June 2, 2008
Volume XXII, Issue 4
NBC Direct Prepares for Its Next Beta
Excerpted from BetaNews Report by Michael Hatamoto
Since last November, NBC has been developing a service, separate from its Hulu venture, for downloading shows after they've aired and watching them offline.
NBC is expected to launch its NBC Direct online download service sometime in the next two months, in an effort to iron out as many problems it can before launching the service publicly this summer.
NBC Direct will allow users to download content using peer-to-peer (P2P) technology from Pando Networks including content in 720p high-definition format. The service is free but has short commercial ads similar to those seen on TV.
NBC Direct allows users to download their favorite television shows for up to one week after the show airs on television. Users have up to 48 hours to finish watching a single episode before the episode's license expires and must be renewed.
Designed for Microsoft Windows users, NBC Direct has a built-in filter that stops the service from playing any copyrighted video clips that may be pirated.
The service will allow viewers to watch episodes of hit shows "The Office," "30 Rock," "Late Night with Conan O'Brien," and "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno."
The service uses Microsoft's DRM and currently works in Windows only. NBC plans to launch Mac OS X and Linux versions of the program, but has not given a target date.
Yale Computer Scientists Present P4P
A Yale research team has engineered a system with the potential for making the Internet work more efficiently, in which Internet service providers (ISPs) and P2P software companies can work cooperatively to deliver data.
The way people use the Internet has changed significantly over the past ten years, making computers seem to run less efficiently and putting strain on the available bandwidth for transmitting data.
Since 1998, the percentage of Internet traffic devoted to the download and upload of large blocks of information using P2P software has increased from less than 10% to greater than 70% in many networks.
By contrast, web browsing now accounts for 20% and e-mail less than 5% of total Internet traffic, down from 60 and 10 percent respectively, in 1998.
Professors Avi Silberschatz, Y. Richard Yang, and PhD candidate Haiyong Xie in Yale's Department of Computer Science are part of a research team that is proposing an architecture called P4P - which stands for "provider portal for P2P applications" - to allow explicit and seamless communications between ISPs and P2P applications.
P4P will both reduce the cost to ISPs and improve the performance of P2P applications according to a paper to be presented at ACM SIGCOMM 2008, a premier computer networking conference in August 2008 in Seattle.
According to Silberschatz, current P2P information exchange schemes are "network-oblivious" and use intricate protocols for tapping the bandwidth of participating users to help move data. He says, "The existing schemes are often both inefficient and costly - like dialing long-distance to call your neighbor, and both of you paying for the call."
The Yale team has played many roles in this project, ranging from naming and analyzing the architecture, to testing and implementing of some key components of the system.
"Right now the ISPs and P2P companies are dancing with the problem - but stepping on each other's toes," said Yang. "Our objective is to have an open architecture that any ISP and any P2P can participate in. Yale has facilitated this project behind the scenes and without direct financial interest through a working group called P4P that was formed in July 2007 to prompt collaboration on the project."
The working group is hosted by the Distributed Computing Industry Association (DCIA) and led by working group Co-Chairs Doug Pasko from Verizon, and Laird Popkin from Pando. Currently, the group has more than 50 participating organizations.
"The P4P architecture extends the Internet architecture by providing servers, called iTrackers, to each ISP," said Silberschatz. "The servers provide portals to the operation of ISP networks."
The new P4P architecture can operate in multiple modes. In a simple mode, the ISPs will reveal their network status so that P2P applications can avoid hot-spots.
In another mode, P4P will operate much like a stock or commodities exchange - it will let markets and providers interact freely to create the most efficient information and cost flow, so costs of operation drop and access to individual sites is less likely to overload.
"While ISPs like AT&T, Comcast, Telefonica, and Verizon and the P2P software companies like Pando each maintains its independence, the value of the P4P architecture is significant, as demonstrated in recent field tests," said Silberschatz.
For example, in a field test conducted using the Pando software in March 2008, P4P reduced inter-ISP traffic by an average of 34%, and increased delivery speeds to end users by up to 235% across US networks and up to 898% across international networks.
Report from CEO Marty Lafferty
 Please click here for video coverage of our Streaming Media East panel entitled "Will P2P Become a Legitimate Means to Deliver Video."
We also look forward to participating in Streaming Media West in September with a progress update on P2P usage for live and download video.
According to Streaming Media, peer-to-peer technology has become one of the hottest topics lately in online video. Controversy now surrounds the role P2P will play, especially in high-quality video delivery on the Net.
Does P2P have a legitimate shot at becoming a mass-market distribution model, or will networks block the traffic before it has the chance? If P2P really is cheaper and better, why haven't content providers adopted it en masse? What's missing from P2P business models? Can P2P truly support live delivery, Flash-based videos, VOD security, and broadcast audience scalability?
The newest Iteration of P2P is peer-to-peer television or P2PTV, which represents a huge breakthrough for video distribution. Featuring major studio and network content with interactive chat is Joost; independent films and customized movie channels is Babelgum; and European TV now completing market trials is Zattoo.
An open P2PTV service, backed by Michael Eisner and Time Warner, is VeohTV; a hybrid P2PTV client player is Miro; and our newest DCIA Member in this space is TVU Networks. China has been a pioneer of P2PTV with services like PPLive, PPStream, QQlive, UUsee, Vakaka, and Xunlei - where the cost savings of P2PTV have brought television to millions of unserved viewers.
Since 2000, P2P's growth into the dominant Internet traffic generator has been dramatic. Velocix reports that P2P now accounts for more than half of all downstream traffic and more than three-quarters of all upstream traffic, and a very large part of the value proposition for broadband access. Video now represents 65% of P2P transactions, audio 11%, and all other 24%.
In the marketplace that we are working to establish, content rights holders will be able to monetize every transaction - with advertising, sponsorships, cross promotion, packaging, subscriptions, or paid downloads - whether their videos, TV programs, series, or feature films are initially entered into distribution by themselves or by other parties - including consumers.
Our view is that civilization is experiencing a profoundly significant digital transformation. Whereas, in the past, video was transmitted through cable or satellite transmission; moving forward, all electronic content will become merged into fungible bits that will be available through a choice of pipelines, whether fiber-optics owned by telco, cable or power companies, or some combination of satellite and wireless.
With this disruptive content infrastructure, reception will be possible on any networked-device, with consumers free to decide they would like to do such iconoclastic activities as watch HD movies on cell-phone screens or share home videos with distant relatives on large plasma screens using surround-sound speakers.
The source for all content and vehicle for all communications will be enhanced P2P, integrating technologies that improve search with discovery-and-recommendation engines and break large files into thousands of tiny pieces for more efficient transmission. The impact on distribution is that audiences will have instant access to all prerecorded content ever produced, as well as the ability to be switched instantly to any live event or performance anywhere in the world. Share wisely, and take care.
P2PTV - Gateway to Live Streaming Television
Excerpted from Explore Alberta Report
Dread missing this summer sporting events, like Euro 2008 from June 7th to 29th or the 2008 Summer Olympics from August 8th to 24th for whatever reasons?
Fear not! All you need is a stable Internet (broadband) connection and a PC and you're on the way to enjoying live streaming peer-to-peer television (P2PTV). Yes, even on the road for those Notebook/Mobile warriors using WiFi.
Among the most attractive entrants in this category is TVU Player by TVU Networks Corporation featuring Sci Fi Channel, Spike TV, Fox News, Fox Soccer Channel, GolTV, and several of the Chinese CCTV channels.
Another example is TVAnts, written and and designed by Zhejiang University, featuring China CCTV, TVBS, Taiwan ZhongTian, and ESPN.
GridNetworks Powers Online Film Festival
Excerpted from Seattle Post Intelligencer Report by John Cook
I spent last Saturday night at the Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF) on Capitol Hill, but maybe I didn't have to leave the house.
That's because SIFF is showcasing ten feature films and ten short short films on IndieFlix, a Seattle start-up that specializes in independent film.
The idea behind the company's free MyFestival site, as reported today by TechCrunch, is to allow online viewers to choose which films will be showcased at the closing night gala. Those who are logged onto the site can vote until June 8th.
In a blog post, IndieFlix describes the MyFestival site as "the ultimate test screening and audience building opportunity."
GridNetworks, the Seattle online P2PTV distribution company that announced an investment from Comcast last week, is providing some of the back-end technology to make the streaming video experience top notch.
From Cork to Cannes via Babelgum
Excerpted from Silicon Republic Report by Marie Boran
Digital media graduate Brian Deane didn't even realize his short film had been seen by viewers of Dublin-based P2PTV company Babelgum when he got the call that he had been chosen as one of the finalists in the Babelgum Online Film Festival.
With a panel of high-profile judges headed by esteemed director Spike Lee, Dean's film, "Without Words," was chosen as the winner of the Babelgum Social/Environment Award, and Spike Lee has some words of his own for the first-time film maker, telling Deane that the film had really touched him.
Submitted when he was still a student at the Huston School of Film and Digital Media, "Without Words" was presented with the Babelgum award last week on stage at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival. With an Irish winner in a global digital media company that is based in Dublin, and Ireland making the top 30 countries by volume of entry, Deane agrees Ireland is fast becoming a hotbed for the online independent film industry.
While most people associate online film with poor-quality, mind-numbing content that can often be found on sites like YouTube, Deane thinks the Babelgum online film festival - the first of its kind - is giving weight to this emerging industry.
"The thing that astounded me about Babelgum was the quality of the film-making - it entices professional level content," he said.
Despite the rising profile of online film, Deane thinks the old-fashioned cinema is here to stay: "The visual structure of the big screen, the building intensity between cuts. The main focus on the bottom left may be the actor and then it cuts to next frame, it is more intense if you have to move your head."
While Deane thinks these two industries can co-exist. also he thinks that online film may be the death of DVD and the physical format.
Best Buy Takes Vudu for a Test Run in California
Excerpted from CrunchGear Report
In a test to see how well the set-top movie-rental box can sell in a mainstream retail store, Best Buy is now selling P2PTV set-top unit Vudu in 24 of its California locations, according to Video Business.
The goal is to raise mainstream interest for Vudu, which is currently at a disadvantage to bigger-branded rival Apple TV.
At some of the Best Buy locations, the two products appear to be merchandised distinctly from one another. Vudu boxes are being merchandised in four different locations: within Best Buy's TV sections, in its high-end Magnolia theater rooms, in DVR/new technology displays and near DVD racks. In contrast, Apple TV can be generally found once, near Apple media products.
At $295, Vudu is more expensive than the starting price of $229 for Apple TV. However, Vudu does 1080p versus Apple TV's 720p and has a 250GB hard drive versus Apple TV's 40GB or 160GB drives. Playback time on a purchased or rented movie using Vudu is instant, too. It's very fast.
The Vudu box is a terrific device with a dead-simple interface. It's great for people who love movies and aren't necessarily all that technically inclined. It faces stiff competition from Apple TV and, to a certain extent, on-demand cable programming, but if it's marketed as a higher-end product for a segment of consumers that just wants to watch movies using a box that works right out of the gate, it could have a bright future.
Hot Spot for Web Video Companies
Excerpted from Crain's New York Business Report By Karen Bannan
A top online video company looking for a US headquarters might be expected to pick Los Angeles, the traditional home of entertainment, or Silicon Valley, traditional home of tech.
But for Joost, a European P2PTV firm looking to reinvent television as an interactive medium, Manhattan trumped them both.
"New York is really a no-brainer," says David Clark, the 100-employee company's General Manager of US Operations. "We can balance the need to be strong in technology, strong in media and strong in entertainment. New York provided the best blend."
Founded by the people who brought revolutionary P2P communications firm Skype to the web, Joost is one of the biggest online video companies opting for New York, but it's by no means the only one.
With hundreds of firms devoted to the new art and business of online video, New York is emerging as one of the developing medium's hottest cities, if not the hottest. The pool of actors, content creators, software developers and advertising experts makes New York a magnet for people who want to be part of online video's evolution, says Bobby Tulsiani, an analyst with JupiterResearch.
"You've got a mix of people that might include three guys making videos in a garage and executives from MTV," says Mr. Tulsiani. "A lot of networking goes on, and deals and partnerships are definitely getting done."
New York has always attracted a substantial share of technology companies, especially those that needed access to advertisers and those drawn by New York's diversity and creativity. The city's pull is even stronger for online video companies. To become a real industry, online video needs innovators on the money, media and technology sides - a confluence most often found in New York.
For instance, online series are now facing the issue of how to adapt TV advertising models to the web.
"How many ads does a "CSI" sell against the show? Five or six segments per show, four ads per segment. That's 30 or 40 ads," says Colin Dixon, broadband media practice manager with Dallas-based research firm The Diffusion Group. "Now look online. They're only selling pre-roll, maybe some interstitials and bumpers, so people just can't sell as many ads."
The promise is bright, if companies can come up with formats advertisers and consumers are comfortable with. Last year, video advertising, according to Mr. Tulsiani, accounted for $550 million of the total online advertising pot. That number will jump to $770 million this year and will grow to $2.3 billion by 2012, according to a JupiterResearch report.
According to a recent Forrester Research study, 90% of advertisers would be somewhat or very interested in exploring online video streaming from an advertising perspective.
The kinds of companies getting their starts in New York range from producers creating online Web series to aggregators like Joost, which offers viewers free access to 28,000 TV shows and the ability to customize channels and share them. Some companies are getting paid big bucks to produce marketing pieces for advertisers, while others are storytellers scraping by.
The mayor's office has helped boost New York's online video scene by hosting gatherings for executives and content creators. A week-long series of events is planned for this month. In addition, efforts to make the city a desirable location for big-budget movies and television shows have serendipitously made things easier for online video companies. Though Web video companies aren't eligible for the tax breaks given to big productions, both the Screen Actors Guild and the mayor's office have made it easier to shoot.
"All you have to do is go to the mayor's office and get permission. All they want to know is if you have insurance," says Alicia Arinella, president of On the Leesh Productions, a Manhattan-based production company. "In L.A., you can't jump in and get your feet wet without experience; it's such an ingrained system. Here, anyone can get into the video world."
The idea of New York as a top digital video destination is a self-fulfilling prophecy. As more companies put down roots, more networking occurs. One resource is Video Meet-up: NY Video 2.0, a group that meets to give and watch product demos. Founded less than two years ago with about 50 participants in a Columbia University classroom, the group is nearing 2,000 members.
Some are seasoned businesspeople. But many are do-it-yourselfers working for the love of the craft.
Dinosaur Diorama co-founder Kathleen Grace and her cohorts worked on the original online series The Burgs, about life in hipster Williamsburg, for a year for free.
"We basically made a TV show in our spare time," she says.
The series premiered on YouTube and caught the eye of Michael Eisner's media studio, Vuguru. Mr. Eisner is now an investor in Dinosaur Diorama's next online series focusing on a fictional indie rock band, The All-for-Nots.
Velocix Powers Video Delivery of MiTele Catch-up TV
Velocix, provider of the world's leading digital asset delivery network, this week announced that Telecinco, Spain's number one TV station, is utilizing the company's digital delivery services for its recently launched MiTele P2PTV offering. MiTele allows online viewers to catch-up on their favorite Telecinco TV programs after they have aired.
"The whole TV industry is witnessing a massive paradigm shift in how viewers consume content and how they are becoming less reliant on traditional fixed schedules," said Chema Bautista, head of Multi-platform at Telecinco. "Partnering with Velocix for our MiTele service is critical to achieving our goal of remaining the number one Spanish TV station, whilst adopting an on-demand solution for our 'TV 2.0' revolution."
"We're delighted to add the leading national TV broadcaster in Spain to our growing list of customers," said Phill Robinson, CEO at Velocix. "With the Velocix Digital Asset Delivery Network powering its MiTele service, Telecinco is able to provide its growing online audience with a high-quality and compelling viewing experience."
Velocix offers the broadest and most innovative range of digital delivery services available today. The Velocix network provides an Internet fast lane for delivery of large digital assets like video, music, software, and games. This means that high-quality streamed video plays uninterrupted from start to finish and file downloads complete without failure in a fraction of the time.
Velocix provides the world's leading Digital Asset Delivery Network, a new generation Content Delivery Network (CDN) designed to meet the rich media needs of the 21st century Internet.
Since 2004, Telecinco has been Spain's most popular TV channel and is one of Europe's most profitable television companies. Telecinco offers a high-quality blend of locally-produced and leading international content with popular live shows, quiz shows, and the Formula 1 Championship broadcasts heading up an impressive line-up that combines both information and entertainment programming.
Ultramercial Granted US Patent for its Ad Model
Ultramercial has been granted US Patent 7,346,545 describing its Attention-for-Access Internet advertising model and ad unit introduced in 2002.
Under the model, online viewers can access copyrighted video, music, text or online services for free by requesting and completing an interactive ad. The viewer's attention acts as "payment" in a value exchange that gives the viewer incentive to complete the ad and repositions the advertiser as the provider, rather than the interrupter that viewers often skip, block or ignore.
"Ultramercial is a socially-engineered value exchange," said Dana Jones, Ultramercial's Founder, who filed the original patent application in May 2000.
"By making the value of the ad explicit and honest, we win the respect of the viewer. 80% finish the ad they start, nearly 5% click-through for more information about the underlying advertisers, and the average viewer spends more than a minute engaging with the sponsor."
"This patent award acknowledges the powerful efficiencies our business model brings to online publishers and advertisers," Jones continued, "With 5-1/2 years in the marketplace we've proven that viewers prefer a user-initiated ad format over other intrusive forms of advertising. And with it comes our guaranteed engagement for the sponsor."
Some successful examples of Ultramercial's business model include its Site Pass, first utilized at Salon.com, The Economist and with Time Magazine's Person-of-the-Year; sponsored WiFi access at major hotels, cafes and airports like Denver International; Virgin Mobile's Sugar Mama program where users "earn" free airtime minutes by engaging with sponsors in a two-way format that provides valuable viewer feedback.
The company intends to license the patent to content providers having difficulty monetizing their assets online, such as traditional print and broadcast companies and social networking sites.
"We believe the newspaper and television industry can re-invent themselves with this model," stated Paul Grusche, Ultramercial's COO. "We bring the double-truck ad online in a full-screen format along with guaranteed interactivity and accountability for newspapers.
This same format is a natural progression for video content, providing an accountable two-way experience that has been lacking in broadcast and in pre-rolls online," Grusche added.
"Our model can monetize the premium services that social networking sites offer, as well," said Grusche. "We offer a strong financial engine packaged within a refreshingly honest user experience."
Twittering Eurovision Points to P2P Solution
Excerpted from Mobile Messaging Report by Ewan Spence
Last weekend, The Eurovision Song Contest took place with 43 countries choosing a representative song to be performed live to an audience upwards of 100 million around Europe (and upwards of 300 million worldwide).
Of course that audience wasn't sitting all together - it was logged on to Twitter, throwing out bards about the camp costumes, the immensely tribal nature of pop music, and the incredibly "artistic" graphics between the songs. After three hours of music and politics, one participant said at the end of the gig, "Thank you Twitter, you all kept me sane."
As more international events pop up on the horizon, the luster of modern communication tools, especially those with a real-time component such as Twitter, Jaiku, IM clients, and of course the older IRC are going to be the place to chat and converse about international events.
The upcoming Summer Olympics are going to be a major stress test of the public's use of these tools (as opposed to say an Apple keynote). On the evidence of Eurovision, Twitter's not quite ready yet - the database went down as the event started and it switched to a 'limited' service to stay up, but resource management in instant communication can't afford to be 99.99% up if the one time that everyone wants to talk is when it goes down (because that's when it's popular).
One reason why IRC stays up is it is effectively distributed around multiple computers. Twitter, for all the latest bells and whistles, relies on a central point.
Modern messaging is going to have to cope with messages of greater bandwidth, much lower latency, and very little room for failure. It's a fair bet that any new globally adopted messaging system is going to have a distributed element to it, and heavily biased around P2P.
QTRAX Signs Kontor New Media
Kontor New Media, a top European leader in digital distribution, and QTRAX, the "world's first free and legal P2P music service," this week announced a digital licensing agreement.
Kontor's business model works to ensure that its indie partner labels' music and music video content are featured in key download shops such as
iTunes, Napster, FNAC, Beatport, Nokia Music Services, musicload, AOL - and now QTRAX. The Germany-based company works with hundreds of independent European music labels.
Kontor offers labels content management and distribution, sales and marketing services in stationary download campaigns and mobile entertainment campaigns, royalty management, and a myriad of other utilization avenues for digital distribution.
"We are excited to partner with QTRAX," said Kontor Managing Director Michael Pohl. "Our mission has always been to distribute artists' output in ways that keep them compensated and able to continue producing more music, as well as compensating their label for their investment. QTRAX helps to harness income lost to piracy, which is vital to keeping these artists making music for their fans," continued Pohl.
"Kontor New Media has consistently shown its commitment to representing artists and labels in the evolving music distribution market online," said
Allan Klepfisz, Chairman and CEO of QTRAX. "From the outset, they have been true to a vision of digital distribution that is fair to everyone investing in an artist's success. We are delighted to be able to offer Kontor's catalog of great artists and songwriters," continued Klepfisz.
P2P Music Sharing in Korea
Excerpted from ZDNet Asia Report by Victoria Ho
Music retailers have been moving away from enforcing digital rights management (DRM) restrictions on music downloads, in hopes of giving the industry a shot in the arm.
Along with this, a number of P2P players have recently been looking into offering DRM-free downloads. South Korea's Soribada last month obtained government approval to allow subscribers to share unlimited amounts of DRM-free music through its Orgel service.
Some industry watchers expressed hope in the viability of such DRM-free music download services in the region, but not without taking into account the higher levels of piracy in Asia which could possibly dampen such efforts.
John Brand, Hydrasight Research Director, said, "File sharing is different in Asia than in other parts of the world," and explained that the greater numbers of physical pirated CDs and DVDs in Asia means far less would see the need to go online to share music.
The paradox of the music industry, noted Brand, is that music distributors want the easy access to music files online to spark listener interest, but hope that that would translate to actual sales of records.
A spokesperson for BayTSP, a company that tracks trading on P2P networks, said, "BayTSP's position has always been that DRM doesn't work. It keeps honest people honest, but pirate groups usually figure out quickly how to strip it from music or other digital files.
"That being said, online music stores that sell DRM-free music are the ones that we think have the most potential. You still need to do monitoring and enforcement, but at least people who want a legitimate way to purchase and download music now have a way to do it, and in a format that won't become outdated if the DRM provider goes out of business or otherwise decides not to support that format in the future," he said.
Brand believes users are not as concerned about how legal the files are, but rather whether it can be easily obtained and carried. "The key areas continue to be cost, ease of use and portability. Because there's so much material out there, users want to access a large volume of works, but they literally just don't have the capacity to pay for it all," said Brand.
A spokesperson for Soribada said the company is currently in talks with several Asian entertainment companies, in addition to global expansion plans.
He added that "proper laws" to regulate P2P sharing will help make the system sustainable in the region, citing the Korean government's strong stance against illegal downloads, which has in part contributed to Soribada's success in the country. Soribada has 15 million registered users - 32% of South Korea's population, according to the company's website.
BayTSP has recently been in talks with companies in China and Japan which are interested in securing their works, according to its spokesperson.
"This interest has definitely picked up over the past six to nine months," he added.
Hydrasight's Brand said the downloading industry still has some way to go in establishing a regulated system to return royalties to content owners. "There have been many attempts at enforcing this but a workable global scheme is yet to emerge," he said.
Israelis and Palestinians Launch Web Start-Up
Excerpted from NY Times to Report by Dina Kraft
Nibbling doughnuts and wrestling with computer code, the workers at G.ho.st, an Internet start-up here, are holding their weekly staff meeting - with colleagues on the other side of the Israeli-Palestinian divide.
They trade ideas through a video hookup that connects the West Bank office with one in Israel in the first joint technology venture of its kind between Israelis and Palestinians.
"Start with the optimistic parts, Mustafa," Gilad Parann-Nissany, an Israeli who is vice president for research and development, jokes with a Palestinian colleague who is giving a progress report. Both conference rooms break into laughter.
The goal of G.ho.st is not as lofty as peace, although its founders and employees do hope to encourage it. Instead G.ho.st wants to give users a free, Web-based virtual computer that lets them access their desktop and files from any computer with an Internet connection. G.ho.st, pronounced "ghost," is short for Global Hosted Operating System.
"Ghosts go through walls," said Zvi Schreiber, the company's British-born Israeli chief executive, by way of explanation. A test version of the service is available now, and an official introduction is scheduled for Halloween.
The Palestinian office in Ramallah, with about 35 software developers, is responsible for most of the research and programming. A smaller Israeli team works about 13 miles away in the central Israeli town of Modiin.
The stretch of road separating the offices is broken up by checkpoints, watch towers and a barrier made of chain-link fence and, in some areas, soaring concrete walls, built by Israel with the stated goal of preventing the entry of Palestinian suicide bombers.
Palestinian employees need permits from the Israeli army to enter Israel and attend meetings in Modiin, and Israelis are forbidden by their own government from entering Palestinian cities.
When permits cannot be arranged but meetings in person are necessary, colleagues gather at a rundown coffee shop on a desert road frequented by camels and Bedouin shepherds near Jericho, an area legally open to both sides.
Dr. Schreiber, an entrepreneur who has already built and sold two other start-ups, said he wanted to create G.ho.st after seeing the power of software running on the Web. He said he thought it was time to merge his technological and commercial ambitions with his social ones and create a business with Palestinians.
"I felt the ultimate goal was to offer every human being a computing environment which is free, and which is not tied to any physical hardware but exists on the Web," he said. The idea, he said, was to create a home for all of a user's online files and storage in the form of a virtual PC.
Instead of creating its own Web-based software, the company taps into existing services like Google Docs, Zoho and Flickr and integrates them into a single online computing system.
G.ho.st also has a philanthropic component: a foundation that aims to establish community computer centers in Ramallah and in mixed Jewish-Arab towns in Israel. The foundation is headed by Noa Rothman, the granddaughter of Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli prime minister slain in 1995.
"It's the first time I met Palestinians of my generation face to face," said Ms. Rothman, 31, of her work with G.ho.st. She said she was moved by how easily everyone got along. "It shows how on the people-to-people level you can really get things done."
Investors have put $2.5 million into the company so far, a modest amount. Employing Palestinians means the money goes farther; salaries for Palestinian programmers are about a third of what they are in Israel.
But Dr. Schreiber, who initially teamed up with Tareq Maayah, a Palestinian businessman, to start the Ramallah office, insists this is not just another example of outsourcing.
"We are one team, employed by the same company, and everyone has shares in the company," he said.
At G.ho.st's offices in Ramallah, in a stone-faced building with black reflective glass perched on a hill in the city's business district, employees say they feel part of an intensive group effort to create something groundbreaking. Among them are top young Palestinian programmers and engineers, recruited in some cases directly from universities.
The chance to gain experience in creating a product for the international market - a first for the small Palestinian technology community - means politics take a backseat to business, said Yusef Ghandour, a project manager.
"It's good we are learning from the Israeli side now," Mr. Ghandour said. The Israelis, he said, "are open to the external world, and there is lots of venture capital investment in Israel, and now we are bringing that to Palestine."
The departure of educated young people mostly to neighboring Jordan and the Persian Gulf states is a major problem for the Palestinian economy and has been especially damaging to its technology industry. Since the Oslo peace process broke down in 2000, a wave of Israeli-Palestinian business ties have crumbled as well.
Political tensions make it somewhat unpopular for Palestinians to do business with Israelis, said Ala Alaeddin, chairman of the Palestinian Information Technology Association. He said the concept of a technology joint venture across the divide was unheard-of until G.ho.st opened its doors. A handful of Palestinian tech companies handle outsourced work for Israeli companies, but most focus on the local or Middle Eastern market.
"It's much easier to have outsourcing than a partnership," Mr. Alaeddin said. "A joint venture is a long-term commitment, and you need both sides to be really confident that this kind of agreement will work."
Benchmark Capital, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm with offices in Israel, invested $2 million in G.ho.st. Michael Eisenberg, a general partner at the firm, said Benchmark was "in the business of risky investments," but that G.ho.st presented entirely new territory.
Recalling his discussions with Dr. Schreiber, Mr. Eisenberg said: "Frankly, when he first told me about it I thought it was ambitious, maybe overly ambitious. But Zvi is a remarkable entrepreneur, and I started to feel he could actually pull this off."
The video hookup runs continuously between the offices. Chatting in the Ramallah conference room, two Palestinian programmers wave hello to Israeli colleagues conferring over a laptop in the Modiin office.
"We are doing something across cultures and across two sides of a tough conflict," Dr. Schreiber said. "I was prepared for the possibility that it might be difficult, but it hasn't been."
Ooma: Peering Details and Hands-On Perspective
Excerpted from EDN Report
Ooma's P2P technique is neatly explained within a paragraph's worth of a thorough review by SmallNetBuilder:
"When you dial a number, Ooma first checks to see if the call is a local call. If so, your call is routed through your traditional phone line. If the call is not a local call, the call is routed through the Ooma P2P network. Ooma determines if there is an available landline-provisioned Ooma Hub within local calling distance of the number you are calling. If so, your call is routed to that Ooma Hub, and the call is made using the landline attached to that Hub."
So with the landline-integrated version of Ooma's service, broadband connections incur traffic not only from incoming and outgoing calls but also from calls related to other Ooma customers. And the user's POTS connection would also find use in completing those calls - each of which the carrier would count as a local connection.
P2P cautions aside, how does the service work? Quite well, in fact one of the best VoIP experiences of numerous services. Incoming voice quality is excellent. Voicemail always seems to be up and accessible.
Fax service is another bright spot in Ooma's offering, both absolutely and relative to other services. Dialing a *99 prefix ahead of the call signals the Hub hardware to switch from its default voice-focused audio codec (iLBC) to a different, more data-friendly alternative (G.711 non-compressed) for the fax session duration. Ooma's future plans include supporting the even more fax-friendly T.38 protocol.
Ooma intends for the Hub to ideally locate between its users' broadband modems and their routers and other LAN equipment. As such, it subsequently handles quality of service (QoS) prioritization of VoIP calls over other WAN traffic, and users can tweak the parameters via a web browser-based user interface. Ooma (unlike Vudu) publishes its port and protocol usage specifications, and users can, if necessary, open up requisite firewall holes.
Ooma's Hub design is an interesting case study on cost-vs-function tradeoffs. It's doing more than just traditional VoIP call functions. Ooma could have just designed a rudimentary SIP unit, perhaps with a blinking LED or few to report voicemail and other status messages to the user, relying on a tethered telephone's transducers and touchpad for I/O. Instead, the company decided to include a speaker, along with several user interface buttons, to enable direct access to voicemail, multi-line, and conferencing functions. But Ooma didn't take integration to the extreme; you'll still need to supply a separate telephone.
Ooma has at least one other unique tech trick up its sleeve. The Scout unit (up to four Scouts per Hub are possible) is a cost- and function-reduced version of the Hub, with only RJ-11 ports included (i.e. no Ethernet capability). It doesn't directly make calls; it instead interacts with the Hub over the home's telephone wiring in order to initiate and receive calls on either the primary or secondary phone number, for conference-calling purposes, to retrieve voicemails, etc. Finally, the company leverages HomePNA 1.0. Pretty cool.
MediaDefender and Revision3 SYN Attack
The LA Times and Wired News among others reported on an accidental outage at Revision3 this week related to anti-piracy activities being conducted by MediaDefender.
What's obvious to all observers is that MediaDefender did not intentionally choose to target Revision3. In fact, some MediaDefender employees are avid viewers of shows like "Diggnation" and "Tekzilla," distributed by Revision3.
MediaDefender has a number of different techniques designed to thwart copyright infringement on P2P networks. One of them includes posting fake files (decoys) to public BitTorrent Trackers, aimed to stop/slow down the spread of unauthorized content on the open protocol BitTorrent network.
For years now, Revision3 has been running its own public BitTorrent tracker, featuring Revision3 content as well as unlicensed content, as any public BitTorrent tracker would typically redistribute currently.
In the course of carrying out its daily anti-piracy operations, MediaDefender identifies an entire list of public BitTorrent trackers by their unlicensed content, and posts fake files accordingly.
MediaDefender's records show that it has been on the particular Revision3 tracker since March of 2008 with no other known incidents.
MediaDefender's anti-piracy counter-measures are highly targeted and designed to frustrate only the content it is specifically hired to protect.
This time, there was a glitch, which has been corrected.
Digital Watermarking Firms Adopt Privacy Principles
Excerpted from Digital Media Wire Report by Mark Hefflinger
A consortium of digital watermarking technology developers announced on Thursday that it has endorsed a set of privacy principles issued by the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT).
Digital watermarks are embedded within media files and communicate copyright information, monitor broadcasts and Internet traffic, enhance security of documents, protect brands, and identify specific copies of media.
"People are bound to wonder what it means if their media files contain embedded information that can be used to identify them," said CDP Senior Policy Counsel David Sohn.
The CDT proposals call for watermarks to provide adequate notice of themselves to consumers; avoid embedding independently useful information about consumers; limit uses for secondary purposes; control access to reading capability; and provide adequate security and respond appropriately when systems are compromised.
"The combination of digitally watermarked content and respect for consumer privacy will further broaden adoption and unleash new distribution models," said Reed Stager, Chairman of the Digital Watermarking Alliance.
"We applaud the Center for Democracy & Technology's focus on digital watermarking and its efforts to gather input from a broad array of stakeholders in developing its recommended best practices."
Viacom and Google Should Share the Load
Excerpted from Business Week Report by Catherine Holahan
To hear Google tell it, Viacom wants to unravel the social web. If Viacom had its druthers, websites that rely on user-generated content (UGC) would be held responsible when users upload material that violates copyrights, Google argues in a public response to Viacom's $1 billion lawsuit accusing Google of copyright infringement.
The implication, Google argues, is that services like video-sharing site YouTube would have trouble getting off the ground. "Viacom's lawsuit challenges the protections of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) that Congress enacted a decade ago to encourage the development of services like YouTube," Google wrote in its May 26th response.
"Congress recognized that such services could not and would not exist if they faced liability for copyright infringement based on materials users uploaded to their services."
Google is only partly right. It's true that doing away with certain DMCA protections - such as those that shield Internet companies from liability for distributed content - would indeed hamper many sites. After all, it's nearly impossible for companies to ensure that all the videos, photos, comments, and other content uploaded to sites don't violate copyrights. Even if such omniscient content screening were possible, it would undoubtedly be cost-prohibitive for all but the largest players.
But Viacom isn't looking to dismantle the DMCA, though its suit does point to a major flaw in the law that websites and media companies both must address: what to do when infringing content is taken down but then immediately put back online. "Even after YouTube receives a notice from a copyright owner, in many instances the very same infringing video remains on YouTube because it was uploaded by at least one other user, or appears on YouTube again within hours of its removal," Viacom says in its complaint.
The DMCA needs an upgrade. Enacted in 1998, the law needs to reflect advances that make it simple to continually post and repost offending material. Media companies like Viacom shouldn't have to file notice after notice to the same site concerning versions of the same piece of content.
When the DMCA became law, user participation was largely confined to AOL chat rooms and peer-to-peer services. As a result, it was feasible for media companies to police their content by searching for unlicensed uploads and filing takedown notices.
Much has changed. Now users are uploading videos, photos, and audio files to video-sharing sites, social networks, blogs, and even sites owned by major media companies. Viacom's MTV.com, for example, lets users upload photos and videos. The number of people uploading content and the speed with which they do it has made filing takedown notices ineffective for media companies that produce large amounts of popular content.
In some cases, by the time a site responds to a takedown request for a popular piece of content, another slightly altered version of that clip or photo has already been uploaded. Under the current law, the media company often has little choice but to file yet another takedown notice for that slightly altered version and hope that someone doesn't simply upload the same material in the interim.
The technology exists to make additional protections for copyright owners possible. Companies such as Audible Magic, Nielsen Media Research, and Vobile all have digital fingerprinting or watermarking services that enable content creators to register content in a central database that can then be scanned by websites for matches to user-uploaded content. In cases where media companies have already filed takedown notices, that technology can be used to match against the removed material and keep the same infringing content, or very similar versions of it, off the site.
"The technology is being deployed and it is fairly good," says Mark Kirstein, President of research firm MultiMedia Intelligence. The US market for such technology will grow to more than $500 million by 2012, he estimates. "It is not going to prevent everything, but it is vastly superior to the alternative, which is largely the content companies monitoring content almost manually and issuing takedown notices."
Google recognizes the potential of filtering technology and is working on its filters for YouTube to solve the re-uploading problem.
Of course, no filtering technology is perfect. There is a risk that filters will screen out non-infringing material, such as parodies of popular content, or fail to recognize a slightly changed version of the same infringing "Saturday Night Live" video, for example.
"If you say that content is automatically taken down when the audio track matches registered copywritten content, that is not good enough since the video could be completely different," says Corynne McSherry, a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit digital rights group. "It may be someday that filters become sophisticated enough, but right now I don't think they are there yet."
With companies such as Google behind them, however, filters are bound to get better. Even the EFF, which supports the DMCA law as is, doesn't have a problem when filters are used to take down material that matches content for which a company has already filed a notice, without user objections. They also don't object to filters that flag possibly infringing content for human review.
The key issue in Viacom vs. Google/YouTube is not whether the DMCA should be thrown out altogether or whether it is possible to keep users from uploading the same content. Really, all the arguing is over who should be responsible for paying for the policing.
Google says it doesn't have to pay under the DMCA rules as written. Google is probably right.
Viacom says it shouldn't have to shoulder the cost of YouTube's success by paying to have a third party screen all of the site's user-uploaded videos. That argument makes some sense as well.
Why not make both content creators and Internet companies pay? Both sides have an interest in policing content. Content creators want to protect their copyright and make sure they are adequately compensated from the sites with which they do have licensing agreements.
And, as UGC sites mature, YouTube and others have an interest in ensuring that their sites are well-lit places on which marketers can safely place ads without worrying about offending a partner or unwittingly supporting pirated material.
Content creators could pay to watermark and register content, and still file initial takedown notices to sites. That way, websites would not remove content that creators willingly uploaded, say, to hype a new show.
For their part, web companies could pay a fee to the same third-party company to scan user-uploaded material against a library of registered content with prior takedown notices. The fee could vary based on the amount of user-uploaded material that the site needs to scan, and thus should take into account the differences between a YouTube and a new start-up.
It behooves content creators and Web companies to start exploring compromise. Judges often come up with verdicts that force companies to meet somewhere around the middle anyway.
Old Dogs and New Tricks
Excerpted from TelecomTV Report
Telcos and ISPs beware. There's a concerted global movement promoted by well-organized, well-funded content industry lobbyists to drive through new laws to crush content piracy - and they don't care who gets caught up in the machinery.
The big business interests in film and music are lobbying both national governments and supra-national bodies, such as the EU, with a range of draconian proposals designed to entrench 20th century copyright in the digital age.
To give the new laws teeth it's being proposed that ISPs at least be forced to grass-up (assist law enforcement officials to apprehend) so-called 'pirates' in return for immunity. With some proposals ISPs may actually become liable for any copyright theft undertaken across their networks.
Whatever the recipe, the thrust is the same: that one industry (ISPs and telcos) be made to expensively enforce the unsupportable business model of another by chasing down its own customers!
It's absurd, but if the recent past is anything to go by the real pirates in this long-running piece of Kafkaesque content (available free) will get away with it and will see their oppressive and, ultimately self-defeating, proposals become law.
Maybe, though, just maybe, the battle will expose how avaricious and tottering the content edifice actually is and public rage will see a complete end to it. There's still time and we can hope.
First the charge sheet (ours, not theirs).
The US is developing an international trade agreement designed to end Internet privacy worldwide and impose a global ban on "unauthorized information exchanges" such as P2P links repositories. Controversial whistle-blower site Wikileaks this weekend posted a PDF copy of an Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement discussion paper presented last October by US Trade Representative Susan Schwab to potential signatories Australia, Canada, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, South Korea, Switzerland, and the European Commission.
The document explicitly aims to "criminalize the non-profit facilitation" of "unauthorized" file-sharing and requires ISPs in participating nations to hand over subscriber information on request. The treaty would also ban anti-circumvention measures designed to protect online privacy or flout DRM protections. International trade representatives could give a green light to draft the treaty as early as the July G-8 summit.
"The proliferation of infringements of intellectual property rights, particularly in the context of counterfeiting and piracy, poses an ever-increasing threat to the sustainable development of the world economy," the discussion paper reads. It goes on to claim IPR violations discourage innovation, fund organized crime, deprive governments of tax revenue and threaten consumer safety.
The proposal aims to quash questions of jurisdiction - currently keeping notorious P2P search engine The Pirate Bay alive and well despite the best efforts of US copyright holders - by calling for "international enforcement cooperation regardless of the location of the right holder or the origination of the infringing item."
Meanwhile in France, lawmakers have the enthusiastic backing of President Sarkozy in their efforts to shepherd what's being called the Olivennes bill. Due to become law this summer, the legislation will allow French officials to actually cut off the broadband connections of people who illegally download films or music over the Internet.
In fact the law is the result of an old-fashioned Gallic stitch-up. The big content companies have got their oppressive copyright laws in return for accepting a version of the old 'cultural quota" wheeze especially brought back, Indiana Jones-style, for the Internet.
Under the 'three strikes' rule (a strangely Anglo-Saxon nomenclature given the sensitivities) offenders get email warnings and then get their accounts closed.
Meanwhile (in return) entertainment companies will end annoying copyright protection on French material so that music and video bought online can be played on any device (if the new regs work there would be less need for the DRM protection). Now the French think they're going to export this outrageous imposition.
According to Sarkozy: "Everywhere in the United States, in the United Kingdom and elsewhere, professionals and governments have tried for years to find the 'grail' to fight the problem of Internet piracy. We are the first, in France, to form a big national alliance around concrete and effective proposals."
M. Olivennes has already been off promoting his legislation in Canada and claims to have had a good response. Spurred on by the French example, the European Union is also minded to have a dabble.
According to Monica Horten, PhD researcher in EU communications policy at the University of Westminster, the EU is effectively in stealth-mode but is banging the legal building blocks into place so it can introduce its own EU-level three strikes rule.
A series of amendments, currently under review in the European Parliament, will clear the legal roadblocks by: enabling data retention in some form so that copyright infringers can be pursued; by altering the principles of data protection which currently prevent ISPs from divulging user identity and other personal information; by enabling member states to set up a process for pursuing and sanctioning copyright infringement outside the domain of the courts (i.e. a privatized law enforcement process for copyright, where ISPs will act on the basis of information supplied by copyright owners).
Other amendments will oblige ISPs to alter the terms and conditions in their contracts with end users, enabling them to sanction and cut off users who infringe copyright; do away with the right of users to freely distribute content (including their own!); and legally block access to websites and web content.
Time has been scheduled for the package to be reviewed by the Council on June 12th, and a vote in the European Parliament on July 8th. "The general theory is that these moves are all coming from the same school of thought, and likely to have been lobbied for by the same groups," says Horten.
"In the EU those include the MPA (Motion picture association), IFPI (recording industry trade group), and the French cultural industry - groups such as Vivendi, and the SACD which is an author's group representing film producers."
It's difficult to know where to start in running through the many reasons all of this is a very bad, regressive set of ideas. Essentially, the moves are a concerted attempt to give the kiss of life to outdated, dying business models based on extortion.
So the most ironic aspect of the evocation of 'piracy' in this debate, is that the majority of parrots, wooden legs and eye-patches are surely to be found on 'content' side of the argument. This is an industry that sues its own customers!
So lets look at royalties. These are not sacred revenue streams without which no content would ever again be created. They weren't even developed as it were, legal principles first, but were highly pragmatic imposts with revenue taken as and where it could be taken and then handed down the chain - sometimes getting as far as the actual musicians or composers.
So the idea that actually listening to music or watching a video constitutes some sort of consumption that demands royalty payment (or the world will collapse) is not an ancient unarguable principle underpinning the entire economics of content creation (as we are being lead to believe by the content industries).
Just using music as an example (because it best supports my case), royalties as we understand them simply become practicable with the arrival of recorded music and that's why they're there.
In fact as recently as the 1950s, the main revenue stream for composers of popular music was publishing - that is, printing and selling sheet music. Recording royalties became important as more records were sold. Ditto recorded music performing rights - the money paid by broadcasters to air music.
This arrived even more recently (and became substantial in the 1980s) because the music industry eventually managed to strong-arm broadcasters into paying substantial amounts - previously it was assumed that radio air-time was a bonus for record companies since it sold their records. Of course these victories didn't sate the content barons - they came for more and the lawmakers seem to have laid down and let them.
For instance, in the UK the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 made it illegal to play copyright music in public (i.e. outside of the home) without the permission of every writer or composer whose music you intend to play.
Clearly not practical, so those nice pirates, the Performing Rights Society (PRS), will sell you a license so you don't get prosecuted. It means that this legalized extortion applies to companies which have a radio on in the workplace, even though royalties for the radio broadcast are already being paid for by the radio station.
In the UK there's plenty of anecdotal evidence that the PRS is gradually tightening the noose by sending out letters and extorting money from businesses under threat of prosecution and there are the inevitable 'hard case' examples which make it into the newspapers - like the charity bus which got the PRS shakedown and, because the sum demanded was too high, had to take out the bus radio.
All this is being made up as they go along. If it were grounded in 'principle' then when we oldies all replaced our LP records with expensive CDs in the 1980s we were obviously re-buying something we already owned and so should have enjoyed at least a discount and should now be due a refund. Do we get one? Of course not: these 'principles' work in one direction only.
Given this history (royalty collection very much enabled by technologies and circumstances) it makes sense that when the technologies change again with the Internet and create new dynamics, then the revenue-driving element should change to match. One good reason that should happen is that the old model simply won't work.
File sharing across the Internet will continue to grow, one way or the other and at the same time significant numbers of artists (especially new ones) will go with the flow, calculating that they stand to gain more by enabling and encouraging the sharing of their work than by trying to squash its free circulation.
Already some significant artists (Prince, Radio head ) have made just such a calculation and it's sure that more will follow. So eventually (and maybe soon) we will see a 'free' content sector aided and abetted by artists who see their recorded material as marketing collateral, encourage its free circulation and who aim to 'monetize' their efforts by live performance, merchandising and sponsorship, rather than extorting royalties from their fans.
There will remain an ever-diminishing rump of old artists and their record companies still fighting a losing battle against piracy. The world will move on and leave them raging at the dying of the light - and good riddance to them.
Coming Events of Interest
Advertising 2.0 New York - June 4th-5th in New York, NY. A new kind of event being developed as a partnership of Advertising Age and Digital Hollywood. The DCIA is fully supporting this important inaugural effort with a closing session, and encourages DCINFO readers to plan now to attend.
Voice Peering Forum - June 23rd-24th in San Francisco, CA. This conference brings together over one-hundred organizations from the information technology (IT) and telecommunications industry to network and discuss the latest in peering, routing, and interconnection of networks and the applications they support. The DCIA is participating with a special session.
P2P MEDIA SUMMIT SV - August 4th in San Jose, CA. The first-ever P2P MEDIA SUMMIT in Silicon Valley. 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.
Building Blocks 2008 - August 5th-7th in San Jose, CA. The premier event for transforming entertainment, consumer electronics, social media & web application technologies & the global communications network: TV, cable, telco, consumer electronics, mobile, broadband, search, games and the digital home.
International Broadcasting Convention - September 11th-16th in Amsterdam, Holland. IBC is committed to providing the world's best event for everyone involved in the creation, management, and delivery of content for the entertainment industry. Uniquely, the key executives and committees who control the convention are drawn from the industry, bringing with them experience and expertise in all aspects.
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