October 6, 2008
Volume XXIII, Issue 10
QTRAX Announces Three High-Level Appointments
QTRAX, a division of Brilliant Technologies Corporation, this week announced the appointments of Jay Berman and Larry Gan as Co-Chairmen of its Advisory Board, and Michael Firetti as Director and Executive Vice President (EVP) of Global Strategic Alliances.
"We are very privileged to have Jay and Larry actively involved in guiding us as we prepare for QTRAX's imminent worldwide launch. Both have attained influential global leadership positions in the music and business communities respectively," said QTRAX President & CEO Allan Klepfisz.
"The increasing depth of Mike's involvement with QTRAX has mirrored our preparedness for a worldwide launch of our groundbreaking product," he added. "Mike first became involved with us as an investor about 12 months ago and has, since then, brought in an array of additional investors that, in aggregate, have accounted for a substantial percentage of the funds we have raised to date. His appointment as a Board Director and EVP will allow Mike to utilize his considerable skills to make a further, 'hands on' contribution to the company."
"After assisting QTRAX over the past year, it is both satisfying and exciting to see its ambitious plans coming to fruition. QTRAX represents a paradigm shift for the music industry," said Berman.
"I am pleased to become involved just prior to QTRAX's debut as a potential industry transformer. QTRAX is focused on becoming the winner in its space and I hope to assist in those endeavors," said Gan.
"The evolution of my involvement with QTRAX has clearly been rapid and reflects my confidence in the company and market space," said Firetti. "Strategic alliance opportunities with QTRAX are limitless and, in my new role, I'm very excited about pursuing each of them with vigor. You often only get one opportunity in a lifetime to be involved in such a big idea with the potential of such a profound and positive effect on an industry."
QTRAX's Allan Klepfisz will deliver the opening keynote address at the P2P & MUSIC CONFERENCE this Friday.
We7 Signs The Orchard for Streaming & Downloading
We7's drive to deliver licensed ad-supported music is reaching full throttle. We7 and The Orchard, a global leader in digital music and entertainment, this week announced more than 1.3 million tracks from The Orchard's repertoire of artists will be available on We7 through ad-funded, on-demand streaming, downloads, and paid-for MP3 downloads.
The deal allows customers on the ad-supported music website access to The Orchard's significant and diverse music offerings, spanning international multi-platinum acts, cutting-edge breaking bands, and iconic and historically significant regional music.
We7 users will be able to listen to full tracks and albums on an unlimited basis at no cost, create personal playlists, and share their favorites with their friends. We7's advertising technology plays short, targeted audio adverts before each streamed track and ensures that music offered through the site is legal and safe, but rights owners get paid and valued.
Greg Scholl, President & CEO of The Orchard, said, "Innovation and experimentation are critical to the growth of digital music, and it's not surprising that We7, Peter Gabriel's latest venture, embodies both. We are supportive of We7's ad-based model, and of ensuring that fans of the artists we represent can listen to and discover music in new ways that compensate our artists and labels fairly."
We7 Co-Founder & CEO Steve Purdham added, "We're very excited to have The Orchard on board at a time when we're gaining real momentum ahead of our full launch in the coming months. It's an exciting time as the ad-funded model becomes accepted as a legal alternative to piracy, and we look forward to a fruitful relationship with The Orchard as our catalog continues to grow'.
We7's Clive Gardiner and The Orchard's Scott Cohen will be featured speakers at the P2P & MUSIC CONFERENCE Friday.
MediaDefender Backs P2P Player PiCast
Excerpted from Contentinople Report by Ryan Lawler
Here's an interesting twist: A new company called PiCast is entering the increasingly crowded market for peer-assisted video delivery - but it's doing it with the expertise of a firm known for helping media companies thwart distribution of video via P2P.
You probably have not heard of PiCast, which is just coming to market with a new offering for peer-assisted video streaming. But you may have heard of ARTISTdirect, its parent company. And if you pay attention to P2P file-sharing news, you probably have heard of MediaDefender - the ARTISTdirect subsidiary and anti-piracy firm where much of PiCast's technology originates.
MediaDefender, which claims to have been "contracted by every major record label and every major movie studio, video game publisher, software publisher, and anime publisher," is best known for its practice of decoying or spoofing major releases of high-profile content - essentially flooding P2P file-sharing networks with fake copies of popular videos and music in an effort to frustrate downloaders into purchasing the real deal.
"There's nothing more difficult than trying to intercept a 3-gigabit file of a new movie release," said PiCast Senior Vice President of Business Development Jonathan Lee. The company hopes to leverage some of that expertise from sister company MediaDefender in rolling out its own P2P-based streaming solution.
PiCast's technology, which was built from the ground up, requires an end-user browser plug-in and a centralized "broker server." The broker server keeps track of which peers have which pieces of content - and then helps to control the distribution of streams via the plug-in.
The technology is platform-agnostic, so it doesn't matter whether a user is watching a live or on-demand stream, or if the stream uses Adobe Flash technology or Windows Media. Because the technology is plug-in based, the user stops sharing when the stream or browser is shut down.
And finally, content owners can therefore deliver from their origin servers or run the PiCast technology along with an existing content delivery network (CDN).
In addition to all the experience and data collected from MediaDefender's spoofing activities, PiCast could also benefit from existing relationships with content owners, said Marty Lafferty, CEO of the Distributed Computing Industry Association (DCIA).
"They have relationships with rights holders already, and can build on those relationships," Lafferty said.
While the company has yet to sign up any paying customers, PiCast is in testing with an indie record label and an online comedy video site to provide streaming of its on-demand content. PiCast expects to begin tests of live streaming content in the coming months.
This is not the first time that ARTISTdirect has attempted to set up an affiliate firm using P2P technology gained from MediaDefender. Last year, the company launched video-sharing site Miivi, which used P2P to distribute user-uploaded videos. But not long after launch, P2P activists derided the site as an MPAA "honeypot" that was being used to entrap users downloading copyrighted content. The site was taken down not long after.
Lee says Miivi was "hugely misunderstood," and that the intent was not to entrap anyone, but to provide a YouTube-like experience that benefited from the efficiencies of P2P.
In the move from Miivi to PiCast, there's a shift from a consumer-facing website to providing technology that can be leveraged by content owners.
"Fundamentally, there's a big difference in what we're trying to accomplish. We're not trying to get people to come to a website, but to be the back-end infrastructure" for content distribution, Lee says.
"PiCast is not so much a repurposing of Miivi technology, but the progression of one of our ideas," Lee says. "We're taking the lessons learned from Miivi, releasing this separately from MediaDefender, and aligning with the DCIA."
PiCast's Jonathan Lee will be a featured speaker at the P2P & MUSIC CONFERENCE Friday.
Report from CEO Marty Lafferty
 We hope to see you Friday for the inaugural P2P & MUSIC CONFERENCE at PopKomm.
The P2P & MUSIC CONFERENCE features industry leaders from around the world presenting new business models and technical solutions now being deployed for profitable music distribution using P2P technologies.
This is your chance to personally meet the people behind some of the most exciting brands now emerging in P2P music distribution - like Blubster, Grooveshark, LimeWire, Octoshape, PiCast, and QTRAX.
Topics include China & Russia - Market Opportunities or Previews of the Future, Digital Challenges - Sound Fundamentals or Changed Circumstances, Technology Advancement - Creating the Commercial P2P Music Ecosystem, and P2P Music Licensing - Private Versus Public Approaches.
In addition to our full schedule of highly rated sessions, there will be ample opportunities for valuable networking. Please click here to register.
P2P also continues to represent both the most significant challenges as well as the greatest opportunities for the motion picture and television industries - and we are grateful to Digital Hollywood's organizers for recognizing that and working with us to mount our first-ever P2P & VIDEO CONFERENCE
This special industry event is scheduled for Monday October 27th at Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel in Santa Monica, CA.
The Conference-within-Digital-Hollywood will feature keynotes from top P2P companies and major video distributors, panels of industry leaders, and valuable workshops.
The P2P & VIDEO CONFERENCE is being sponsored by CUGate, Javien Digital Payment Solutions, and Unlimited Media; and is a companion piece to the P2P & MUSIC CONFERENCE taking place this Friday as a Conference-within-PopKomm.
P2P & VIDEO CONFERENCE keynote speakers will include Robert Levitan, CEO, Pando Networks; Barry Tishgart, VP of Internet Services, Comcast; Michael King, CEO, Abacast; Kevin Bradshaw, COO, LimeWire; Kumar Subramanian, CEO, MediaMelon; Orang Dialameh, CEO, iVisit; Tom Patterson, CEO, Digital Containers; David Rice, VP of Marketing, Move Networks; and Phill Robinson, CEO, Velocix.
Panelists will include Stephen Alstrup, CEO, Octoshape; Arash Amel, Head of Broadband Media, Screen Digest; Philippe Benoliel, CEO, MashON; Eitan Efron, VP of Marketing, Oversi; Chris Gillis, Director of Sales, MediaDefender; Paul Grusche, COO, Ultramercial; Daniel Harris, CEO, MediaPass Gigantic; Peder Jungck, CTO, Cloudshield; Gerry Kaufhold, Principal Analyst, Reed Business; Kshitij Kumar, CEO, TellyTopia; Larry Langs, Legal, Business & Technology Strategies Leader, iBusiness Partners; Walter Leaphart, CEO, Music Intelligence Solutions; Jonathan Lee, SVP, PiCast; Alex Mashinsky, CEO, DigiMeld; Rob Manoff, CEO, Jambo Media; Steven Masur, Managing Partner, MasurLaw; Jeffrey Payne, CTO, GridNetworks; Keyvan Peymani, COO, Nettwerk Music Group; Laird Popkin, CTO, Pando Networks; Patrick Ross, Executive Director, Copyright Alliance; Neerav Shah, VP, Business Development & Strategy, Verimatrix; Tim Street, Producer, Digital Entertainment; Patrick Sullivan, CEO, RightsFlow; Jeremy Toeman, CEO, LiveDigitally; Dave Toole, CEO, MediaMobz; Laura Tunberg, CEO, EM Syndication; and Jeff Ulin, Of Counsel, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. More speakers will be announced.
The P2P & VIDEO CONFERENCE will address such topics as: Video Content Protection - Copyright Infringement Deterrence or Prevention through Enforcement; P2P Technological Advancement - Instant High-Definition Delivery or Deprioritized Low Resolution Transmission; Rights Holder Requirements - Promotional Value or New Revenue Stream(s); P2P Content Licensing - Distribution for Video Rights Holders or Rewards For Copyright Enforcers; P2P Video Revenue - Ad-Supported, or Subscription, or Paid Download Business Models; Future P2PTV Innovation - Market Opportunities or Disruptive Previews of the Future.
The P2P & VIDEO CONFERENCE is being held in conjunction with Digital Hollywood Fall, and registration for both events yields a substantial savings for attendees. For more information, please visit www.dcia.info/activities/p2pvcca2008.
To register please visit www.dcia.info/activities/p2pvcca2008/register.html. Pre-registration rates end October 20th.
For sponsor packages and speaker information, please contact Karen Kaplowitz, DCIA Member Services, at 888-890-4240 or karen@dcia.info. Share wisely, and take care.
Spotify Raises $21 Million for P2P Service
Excerpted from TechCrunch Report by Mike Butcher
Spotify, founded by the former Tradedoubler team, is understood to have raised $21 million from Northzone Venture Partners at a monster $96 million pre-money valuation. The service is still in private beta.
Creandum, another of Sweden's top venture capital firms, is also understood to have taken part in the funding round. Spotify recently held a large party in Stockholm.
The Stockholm-based Spotify can essentially be summed up, in the words of a blogger, as a kind of hybrid of Skype, Last.fm, the iTunes Store, and BitTorrent.
A lightweight iTunes-like application streams songs via encrypted peer-to-peer (P2P) technology. The service is ad-financed.
Games are Alive with Sound of Music
Excerpted from the Globe and Mail Report by Blaine Kyllo
When the videogame "Rock Band" was released last year, it reset the baseline for music games. "Guitar Hero," which established the market for such games in North America, is still popular, but players can only take on the guise of a guitarist. With "Rock Band," gamers can play bass, drums, or even vocals.
The competition - this is not your grandmother's Sunday afternoon piano recital - has sparked a spate of innovation within the music game genre.
Both games have upgraded to fully wireless instrument controllers, and this fall's release of "Guitar Hero World Tour" - scheduled for October 26th - includes drums and vocals as part of the game play. That game's big step, though, is in giving eager gamers the opportunity to become music makers. Using the guitar and drum controllers, players can compose and record original songs in Music Studio, and share them with the world using GHTunes.
Greg LoPiccolo, Vice President of Product Development for "Rock Band" developer Harmonix, says that the idea of incorporating user-generated content (UGC) is a big developmental focus for his team. "Our primary interest is not so much in composing music but in performing music," he said. Essentially, improvising.
The success of music games - the genre has grown from $250 million in 2006 to $1.2 billion in 2007 and expects to surpass $2 billion this year - is also creating new musicians. Terry McBride, CEO of Nettwerk Music Group, expects that ten years from now there will be fifty times more guitar players - who know how to play a melody - than there are now.
Pushing five buttons on a guitar-shaped controller is not the same as learning chord progressions on a real guitar, he admits, but McBride says that playing the videogame creates a desire to pursue music on another level. "Kids are connecting with music on a much deeper level than they have in the last fifteen years," he said.
"Songs are simply emotions. When a fan attaches their emotion, part of their life to that song, they make it their own." Being able to perform that song, to interact directly with it, makes that connection even greater. McBride calls it "emotional glue."
McBride believes that music is a social interaction, which is why his company encourages fans to engage with songs and artists, whether that is accomplished by releasing DRM-free digital music or putting raw Sarah McLachlan tracks on her MySpace page and asking fans to remix her songs.
Nettwerk artists Barenaked Ladies were the first band to release to the public the stems of their songs before the album of those songs was being sold. Stems are the individual layers or components of a song that are mixed into a final arrangement.
McBride thinks something fascinating happens when different players in different parts of the world can come together to play music as simply as they can with "Guitar Hero" and "Rock Band."
"Then we've gone from social-within-your-own-tribe to social-within-the-worldwide-tribe," said McBride. "And that could be an amazing thing for breaking down barriers."
RightsFlow Powers Blackstone EMI WHY Campaign
Blackstone Winery, EMI Music, World Hunger Year's (WHY) "Artists Against Hunger and Poverty" initiative, and content licensing firm RightsFlow, have joined forces to fight hunger. The companies have teamed up to donate funds to WHY when fans access free music downloads in a Blackstone consumer promotion.
This promotion, powered by RightsFlow, serves a dual purpose of promoting Blackstone Wine and raising awareness and funds for the charitable organization WHY, with Blackstone making a donation to WHY for every download redeemed by consumers.
This venture offers consumers the opportunity to download two free songs of their choice from a selection of more than 160,000 top tracks by EMI artists.
Consumers will receive song codes redeemable for free music downloads from the EMI Music catalog. The codes are being placed on promotional hangers on Blackstone Wine bottles and are featured as part of a major in-store campaign from October 1st through January 31st.
"Giving the gift of music and leveraging it to fight hunger is a unique way for a recognizable and trusted brand like Blackstone to join WHY's long tradition of partnering with artists and music companies to bring new resources and attention to the problems of hunger and poverty in the United States and around the world. We are very proud of the active engagement that all partners at EMI, Blackstone, RightsFlow, and our ad agency Duncan Channon have brought to this effort. We believe it sets a new standard for integrating music into cause-related marketing campaigns." said Noreen Springstead, WHY's Director of Marketing & Fundraising.
"RightsFlow is proud to provide strategic partnerships allowing companies to build an unprecedented charitable contribution model by donating to WHY," RightsFlow President & CEO Patrick Sullivan said. "RightsFlow is honored to participate in this promotion, and we continuously hope more companies follow Blackstone's lead in creating a business philanthropy model."
MySpace Music: One Week, One Billion Streams
Excerpted from Digital Music News Report
MySpace Music has delivered a quick, one billion song plays, according to information shared midday Wednesday.
The top-streamed track since the September 25th launch is "Whatever You Like" by T.I., which garnered 10.9 million plays. Other in-demand tracks include "Can't Believe It" by T-Pain (4.2 million); "So What" by Pink (4.2 million); "My Life" by The Game featuring Lil Wayne (3.9 million); and "Miss Independent" by Ne-Yo (3.5 million).
That the list skews heavily towards mainstream, major label content, is an unsurprising result. The list is also urban-heavy, though other top-charting artists include Jason Mraz, Katy Perry, M.I.A., and David Archuleta.
Meanwhile, independent labels are continuing to negotiate for inclusion, though groups like Merlin and A2IM have been highly critical of the venture.
The most important concern surrounds the absence of equity percentages for independent groups, though distributors The Orchard and IODA appear less attached to that component.
The Orchard is currently loading its catalog onto the site, and other independent content is coming from major-controlled distributors ADA, RED, Fontana, and Caroline.
Mobile Music Will Help Combat Infringement
Excerpted from TechRadar Report by Adam Hartley
"Eat as much as you like" style music downloads, such as Nokia's "Comes with Music" service, should result in a decrease in the amount of online music infringement, according to new research.
British consumers could well download 2.1 billion tracks a year using such services, according to the market researcher TNS Technology, which interviewed over a 1,000 people ages 16-to-64 about what they wanted from an unlimited mobile music service.
"If the industry got it right, we could see a significant shift in the way people obtain and listen to music," said Stephen Yap, Research Director at TNS Technology.
Nokia's "Comes with Music" phone was unveiled October 2nd in time for holiday gift-giving.
Sony Ericsson and music specialist Omnifone's "PlayNow Plus" service will go further than Nokia's rather DRM-restricted service and even allow subscribers to listen to their music on iPods and other devices.
TNS claims that 45% of users would buy fewer CDs, 47% would buy fewer digital downloads, and 38% said they would reduce their use of unauthorized P2P downloading of music.
P2P Veoh Hopes for Second Legal Victory
Excerpted from MediaPost Report by Wendy Davis
Fresh off a victory over adult entertainment company Io Group, P2PTV service Veoh is asking a federal judge to rule in its favor in a copyright infringement lawsuit filed by music giant Universal Music Group (UMG).
In papers filed in federal district court in Los Angeles this week, the Michael Eisner-backed Veoh argues that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's (DMCA) "safe harbor" provisions immunize the company from liability for copyright infringement committed by users. Last month a federal magistrate in San Jose, CA ruled in Veoh's favor on a similar issue.
The dispute between UMG and Veoh dates back to last year, when Veoh went to court seeking a declaration that its service was lawful. UMG then sued Veoh for copyright infringement. Last month, UMG added Veoh investors Shelter Venture Fund, Spark Capital, and The Tornante Company (founded by Eisner) as defendants.
UMG alleges that Veoh "is a massive copyright infringer that has built its business on the back of others' intellectual property (IP)." The record company charges that Veoh is "following in the footsteps of infamous pioneers of mass piracy on the Internet such as Napster" by enabling users to upload and share copyrighted clips.
In its motion this week, Veoh argues that it is immune from liability under the DMCA's safe harbor provisions because it removes infringing material upon request of the owner. Veoh also says it deploys filtering technology in an attempt to screen-out copyrighted material before it appears on the site.
In addition, Veoh alleges that UMG did not disclose which clips it objected to until long after litigation commenced. "Promptly after Veoh filed this lawsuit, Veoh's counsel wrote to plaintiffs' counsel and explained that if plaintiffs would simply identify which videos they contended were infringing, Veoh would promptly take appropriate action," the company wrote in its motion.
"In response, plaintiffs still refused to identify any infringing videos and instead insisted that Veoh should be able to figure out on its own which UMG 'content' is on its site."
Although feuding with UMG, the P2P service has forged deals with other entertainment companies, including the television networks CBS, ABC, and WB.
This week, Veoh launched three ad-supported channels from Warner Bros. Television Group, which offer full-length episodes of shows like "Smallville," "Friends," and "The O.C."
Music Business in a Quandary
Excerpted from Variety Report by Phil Gallo
The music industry closed out its third quarter at 297.9 million albums sold, down 12% from last year, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
That means it will have to log 200 million sales before January 4th to break-even with 2007's total of 500.5 million. Last year the industry did nearly 33% of its business in the final quarter; to stay the course that percentage would have to top 40% this year.
It's yet another dire situation for an industry that has been affected by copyright infringement and shifts in individual tastes, specifically the transformation of the marketplace from one centered on albums (including digital and physical), which retail for between $9 and $16, to one built around the digital single, which goes for about a buck.
September is chockfull of single releases from albums that will appear in the fourth quarter; the hope is that the first releases sell well and whet the appetite for the full album. If a single stiffs, it's highly unlikely the album will perform.
The fourth quarter is the one time of year when the top 10 boasts a list of six-digit sales figures per album and physical CDs make up a significant portion of the total units sold. In addition, retailers continue to see a rebirth for vinyl; sales have doubled to 1.3 million LPs sold, according to Nielsen SoundScan, although that's still a drop in the ocean.
In the last year or two, major brick-and-mortar retailers have been shutting their doors, making Wal-Mart, already the No. 1 music retailer in the country, an even more important venue for the labels to market mainstream releases. With Virgin largely out of the retail picture, this holiday season will be big-box-centric, with the indies filling in the niches.
The big problem is that Wal-Mart, Target, and Best Buy have reduced inventory and floor space for recorded music. And Circuit City could be the next to join the recently shuttered Tower Records. Its stock has fallen 82% this year, and it may be looking at bankruptcy if there is no rebound in the fourth quarter.
The big-box retailers have for the last several years used exclusive releases to pull in consumers, and if Best Buy can get Guns N' Roses' "Chinese Democracy" into its outlets before December 1st, it may have one of the most lucrative draws of the holiday season to itself. If it's released prior to December 23rd - rumors are focusing on Thanksgiving week - the move will be among the important factors in whether the business can curtail its drop from last year to single percentage points.
Regardless of statistics, the perception of whether recorded music has bounced back may well hinge on the performance of just two releases, Britney Spears' "Circus" (December 2nd) and Kanye West's "808s & Heartbreak," which the performer wants moved into November from its current December 16th release date.
EFF Says RIAA Must Embrace New Model
Excerpted from Ars Technica Report by Nate Anderson
In a new report, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) wonders aloud about the RIAA's litigation conflagration with questions like, "Has the arbitrary singling out of nearly 30,000 random American families helped promote public respect for copyright law?" and "Have the lawsuits put the P2P genie back in the bottle or restored the record industry to its 1997 revenues?"
The report is a 20-page recap of the RIAA's anti-P2P lawsuit strategy over the last five years, beginning with that day in September 2003 when the first 261 "American music fans" were sued by the music trade group for file-swapping. What follows is a tale of overly broad, privately-issued subpoenas (cracked down on by the courts in December 2003), massive "John Doe" lawsuits (still ongoing), and the "Shamnesty" of the RIAA's Clean Slate program (used by only 1,108 people before cancellation in 2004).
Reading the EFF's recap, one gets the distinct impression that the 30,000 legal threats issued to date have generally targeted laid-off, single-parent, disabled veterans of a certain age accused of downloading hard-core rap music through Windows-only P2P apps when the only computer they own is a Mac. Also, dead grandmothers.
The EFF's tough stance against the RIAA actions isn't predicated on the belief that everyone sued so far is innocent; instead, it's based on the argument that legal threats, $4,000 settlements, and $200,000+ statutory judgments are grossly disproportionate to the offenses - plus, the RIAA's "driftnet" strategy is causing hardship for numerous innocent parties.
But the basic critique is pragmatic. File sharing hasn't stopped. It's not even down much as a percentage of total Internet traffic (and new techniques like direct download links may simply shift the action elsewhere). The "educational" component of the campaign has certainly spread the message, but it's not changing behavior. And the "carrot" of legal services like iTunes only accounts for an estimated 5% of all music acquired on the Internet.
Given that the current approach isn't working, the EFF offers its "A Better Way Forward" from April of this year. In the document, the group outlines an approach it has been talking up on the conference circuit for years: voluntary collective licensing.
The idea has gained some traction with artists like Barenaked Ladies but has yet to be acted on by the labels (we are seeing some exploratory moves, however). Basically, Internet users could purchase a license in the same way that radio stations pay for the right to play any songs they want. The EFF envisions a fee of $5-10 a month that would be paid to a new collecting society and distributed to artists and labels, and consumers could download whatever they want, however they want.
As for the RIAA, it's not convinced by any of the attacks on the current approach. RIAA spokesperson Cara Duckworth said, "We recognize and fully appreciate that this program would cause controversy in certain online quarters, but what enforcement program hasn't? The music industry was hemorrhaging jobs and lost revenue, artists were being dropped from label rosters, and legitimate music retailers had no shot at staying afloat. This harsh reality called for a difficult but necessary approach. The bottom line we ask is this: think about what the legal marketplace and industry would look like today had we sat on our hands and done nothing."
The RIAA's basic point is that the legal campaign wasn't out to eliminate copyright infringement or return the labels to the glory days of the 20th century or to "fight the future." It was to educate people about copyright infringement (and if you remember the Napster days, it was pretty clear that many users thought downloading all the songs they wanted was lawful) and build some sandbags to hold back the P2P flood. Behind the barricades, the music business could then have time to work out licensed alternatives like iTunes, eMusic, and the recent Amazon music store.
Those two goals may have been met - certainly, people are aware of the lawsuits now. The EFF's point seems to be simply that as a practical matter, unauthorized downloads are still swamping the iTunes dinghy and that "education" has been about as effective as lecturing the rain during a storm. Of course, we heard this all last year, too, and things have yet to change.
CyberDefender Achieves Landmark 4 Million Users
An innovative Internet security developer offering early detection through a proprietary secure P2P network, delivering antidotes faster than the actual virus or spyware can spread, today announced a milestone of approximately 4 million users between January and August 2008.
The company's successful back-end technology significantly reduces the cost of updating each user's software and allows for virtually unlimited daily updates, regardless of the file size. The progressive P2P solution developed by CyberDefender responds faster to growing online privacy and security threats such as phishing, viruses, and spyware.
CyberDefender's Collaborative Internet Security Network allows unlimited anti-virus and anti-spyware software updates through propagation.
Updates are delivered immediately to the user as well as the server, making the service fast, frequently refreshed, and more powerful than alternatives.
Most competing anti-virus software companies only update against new threats a few times per week due to rising broadband costs. The CyberDefender earlyNETWORK detects and updates all users within hours when a new virus, spyware, or phishing attack is detected.
CyberDefender even works with other security software products and can be used as an additional layer of security.
"Surpassing 4 million users is a major achievement for us," said Gary Guseinov, CEO of CyberDefender. "We believe that our user base will continue to grow and we anticipate an increase in revenue because of this. We are proud to offer the most efficient line of defense available and will continue to improve our products. In addition, we intend to further grow our user acquisitions through various channels and product developments."
Velocix Delivers Video for Bollywood TV
Excerpted from IT Examiner by John Oram
At the Streaming Media West show we met with Phill Robinson, CEO of Velocix, one of the largest worldwide content delivery network (CDN) companies.
Velocix customers include Bollywood TV, where you can watch "Saas Bahu aur Sensex." The movie promo says it is a fun film about the changing face of India.
Robinson explained how Velocix has taken the best elements of P2P, whereby bandwidth is increased as more and more computers start downloading a movie or watching a live broadcast. The big problem with P2P is that the ISP ends up having its bandwidth consumed.
Velocix has integrated proprietary caching at both the "big pipe" network provider level and the "small pipe" individual ISP locations. All of these devices are under the control of a decentralized network management suite of proprietary applications.
Next, it uses off-peak bandwidth. Robinson explained that the company manages this by having a worldwide network of locations interconnected to a very big fiber-based broadband pipe.
Every browser was originally designed for the successful delivery of successive small objects (files) using HyperText Markup Language (HTML), the predominant markup language for web pages.
Then, the browser was enhanced with a plug-in using Javascript, the scripting language most often used for client-side web development or Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), a simple mechanism for adding style such as fonts, colors, and spacing to web documents.
Over 95% of Windows OS-based browsers have a Flash plug-in to assist with the multimedia software created by Macromedia and currently developed and distributed by Adobe Systems. Each of these enhancements to your browser allows different individual effects to be displayed. Some can only run on the desktop, others will run on a mobile phone browser.
Then there is the issue of how much download speed is required for the various resolution levels. For YouTube videos, we can live with 320p resolution, which needs a download speed of about 300kbps. At the opposite end of the scale are full-screen, hi-res 1080p eye-popping movies and real-time live performances, which call for a download bitrate of between 6Mbps and 10Mbps.
So what does that mean on your desktop when you want to watch a movie? If you're in Bangalore or San Francisco downloading a movie from Bollywood TV, you might actually be interconnected to multiple servers in several different time zones. Each of the locations has taken the movie and divided it into a series of standalone "slices." These slices are located at places where bandwidth is not in high demand and are priced at less per megabyte at that local time zone than where your desktop is doing the downloading.
Not everybody lives in the country where an event is taking place. The Italian football (called soccer in US) club AC Milan has millions of fans all over the world, most of whom will not show up at an Italian or EU stadium to watch a game. AC Milan uses a subscription service based on Velocix technology to bring the excitement of its hard-charging players into living rooms of Californians.
The same is true of Bollywood TV putting movies onto the desktops of folks half a world away. Robinson said that Velocix can provide customers with the tools to do streaming video themselves with their in-house technicians and servers.
Alternatively, Velocix can do it all for the customers, as an end-to-end delivery system with head-end content delivered directly to nearly anyone with the proper bandwidth. Phill said that most of Velocix's customers like the subscription model, including BBC, Verizon FiOS in the US, and Telecinco (Spain).
Robinson said that the BBC has increased its TV viewing figures because viewers jump onto their computers and get up-to-date on a segment of a show they missed. Obviously streaming media is changing how we use our desktop computers and mobile phones. CDN is a necessary tool to get that high-quality video and audio out there to everybody.
More All3 Shows Hit Joost
Excerpted from C21 Media Report
UK-based distributor All3Media International has ramped up its offerings on P2PTV service Joost, making hundreds more hours of content from 16 more shows available to users in the UK.
New All3 shows that can be streamed for free via Joost are "Peep Show," "Shameless," "Derren Brown's Mind Control," "Messiah and Trick of the Mind," "Ultimate Force," "10 Years Younger," "How to Look Good Naked," "Balls of Steel," "Elizabeth I," "Dirty Tricks," "North Square," "Young Person's Guide to Becoming a Rock Star," "Hype the Streets with Paul McKenna," "Weapons that Made Britain," "50 Greatest Magical Hits," and "HypnoSex."
They join other All3 titles "Hollyoaks," "Fifth Gear," and "The Gadget Show," which are already available on Joost.
Vudu Takes High-Def Movies Higher
Excerpted from Multichannel News Report by Todd Spangler
P2PTV hardware/network start-up Vudu this week will begin offering 65 feature movie titles in 1080p high-definition (HD) video format via its Internet-connected set-top, in a bid to peel home-theater aficionados from cable and satellite video-on-demand (VOD) services.
The movies, priced for a la carte rental, include "Chronicles of Riddick," "The Spiderwick Chronicles," "In Bruges," "Speed Racer," and classics such as "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," "Chinatown," and "Saturday Night Fever."
Vudu calls the service "HDX," with video encoded at variable bit-rate in MPEG-4 H.264 in 1080p at 24 frames per second - the highest HD format currently defined.
The average bit-rate for an HDX-encoded title is 9 to 10 Mbps, compared with about 4 Mbps for Vudu's regular 1080i HD titles, said Chief Technology Officer Prasanna Ganesan.
Vudu offers HDX movies for the same price as regular HD - $5.99 for a 24-hour rental of new releases - and said it will provide every newly released HD title in the new format.
"Our customers are the on-demand consumers," Ganesan said. "They don't want to order DVDs two days in advance and wait for them to come in the mail." Ganesan said HDX titles will take about 3-to-4 hours to download to the Vudu set-top box (STB) over a standard broadband connection.
At least initially, Vudu's HDX service will spar with the on-demand offerings of the two major satellite operators, as well as Blu-ray Disc DVDs, which use the 1080p format. Both Dish Network and DirecTV have announced plans to offer 1080p movies via their VOD services.
Vudu, founded in 2004, has secured distribution deals with each of the major movie studios, including Walt Disney Studios, Lions Gate Entertainment, Paramount Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox, Universal Studios, and Warner Bros. Its full slate of VOD titles is about 9,800.
Vudu's STBs carry a list price of $299. The product is available from the company directly and retailers including Amazon and Best Buy, which is offering a $200 movie credit to all new Vudu customers until December 31st.
Santa Clara, CA-based Vudu has not disclosed how many of its boxes it has sold to date but said the number is less than 100,000.
Buffalo Adds LinkStation Live with BitTorrent
Buffalo announced the latest addition to its high-performance line of LinkStation Live with BitTorrent: the Network Attached Storage built in DLNA Server, designed for home networking to share documents, pictures, movies, and music over a network using a BitTorrent client.
With its compact and light form factor, this new feature comes with a massive storage of 500GB and 1TB, offering the same great features and protection that Buffalo's award-winning NAS devices are known for.
The new LinkStation Live is the perfect solution for storing and sharing large amounts of digital content from any web browser. Best of all, this NAS Solution has a built-in BitTorrent Client, a program that downloads files using a P2P file-sharing communications protocol. With a built-in BitTorrent Client, LinkStation can download content without the requirement to keep users PCs powered up.
One can store content from network computers or by using the one-touch direct-copy function that is a means of taking pictures or movies from a digital camera, camcorder, or storage device via a USB port directly. Stored data can be shared on your network and a built-in DLNA media server can stream it to a PC, a MAC, a Buffalo Link Theater, or other DLNA-certified entertainment device.
"The LinkStation Live with BitTorrent is designed for consumers who look for storage solutions supporting a file-sharing protocol for sharing large files." said Kazuhiro Tabuchi, Area Manager, Southeast Asia and Oceania Group, Buffalo.
"We focused on BitTorrent fundamentally as it reduces the cross-ISP traffic by eliminating the traffic's linear growth with the number of peers," he added. "The web-access feature enables you to access your data and media stored in the LinkStation via the Internet by computers and iPhones. It also supports the Apple Time Machine."
Alcatel-Lucent Evolves its IP Access Platform
Alcatel-Lucent this week confirmed the ongoing evolution of its industry-leading Intelligent Services Access Manager (ISAM) portfolio of IP broadband access products, providing access to the most innovative offerings of voice, video, and data services for tens of millions of end-users around the world already.
Since its launch four years ago, continuous innovations have turned the ISAM family into the ultimate reference platform that addresses increasing bandwidth and service delivery requirements, enabling multiple TV/video streams (including HDTV in conjunction with high-speed Internet access, VoIP, and gaming applications) as well as IP-based multimedia services (IMS).
More than 200 service providers worldwide have adopted the ISAM platform. Over the years, the ISAM family - a major building block of Alcatel-Lucent's Triple Play Service Delivery Architecture (TPSDA) - has continuously evolved to support a flexible mix of future-proof access technologies (xDSL, VDSL2, GPON, P2P Ethernet) and a variety of network topologies (central office as well as remote architectures).
The Alcatel-Lucent ISAM product family provides an unsurpassed IPTV experience, earning a five-star rating for video and QoS support (Current Analysis assessments of December 2007 and September 2008, respectively), as well as a cost-effective migration to packet-based voice, thereby offering support for any type of voice application - from Class 5 to full NGN architectures.
The ISAM family is widely recognized for its ongoing innovations, the most recent being the groundbreaking Smart DSL technology, as well as its distributed DSLAM and virtual ONT concepts. Having surpassed the 200th customer milestone, Alcatel-Lucent's ISAM platform is deployed at many of the leading service providers (such as AT&T, Belgacom, Hanaro Telecom, Hong Kong Broadband Network Limited, KPN, NeufCegetel, NTELOS, Swisscom and Telstra), as well as a considerable number of utility companies (NRGi Fibernet, Jonkoping Energi, Bristol Virginia Utilities) and municipalities and regions around the world (Arvidsjaur and Tidaholm in Sweden, Lincoln County in the US, and Asturias in Spain).
"As the next-generation fixed access market continues to evolve, two factors remain constant. The first is Alcatel-Lucent's ongoing ability to establish new benchmarks for access technology performance; the second is the company's corresponding ability to generate the ultimate validation for its access solutions, specifically, unmatched customer and market success," said Erik Keith, Principal Analyst for Broadband Infrastructure at Current Analysis.
"With this latest milestone achievement, Alcatel-Lucent has once again demonstrated its ability to defend its fixed access leadership, despite an acutely competitive market." "Since its launch four years ago, the ISAM family has been adopted by at least one customer per week, consolidating our undisputed number one position in IP broadband access," said Luis Martinez Amago, President of Alcatel-Lucent's Fixed Access Activities.
Share Links - File-Sharing Revolution or Evolution
Excerpted from Zeropaid Report by Drew Wilson
Many would argue that Napster kicked off the era of file sharing in 2001 because it pushed this practice from the obscure digital underground into the mainstream consciousness. It's an argument that still resonates today, and has become a staple description for media to describe how it all began.
While this argument has been around for years, other "revolutions" have been claimed. Was Kazaa revolutionary for being the first mainstream file-sharing client to be decentralized? Was LimeWire revolutionary for being the first mainstream open-source P2P client? Was eMule revolutionary for its serverless Kademlie network or protocol encryption techniques? Was BitTorrent revolutionary for its unique tracker/client system? Was Shareaza revolutionary for its multiple network concept?
Indeed, there are many advances to be cited in file sharing, but sometimes what is deemed as "revolutionary" is really an advance in one's preferred client or network. Now, we see this question being raised again with the idea of share links.
In actual fact, the evolution of file sharing has been anything but linear. While there were protests over the downfall of Napster, many were also quietly downloading on UseNet or ICQ. While the URN hash system on Kazaa was getting cracked, many were also sharing on eDonkey2000/eMule and LimeWire.
While Grokster was getting dragged through the US courts, many were searching through others' shared folders on Shareaza or chatting on WinMX. This is not denying what was popular, but accepting that there were almost always multiple ways of getting files from multiple P2P or P2P-like systems.
Most users are using multiple networks to get what they want today. This is particularly the case with those using private BitTorrent websites. The very nature of BitTorrent demands that every release be a separate network. Each private site can be viewed as a community that encompasses many of these networks.
The earliest kind of "share link" service was YouSendIt. According to Wikipedia, YouSendIt was founded in 2004. Its original intent was to help people send large files over e-mail when restrictions were tight. Such a service was definitely heaven-sent in such circumstances, yet wasn't exactly meant for file sharing by any stretch of the imagination.
Other similar services popped up like Megaupload (2005) and Rapidshare (2006) - the products of competition more than anything else. The concept of sharing these links is probably as old as when the companies were founded in the first place, but weren't popularized in the file-sharing realm until around 2006-2007 when people caught on to the idea. "Sharity blogs" and forums, which allow file-hosting links, started cropping up because finding links like these wasn't as easy as browsing a list of hosted content on the official website.
All this was made a lot easier when people designed search engines that crawled through the Internet to find these links and put them into a searchable database. Still, for older file-sharing users, the concept may sound familiar - put a file on a server and users download that file from the server.
This concept definitely existed with FTP sites that have also been around for a considerable amount of time. Another protocol that conforms to these principles is UseNet, which dated back to before Napster became popular. There was also the really old style of bulletin boards that were sometimes cited as the earliest form of file sharing.
So rather then something new, file-hosting might be seen as a way file sharing has basically come full-circle back to its core roots.
The question remains, though, how popular is this? It's not nearly as popular as BitTorrent or LimeWire. Are there a number of people using it?
Absolutely. Is it just the next iteration of file sharing? It's questionable whether it's 'the next big thing' given that file sharing's history is not linear anyway, but it may very well be just another tool in a file sharer's toolbox. These days, that toolbox appears to be getting more-and-more robust.
Grad Student Devises Method For Plugging Holes in Wi-Fi
Excerpted from MediaPost Report
City-wide Wi-Fi zones have long been considered a major step toward closing the so-called digital divide.
But such zones are not always so democratic, as dead zones tend to occur in unpredictable places. There's a lot at stake for anyone who can help bring municipal Wi-Fi to everyone intended to receive it.
Enter a Rice University graduate student, working with his advisers and Hewlett-Packard, who claims to have found a way to predict and prevent Wi-Fi dead zones.
PhD candidate Joshua Robinson says he has developed a technique that requires only a zoning map and a few simple calculations that can greatly improve the functionality and efficiency of citywide Wi-Fis.
His work was presented in "Assessment of Urban-Scale Wireless Networks with a Small Number of Measurements" at the MobiCom 2008 Conference, run by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).
Chief among his findings is that more nodes do not necessarily mean better coverage, a theory that flies in the face of conventional Wi-Fi wisdom. Please click here for more information.
Why Bandwidth Still Matters
Excerpted from eMarketer Report
When it comes to Internet bandwidth, deciding who pays for increased traffic from online video will be pivotal for online video growth. At the same time, the battle over net neutrality is in large part a battle over bandwidth and who pays for it.
There is no question that video data is the main driver for the stupendous growth of Internet traffic, projected by Cisco Systems to increase by 56.5% in 2008.
By 2010, PC online video (defined by Cisco as "video that is downloaded or streamed for viewing on a PC screen") will make up 29.5% of monthly consumer Internet traffic.
Further, when you add the TV online video segment (Internet delivery of video to a TV screen) and video communications (video telephone), those three forms of online video data will consume more bandwidth than P2P data - today's current traffic leader - at 42.8% of monthly traffic versus only 36.6% for P2P in 2010.
One reason for the upsurge of online video traffic will be increased viewing. Another reason will be improved video quality with more high-definition (HD) streams - which also amplifies the amount of data sent across the Internet.
Still, while increased traffic from video creates extra costs to develop greater bandwidth, it does not threaten to overwhelm the Internet. Recent data from TeleGeography Research shows that as of midyear 2007 and 2008, the amount of Internet bandwidth grew more than did the amount of traffic-even during peak traffic.
Cox Quietly Cuts Off File Sharers
Excerpted from Online Examiner Report
Hollywood execs have been attempting to convince Internet service providers (ISPs) to fight copyright infringement by deploying filters that will screen-out unauthorized material.
This concept is problematic enough, given that filters are notoriously bad at screening out unlawful material. Current systems are easily fooled by encryption techniques, which means they miss infringing material. On the flip side, filters can wrongly tag material as infringing when it's not, such as when users are making fair use of it in a parody.
But some proposals have gone even further, calling not just for the use of filters, but for the disconnection of accounts suspected of uploading or downloading infringing content.
There are many reasons to object to these proposals, which would cut off a major means of communication - leaving people without e-mail, online news or other web services that users take for granted. Among others, ISPs are terrible at figuring out which users are infringing copyright.
Researchers from the University of Washington (UW) studying P2P networks recently reported receiving hundreds of takedown notices wrongly accusing them of copyright infringement.
In fact, the idea is so bad that in Europe, regulators recently prohibited EU members from passing laws that would have required ISPs to disconnect users after three accusations of infringement.
Nonetheless, it's now come to light that at least one major US ISP, Cox Communications, has been quietly cutting off some alleged file-sharers for a while. Cox has only done so very rarely - less than one-tenth of 1% of users have been disconnected, according to a Cox spokesman.
Still, it's troubling that Cox has taken it upon itself not only to police the web, but also play judge and jury and disconnect users who may not have done anything wrong.
It's also disturbing that Cox attempts to justify itself to users by telling them - wrongly - that federal law requires the company to disconnect them. "Under the DMCA, we have the responsibility to temporarily disable your Internet access, until such time as you take the necessary steps to remove the infringing files and to prevent further distribution of copyrighted material," the shutdown notices state, according to this screenshot.
In fact, the DMCA in no way requires ISPs to cut off people based on mere allegations of file sharing. As Public Knowledge points out, the statute encourages ISPs to develop policies that provide for termination of the accounts of repeat offenders - not merely people accused of copyright violations, but those who have actually infringed.
Studios Sue to Bar a DVD-Copying Program
Excerpted from NY Times Report by Brad Stone
Six major movie studios sued RealNetworks, the Seattle, WA based digital media company, on Tuesday over its new $30 software program that allows people to make digital copies of their DVDs.
As the opening warning on every DVD indicates, Hollywood has bitterly opposed such copying. The studios have argued that it threatens their emerging business of digital downloads and can motivate buyers to rent, copy, and return DVDs instead of buying them.
RealNetworks, the company behind RealPlayer software and the Rhapsody music subscription service, said RealDVD gives users the freedom to do things like make back-up copies of favorite discs or take movies along on a laptop while traveling. It has argued that RealDVD is now legal because of a favorable decision last year in a case against Kaleidescape, a Silicon Valley, CA based manufacturer of high-end media servers.
RealNetworks also said that RealDVD conforms to Hollywood's rules on DVD protection by encrypting the digital copies, which prevents unlawful online file sharing.
"We are disappointed that the movie industry is following in the footsteps of the music industry and trying to shut down advances in technology, rather than embracing changes that provide consumers with more value and flexibility for their purchases," RealNetworks said.
For their part, the studios argued in legal filings that the software violates the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) because it bypasses the anti-copying mechanism built into DVDs.
"RealDVD should be called StealDVD," Greg Goeckner, Executive Vice President and General Counsel for the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). "RealNetworks knows its product violates the law, and undermines the hard-won trust that has been growing between America's moviemakers and the technology community."
Paramount Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox, Universal Studios, Warner Bros., Columbia Pictures, the Walt Disney Company, and Sony Pictures are suing RealNetworks in United States District Court in Los Angeles, CA, seeking an injunction that would prevent the company from selling the software.
Also on Tuesday, RealNetworks countersued the studios in federal court in San Francisco, CA, asking a judge to find that the program does not violate Hollywood's DVD license.
Coming Events of Interest
PopKomm - October 8th-10th in Berlin, Germany. The international music and entertainment business trade show, conference, and festival. Decisive developments within the business. Think forward: for three days, experts will be appraising and voicing their opinions on creation, communication, and commerce. Over 400 showcase performances.
P2P & MUSIC CONFERENCE - October 10th in Berlin, Germany. The DCIA proudly presents an all-new day-long conference within PopKomm, focused totally on P2P solutions for the music industry. How to protect and monetize musical content in the steadily growing P2P marketplace.
Spirit of Life Award Dinner - October 15th in Santa Monica, CA. The City of Hope Music and Entertainment Industry Group will award the 2008 Spirit of Life Award to Doug Morris. Dinner packages and advertising information can be obtained through Mary Carlzen and 213-241-7328.
P2P & VIDEO CONFERENCE - October 27th in Santa Monica, CA. The DCIA proudly presents an all-new day-long conference in conjunction with Digital Hollywood, focused totally on P2P solutions for the television and enterprise A/V industries. How to protect and monetize video content in the steadily growing P2P marketplace.
Digital Hollywood Fall - October 27th-30th in Santa Monica, CA. With many new sessions and feature events, DHF has become the premiere digital entertainment conference and exposition. DCIA Member companies will exhibit and speak on a number of panels.
DDEX Conferences – Digital Data Exchange (DDEX) Implementation Conferences on October 23rd, 28th, and November 6th in New York, NY; Santa Monica, CA; and Paris, France respectively. Automation of B2B data exchange for digital content markets. Registration required.
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.
International CES - January 8th-11th in Las Vegas, NC. With more than four decades of success, the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) reaches across global markets, connects the industry and enables CE innovations to grow and thrive. CES is produced by the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), the preeminent trade association promoting growth in the consumer technology industry.
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