putting P2P to use for the transfer of licensed high-definition (HD) TV episodes.
The downloads will be supported by advertising supplied by the broadband ad network YuMe Networks. Pando said the service would move out of the beta stage by the end of March.
DCINFO Editor's Note: Pando Networks CEO Robert Levitan will deliver a keynote address at the P2P MARKET CONFERENCE.
QTRAX Has Active Deal with TVT Records
Excerpted from Wired News Report by Eliot Van Buskirk
After all of the hubbub surrounding QTRAX's launch, music fans looking forward to downloading music from P2P networks via QTRAX will be happy to know that the company has a deal in place with record label TVT Records, home to gold and platinum-selling artists such as Lil Jon & The East Side Boyz, Default, Ying Yang Twins, Sevendust, and Pitbull.
After Listening Post followed up on a reader tip about a smattering of songs now available on the service, all from TVT artists, Steve Gottleib, President of the label told us, "TVT has long been a forceful advocate of the ad-supported model," and confirmed that his label has an active deal with QTRAX dating back to nearly two nears ago.
"We originally did this deal with QTRAX in '06 never thinking it would take so long for the concept to be more broadly embraced," said Gottleib.
"We recently renewed the agreement and are happy to be providing QTRAX with many of our 25 Gold and Platinum releases as well as hot new charting singles like Ying Yang's 'Drop' and Pitbull's 'The Anthem.'"
Gottleib continued, wondering why it has taken the majors so long to sign with QTRAX and pointing out that TVT was, admirably, the only label to settle with the original Napster "back when it was still possible to contain and legitimize peer-to-peer."
He added, "The future that we live in now was obvious and apparent back then, that if you scattered Napster's audience to the wind," it would be difficult or impossible to get them back.
Napster offered the major labels $1 billion for two years of licensing - $500 million each year, to be divided among them. With sales continuing to decline, they'd no doubt consider taking the deal now, if it were possible to do so.
DCINFO Editor's Note: QTRAX Chairman & CEO Allan Klepfisz will deliver a keynote address at the P2P MARKET CONFERENCE.
Report from CEO Marty Lafferty
 Ned Sherman and the Digital Media Wire team are to be heartily congratulated for a very stimulating and informative Digital Music Forum East this week in New York.
We interviewed QTRAX Chairman & CEO Allan Klepfisz in the closing session.
The DCIA wanted to know what's next for "the world's first free and legal P2P music service."
QTRAX's high-visibility launch at Midem raised expectations of an enormous breakthrough for digital music distribution. It also raised fundamental 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 piracy? Can the service's implementation live up to its leaders' ambitious vision?
We wanted to understand what happened and why at the QTRAX launch, as well as what's next for this boldly conceived enterprise.
Allan Klepfisz recounted the progress that's been made since the first iteration of QTRAX, some five years ago. It was withdrawn from the market, shortly after being introduced, when it became clear that content rights-holder issues would require considerable time to properly address.
Indeed, QTRAX's track record has been notable for consistently demonstrating respect for intellectual property (IP) throughout its history.
The QTRAX chief executive outlined key development aspects since that time covering company ownership, affiliations with key vendors, licensing activities, P2P technology advancements, and marketing activities.
QTRAX is now a subsidiary of Brilliant Technologies Corporation and the company is considering ways to take the service public.
Its technology partners include Songbird (for the QTRAX player) and Oracle (for back-end functionality of the service), which will help enable the company to serve tens of millions of anticipated users.
QTRAX will not have intrusive ads, but rather have attributes which will make it a service that's pleasant-to-use and content-rich, with extensive biographies and reviews for lesser-known bands.
Users will be able to buy related DVDs, tee-shirts, ring-tones, concert tickets, etc. The service will distinguish itself as superior to unlicensed P2P services in terms of look-and-feel and highest value aspects of user experience.
According to Allan Klepfisz, the music industry has made reasonable demands for remuneration. Meeting what they want per song may be difficult for some distributors, but QTRAX believes it can meet the requirements of rights holders through the multiple monetization streams it will generate.
QTRAX recognizes that music fans perform a number of activities around music beyond simply downloading and listening. With QTRAX's unique multi-faceted business model, no matter what a person wishes to do in relation to his or her music experience, there will be introductions to an extensive variety of music-related products and services.
The company expects that there will be a lot of consolidation within its browser from users' pre-existing collections and the music they download from the web.
QTRAX intends to limit neither the number of tracks people can download nor the number of times they can listen to songs. QTRAX uses digital rights management (DRM) to track the number of plays in order to determine what to pay labels and artists. The file format is as good as or better than MP3, with a higher bit-rate than competitors. In time, the tracks will also be playable on portable devices.
Initially, QTRAX will be exclusively music. It will fingerprint every song presented to ensure delivery of the right track to the consumer requesting it. P2P can reasonably be expected to grow to contain as many as 70 million songs in the foreseeable future, many of them rare or live versions of songs, which fans of artists love.
QTRAX will become a global service, after initial deployments, on a geographically phased-in basis. It will contain neither spyware nor any other malware.
Launch commitments centering on a major presence at Midem 2008, the music industry's largest and best established trade event, were made in late fall, and intended to demonstrate QTRAX's appreciation for rights-holder support while also communicating as much about the new service as possible to attendees.
The marketing plan included building on this corporate launch into a consumer roll-out based in part on proactive viral marketing. Regarding adverse press reaction to the Midem launch in advance of having expected major licensing deals closed, Allan said they've had to just turn their cheeks and take it.
Since then, however, the company has been gratified by the degree of support it has received from rights holders. And while some in the label and publisher community continue to be frightened by the potential risks of ad-supported music, others are not. Many recognize that a substantial group of consumers are not paying for music - and a key question is how to attract them.
Half a million users downloaded QTRAX at its launch, spiking at one point to an astonishing 22,000 per millisecond. In the days immediately following, QTRAX became the 742nd most trafficked site on the Internet - even without music sharing having been activated - which augurs especially well for its success as an antidote to piracy.
Licensing negotiations are by necessity complex and finalizing contracts takes a long time. All parties want to do this in such a way that it's going to work as a demonstration that free digital music can be profitable.
Consumers haven't wanted to be illegal. They have wanted to access free music and, provided full deployment is well executed, they'll readily accept the proposition that they can get everything they want in a lawful manner.
There will be many ad-supported services coming, and experimentation at this stage in the evolution of digital music distribution is a good thing.
QTRAX is more confident than ever that its model will be highly attractive to users.
After investing five years in developing its service and on licensing, the company has made a great deal of progress. It's not an easy road to change fundamentals in the music industry. QTRAX has gone down most of that road and is very close to the end of its long journey towards realization.
Please plan now to attend the P2P MARKET CONFERENCE for an important update. Share wisely, and take care.
More Teenagers Ignoring CDs
Excerpted from LA Times Report
Going to the mall to buy music may no longer be a rite of passage for adolescents.
For the first time last year, nearly half of all teenagers bought no compact discs (CDs), a dramatic increase from 2006, when 38% of teens shunned such purchases, according to a new report released Tuesday.
The unauthorized sharing of music online continued to soar in 2007, but there was one sign of hope that licensed downloading was picking up steam. In the last year, iTunes, which sells only digital downloads, jumped ahead of Best Buy to become the No. 2 US music seller, trailing Wal-Mart.
What concerns the music industry is unauthorized Internet file sharing on websites where people pick up a digital song or album that others have uploaded. They can also do what is known as P2P file sharing, where people download music while opening up their computers to others to pick-up the music. The music industry says people who obtain music free online are breaking the law.
Rachel Rottman, 14, says she hasn't bought a CD in a year. The Santa Monica High School freshman says she downloads five or six songs a day.
Rachel said she had about 2,600 songs stored on her computer. Before getting a computer in the seventh grade, she always bought CDs. But now it's too much trouble, she said.
"You have to go to the store and then you have to pay - I don't know how much, $12, I'm guessing? - then you have to put it on your computer," Rachel said.
"When you download it, it's right there."
"The trend is continuing but it will flatten because there are people who will always want the physical," said Ted Cohen, Managing Partner at TAG Strategic, a digital media advisory firm.
DCINFO Editor's Note: TAG Strategic's Ted Cohen will be a featured speaker at the upcoming P2P MARKET CONFERENCE.
Peer-to-Peer (P2P) in Play
Excerpted from Telephony Online Report by Rich Karpinski
February saw BitTorrent traffic shaping and Net Neutrality come to the fore.
AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, Vuze, and others made filings in an FCC rule-making proceeding initiated by Comcast's alleged blocking of BitTorrent traffic. At issue: are carriers shaping network traffic or discriminating against bit-heavy protocols?
Developers are hard at work extending the P2P protocol to defeat efforts to delay BitTorrent traffic.
Congressman Edward Markey (D-MA) introduced a new Net Neutrality bill, focusing on principles of conduct rather than enforcement or penalty provisions.
What it means: inspecting packets for network management - and eventually content and ad-targeting - is an area of growing in importance, though service providers have some choppy political waters to navigate. That's especially true as "open networks" becomes an increasingly prevalent user rallying cry - and telco marketing slogan.
Verizon Touts ISP Competition & P2P Collaboration
Citing the importance of network management practices in providing safe and high-quality broadband services to consumers, a senior communications sector executive said Monday that competition - combined with meaningful information and industry-developed standards of conduct - would ensure that providers' practices benefit consumers.
He also suggested that public policy should focus on creating the right climate for investment in the increased network capacity needed for tomorrow's services and the addition of more players in the already competitive market.
Testifying at a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) en banc hearing on broadband network management held at Harvard Law School, Tom Tauke, Verizon EVP for Public Affairs, Policy, and Communications, said network management is "important to the secure and reliable functioning of our networks" and "just as important, if not more so, to consumers."
Tauke said actions taken to fight spam, guard against service attacks and other online threats, and to keep networks functioning as consumers expect are "technically complex and evolve constantly" to meet new challenges. "Particularly in a competitive and evolving marketplace like broadband, these are decisions best made by network engineers and operators - not policymakers," he said.
Tauke stressed that providing consumers with "meaningful information" and "transparency" will answer most concerns about network management. "All of us could probably do a better job of this, and we're working on it," he said.
"So long as consumers have information about the nature of their broadband services and the practices of their providers, they will vote with their feet and their pocketbooks on the practices of various providers."
Verizon's leadership in the area of industry-developed standards of conduct includes working with P2P software developers and distributors, Yale University researchers, and other broadband providers through the P4P Working Group (P4PWG), sponsored by the DCIA, to develop innovative ways to improve the efficiency of P2P applications while simultaneously reducing the network congestion that such applications can cause, he said.
Verizon's Doug Pasko, Co-Chair of the P4PWG, will be a featured speaker at the upcoming P2P MARKET CONFERENCE.
PeerApp Responds to FCC Hearing with Solutions
PeerApp is a leading supplier of intelligent media caching solutions for ISPs worldwide. PeerApp solutions cache and accelerate content delivery including P2P and HTTP downloads and video streams allowing ISPs to meet bandwidth and service quality challenges and satisfy subscriber demand.
The company also attended Monday's FCC hearing. While there was some useful discussion about what constitutes broadband network management, PeerApp was struck by a couple of things.
First, there was a preponderance of discussion of government oversight of ISPs and how they manage their networks, but little attention paid to a fundamental problem: network congestion resulting from the unprecedented growth in video traffic - P2P downloads and HTTP streaming - and what can be done to manage it and improve the subscriber quality of experience.
Second, little was said about what ISPs outside the United States are doing to solve these problems. Of course, there was the reference to the US becoming a "third world" Internet country as measured by broadband subscriber growth and access line data rates.
Most importantly, there was virtually no discussion of or even reference to solutions for the underlying problems!
It should be noted that every ISP on the planet does some form of broadband network management; many use deep packet inspection (DPI) devices to limit the amount of bandwidth consumed by P2P. This in turn causes degradation in P2P application performance which can anger both P2P services and their users.
Many ISPs, particularly international ISPs, have arrived at the conclusion that something else must be done to address the larger problem and satisfy user demand for P2P applications.
Caching P2P and HTTP video traffic within the network is a viable and affordable solution. Because video traffic consumes an enormous amount of bandwidth and tends to involve very repetitive downloads or streams, this type of traffic tends to be highly cacheable.
Unfortunately, the FCC Hearing was more about complaining and less about solving the problems created by a new wave of video applications and services.
Application vendors should be encouraged to support a caching infrastructure, and ISPs should be encouraged to solve their network management problems through caching rather than restricting the flow of traffic.
Interestingly, the degree to which the problem of broadband network management is so polarized and seemingly intractable is unique to the United States. Many International ISPs already "get it," and have deployed caching infrastructures to accelerate video downloads and satisfy customer demand.
It's time for US ISPs to get ahead of this problem and realize that it represents an opportunity to differentiate themselves competitively. The caching technology exists today. And application vendors should go out of their way to support caching infrastructure rather than simply objecting to other traffic management solutions.
The company also believes that it is time for those that report on and analyze these problems to start analyzing and reporting on solutions.
PeerApp's Eliot Listman will be a featured speaker at the upcoming P2P MARKET CONFERENCE.
Vuze Creates FCC Channel to Encourage Dialogue
Vuze, the rapidly growing peer-to-peer television (P2PTV) entertainment platform, with an installed base of 20 million client downloads, was invited by the FCC to provide a product demonstration and speak on behalf of the P2P industry at this week's hearing.
Representing Vuze was CEO Gilles BianRosa, whose presence raised the level of awareness of network management practices. His larger objectives were to elevate the discussion to help evolve the Internet to benefit consumers, network operators, and online businesses.
"We support building an open Internet that fosters innovation for all," he said.
Vuze invites the public to share opinions on the subject by submitting video testimony regarding broadband network management. Consumers across the country are encouraged to record and upload their testimonial videos to the new FCC Channel on Vuze, which will be made a part of public record regarding this matter.
The channel currently features What is Net Neutrality by Public Knowledge, Reasonable Network Management from JT Rockville, FCC Testimony from U235 Sentinel, and Kevin Parker's Testimony to the FCC from JCS.
Moving forward, Vuze will broaden the channel to include additional materials related to Internet policy, net neutrality, and other issues of concern.
To that end, DCINFO readers are welcome to help promote this new forum and to help populate it with video content. For example, if there are other hearings or events that result in video, Vuze would welcome having them on the channel.
Vuze is also creating a hub page that will enable news reports, forums, and the like. DCINFO will alert readers when that goes live.
50/50Mbps to Half of Comcast Users by 2010
Excerpted from Broadband Reports Report by Dave Berstein
While Comcast has been very chatty in general about its DOCSIS 3.0 upgrades, demonstrating 150Mbps service several times last year to the media, the company has kept deployment details, speed tier, and pricing information close to the vest.
What we know so far is that the company says the upgrades can be accomplished relatively inenexpensively, and that it will be aiming to have 20% of its footprint upgraded with the speedier service by the end of this year.
DSLPrime has some interesting additional information in its most recent industry newsletter: 50 megabit, upstream and down, available to half the homes in America by 2010.
Brian Roberts of Comcast is leading the charge, planning to upgrade to DOCSIS 3.0 for ten million homes in 2009. That's half his network.
Motorola believes it will be able to deliver that speed in the upstream as well as the downstream, with equipment everyone is hoping will ship by the end of this year.
This could be a nightmare for AT&T, Bell Canada, Qwest, and British Telecom. Comcast will be 20 times as fast as U-Verse on the upstream, and easily twice as fast downstream.
The manufacturers say they are ready to supply equipment for 30-to-60 million US homes by 2010 if the cablecos want to move quickly. While the CTOs are very excited, the CFOs haven't yet approved the spending in other US cablecos.
At the moment, limited upstream bandwidth is a serious liability when competing with Verizon's symmetrical FiOS service and, as evident by recent news, handling upstream P2P demand.
With just a "couple billion dollars" and two solid years' work, Comcast can be in a prime position to compete with Verizon's $23 billion FiOS deployment, and surpass what's offered by AT&T's $6.5 billion FTTN U-Verse deployment.
Comcast isn't confirming any deployment numbers beyond this year. "All we have officially announced is that we plan to introduce DOCSIS 3.0 to up to 20% of our footprint in 2008," Comcast spokesman Charlie Douglas said. "We have not announced speed tiers, pricing, or markets."
CloudTrade P2P Sharing for Cell-Phones
Excerpted from Wired News Report by Eliot Van Buskirk
We caught up with CloudTrade at the Digital Music Forum East for a hands-on preview of the P2P cell-phone service the company claims will allow users to share music, videos, and images with each other, cell-phone-to-cell-phone.
Users can already sign up for 1GB storage of storage, to which music and other media can be uploaded from their computers or phones. Log into the service on your web-capable phone, and you'll be able to download the stuff in your locker directly onto your phone.
At some point in March, CloudTrade users will be able to share media with their friends through the service. You'll be able to download songs from your friends' lockers, upload photos to share from your phone, and so on.
General functionality includes uploading and downloading from your phone. The upcoming sharing feature will let users browse, search, and download from each others' media storage lockers.
CloudFire Makes P2P Media Sharing Easy
Excerpted from GigaOM Report by Stacey Higginbotham
WiredReach, maker of P2P file-sharing application BoxCloud, has built a new service built around sharing media easily and quickly.
CEO Ash Maurya says CloudFire is similar to services such as WeBot, and doesn't require a client on the end user's computer. It does, however, require your host PC to be on.
CloudFire is integrated into iTunes, so anyone using iTunes for music and video and iPhoto for photos can easily share their files after downloading some software. Maurya classifies the service as peer-to-web, since the recipient of the files can view them through any browser, even on a mobile phone.
WiredReach has plans for an iPhone interface as well. Other than the obvious benefit of grabbing content from your PC while on the go, CloudFire can be used to share family videos and photos with distant relatives and for other similar uses.
The service will be ad-supported for people who use their own computers as servers to host their content, but eventually CloudFire will have a premium caching service using Amazon's S3 storage so people can offload large files for sharing. WiredReach already has a similar premium service used by its BoxCloud clients
The site will open up for a private beta in a few weeks.
PiraBoogle: Google Meets BitTorrent
Excerpted from Tech Digest Report
To be honest, the name is the coolest thing about PiraBoogle, a new torrent search engine, reminiscent of salty seadogs boogling round a hornpipe. Whatever boogling is.
Anyway, the site is a mash-up of Google and torrent trackers, claiming to make it easy to search more than 50 of the most popular torrent sites - including The Pirate Bay, MiniNova, and Btjunkie.
The developers knocked it up after recent publicity about Yahoo reportedly banning The Pirate Bay from its search listings.
That said, it's not hugely complex to make this kind of site - they've just used Google's co-op platform to aggregate listings from the various torrent sites, then bought the domain name PiraBoogle.
UGC Videos Attract Billions of Viewers
US Internet users watched more than 10 billion videos online during the month of December 2007, representing the single heaviest month to date for online video consumption, according to a study by comScore.
With the writer's strike keeping new TV episodes from reaching the airwaves, it appears that online video stepped in to help fill that void.
Google Sites ranked as the top US video property in December with 32.6% share of videos. YouTube accounted for more than 97% of all videos viewed at the property. Fox Interactive Media ranked second, followed by Yahoo Sites, and Viacom Digital.
In total, nearly 141 million Americans viewed online video in December. Google Sites captured the largest online video audience with 79 million unique viewers, followed by Fox Interactive Media with 43.9 million, and Yahoo Sites with 38.2 million.
77.6 million viewers watched 3.2 billion videos on YouTube (41.6 videos per viewer). 40.5 million viewers watched 334 million videos on MySpace (8.2 videos per viewer).
Online viewers watched an average of 3.4 hours (203 minutes) of online video during the month, representing a 34% gain since the beginning of 2007. The average online video duration was 2.8 minutes. The average online video viewer consumed 72 videos.
Veoh is Raising a Large Round
Excerpted from The Industry Standard Report by Eric Eldon
Peer-to-peer television (P2PTV) industry leader Veoh is in the process of raising a $40 million round at a proposed $150 million valuation, and has hired investment bank Bear Sterns to help with the effort, Silicon Alley Insider reports.
San Diego-based Veoh is an up-and-coming competitor of YouTube, and is growing at a healthy rate. The site features user-created videos, clips from partners such as the Independent Comedy Network, as well as content from large companies like Viacom.
From what we hear, the company is well-respected in the media world, partially because it's made a point of forging partnerships with entertainment companies.
Most recently, third-party analytics firm comScore showed Veoh bringing in nearly 16 million monthly unique visitors worldwide last December - versus YouTube's close-to-78-million.
Spark Capital investor Bijan Sabet, who sits on Veoh's Board, says that Veoh's internal server logs show 21 million unique monthly viewers in December, up from 2.5 million at the beginning of the year.
He also says that users are watching more than 30 million hours of Veoh videos per month now.
Veoh is pretty big, but like every other online video company, it is trying to figure out how to monetize its traffic.
Artist Managers Consider Suing Labels for P2P Settlements
Excerpted from Digital Media Wire Report by Mark Hefflinger
Managers of top recording artists are considering legal action against major record labels, saying that Universal, Warner Music, and EMI are dragging their feet in distributing hundreds of millions of dollars in settlements from copyright infringement lawsuits against file-sharing firms like Napster and Kazaa, the NY Post reported.
"Artist managers and lawyers have been wondering for months when their artists will see money from the copyright settlements and how it will be accounted for," attorney John Branca, who has represented Korn and The Rolling Stones, told the Post.
"Some of them are even talking about filing lawsuits if they don't get paid soon."
An estimated nearly $400 million, including $270 million from Napster and $100 million from Kazaa, has been awarded to the labels - but the managers say little of this money has found its way into the hands of artists.
"They will play hide and seek, but eventually will be forced to pay something," artist manager Irving Azoff told the Post.
Record label sources told the Post the labels are figuring out how to divide up whatever money is left over among artists, after hefty attorneys' fees are paid.
"If anything has been paid so far, it has been minimal," Jay Rosenthal, legal counsel of the Recording Artists Coalition, told CNET News.
"They are certainly going to claim that the legal costs have eaten up the proceeds, but I don't believe that is the case."
For its part, Warner told the Post that "nearly all settlement monies have been disbursed," while spokespeople for Universal and EMI have stated that they intend to share the settlements with their artists.
The other major, Sony BMG, was not party to at least the Napster lawsuit, as Napster received financial backing from, and was eventually acquired by BMG parent Bertelsmann.
Coming Events of Interest
Canadian Music Week - March 5th-8th in Toronto, Canada. The 26th installment of this international festival. Conference registration includes access to performances by over 500 of the hottest global artists throughout 41 downtown venues. Register early to secure your place and save. The DCIA will moderate a P2P panel on Thursday afternoon focused on P2P and music.
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 MARKET CONFERENCE - March 14th in New York, NY in conjunction with the Media Summit New York (MSNY). The industry's premiere marketplace focused on the unique global revenue generation 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).
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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