January 19, 2009
Volume XXV, Issue 1
P2P Service Powers Obama Call-to-Service Program
Seeking to inspire thousands of Americans to respond to the incoming Obama administration's challenge to engage in community service projects on January 19th and beyond, inauguration organizers turned to Evoca for help.
Evoca enables users to easily create fresh, engaging audio content using any phone, computer mic, and industry leading peer-to-peer (P2P) Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service Skype, and stream it online to any website, blog, or social media profile.
As part of its global reach, Evoca is Skype's web services partner, conveniently recording free Skype calls directly within the Skype client.
Consumers can access the Evoca "Call to Service" toll-free hotline at 877-888-6228 and stream volunteers' diverse stories on the www.USAservice.org website.
Responding to President-Elect Obama's appeal to honor Martin Luther King, Jr. while volunteering in their communities, the service features voices of project participants ranging from former election campaigners canvassing for clothing for the needy in Orange Park, FL, to an AmeriCorps team refurbishing a family emergency center in Rochester, NY, to neighbors bringing food, entertainment, and care to the residents of the Eastern Nebraska Veterans Home.
Anyone can call to record their stories before and after January 19th to continue to respond to President-Elect Obama's "Call to Service" for Americans in need.
Watch President Obama's Inauguration on P2PTV
As DCINFO readers know, President-Elect Barack Obama's inauguration as the 44th US President is scheduled to take place on Tuesday, January 20th - but during the normal work-day for most Americans in all US time zones.
A new way for those unable to attend in person or to watch at home on television is to view the ceremony by means of peer-to-peer television (P2PTV) online.
P2P application Livestation will enable users to switch among a variety of international perspectives on the inauguration, including Al Jazeera, BBC, C-SPAN, EuroNews, and France 24. Please click here for more information.
Joost will be live-streaming the CBS broadcast television network's coverage. Joost has also compiled a playlist of everything viewers need to get ready for Inauguration Day. In addition to carrying Obama's speech in real-time, Joost has set-up an Everything Obama channel featuring interviews, memorable moments from the campaign trail, light-hearted satire, music, and more. Users can link to the Joost Obama Channel here.
Citizens who may be out-to-lunch or otherwise mobile during the noon ET event can also participate via live-stream on their cell-phones as subscribers to Verizon V Cast or AT&T Mobile TV.
Welcome Laura Tunberg to the DCIA
The Distributed Computing Industry Association (DCIA) is very pleased to welcome Laura Tunberg to the DCIA Member Services team. Laura will be based in Los Angeles, CA and will focus on DCIA Content Group development as well as expansion of other activities that support current and prospective DCIA Member companies.
Laura is a Principal Partner with We Get It Consulting, a consulting firm that specializes on bridging the gap between content and technology.
Previously, Laura was Founder & CEO of EM Syndication, a video delivery website, and, prior to that, a Vice President at MGM Studios in charge of its content protection department, where she was instrumental in getting MGM v. Grokster off the ground, which eventually went to the Supreme Court resulting in a seminal decision that has helped define the course of industry development.
She has an extensive background in legal and government affairs in the entertainment sector. Laura also has a deep understanding of new technology and is an expert in intellectual property (IP) law. She played a key role in lobbying efforts in Washington, DC on entertainment related issues and developed 2004's federal copyright-reform legislation.
Laura can be reached at 310-415-0330 or laura@dcia.info.
The DCIA Member Services team is led by Karen Kaplowitz based in New York, NY; and includes Limor Schafman, based in Washington, DC; as well as additional resources in Europe and Asia.
Report from CEO Marty Lafferty
 The DCIA calls upon all P2P file-sharing software firms, whether or not Member companies, to join now in voluntary reporting of their compliance with ISPG, the industry-wide program introduced in July 2008 to protect P2P users against inadvertently sharing personal or sensitive data.
A document summarizing the program is posted here. For more information on participating in the report, please call 410-476-7965 or e-mail ISPG@dcia.info.
We also encourage P2P software distributors to direct users to the Onguard Online website pages dedicated to P2P File-Sharing Safety.
The ISPG summary document outlines seven steps that are required to be in compliance: 1) default settings, 2) file-sharing controls, 3) shared-folder configurations, 4) user-error protections, 5) sensitive-file-type restrictions, 6) file-sharing status communications, and 7) developer principles. The developer principles address feature disablement, uninstallation, new-version upgrades, and file-sharing settings.
An eighth optional step for added consumer protection addresses inactive states of the P2P file-sharing application (fully disconnected from the P2P network and running in the background).
To put the ISPG in context, the President's Identity Theft Task Force (PITTF) has provided leadership for 96 related task forces and working groups since May 2006. Identity (ID) theft costs US businesses and consumers in excess of fifty billion dollars annually with an estimated 15 million US ID theft cases per year according to Javelin Strategy & Research.
Of this amount, to date, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has prosecuted only one case associated with P2P file sharing, where the total losses were $73,000. And among thousands of cases cited in the initial PITTF fact sheet, none involved P2P. But that does not mean this potential threat should be ignored or under-estimated by our emerging industry.
In about one-fifth of stolen ID cases, the Internet plays a part in perpetrating the crime. Thus far, in such instances, the means have tended to be more directly related to the intentions of the criminal than would have been the case in user-error of P2P software programs. Phishing scams involving a combination of e-mail and fraudulent websites - whose average time in operation is less than three days - have posed by far the greatest danger. Given that reality, the ISPG represents an important preventive measure.
The ISPG has remained within the scope of its subject matter based on our experience that in order to be successful, such working groups need well-defined project goals, non-overlapping participant roles, and clear procedures in order to achieve their respective missions.
The DCIA has separate ongoing initiatives focused on such issues as optimizing the efficiency of P2P protocols for broadband network operators (P4P Working Group), monetizing file-sharing traffic and deterring copyright infringement (P2P Music Models), and combating the redistribution of criminally obscene content (P2P Patrol).
Of these, the most challenging area continues to involve the distribution of copyrighted works, which the DCIA has identified as a 2009 priority.
This is due to a host of legacy reasons, inherent complexities with associated technological requirements to simultaneously monetize and protect content, and complications that continue to make it problematic for key contributors to directly participate.
Adding to the degree of difficulty, standards-and-practices efforts such as these must remain voluntary in order to comply with anti-trust laws in the US and other jurisdictions. Participation in working groups must be open publicly to qualified participants. Adherence to their work products must also be the unilateral decision of each individual company or organization.
The P2P industry has changed enormously since the DCIA's inception in 2003, with a much greater emphasis now on more sophisticated services than the kind of rudimentary file-sharing application Napster introduced.
Today we have a panoply of robust commercial P2P offerings, hybrid P2P content delivery networks (CDNs), peer-to-peer television (P2PTV) applications, live P2P streaming solutions, mobile P2P technologies, cloud computing, etc.
In the post MGM v. Grokster era, P2P software developers and distributors are successfully advancing services that appeal to consumers and serve the interests of all participants in the delivery chain.
As noted when the ISPG was introduced, we are grateful to industry participants and regulatory agency representatives, who worked hard on a worthwhile project, and also to industry observers, whose critical comments are useful in pointing out issues that need additional attention to facilitate commercial advancement. Share wisely, and take care.
Looking Ahead to a Genachowski FCC
Excerpted from SmartBrief Report
Industry watchers are trying to read the tea leaves on the future direction of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) under Julius Genachowski, President-Elect Barack Obama's choice to head the Commission.
Genachowski, who served as counsel for former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt, is expected to support Obama's stated preference for network neutrality on web traffic management as well as the expansion of high-speed Internet.
For more detail, please read these articles in Business Week and the Wall Street Journal.
Cisco Executive May be Tapped by Obama
Excerpted from San Francisco Chronicle Report by Deborah Gage
Business Week reported Thursday that Cisco's Chief Technology Officer (CTO), Padmasree Warrior, is one of two people being considered for national CTO by the incoming Obama administration.
Declining to comment directly on such speculation, Warrior said, "Cisco is committed to working closely with the Obama Administration on their plans to deploy digital infrastructure to grow our economy and create jobs."
"Smart networking technologies and IT play a critical role in transforming government, energy, education, and healthcare. President-Elect Obama and his team fully understand the importance of digital infrastructure to further our technology leadership as a nation."
Warrior joined Cisco in 2007 after 23 years at Motorola, where she was also CTO. She led Motorola to win the 2004 National Medal of Technology and has worked to get women and minorities more involved in math and science.
The other candidate is Vivek Kundra, CTO for the District of Columbia, according to Business Week and other media reports. He has used technology to streamline government and increase citizen participation and advises Obama's transition team on technology.
This is the first time the US will have a CTO. He or she will oversee technology systems and policies for all federal agencies and make sure they improve how the government and citizens exchange information. These systems also need to be secured.
Obama is expected to fill the position within a few days.
Looking on the Bright Side
Excerpted from C21 FutureMedia Report by Jeremy Allaire
While it may not be as fast-growing as once predicted, online advertising is still expected to increase by at least 5% this year. Some areas are growing faster than others.
In the US, for example, online video advertising is forecast to jump 45% from $587 million last year to $850 million in 2009 - a trend projected to remain strong through to 2013 when online video advertising will reach $4.6 billion, according to web statistics specialist eMarketer.
Despite constrained budgets, media businesses continue to invest in growth opportunities. Entire categories of media businesses, including magazine and newspaper publishers, have transformed themselves into web video producers in order to expand their online advertising inventory.
Hundreds of businesses have emerged that are building technology and providing services that interface directly with online video platforms.
This ecosystem includes many technologies, such as software applications, advertising servers and networks, widgets, search engines, portals, social networks, solution providers, and interactive advertising agencies.
Practically speaking, the emerging ecosystem means that media businesses are able to accelerate the time to market for their website video properties and extend online video experiences through platform partners, avoiding the costs of reinventing the wheel or adding in-house overhead to answer specialized market demands.
For the industry this means that online video platforms are becoming true "platforms," in the sense that they spawn business growth and entire economies around their technology.
Related to the online video ecosystem is the growing popularity of blended monetization strategies that leverage a combination of direct advertising sales and third-party ad networks in order to maximize the yield on inventory.
As any advertising sales professional will tell you, not all advertising inventory is created equal. This could not be more true than when it comes to unsold inventory - unplanned spikes in traffic that leave media companies with a lot of inventory and insufficient advertising to place in the video streams.
Many media businesses want to be able to easily and flexibly sell inventory in syndicated content distinctly from inventory on their own site, and leveraging third-party ad networks is a solid strategy to accomplish this.
Online video platforms are increasingly giving advertising sales operations the flexibility to carve up inventory for different sales strategies, which may include direct selling of premium content or packages and optioning other inventory into third-party advertising networks for automated sales.
P2P Movie Downloading Legalized in Korea
Excerpted from Korea Times Report by Bae Ji-Sook
Some movies can now be downloaded legally in Korea from P2P services after an out-of-court settlement between the Korean Film Producers' Association (KFPA) and the Digital Content Networks Association (DCNA), an association of P2P hosts.
The KFPA said the price of films would be graded according to the date of production and release as well as the picture quality.
"Copyright holders have sued P2P hosts for unauthorized downloading,'' KFPA official Cho Gwang-hee said. "But it may take years for both sides to settle disputes through legal battles. So both sides reached an out-of-court settlement.''
Filmmakers claimed that they sustained more than $230 million in losses due to unlicensed downloading. More and more fans watch the latest movies at home free-of-charge, the Korean Film Council said Wednesday.
According to its survey of 2,401 people, 86% have seen movies through the Internet and mobile devices. About 48% said they have downloaded unlicensed movies and 19% said they have uploaded them.
Last March, 35 filmmakers sued eight web hosting companies, but the lawsuits were unable to prevent unauthorized downloading.
Once detected, an unlicensed download could cost perpetrators a 500,000-800,000 won fine, but the threat has failed to root-out infringement.
Balderton Capital Lines up $500 Million Fund
Excerpted from C21Media Report by Jonathan Webdale
Balderton Capital, a venture capital company that counts Top Up TV and Next New Networks among its portfolio, has raised $430 million for new technology and media investments.
The London-based arm of Benchmark Capital was spun off from its US parent two years ago and has since cashed in on funds handed to firms including Bebo, which Time Warner acquired for $850 million.
Balderton has also given its backing to P2P live-streaming provider RawFlow.
The VC is now aiming to establish a new $500 million fund to invest in new technology and media opportunities and is already well on the way, according to today's Financial Times.
Barry Maloney, General Partner of Balderton, told the paper that while there could be some casualties in the firm's portfolio the downturn meant investment prospects were good. "Part of the reason for raising this fund now is to take advantage of the opportunities that this stage of the cycle throws up," said Maloney.
Motionbox Raises $6 Million for Video Sharing Service
Motionbox, the leading personal video sharing and storage site, announced the initial closing of its $6 million Series C investment round. The investment was led by the Company's current investor, Constellation Ventures, with participation from earlier venture investors, Canaan Partners and SAS Investors.
Commenting on the transaction, Liza Boyd, Managing Director at Constellation Ventures said, "Motionbox is positioned to be the game changer in the personal video space. While other companies have been out touting their one-off features, Motionbox has quietly and diligently developed a feature-rich high-definition product and technology platform that continues to receive kudos from users and Tier 1 partners. We're thrilled to expand our commitment to the company."
The company also announced the promotion of Josh Grotstein to CEO. Mr. Grotstein has been working with the company as its COO since the spring of 2008, and was tapped by the Board and the Founder & former CEO, Chris O'Brien. Mr. O'Brien will now serve as Board Chairman and EVP of Strategy and Corporate Development, working closely with Mr. Grotstein on critical business issues.
"Online video in 2009 is today where the web was in 1996, ready to explode in various directions and niches," Mr. Grotstein noted. "In the personal video arena, where safety, ease of use, and quality are all critical elements, Motionbox's platform can't be surpassed by any other service in the marketplace. That's largely due to the vision of and the technology deployed by the team assembled by Chris O'Brien. The company's recent 400% growth in its user base and the addition of several new Tier 1 partners, is testimony to the market's validation of Motionbox as the pre-eminent platform for high quality/high definition personal video."
Salesforce Offers Pricing For Cloud-Computing Services
Excerpted from Information Week Report by Antone Gonsalves
Salesforce has launched a cloud computing business that enables developers to build applications on the software-as-a-service (SaaS) vendor's platform and tie those applications to web services offered by Amazon, Facebook, Google, and other sites.
The starting price is $995 a month, which includes the ability to create an online community for up to 250 customers, set up a contact center with up to five customer-service reps, connect to up to five partners, and tap the services of other sites.
Salesforce is providing the development tools for building web applications that run on its Force.com platform and link to services on other sites.
Salesforce's partnership with Amazon enables customers to connect to the online retailer's Elastic Compute Cloud service and Simple Storage Service. In addition, Salesforce offers customers access to Google's App Engine, which provides access to the search engine's spreadsheet, presentation, word processing, web mail, and other applications.
Salesforce also offers tools for tying in to Facebook's social network, making it possible to connect to employees, customers, and partners in new ways. For example, at the San Francisco launch event, Salesforce showed how Orange, France Telecom's multinational wireless service business, is using Facebook to reach customers.
Orange has built an online community in Facebook that customers can use as a forum to discuss products and services. Orange monitors the discussions and uses the information to improve customer service and track problems with products.
With Amazon, Salesforce customers can leverage the retailer's data centers to get an extra blast of processing power through EC2 or more storage capacity through S3. The latest integration with Google expands on the companies' technology partnership, which started in 2006 with the integration of the search engine's keyword analytics service and Salesforce's CRM applications.
To Salesforce, which surpassed $1 billion in revenue last year, the Service Cloud represents a major step from the company's SaaS roots to an era where service providers open up their platforms, so customers can pick and choose the services they want to use in their own web applications.
"We really see this as our next billion-dollar opportunity," said Marc Benioff, chairman and chief executive of Salesforce.
Mobile VoIP and "The Cloud"
Excerpted from TMC Net Report by Mark Hewitt
Over the years it has been called "Grid Computing," "Distributed Computing," and "Software as a Service (SaaS)." However, the new buzzword for it is "Cloud Computing."
Microsoft has abandoned trying to fix Vista and replaced it with the Azure Cloud Services Platform, Amazon has already proven the value of Cloud Computing with the Elastic Web and Google's Application Engine launched like a rocket. Cloud Computing has arrived.
That said, we still have a way to go before we cut the cord and move cloud based applications into the mobile world. With Apple and RIM significantly restricting applications on their mobile platforms, this leaves only Open MOKO and Android as potential platforms that provide the development community the necessary openness to ensure competitive access to the mobile platform.
Information is only valuable if we can access it when we need it the most and that seems to be more often at the end of a cell-phone. It is no wonder why the presentation of the iPhone's display and interface became such a hit. It was not just the disintermediation of the carriers' grip on applications and services available over the wireless network, it was the presentation of content and applications that drove rapid acceptance.
As more mobile devices with great displays and better user interfaces appear, the developer community will move quickly to support the untethered with maturing cloud-based applications. We already see such great examples as Salesforce and LinkedIN.
Users will no longer be concerned about backing up their files or where a particular report is or even trying to remember in which contact manager their address books are stored. Soon they'll be able to pick any phone or mobile device and have full access to applications, services, and information.
This will happen without the need to remember different userIDs or Passwords, as is possible today in most every laptop installed with a Trusted Platform Module (TPM).
Digital Music Industry Grows by 25% in 2008
Excerpted from Times Online Report by Patrick Foster
The digital music industry grew by 25% worldwide last year, with sales of $3.7 billion, despite the fact that 95% of all downloads were unauthorized, according to a report by IFPI, the international record industry body.
The figures came on the day that the Department for Business, Enterprise, and Regulatory Reform (BERR) published the responses to its consultation on combating unlicensed P2P file sharing, confirming that there was a "marked polarization" within the industry on how to deal with online copyright infringement.
The government is in favor of a co-regulatory solution in which a change to existing laws would see Internet service providers (ISPs) legally obliged to adhere to codes of practice that could see Internet users who persistently flout the law disconnected.
The BPI, the voice of the British music industry, claims that the sector lost £180 million to online music infringement in 2008, and needs new legal protection.
In July, the BPI signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with ISPs that saw them send out letters to 1,000 subscribers per week who have been engaged in unauthorized file sharing, over a three month period.
The ISPs are vehemently opposed to any plans that would force them to disconnect their own customers, and claim that the problem can be solved by creating business models that steer Internet users away from infringement, or by rights holders initiating legal action themselves.
BT wrote in its submission: "Unauthorized P2P file sharing of copyrighted material is fundamentally a market issue which needs to be addressed through a range of commercial means."
But the music industry claims that without legal backing, any agreements to punish Internet users who download without authorization would founder.
John Kennedy, chairman and chief executive of IFPI, said, "The government needs to understand that ISPs are not going to do this voluntarily."
The government will set out its response to the consultation in an annex to the preliminary Digital Britain Action Plan, due to be unveiled by Lord Carter, the Communications Minister, on January 26th.
Lord Carter said, "We received some opposing views on other issues - including regulation - reflecting the fact that this is a complex and challenging problem. We're now examining what the best way forward is."
Another Victim of the Recession: Anti-Piracy
Excerpted from NewTeeVee Report by Janko Roettgers
Some 95% of all digital music downloads continue to be infringing, according to estimates released today by music industry trade group IFPI. Those numbers don't translate well for online video, especially as streaming sites like Hulu start to see significant traction, but a quick look at the stats of sites like The Pirate Bay show that unlicensed video downloads are hugely popular as well. So how does the entertainment industry react to these trends? Apparently by curtailing anti-piracy measures.
Sure, trade groups like the IFPI and Hollywood's MPAA continue to beat the anti-piracy drum. But take a closer look, and you'll notice that the industry is starting to backtrack on many fronts of the war against online infringement. It's not that they wouldn't like to continue to pursue infringers, spam P2P networks with fake files and press for copyright filters. It's just that those things never actually worked that well, and are starting to look like luxury in tough economic times.
Both Hollywood and the record companies used to spend millions on polluting P2P networks and slowing down file sharers with corrupted data. However, technical anti-piracy measures like these require lots of servers and bandwidth, and critics have always argued that these technologies don't really work. That message seems to be resonating with cash-strapped entertainment executives.
The weakening economy may also have been the real reason behind the RIAA's decision to halt its lawsuits against P2P file sharers. Critics have long suspected that the music industry makes a lot of money with its $3,000 out-of-court settlements with file sharers, but most of this money has been going to lawyers and companies gathering evidence about file-sharing networks. Combine that with the growing number of court battles and expenses like the $108,000 the industry had to pay to wrongly accused P2P defendant Tanya Andersen, and the lawsuits begin to look like anything but a cash cow.
The record labels are now looking to reduce these costs by getting ISPs to do some of the dirty work. The RIAA has announced that some major ISPs have agreed to warn infringing customers and potentially disconnect repeat infringers, and Hollywood would love to be part of that deal. However, no single ISP has publicly agreed to work with the RIAA.
Forwarding tens of thousands of infringement notices to customers, keeping track of their misdeeds and potentially dealing with disconnects costs a lot of money, which is why some ISPs now demand that reimbursements should be part of any cooperation with the entertainment industry. It's safe to assume that these types of voluntary agreements between ISPs and rights holders will be the next idea to be scrapped in light of the continuing downturn.
P2P Meets Instant Messaging (IM) on LimeWire
Excerpted from My ADSL Report by Alastair Otter
Popular P2P file-sharing service LimeWire has announced a new beta version of its software that adds the Jabber instant messaging (IM) service to the mix.
The LimeWire 5.0 beta release, announced at the P2P MEDIA SUMMIT at CES last week, also has a completely overhauled interface. The most exciting new feature in 5.0, however, is the integration of Jabber with the file-sharing service.
Looking a little like the meeting of social networking and P2P, users can share files with contacts already known to them on Jabber. Users will be able to mark files such as music or photographs as being available to all LimeWire users or just their friends and family on Jabber.
Users will also be able to search for audio and video among their Jabber contacts. LimeWire is obviously hoping that users will feel more comfortable obtaining files from personal friends rather than just anonymous sources.
The new service for LimeWire will also mean that users of other Jabber-compatible services, such as Google's Chat service, will be able to share files with contacts on that network.
QTRAX Signs Pan-European Deal with PRS for Music
Excerpted from Billboard Business News Report bu Andre Paine
UK collecting society PRS for Music announced a new licensing deal with QTRAX during MidemNet in Cannes.
Following the initial launch of QTRAX at MidemNet in 2008, the service has now secured deals with publishers and three major labels, with Warner Music yet to sign on.
PRS for Music, previously known as the MCPS-PRS Alliance, has partnered with the licensed P2P service to provide access to the Anglo-American repertoire of Peermusic and other UK independent publishers. The deal also includes PRS for Music direct members (excluding writers represented by EMI Music Publishing) throughout the European Economic Area (EEA) territories. It covers communication to the public rights.
The agreement with QTRAX marks the first of what PRS for Music expects to be many pan-European licensing deals covering mobile and online services.
"PRS for Music aims to provide new and existing Pan-European services with access to the widest repertoire possible," said Andrew Shaw, Managing Director for Broadcast and Online.
"We are pleased to have been able to facilitate QTRAX's move into the European market and we are excited about the further expansion of the European market for legitimate digital music services that will result from today's launch."
QTRAX, which compensates rights-holders with advertising revenue, launched in the US last year. It is not yet available in Europe although this latest deal suggests a launch is approaching.
"Critical to the success of QTRAX has always been a presence in the UK," said QTRAX President & CEO Alan Klepfisz. "We are grateful to PRS for Music for its professionalism, knowledge of new media, and support for a legitimate ad-supported P2P platform."
PRS for Music will make a full announcement about its re-branding on Monday.
The Biggest Thing in Music since Napster 1.0
Excerpted from TechRadar Report
Spotify could be the biggest thing that's happened to online music since the original Napster P2P client launched 10 years ago. And that's not an exaggeration.
Spotify is a free-and-legal PC and Mac-based P2P music player similar to iTunes and Windows Media Player. The difference, though, is that you don't play locally-stored MP3 files in Spotify. You stream high-bitrate songs directly from the Spotify network.
You search for a song, band, or album in the same way you would in iTunes. You click it and it plays. And it all happens instantaneously. There's no waiting for songs to buffer. There's no waiting for your search to be sorted through. It all happens immediately - as if you're searching your MP3 library on your own computer.
Spotify is primarily funded through advertising. Every 10 tracks or so, you have to sit through a short radio-style advert (usually about 20 seconds). If you don't want any adverts between tracks, you can pay 99p for a day's ad-free listening, £10 for a month, or £100 for a year.
The Spotify application itself is extremely lightweight. It's a less-than 2MB download, which means it's extremely responsive, quick to load, and it'll work well with old PCs.
And despite its dinky size, the app still has some fantastic functionality in it. You can create your own playlists in the sidebar. And you can then share those playlists with your Spotifying friends. Right click the playlist, and it'll have its own HTTP link. Send this to a friend, and when they click on it, your playlist will open in their own Spotify window.
You can send links to any song on the Spotify database in exactly the same way. It's even got song-display integration with Windows Live Messenger.
Many MP3 players and phones these days come with Wi-Fi connections. As they become more common, and public Wi-Fi points roll out in more towns and cities around the world, Spotify could be incorporated into portable music players and mobile phones.
Imagine this - you're stuck at the train station with only a phone and a pair of earphones. The next train is in 45 minutes and it's freezing cold. Wouldn't it be cool to load up a Spotify client on your phone, use the station's Wi-Fi connection to listen to any music you can think of in seconds - for free?
LittleShoot - The Dawn of P2P 2.0
Excerpted from Killer Startups Report
LittleShoot is a new tool that has been developed by the folks who brought us LimeWire, the popular P2P file-sharing client. This particular piece takes the concept of LimeWire one step further, and it can be described in an accurate way by terming it as P2P sharing through a browser, or (as it is propounded on the site) "P2P 2.0." Any of these two definitions is a good one, and it gets the basic idea across efficiently.
That is, using LittleShoot, you can share files using your browser and stream P2P downloads while searching services like YouTube and Flickr. The three main functions of LittleShoot can then be defined as downloading, searching, and publishing in a browser-based setting.
This application has been released as open source software, and it employs both open standards and protocols. In practice, this means that anybody can make a contribution to the project if he or she has the technical wherewithal.
The ultimate aim is to conjure up a tool that can contribute to the welfare of the public, by taking into account both its opinion and its input.
The service is quite a compelling development as regards the sharing and publishing of media.
RightsFlow Names Hutchison Chief Creative Officer
RightsFlow, a provider of licensing and royalty services announced that Duncan Hutchison is joining the Company as Chief Content Officer overseeing the Outsourced Mechanical Licensing division.
Hutchison, who comes to RightsFlow with almost 20 years of music industry experience will lead RightsFlow's content acquisition division and will be responsible for building and managing the label and distributor groups signed to the company and for implementing its expansive growth plans in this area for 2009.
Hutchison has an extensive music background working in senior management roles with music companies in both traditional and digital sectors: Caroline Distribution, Alliance Entertainment, K-Tel International, Sheridan Square Entertainment, Blackheart Records, Gray V, and WoozyFly.com
"Duncan is a seasoned leader with a diverse knowledge of the music industry and is going to be an excellent addition to our senior management team," said Patrick Sullivan, RightsFlow's CEO. "He adds tremendous value to our company and we see his role helping accelerate and shape our explosive growth trajectory into 2009."
"I am delighted to be joining the company at this important stage in its growth", said Hutchison. "RightsFlow is a dynamic company with a proven product and I'm excited at the prospect of offering labels the opportunity to safely and effectively outsource, at significant costs savings, mechanical licensing and royalty payments; a area of increasingly complexity and liability for many rights owners."
70% of Kids Take Part in File Sharing
Excerpted from Digital Media Wire Report by Jay Baage
Lawrence Lessig, an American academic and political activist, is the author of a new book called Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy.
This video from his appearance on the Colbert Report is a few days old, but both entertaining and interesting.
Lessig argues that for more than a decade, we've been waging a war on our kids in the name of the 20th Century's model of "copyright law." He claims that 70% of today's kids are file sharing anyway and what we need to do now is to embrace this new way of consuming media and encourage an innovative value-added remix economy instead.
This is in essence the same point as Matt Mason made in his recent book The Pirate's Dilemma and represents a school of thought which asserts that big media needs to stop spending so much valuable time and resources defending a dying business model (and in the process alienating their audience) and, instead, focus on offensive moves in the new media space.
It's complicated, since you don't want to "trade analog dollars for digital pennies," but we are already in a hybrid economy, where companies will benefit from both commerce and community, and Lessig's book will certainly be on the "must-read" list this year.
UK ISPs Reject Regulation in P2P Consultation
Excerpted from Computing Report by Tom Young
The British government has published the responses to a consultation on unauthorized P2P file sharing, which shows that none of the proposed solutions to the problem received widespread support.
File sharing allows software and intellectual property (IP) to be distributed without the proper recompense being paid to developers. But it is difficult to regulate as Internet service providers (ISPs) say they are not responsible for the content of what passes through their connections.
The government's preferred solution to the problem of unlicensed P2P file sharing is a co-operative approach to pursuing unauthorized downloaders.
Other options considered include: requiring ISPs to provide personal data relating to a given IP address to authorities; requiring ISPs to take direct action against users; allocating a third-party body to consider evidence and requiring ISPs to act on it; or requiring that ISPs filter unlicensed content.
No ISP was in favor of any of the solutions, including co-regulation.
"Sky considers it fundamental to any solution that it is not imposed on ISPs either through legislation or regulation," said BSkyB in an official response.
Many respondents also expressed concern over the ability of technical solutions to filter unlicensed content.
"We received some opposing views on other issues - including regulation - reflecting the fact that this is a complex and challenging problem," said Stephen Carter, Minister for Technology, Communications, and Broadband. "We are now examining what the best way forward is and will set out the next steps in the interim Digital Britain report later this month."
Many respondents to the report indicated that progress could be made by trying to change the behavior of consumers.
"Responses we received point to a consensus on the need to educate consumers about the economic importance of copyrighted material and the damaging effect file sharing has on Britain's creative industries," said Carter.
"We have also seen agreement on the need for licensed content to be innovative, attractive, and easily accessible. And it's clear that consumer concerns about data protection and privacy must be addressed."
Industry Peers Slam Australian File-Sharing Filter
Excerpted from Computer World Report by Darren Pauli
Australian Communications Minister Stephen Conroy said last month in a government blog that P2P filtering will be tested in pending trials which may require ISPs to block unauthorized file sharing in P2P networks - used by LimeWire, Kazaa, and BitTorrent clients.
"Technology that filters P2P and BitTorrent traffic does exist and it is anticipated that the effectiveness of this will be tested in the live pilot trial," Conroy wrote.
The national clean-feed Internet scheme, part of the government's $128 million plan for cyber safety, will impose national content filtering for all Internet connections and will block web pages detailed in two blacklists operated by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA).
Penetration testing firm Assurance Director Neal Wise said blocking unlicensed content over P2P traffic is too resource-intensive and detrimental to legitimate traffic to be feasible.
He said enforcement will be difficult because current technology cannot effectively filter the huge reams of data traveling over the networks, and ISPs are unwilling to police users.
Pure Hacking Senior Security Consultant Chris Gatford said ISPs lack the resources to block only unlicensed material, which requires potentially billions of shared files to be verified.
Wise said commercial organizations will overtake unauthorized file sharers as the heaviest users of P2P networks within five years for the dissemination of media-rich content.
"It is a logical way to distribute media en masse; unauthorized sharers have proven this," he said.
Open Source Industry Australia (OSIA) Board Member Damian Hickey said P2P protocols are being recognized by commercial and open-source communities as the fastest way to distribute and store large files such as software and video.
"We are considering making a GPL license our video solution and converting it to P2P so it is held on computers run as servers. It would be an absolute killer for us if video was filtered while we are running it."
"Filtering is an impediment to business - we often have designers working for us who will deliver their work to us via BitTorrent."
A spokesman for the Communications Minister said P2P content filtering will not be included in the mandatory opt-out service.
Judge Denies Restitution in Torrent Case
Excerpted from ZDNet Report by Richard Koman
The way Hollywood sees it, every file someone downloads for free is a lost sale. In their fantasy world, millions of P2P users are desperately eager for their content. If they couldn't download it for free, they would buy it. They want it that bad. But that's not obviously how economies work.
When something is free, you check it out. Consider the free single of the week on iTunes. Never heard of the band or the song, but it's free. Might as well download it; if I hate it I can always delete it. If I love it, I might just fork out $9.99 to buy the album. Apple understands this simple concept. Give something away and try to convert some percentage of samplers to buyers. Maybe - what? - two percent of free single downloads are converted into album sales. Say a million downloads = 20,000 album sales X $10 = $200,000.
Record companies would never give anything away, I suppose, because they see every free sample as a lost sale. At least that must be the conclusion of their legal arguments that they deserve full compensation for each download.
Once again, the courts have inserted a degree of reason into specious RIAA arguments. Ray Beckerman reports that US District Court Judge James Jones of the Western District of Virginia denied the RIAA's request for restitution based on the full value of lost sales.
The RIAA provides proof that 183 sound recording albums were transferred through Daniel Dove's server a combined total of 17,281 times. Multiplying 17,281 by the average wholesale price of a digital album in 2005 ($7.22), the RIAA concludes that its member companies suffered economic loss in the amount of $124,768.82.
Does this make sense? Even more ridiculous: Lionsgate states that Dove distributed over a million units of 700 movie titles valued "at $19 per unit," resulting in a "$22 million amount of loss to the industry." From this figure representing the total loss to the movie industry, Lionsgate concludes that since it holds 4% of the movie titles at issue (28 out of 700), it should get 4% of $22 million, or $880,000.
The judge made clear that neither the RIAA nor Lionsgate could get damages based on such speculation. It is a basic principle of economics that as price increases, demand decreases. Customers who download music and movies for free would not necessarily spend money to acquire the same product.
The court in Hudson was skeptical that customers would pay $7.22 or $19 for something they got for free. Certainly 100% of the unlicensed downloads through Elite Torrents did not result in the loss of a sale, but both Lionsgate and RIAA estimate their losses based on this faulty assumption.
Quite simply, the judge said, "Although it is true that someone who copies a digital version of a sound recording has little incentive to purchase the recording through legitimate means, it does not necessarily follow that the downloader would have made a legitimate purchase if the recording had not been available for free."
Music File-Sharing Case to be Webcast
Excerpted from Online Examiner Report by Wendy Davis
In a move that's being hailed as groundbreaking, a judge in Boston has decided to webcast a hearing this week in one of the remaining file-sharing lawsuits brought by the record industry.
Judge Nancy Gertner granted the motion of the defendant, grad student Joel Tenenbaum, for the Internet broadcast, rejecting the record industry's argument that a webcast could taint a jury pool.
"The public benefit of offering a more complete view of these proceedings is plain, especially via a medium so carefully attuned to the Internet generation captivated by these file-sharing lawsuits," she wrote.
Gertner has proven sympathetic to file-sharing defendants in the past. In one recent case, she denied a record industry request to subpoena a college's records for identities associated with IP addresses. In that case, she ruled there wasn't enough proof that the students tied to the IP address were the ones who shared files.
In another proceeding, she criticized the record industry for "bankrupting" defendants. Recently, the RIAA said it would stop suing individual defendants, but intended to continue prosecuting cases now in the pipeline.
Regardless of Gertner's feelings about the merits of those lawsuits, the decision to webcast this week's hearing makes a lot of sense.
Given that courts are open to the public, it's hard to justify the stance that only people who appear in person at the courthouse should be able to witness the proceedings.
Reports Re: Status of File-Sharing Lawsuits
This week, TechDirt asserted that the RIAA just can't seem to stop the momentum on filing those lawsuits.
DSLReports claimed that the RIAA keeps filing P2P lawsuits despite the promise that they turned the corner.
And Zeropaid questioned whether the RIAA is still suing file sharers.
This important matter deserves continuing attention and close scrutiny by all affected parties.
Coming Events of Interest
MIDEM & MidemNet Forum - January 17th-21st in Cannes, France. MIDEM is the international music market from all genres for all professionals providing five days of business and and a global networking marketplace. MidemNet Forum focuses on digital distribution of music.
Upsizing: Reinventing Yourself and Your Career for the New Digital Economy - January 22nd in New York, NY. Shelly Palmer, President of NATAS-NY hosts this one-day course that will provide practical guidelines, ideas, techniques, and digital skills to help you become more competitive and make more money in the digital age.
Digital Music Forum East - February 25th-26th in New York, NY. Participants include top label execs, artists and reps, association heads, attorneys, investors, consumer electronics, plus technology leaders from social networks, payments companies, online retailers, mobile companies, technology start-ups and more.
East Coast Music Awards - February 26th - March 1st in Corner Brook, NL, Canada. Live, original music during a four-day festival. Terry McBride, Co-Founder & CEO of Nettwerk Music Group, will be the keynote speaker for the conference component of the ECMA weekend.
P2P MARKET CONFERENCE - March 17th in New York, NY. Strategies to fulfill the multi-billion dollar revenue potential of the P2P and social network channel for the distribution of entertainment content. Case studies of sponsorships, cross-promotion, interactive advertising, and exciting new hybrid business models.
Media Summit New York - March 18th-19th in New York, NY. Sponsored by McGraw-Hill and Digital Hollywood, the 2009 MSNY is the premier international conference on media, broadband, advertising, television, cable & satellite, mobile, publishing, radio, magazines, news & print media, and marketing.
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