July 28, 2008
Volume XXII, Issue 12
Don't Miss P2P MEDIA SUMMIT Silicon Valley
If you choose just one conference to attend this summer to stay current on the latest developments affecting Internet service providers (ISPs), content delivery networks (CDNs), and peer-to-peer companies (P2Ps), make it this one: P2P MEDIA SUMMIT Silicon Valley.
This inaugural Bay Area DCIA event features industry-leading speakers from all over the world discussing the most important topics. It takes place next Monday August 4th at the San Jose Marriott.
Pre-registration rates can save you up to $200 when you also sign up for Building Blocks, jointly produced by the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) and Digital Hollywood. Building Blocks is at the same venue on August 5th through 7th; and pre-registration rates end today July 28th.
P2P-Next Project Tests P2PTV
Excerpted from Zeropaid Report
A European research project aims to build a next-generation P2P content delivery platform that the team hopes will become a Europe-wide standard for broadcasters.
The P2P-Next consortium has developed a BitTorrent client called SwarmPlayer that can stream video and is looking for folks to help test out the system.
This trial is part of the P2P-Next project. P2P-Next is a European research project funded by the EU FP7 framework. The P2P-Next project aims to build a next-generation P2P content delivery platform, to be designed, developed, and applied jointly by a consortium consisting of high-profile academic and industrial partners with proven track records in innovation and commercial success.
P2P-Next is developing a platform that takes open-source development, open standards, and future-proof iterative design as key design principles. By using P2P technology it aims to provide an efficient and low-cost delivery platform for professional and user-created content.
Participants will help measure the performance of the SwarmPlayer software in different situations and whether video is downloading successfully and at what speed.
Current P2P technology allows video to be distributed in three different ways: download it to watch after downloading; watch it while downloading it, and watch it live (web-cams, live TV broadcasts, etc.).
P2P-Next research focuses on combining all these modes of video streaming into a single solution by merging them into the BitTorrent protocol.
This allows a single player to download movies, watch video-on-demand, and watch live video streams using one technology, while taking advantage of the popularity and maturity of existing BitTorrent clients.
The P2P-Next team successfully created the SwarmPlayer software to support these streaming modes, but requires an audience to test it.
Volunteers will need to use the SwarmPlayer BitTorrent client. Once this has been installed, they will be able to download a pre-recorded five-minute clip provided by the BBC or a live view of Amsterdam from the roof of Fabchannel, which is located here.
Those wanting to take part must have a broadband net connection speed of 600kbps or higher. Those downloading and installing the software will be able to see how it handles a live stream and a pre-recorded broadcast.
The P2P-Next project is scheduled to run for four years and the SwarmPlayer is likely to be the first of many prototypes it produces.
Report from CEO Marty Lafferty
 Don't miss the P2P MEDIA SUMMIT Silicon Valley on Monday August 4th at the San Jose Marriott.
To stay on top of cutting-edge developments affecting Internet service providers (ISPs), content delivery networks (CDNs), and peer-to-peer companies (P2Ps), this conference is a must-attend event.
Hear from industry leaders from all over the world on the latest regulatory actions, technological break-throughs, ground-breaking deals, new business models, and ongoing case studies.
Topics will include P2P and network management, P2P and content delivery systems, P2P and marketing, and P2P and content licensing.
At this first-ever P2P MEDIA SUMMIT in the Bay Area, attendees will have opportunities to meet Abacast's Michael King, ARTISTdirect's Jonathan Lee, Bingham's Joshua Wattles, Brand Asset Digital's Joey Patuleia, Comcast's Barry Tishgart, Cloudshield's Peter Jungk, Creative Commons' Mike Linksvayer, Digicorp's Jay Rifkin, Double V3's Martine Groulx, EM Syndication's Laura Tunberg, Getback Media's Chris Dominguez, GridNetworks' Jeffrey Payne, Hiro-Media's Daniel Leon, Ignite Technologies' Fabian Gordon, Jambo Media's Rob Manoff, Kontiki's Eric Armstrong, Leaf Networks' Jeff Capone, LimeWire's Brian Dick, mBit's Chunyan See, MediaDefender's Chris Gillis, Microsoft's Ravi Rao, Motorola's John Waclawsky, Octoshape's Stephen Alstrup, Ono's Fabian Bustamante, Oversi's Eitan Efron, Packet Exchange's Chuck Stormon, Pando Networks' Robert Levitan and Laird Popkin, TVU Networks' Dan Lofgren, Ultramercial's Dana Jones, Verizon Communications' Doug Pasko, YuMe Networks' Rosanne Vathana, and more.
Our first morning discussion will focus on network resources - reducing bandwidth usage and improving P2P throughput. What are the mission, objectives, history, and status of the P4P Working Group (P4PWG) and Ono? What tests have been conducted to date and what have the results shown? How do technologies such as live P2P streaming and P2P caching impact on this issue? How does the P2P industry move from testing to standards setting and best practices? How can interested parties get involved?
Hybrid CDNs - the evolving distribution chain - will also be covered during a morning session. What is the current landscape for web-based content distribution and what role do P2P-based and hybrid-P2P technologies play? How does wide-area peering relate to this? What trends are emerging in P2P implementation by other participants in the distribution chain and in consumer usage? What impact do advances in security, data compression, caching, content acceleration, swarming, streaming, and other P2P-related technologies have?
In the afternoon, featured subject matter will include consumer propositions - what's working and what's not. Has any alternative business model - paid-download, subscription, or advertising-supported - yet proven to be more promising than adware that first predominated in P2P? How do contextual marketing and promotional offerings relate to the P2P channel? Have any more innovative approaches been attempted and what has been the learning? How can marketers and content owners collaborate to effectively exploit the unique opportunities afforded by P2P distribution?
And finally, we will feature a special session on private versus public approaches - P2P for content rights holders. What are the various content licensing and market exploitation strategies that have been tried to date with respect to P2P distribution? How and why is collective licensing gaining traction overseas and could this be applied to the US market? What should the roles and responsibilities be for P2P companies, ISPs, CDNs, and other parties in an optimal but practical P2P content licensing regime?
Register today and save up to $200 when you also sign up for Building Blocks taking place at the same venue on August 5th through 7th. Pre-registration rates end on July 28th.
P2P, which already represents the lion's share of all Internet traffic, now also offers unprecedented opportunities for commercial development and highly attractive entry points at many levels.
We hope to see you next week. Share wisely, and take care.
P2P Streaming to Disrupt CDN Business Models
Excerpted from NewTeeVee Report by Janko Roettgers
The EU-funded P2P-Next project has been beta testing a new open source streaming solution since late last week, streaming both a live webcam transmission and an archived video from the BBC through its BitTorrent-based SwarmPlayer.
P2P-Next's scientific director, Johan Pouwelse, said about the progress of the test, "It's been positive beyond our expectations. More than 4,000 users have installed the latest beta version of SwarmPlayer." Of course SwarmPlayer isn't the only effort to utilize P2P for streaming video. In fact, hardly a week goes by without a new start-up pitching a new P2P streaming solution.
These companies should pay close attention to P2P-Next, not only because the project has €14 million to develop an open-source streaming alternative, but also because broadcasters from the BBC to Germany's ARD seem to love the idea of ditching their proprietary platforms.
P2P-Next's SwarmPlayer is loosely based on research that a team of P2P developers at the Delft University of Technology has been doing for the last couple of years.
The team, led by Pouwelse, has been publishing the social BitTorrent client Tribler, and it started to test P2P Next's BitTorrent-based streaming earlier this year with a closed beta test in cooperation with the Dutch BitTorrent website MiniNova. Pouwelse acknowledged that the system needed some tweaking early on, but the reason wasn't that P2P wasn't working. Instead, it worked too well, blasting the client with huge amounts of data that overloaded the client computer's CPU and affected live playback.
These initial problems have been fixed, according to Pouwelse. Even more interesting than the test itself, however, is who's participating.
P2P-Next uses content from the BBC for its beta test. Granted, it's not "Dr. Who," just an outdated weather report, but the mere presence of a major broadcaster in a field test like this is noteworthy.
Pouwelse says working with the BBC has had bigger benefits for the project than cooperating with MiniNova did, since broadcasters like the BBC "have done TV for decades already."
The fact that the project's not getting sued for copyright infringement might also help when it comes to conducting publicly funded research. But, of course, there's something in it for the BBC as well. The Beeb has been pushing out massive amounts of bandwidth through its iPlayer service.
It's been using Kontiki's proprietary P2P client to offset some of that bandwidth for show downloads, but all streams have been completely server-based. Kontiki's President Eric Armstrong told us back in May the company's relationship is "very strong."
Pouwelse calls P2P Next's efforts disruptive to the still-emerging content delivery network (CDN) market. "By developing a common open standard we can move P2P to the next level and craft a single overlay," he said, adding that he sees a potential to have an open standard for P2P streaming included in any future browser or next-generation television set.
Wade Hennessey Rejoins Kontiki as CTO
Kontiki, the leading provider of managed peer-assisted delivery for high-quality video and digital content, this week announced the reappointment of Wade Hennessey as Chief Technology Officer (CTO). Hennessey returns to Kontiki to oversee the core technology development of the company's patented peer-assisted content delivery solution.
As Kontiki's original CTO, Wade co-founded Kontiki in 2000 and designed the technology to enable companies to turn their corporate networks into advanced P2P delivery systems, which has remained the core of Kontiki's Delivery Management System (DMS). He was also deeply involved in raising three major rounds of funding, helping to further develop Kontiki's technology during its early stages. Hennessey served as CTO and Vice President of Engineering until Kontiki was acquired by VeriSign. He departed VeriSign in 2007.
"Kontiki has gone through many phases of development through the years, of which Wade has been a large part, so it's with enthusiasm that we welcome him back to the team," said Eric Armstrong, President, Kontiki. "We're in a great place to continue to penetrate the enterprise and consumer entertainment space with broad deployment of P2P content delivery and we're excited to have our core team behind the charge once again."
"When we first started Kontiki, our team was focused on authorized P2P content distribution," said Wade Hennessey. "However, we have always had a broader vision of developing additional distributed computing services that efficiently utilize large networks of machines for tasks which have previously been done in more centralized ways. I'm certainly pleased to be back so I can continue working towards the original goals of the company."
Hennessey brings a wealth of experience in engineering and computer science back to Kontiki. Prior to co-founding Kontiki, Hennessey was Vice
President of Engineering at AOL Products, where he built the application's core infrastructure to support personalization services. He also developed the Netscape Personalization Engine, a specialized application server to run NetCenter and many other AOL services.
Hennessey holds a bachelor's of science in mathematical and computational sciences and a master's in computer science both from Stanford University.
EZTV Trials TV-Torrent Streaming
Excerpted from TorrentFreak Report by Ben Jones
Last week, we wrote about the new attempt to invigorate video distribution, by mixing torrents with streaming video. Our piece piqued the interest of the leading TV-torrent distribution group EZTV, and this week it launched a live-beta test of the technology for its warez.
EZTV administrator Novaking said that the decision to start experimenting with SwarmPlayer came after reading about the technology here.
The SwarmPlayer EZTV is experimenting with uses slightly modified torrent files (.tstream), which make it possible to stream video files using the BitTorrent protocol. This new technology allows publishers to offer video steams without having to pay for expensive bandwidth.
Theoretically, you can watch all torrent files with the player, but it's recommended to use newer releases as they often offer a higher swarm speed.
Streaming the typical TV show will run to around 100kbps, a speed unattainable with older television torrents due in part to the low peer numbers, as much as the larger piece size used in the pre-stream torrents.
Novaking isn't too worried about the sequential piece transfer, and loss of the tit-for-tat impacting the speeds of the swarm for those not trying to stream.
"The spread will be so wide in the first week," he tells us, "that it won't affect it greatly. Of course it's impossible to tell until it's fully live and working."
Currently, only their own torrents will be available via .tstream files, but the hope is that should the test prove successful during the next week, to have them for the torrents from their partner sites, such as MVgroup as well.
BitTorrent streaming is the ideal low-cost distribution model for online video.
It is interesting to see that this multi-million dollar research project collaborates with torrent sites like MiniNova, and mainstream broadcasters such as the BBC. Could this be the future of major networks?
EZTV's Novaking certainly seems to think so. "We are hoping that TV networks start seeing this as a method to provide people with what they want."
ZipClip Lets Users Send Content from Web to Mobile
Excerpted from Washington Post Report by Tricia Duryee
Why buy mobile content when you can just rip it from the web? This is a pretty good idea that targets the mindset of a teenager, who wants all the cool new wallpapers and ring-tones for their phone, and will go to pretty big lengths not to pay for it.
Palo Alto, CA-based Berggi, which launched a mobile e-mail product a-year-and-a-half ago, launched a new product this week called ZipClip.
The application must be downloaded to the phone and your computer, which is then a plug-in for both Firefox and Internet Explorer.
Then, when a person is online and sees a piece of content he or she likes - a video, photo, image, graphic, animation, avatar, or even audio clip - they right-click over the content, and then pick send-to-phone. They can also send it to a friend. The content doesn't appear as an SMS, but rather stored on ZipClip's servers and accessible through the application on the phone.
Right now, Java, Symbian and Blackberry versions are available with iPhone support coming in October. The Blackberry version can be used on either AT&T or Sprint. Outside the US, it's available through most carriers, and a Chinese version will launch in August in time for the Olympics, said Babur Ozden, Berggi's CEO.
In an online demo, Ozden showed how it works. Users can highlight a chunk of text, right-click, and send it to their phone. They can right-click on a YouTube video, and either watch that on their phone, or strip off the audio portion and use it as a ring-tone.
There's also a ring-tone maker, which allows a person to pick any portion of a song for varying lengths, and send that to his or her phone.
He also showed how images can be found on Google, Facebook, or even sites like 123greetings that have little illustrations that could easily serve as a wallpaper.
Ozden dismissed the idea that Berggi could run into copyright protections, and has a self-policing mentality.
"We expect the end-users will be sensitive enough. If it's a copyrighted area, they should not use it. If the content is digitally protected, when they right-click, nothing happens. If the website has certain rules, but it's not digitally protected, we expect our users to adhere to those rules."
The service is free, so it's the company's goal is to monetize in three different ways in the future. First, it will create a premium version for users who want to increase their in-box size on their servers. Second, it will develop premium channels, where people can choose to pay for content; and third, it will rely on advertising after the user base reaches a certain size.
Mobile P2P: Keep up with Peers Securely
Excerpted from ICT Results Report
Mobile P2P applications allow a team or group to create new levels of ad-hoc cooperation and collaboration around a specific, real-time goal. But developing compelling and secure applications is a challenge. Now a platform developed by European researchers rises to that challenge.
Many business sectors could benefit enormously from secure P2P mobile communications, but developing applications tailored to specific needs is expensive, time-consuming and not necessarily reliable. Security, in particular, is a difficult issue to resolve.
But now researchers at the EU-funded PEPERS project are putting the final touches to a mobile P2P development platform for secure applications.
The platform could mean a rapid rise in the number of secure, industry specific P2P mobile applications, helping to increase the competitiveness of European business.
P2P applications allow decentralized companies to more effectively manage a dispersed and highly mobile workforce. Journalists will be able to work more collaboratively on breaking news, and security guards will coordinate responses to situations, increasing security and personal safety.
P2P applications are a powerful innovation enabled by the internet. Essentially, P2P allows individuals to connect and work together, rather than having to go through a central communications unit first.
P2P can allow thousands of people to collaborate around a specific long-term or ad hoc goal. The technology gave rise to Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia written by thousands of volunteers. It enabled the creation of Digg, Stumble-Upon, and del.ico.us, all phenomenally successful book-marking services.
Live Mesh Goes Mobile and P2P
Excerpted from ReadWriteWeb Report by Frederic Lardinois
There has been a lot of development around Microsoft's Live Mesh platform in the last few days. Just last week, Microsoft opened up Live Mesh to all users and quietly released a mobile version.
This week, Microsoft announced that it is rolling out a major update of the Live Mesh infrastructure that will allow users to sync files directly among different devices without having to sync to the Live Desktop first. This will allow users to bypass the 5GB limit of Live Mesh's online storage.
Allowing users to bypass the Live Mesh online storage by directly copying files from one machine to another is a major enhancement to Live Mesh. 5GB is not a very large amount of storage anymore, especially if you want to share videos or photos.
Bypassing the Live Desktop of course means that those files are not available online from anywhere anymore, but for a lot of usage scenarios (back-up, syncing between desktop and laptop etc.), the online storage wasn't really necessary anyway. Still, it would be nice to see Microsoft up the 5GB limit, or allow users to purchase more space.
Strangely, users will have to turn of syncing to the Live Desktop on the Live Desktop itself. It is not possible to directly configure a folder to bypass the Live Desktop from the desktop, which might have some technical reasons, but mostly seems like an unnecessary hassle.
The new version of Live Mesh will also allow users to manage potential file conflicts on the Live Desktop, something that was sorely missing before.
Microsoft also quietly released a mobile version of Live Mesh, which allows users to access their files from their mobile phones or any other Internet connected device through an optimized site.
Chinese P2P Firms Rake in Big Bucks
Excerpted from GigaOM Report
Pacific Epoch reports that the Chinese P2P company Xunlei is in talks with US venture capital companies to raise a final round of $100 million.
Xunlei had previously secured a total of $30 million in funding, with an estimated $5 million coming out of Google's check book. An IPO is planned for later this year, according to Pacific Epoch. Xunlei isn't the only Chinese P2P company raking in big bucks these days. The Chinese market research company iResearch is reporting that P2P companies like PPLive and PPStream are attracting an increasing amount of advertising dollars.
The growing revenue goes along with tons of users watching thousands of video streams. Maybe Joost and others should take a look at China to see how to make money with P2P video.
User numbers are exploding across the board for Chinese P2P providers, according to iResearch. The market research company is reporting that PPLive is now the market leader, clocking almost 24 million active users in May.
Competitor PPStream is following closely with 23.5 million users.
QQLive reached around 17 million users, UUSee got almost 10 million users, and Tudou trails the field with 7 million users. The popularity of these services also translates into increasing ad revenue. iResearch estimates that PPLive has already generated roughly $3.4 million in revenue in the first half of this year.
PPStream made $2.2 million during the same time, while PPFilm and UUSee both generated $680K each. We had a chance to talk with PPLive VP James Seng last month, and he told us that the company has seen some 100 million downloads of its P2P streaming video client, which offers access to 900 or so live TV channels. It has 110 employees, is looking to expand into the US, and yes, it's profitable.
iResearch now adds to this picture the detail that PPLive apparently has been able to attract more than 200 individual advertisers this year alone.
Of course it's not all rosy for Chinese P2P companies. They've had their fair share of copyright infringement lawsuits as well. The MPAA sued Xunlei in February of this year and PPLive was sued by a local rights holder in May.
However, Chinese courts don't always side with the rights holder, and the fines seem to be negligible compared to the money at stake: Tudou was recently ordered to pay the equivalent of a mere $7,000 for distributing a movie without the consent of rights holders. US-based companies would have to expect statutory damages of up to $150,000 in such a case.
Chinese online video start-ups have other things to fear instead, such as being closed down for hosting videos that don't go over well with government officials. Local YouTube competitor 56.com recently closed down for more than a month, and the word on the street has been that it was due to non-sanctioned videos.
Meanwhile, other video portals can't seem to stop raising money to cover their huge expenses. In China, P2P start-ups seem to be doing better than their video portal brethren, if iResearch's figures are accurate.
It's an interesting juxtaposition to the situation in the US. Is it that P2P video platforms in China have concentrated on safe TV fare and shied away from potentially problematic user-generated content? Or is there another explanation?
Joost & Tom Group Launch Chinese JV
Excerpted from C21 Media Report by Adam Benzine
Peer-to-peer television (P2PTV) platform Joost and Chinese media conglomerate Tom Group have launched a joint venture to bring a full Joost offering to the region of Greater China.
As part of the agreement, Joost and Tom Group's Internet arm, Tom Online, have also launched a new Chinese version of Joost, available at http://joost.tom.com.
"Joost has always been a global service, and our partnership with Tom is a perfect example of the regionalized offerings we are able to bring to the market," said Joost CEO Mike Volpi.
"There's a great market opportunity in China with content producers who are making high-quality content, advertisers eager to reach consumers online, and an active online community."
Both Joost and Tom will primarily source programming from within China, and distribute this both within and outside of China.
To date, Tom has sourced about 16,000 hours of Chinese programming for Joost and has already lined up with several content providers such as CCTV, China Record Corporation, BTV Media, Huayi Brothers Media Group, Taihe Rye Music, and CAV Warner Home Entertainment.
Tom will secure advertising for the localized version of Joost, and Joost will provide the underlying technology.
Ken Yeung, CEO and Executive Director of the Tom Group, added that the company was "widgetizing and modulizing" its portal in the region to create a personalized and interactive user experience.
"The alliance with Joost will further enhance and increase our range of Internet service offerings," said Yeung. "Riding on the established and diversified media platform covering Internet, TV, publishing and outdoor advertising, Tom is leading the way in the avenue where traditional and new media converge."
Canadian Music Mogul Takes on China
Excerpted from AFP Report
Terry McBride, the Canadian best known as the manager of pop megastar Avril Lavigne said the music industry's obsession with stemming the unauthorized flow of downloaded material is futile and short-sighted.
"I do not believe that the record label owns the song, the publisher does not own the song, even the artist does not own the song," McBride said.
"It is the emotion that a fan attaches to that song, to that lyric that makes it popular. What the record business needs to do is to monetize the behavior of that fan."
McBride said record companies need an alternative to what he sees as an outmoded business model that relies on a few mega-selling artists and copyright protection.
In almost every global market record sales are plummeting as people turn to the Internet for music, increasingly downloading it for free.
A recent survey by MTV of consumers in 12 Asian countries found that 77% of people aged between 15 and 24 had downloaded unauthorized music in the past month, while 59% had also made legitimate purchases.
McBride said his approach is much more effective than the fervor for litigation, and cited the example of Napster, the hugely popular US music sharing site that was sued into oblivion instead of being harnessed as a new revenue stream.
For him, the solution has been to hold copyright in one place, on the artist's own record label or "imprint," and while he welcomes free exchange of music, copyright remains at the center of his strategy.
"If you have collapsed copyright sitting in one place it has more value than if it is fractured," he said at the recent MusicMatters conference in Hong Kong.
"Then you can give one part of the copyright away gratis in order to monetize another part of the copyright." In this way, the song becomes a loss-leader that advertises other selling opportunities, he said.
Success follows from innovative use of the song's long-term value - as background music for advertisements or television shows; sales through protected technology such as mobile phone ring-tones; or website advertising.
McBride said this business model, which he set up three years ago, has already begun to work for his company, Nettwerk Music Group, with seven of the eight "imprints" he started now showing profit.
Artists on his roster, including singer-songwriter Sarah McGlachlan and the band Barenaked Ladies, are making as much money as they would selling many more records, he said.
Q&A with Veoh CEO Steve Mitgang
Excerpted from Wired News Report by Betsy Schiffman
Truth be told, online video is one big experiment. Nobody knows how it will ultimately work, but we do know this: TV ratings are deteriorating and online video consumption is soaring.
That means everyone wants in. Fox, Google, Time Warner, Viacom, Microsoft, and Disney are formulating (some more aggressively than others) online video strategies now, so that if or when the drought comes, they've got an online business in place.
It's a crowded space. Google-owned YouTube has a gigantic lead over competition, with an estimated 34% share of the online video market, according to comScore. Upstart Hulu, a joint venture between Fox and NBC, has loads of cash ($100 million in funding) and an enviable collection of content from major players, including MGM and Sony.
P2PTV television service Veoh shouldn't be dismissed, though. Founded in late 2004 by Dmitry Shapiro, the company has lined up some big-name backers, including Michael Eisner (former CEO of Disney), Tom Freston (former CEO of Viacom), and Jonathan Dolgen (former Viacom exec), as well as Time Warner, Intel Capital, and Goldman Sachs.
And unlike Hulu, which only carries content from major TV and movie studios, Veoh has a decent supply of user-generated content (UGC) in addition to a large library of broadcast and cable TV programming.
We hooked up with Veoh CEO Steve Mitgang, a former Yahoo and longtime Silicon Valley veteran, to chat about where the online video market is going, if advertising dollars are following, and whether Veoh will go it alone.
Wired: Who do you view as competition?
Steve Mitgang: When it comes to success, the biggest thing I worry about is our own ability to execute. And I think we're doing a great job. It's about helping users discover great video to watch. I don't think any single competitor out there is making greater strides than we are. That said, I worry about YouTube. You've got to worry about Google, with its vast resources.
I like Hulu. I think there's a role for a narrow, walled-garden approach. AOL did pretty well with that 10 years ago. It's great for people who want to find pristine, studio-driven content. What they're missing is the fact that people don't only want to watch that.
I'll give you an example: I was out fundraising for the company a quarter ago, and there were a couple of potential investors I was supposed to meet with, so I looked them up online and found videos of them to watch. At that particular time, those videos were more relevant to me than watching 'Family Guy,' and I had to go somewhere other than Hulu to find them.
Maybe you have a bunch of climbers recording their ascent of Mt. Everest - that could be more interesting to some people than watching 'Heroes.' You need to have both UGC and studio-produced content to be the video service of the future.
Wired: People always talk about YouTube's revenue problem and how challenging it's been for them to monetize traffic since big advertisers don't necessarily want their brands associated with low-quality videos. What do you think the problem is there?
Steve Mitgang: I do not believe that UGC sites are a problem for marketers. I think 30-second videos are a problem for marketers - it's pretty hard to run a mid-roll or a pre-roll ad on a 30-second video. YouTube has got to figure out a way to change a brand proposition - maybe that means including longer videos - and then you'll see a world of marketing opportunities unfold.
We don't understand where all that's coming from because we know people are buying ads on our site. And we know that if any advertiser wants to address Facebook and social media audiences, they have to be comfortable with UGC.
You have to believe in audience targeting. If you know the audience you want to reach - either because there's a profile based on video consumption - say you're looking for people who love to watch sci-fi because they're technically forward thinking - or if you want to target a behavior - such as people who are searching for mobile phones - the content doesn't matter. What matters is that the advertiser gets to the right audience at the right time. We're seeing great success with behavioral targeting.
Wired: Is your intention to go it alone? You mentioned you were fundraising - are you satisfied with your funding or are you looking for more?
Mitgang: When we raised our last round of funding, we all agreed that want to make sure it was the last round we'd need - we have plenty of cash to get us to our break-even point which is next year.
Wired: When would you expect ad rates online to catch up to broadcast TV?
Mitgang: I'll use CBS as an example - they believe they're getting competitive rates today. If they're in the $20 or $25 CPM online, that's actually very similar to offline rates. I wouldn't compare rates, though. I think what we all want to see is the day when the average marketer looks at this space as a core part of the marketing mix.
I think you've got a bunch of advertisers trying to figure it out early on so they can scale it. Once that happens, you'll see a lot more people in the mix.
Wired: Has it been challenging to get content providers to sign on?
Mitgang: I don't know that 'challenging' is the right word. The amazing thing about this space is that it's an incredible period of time. Content producers are trying to figure out what their future business models will be. I think everybody has very similar long-term views of the market.
Some folks, I think, want to make sure they have more or less control over distribution. It hasn't been challenging to get content partners though - there have been excellent discussions and collaboration.
Verimatrix Secures Funding for Content Protection
Verimatrix, a developer of anti-piracy technology for pay-TV networks, has closed its third and largest-to-date round of financing, led by Goldman Sachs.
Previous investors Crescendo Investments, Cipio Partners, and Mission Ventures also participated; the company raised $23 million across its two previous funding rounds.
Founded in 1999, San Diego, CA-based Verimatrix said that to-date its technology has been deployed by over 150 IPTV providers in 32 countries.
"With the completion of this Series C investment, our business plan is fully funded, and we are able to quickly scale our operations," said Verimatrix CEO Tom Munro.
"As the majority of our business comes through our industry-leading channel partners, OEMs, and integrators, we will make ongoing investments in interoperability, testing, and monitoring platforms to support their rapid growth and increasingly complex system architectures."
Halite: Fast & Lightweight BitTorrent Client
Excerpted from TorrentFreak Report
During the last three years, not many new BitTorrent clients have surfaced. Together, uTorrent, Vuze, and BitComet have a 90% market share among BitTorrent clients. For a new client, it is nearly impossible to catch up with these giants, but Halite might just stand a chance.
Still a relatively unknown BitTorrent client at the moment, Halite is named after a mineral - rock salt in plain English.
The open source application was developed by Irishman Eóin O'Callaghan, who started the project in 2006, and has been adding features and improvements ever since. Over the past few months, it has become a fully-featured, yet lightweight BitTorrent client.
One of the greatest strengths of Halite is that it uses minimal system resources. The latest release uses less than 10,000k of memory, half of what uTorrent uses on average and only a fraction of the consumption of Vuze or BitComet.
Halite started to develop a steady user base after uTorrent, the most widely used BitTorrent client, was sold to BitTorrent. At the time, many uTorrent users were afraid that their favorite BitTorrent client would be ruined by the company, and some abandoned the application. Although these worries turned out to be unfounded, Halite has certainly become one of uTorrent's main competitors.
Halite supports all of the basic features the average downloader requires including encryption, selective downloading, a torrent creator and more. So far there is no support for disk caching, seeding preferences and torrent queuing, but these and other features are on the to do list, and will be implemented in the future.
The download speeds of Halite are pretty much comparable to clients like Vuze and uTorrent. Some people report that it is significantly faster than uTorrent, but in the test lab we were not able to replicate these results.
Overall, Halite is a great BitTorrent client for those people who are looking for a client that uses minimal system resources and has all the basic features.
Torrentz Celebrates Fifth Anniversary
Torrentz, the largest BitTorrent meta-search engine, celebrated its fifth anniversary this week. The service, one of the oldest torrent sites around, has evolved quite a lot over the years.
Back in 2003, torrent sites came and went like the wind. Since most were hosted on home connections or shared hosting accounts, they were struggling to stay online. And legal pressure ended the aspirations of some webmasters.
Nonetheless, during July 2003 a new BitTorrent site by the name of "Torrentz" was launched.
Initially, Torrentz was hosting torrent files, the opposite of its position today. The first torrent - "X-Files [1x01] - Pilot" - was uploaded July 24, 2003. Although the file is no longer available, the site is still going strong and the visitor count is growing every day.
Torrentz went live only a week after torrentse.cx, one of the largest BitTorrent sites at the time, chose to pull the plug. Like many others, torrentse.cx decided to shut down its site after it received a warning.
At the time, one of the administrators stated: "The site torrentse.cx received a cease-and-desist letter during the day of Wednesday, July 16, 2003 for copyright infringement. The entire website has been removed and will not return."
Another popular BitTorrent site, bytemonsoon.com, threw in the towel around the same time. "Due to excessive bandwidth usage, lack of a stable host, consistent DOS attacks, and lack of other options and as I'm leaving in five hours and haven't slept yet, I have no other choice but to shut the site down," the admin wrote.
Those were turbulent times, and SuprNova.org was pretty much the only large site left. However, the sites that went down were soon replaced and these new sites were growing fast - as did Torrentz.
Torrentz now has over a million visitors a day and indexes more than 10 million pages.
CloudShield Expands Business with New Office
CloudShield Technologies this week announced the opening of its new office location in Herndon, VA. The expansion comes as a result of doubling annual revenue during each of the past three years and tripling the size of the team to address expanding Federal business opportunities.
Staffed with seasoned sales, engineering and professional services experts, the team is helping different government agencies tackle their toughest security and network policy enforcement challenges.
Bruce Gilley, Vice President of Federal Operations, leads CloudShield's Virginia office. "Our success in the Federal market has been based on complementing CloudShield's advanced Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) platform with experienced, mission savvy personnel to deliver solutions that enable our customers to dynamically modernize, manage and protect their mission critical networks," said Gilley.
Through CloudShield's Federal Team, the company has successfully supplied its security and adaptive policy enforcement platform to numerous DoD and intelligence agencies. CloudShield's unique high speed DPI network platform provides unmatched capabilities in the areas of network security, cross domain solutions, content management and network policy enforcement functions.
"Technologies like DPI and directly relevant operational policy controls are critical in protecting and advancing the government's networked infrastructure," added Gilley.
"We have proven technology and critical operational experience required to meet the specific needs of any government organization," said Matt Jones, CEO at CloudShield. "Our Federal Government practice and our partner network are well versed in understanding an organization's goals and delivering solutions to achieve them."
CloudShield's Federal Team combines unique, best in class platform and applications knowledge with more than 100 years of combined DOD, intelligence community and federal agency operational experience. The company is committed to supporting the US government's mandate to improve the protection of the critical infrastructure and drive up efficiency across network command and control.
SafeNet Provides IPsec Security Toolkit
SafeNet, a global leader in information security, this week announced that the company's industry-proven IPsec security toolkit, QuickSec/IPsec, has been optimized specifically for the new Intel EP80579 Integrated Processor product line.
The Intel EP80579 Integrated Processor product line is ideal for developers of networking devices - such as VoIP gateways, wireless and WiMAX access, and security appliances - designing for low cost, secure SOC solutions that integrate multiple applications into one appliance, minimizing procurement and management expenditures.
The optimization of SafeNet's QuickSec/IPsec security toolkit for the new Intel Integrated Processors will provide customers with a fast, reliable security solution that can be taken to market quickly while reducing costs.
"SafeNet has been dedicated to the development and maintenance of a future-proof family of embedded IPsec security IP and toolkits for the networking and wireless industries for over a decade," said Simon Blake-Wilson, Managing Director, Embedded Security Solutions, SafeNet.
SafeNet will be featuring a demonstration of the company's QuickSec/IPsec running on the Intel EP80579 Integrated Processor with Intel QuickAssist Technology at the Intel Developer Forum (IDF), scheduled for August 19th-22nd at the Moscone Center West, in San Francisco, CA.
FCC En Banc Hearing on Broadband of Tomorrow
Excerpted from Ars Technica Report by Nate Anderson
American artists are "the world's storytellers," said FCC Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate at today's third FCC en banc hearing of the year; while this might sound a bit patronizing to the rest of the world, it goes down well during discussions about file sharing and broadband.
These storytellers are currently watching "the art of this country vanish into thin air," Tate continued, "as a result of unauthorized downloading."
Tate stopped short of putting out solutions, but she made it clear that the $200 million "lost" in her home state of Tennessee every year had to stop somehow.
All five FCC commissioners trekked out of their eighth-floor Washington, DC offices for a long evening of hearings at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA.
The hearing was designed to talk about the "broadband of tomorrow," but what was striking was the level of agreement on certain key points.
Most panelists seemed united in a negative assessment of closed networks (cell-phones), closed set-top boxes, (NebuAd - CMU professor emeritus David Farber called such systems "almost obscene"), and ISP filtering.
A representative from YouTube, David Eun, gave a nice description of why filtering "copyrighted material" is hard.
For one thing, nearly all created content in the US is copyrighted, even dancing-dog video clips.
That means the problem to be solved is not stopping the flow of "copyrighted content" online, but finding out what rights each uploader has for each bit of content. This is a tough problem, one not easily solved by simply looking at a file as it passes across a network.
Jon Peha, a CMU computer science professor, told the commissioners that unauthorized file sharing was a real problem; in a recent study of his at Illinois State University, a minimum of 51% of all students used P2P apps each month, with most observed transferring copyrighted files.
But Peha pointed out the problems raised by ISP filtering; If ISPs block, what level of proof do they need, and who should they show it to (since some P2P apps may compete with ISPs' own content offerings, ISPs could gain a competitive advantage by accepting weak evidence)? What disclosure should be required? What actually constitutes a copyright violation, and how can machines judge "fair use?" How effective will such tools be once countermeasures like pervasive cryptography are widely employed?
Mark Cavicchia, the CEO of WhereverTV, bashed ISP plans to severely cap downloads. He pointed to Time Warner's 5GB per month trial in Texas, a limit he called "ludicrous." His business and many like his depend on reliable access to consumers. If a few users are really causing huge problems for ISPs, Cavicchia said the solution was to target them, not to penalize everyone.
The calls for "openness," "freedom," and "transparency" were numerous, with every commissioner well aware of broadband's power. Commissioner Copps called access to broadband almost a "civil right," for instance, while Kevin Martin talked up the need for free, low-speed "lifeline" broadband to everyone. But it's clear that Commissioners Tate and Robert McDowell are more sympathetic to staying out of the way as ISPs make their own decisions about filtering and network management.
McDowell, in particular, said in his remarks that "those who seek to frustrate today's empowered consumers do so at their peril." He went on to add, to some applause from the crowd, that discussion about network management was needed, but that "engineers should solve engineering problems."
It's unfortunately simplistic rhetoric, as technical solutions are a product of all sorts of non-technical decisions. Network management has no a priori "right answers." The solutions depend on the goals of network management, and all sorts of groups from Free Press to AT&T to end-users have different ideas about how a network should look.
This is the point of the FCC's famous Internet policy statement. The statement provides the four basic principles that ISPs need to follow; with the goals given, engineers can be turned loose in all sorts of creative ways to find solutions. But those four general principles still remain open to widely varying interpretations, as shown by the recent battle with Comcast at the FCC.
Such decisions are inherently political and economic, not simply "technical." So long as the FCC can resist the urge to step in and actually mandate particular approaches and techniques, instead confining itself to big-picture goals, its policies stand a much greater chance of actually helping create the "open Internet" everyone says they want.
Senate Introduces Intellectual Property Rights Act
Excerpted from Digital Media Wire Report by Mark Hefflinger
A bipartisan group of US Senators on Thursday introduced the Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights Act of 2008, a bill that would authorize the Attorney General to prosecute civil copyright infringement cases.
It also includes measures to strengthen both civil and criminal copyright laws and beef-up law enforcement resources to fight intellectual property crimes.
The bill was introduced by Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and ranking member Arlen Specter (R-PA), and is co-sponsored by Senators Evan Bayh (D-IN) and George Voinovich (R-OH).
The Senate legislation mirrors the PRO-IP Act, which passed in the House of Representatives earlier this year, and also includes a provision that would create a White House-level position to coordinate intellectual property law enforcement across government agencies.
The bill introduced Thursday was praised by copyright interests including the Business Software Alliance (BSA), Copyright Alliance (CA), Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), and National Music Publishers Association (NMPA).
Opponents included intellectual property-focused public interest group Public Knowledge.
"This bill would turn the Justice Department into an arm of the legal departments of the entertainment companies by authorizing the DOJ to file civil lawsuits for infringement, forcing taxpayers to foot the bill," said Public Knowledge President Gigi Sohn.
Music Bosses Told to Pump up the Incentives
Excerpted from The Scotsman Report by Craig Brown
Music labels will have to make it worth fans' while to download licensed music if they want to stop Internet copyright infringement, industry experts warned last night.
The admonition came as the record industry announced it was entering into an agreement with Internet service providers (ISPs) in a drive to clamp down on unauthorized P2P file sharing, which it is estimated will cost it £1 billion over the next five years.
The move may result in users looking to share music files paying a yearly fee of between £20 and £30. However, a media analyst yesterday said that if record labels want to avoid alienating the music-buying public and recoup the lost revenue, they must offer incentives and abandon the role of middlemen between musicians and fans.
Britain's six largest ISPs - BT, Virgin Media, Orange, Tiscali, BSkyB, and Carphone Warehouse - have now signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) to commit themselves to developing licensed file-sharing services and to ensure their customers know that they are not permitted to share copyright-protected music.
The immediate effect of this announcement will see letters sent to the most prolific sharers, informing them that their activity has been detected, is unauthorized, and is being monitored.
But Matt Phillips, head of UK communications for the BPI, said that to make licensed digital downloads profitable, the industry has to persuade the public of their value.
He said, "We believe in a three-way approach. The first is to make it easier for people to download licensed music. We've got to do that more and better."
"We've got to make it harder for people to download unauthorized music for free. That will be through tackling the systems that offer unlicensed music for free and the possibility of partnering with ISPs so they do something about it."
"We have to communicate better the value of music and why we want people to pay for it, and that's a difficult thing to do."
He said that the issue "threatened the very future" of the music industry.
Mr. Phillips said that idea of a levy is only one model of controlling downloads and that a number of other routes were workable.
Graham Lovelace, a media analyst, said yesterday's announcement was a result of "chickens coming home to roost" for the record industry, and that rather than try to fight the Internet and risk alienating its young customer base by criminalizing them, the labels should make themselves a more attractive proposition in order to compete.
"In the seventies, with vinyl, while they were expensive, you got a lot of added value: sleeve notes, lyrics, art, posters, cardboard cut-outs. There were reasons to buy the product that weren't just to do with the music," he said.
"There is still something in that. Certainly you can rip a film online, but you don't get the extras you get with a DVD."
Mr. Lovelace said that the record industry had to redefine its role. "They have to become a service provider, not just a middleman."
"Record labels have to do the digital equivalent of the vinyl days, by creating a value-added enhanced experience: video extras, opportunities to meet the band, gigs. There's an entire social network to be built around the label sites, but they haven't done that yet."
A spokeswoman for Virgin Media said that while it was too early to identify a price, the single fee for access to legal monthly downloads was being considered.
"This is possibly something that could work. BSkyB and Universal announced earlier this week that they were setting up a download service. But it's really too early to say at this stage," she said.
The BSkyB service will combine an unlimited on-demand jukebox service with a set number of monthly downloads that can be saved, even if users stop subscribing, for a single monthly charge.
The Time Has Come to Legalize File Sharing
Excerpted from Reuters Report by Tom Dunmore
The new policy of sending a letter to people suspected of downloading unlicensed music isn't going to save the music industry overnight.
But it may signal the start of a radical overhaul of the way we consume music. There's no doubt that CD sales are plummeting and licensed download services aren't growing fast enough to fill the gap. It's such a threat to the UK's creative industries that the government has become involved.
And it seems the threat of legislation has been enough to force the UK's six biggest Internet service providers (ISPs) to choke back their reservations and agree to send letters to users of P2P file-sharing services.
But what comes next? In France, a three-strikes-and-your-out law will soon force ISPs to cut the broadband connection of serial downloaders.
Such punitive action, however, is doomed to failure. In these days of wireless networks, proving the identity behind an IP address is becoming very tricky indeed.
And increasing the risk to file sharers will only serve to drive them further underground to sharing services that will mask their identities. What's more, draconian laws simply fuel resentment against a music industry that has spent the last decade fighting against the Internet rather than working with it. Having failed to solve its problems by shutting down popular music services and suing downloaders, it's time for the music industry to change tack.
The only real solution is to legitimize the P2P services. Rather than fighting against music sharing, the music industry should issue licenses that allow royalties to be collected every time a song is shared. The snag, of course, is how to generate those royalties in the first place. The slow uptake of music subscription services proves it's unfeasible to ask people to opt in to paying twenty dollars a month for music.
One alternative is advertising, but the preferred route of many within the music industry a controversial levy on broadband charges. Just as Canada adds a small tax to blank media such as CD and tapes, so the UK could add a tax to broadband, with the resulting funds going directly to the rights holders.
Legalizing file-sharing may seem like a drastic step, but it has precedent. The truth is that many music technologies were deemed 'illegal' - right up until they were licensed.
Piano rolls, gramophones, radio, and MP3 players were all the subject of legal cases brought by the music industry. Now they're just a source of income. It's about time that file sharing stopped being seen as a problem, and started to be seen as a revenue stream.
Coming Events of Interest
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. The DCIA will conduct a P2P session.
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.
Streaming Media West - September 23rd-25th in San Jose, CA. The only show that covers both the business of online video and the technology of P2PTV, streaming, downloading, webcasting, Internet TV, IPTV, and mobile video. Covering both corporate and consumer business, technology, and content issues in the enterprise, advertising, media and entertainment, broadcast, and education markets. The DCIA will conduct a P2P session.
P2P MEDIA SUMMIT LV - January 7th in Las Vegas, NV. This is the DCIA's must-attend event for everyone interested in monetizing content using P2P and related technologies. Keynotes, panels, and workshops on the latest breakthroughs. This DCIA flagship event is a Conference within CES - the Consumer Electronics Show.
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