March 9, 2009
Volume XXV, Issue 8
Don't Miss the P2P MARKET CONFERENCE
Pre-registration rates end this Tuesday (3/10) for the second annual P2P MARKET CONFERENCE on March 17th at the Cornell Club of New York.
This DCIA special event is being held in conjunction with the 2009 Media Summit New York, which features keynotes from top executives at Microsoft, NBC Universal, and Viacom. Save $500 over normal registration fees by signing up now at the special combined rate of $995 for both events.
The P2P MARKET CONFERENCE, for just $399 a la carte if you register by the tenth, will focus on commercial aspects of the newest advances from the cutting-edge of innovation: generating revenue with services that employ P2P; obtaining financing for business plans that involve P2P; and reducing expenses for entertainment and enterprise customers that utilize P2P.
You will personally meet leaders from today's top global P2P brands like BitTorrent, LimeWire, Pando, Octoshape, and Abacast. You'll find out how to participate in history-making projects like the Isle of Man P2P Music initiative and transformative efforts like the P4P Working Group (P4PWG).
You will hear the latest from the top companies addressing consumer protection and copyright enforcement, issues that are again generating sensational headlines. And you'll get a firsthand look at the newest strategic perspective from FTI Consulting on "FHTML: Powering the New Web."
If you can't be there in person, you can still participate virtually - by signing up for the first-ever live DCIA event webcast presented by Abacast. But if you can attend in NYC, you'll also be able to join us for a very special "Sharing o' the Green" VIP networking party at the end of the day.
Nexon Chooses Pando to Optimize Game Downloads
Pando Networks, the leading provider of content delivery cloud services and Nexon America, a world leader in free-to-play multiplayer online video games, announced this week that Pando has been selected to provide optimized content delivery services for Nexon America game downloads.
The partnership, which will utilize the Pando Content Delivery Cloud platform, will accelerate download speeds and increase completion rates for millions of Nexon gamers and significantly lower delivery costs and services for Nexon.
Nexon America, a leader in the increasingly popular massively multiplayer online gaming (MMORPG) industry, offers a comprehensive roster of high quality game titles for free. With more than two million registered users for "Combat Arms," its recently launched first person shooter (FPS) title, coupled with the success of "MapleStory," its MMORPG game, the partnership with Pando will provide Nexon users with unparalleled download speeds.
"We identified and tested several solutions, but Pando Networks truly increased the speed and efficiency of delivering our large game files to players," said Soo Min Park, Vice President of Game Operations at Nexon America. "With quicker completed downloads, it is now even easier for Nexon players to experience our free-to-play games and allows Nexon to expand our reach even further in the North American market."
The Pando Content Delivery Cloud optimizes data delivery from both CDN servers and peer nodes. The Pando service accelerates download speeds while significantly reducing delivery costs. The Pando Content Delivery Cloud is more scalable than a stand-alone CDN delivery service because as download demand increases, Pando network capacity expands and performance improves. This is especially important for online game distribution as new releases of popular games frequently result in a sudden surge in download demand that can degrade CDN performance and the end user experience.
"We are thrilled that Nexon America selected Pando Networks to optimize the delivery of their popular games," said Robert Levitan, CEO of Pando Networks. "The Pando Content Delivery Cloud is perfect for increasing the performance and scalability of online game delivery. Our industry-leading expertise, developed from managing a network of more than 24 million consumer nodes, can now be leveraged to help partners such as Nexon America."
Pando Networks has been an industry leader in optimizing content delivery within Internet service provider (ISP) networks. Pando Networks' CTO Laird Popkin and Verizon Communications' Senior Technologist Doug Pasko are Co-Chairs of the DCIA-sponsored P4P Working Group (P4PWG) with nearly 100 participating companies. Pando has conducted trials of P4P protocols with AT&T, Comcast, Telefonica, Verizon and other ISPs. The results have shown accelerated content delivery speeds and reduced network operating expenses.
Report from CEO Marty Lafferty
 Congratulations to CeBIT organizers Deutsche Messe AG for their twenty-third consecutive annual success in mounting the world's largest trade fair this week in Hannover, Germany showcasing digital IT and telecommunications solutions for home and work environments. CeBIT 2009 offered an international platform for comparing notes on current industry trends, networking, and product presentations.
This year, the state of California was the first-ever official Partner State of Germany's IT and telecommunications industry association, BITKOM, and CeBIT itself, with a focus on environmentally-friendly technologies - a topic that also played a key role last year where Green IT was specially featured.
The star attraction of the Partner State program was the flanking German-Californian ICT Summit, and we are very grateful to Jimmy Schaeffler, Chairman and Chief Service Officer of The Carmel Group, for involving the DCIA in this historic effort.
Most DCINFO readers already recognize that distributed computing, P2P, and cloud computing are and always have been role models for environmentally friendly online technology: Reduce, reuse, and recycle could have been the DCIA's motto from our inception.
These technologies dramatically REDUCE costs for content providers and network operators alike when contrasted with traditional client-server architectures. By definition, the perfect digital replication and massive redistribution of files and streams via P2P exemplifies the concept of REUSE. And the very nature of distributed networks of interconnected devices, where bits of content are passed along from end-user to end-user, epitomize RECYCLING.
Tuesday afternoon's panel, moderated by Jimmy, was aptly entitled P2P - What Business Models Are Making Money in This Uncharted Territory:
"Napster was the name and model that caught everyone's first attention - so many years ago, it seems - but, how the industry has grown since then. Indeed, P2P is actually quite a legit business these days, with new versions, and hybrids and business models springing up all the time.
But what works best in an enterprise and commercial context? What's been learned, what's ahead? Whether we are talking about file sharing, video, audio, or data, or even telephony services, P2P suggests great things to businesses.
Discussion forums, distribution of computing, the e-marketplace, and distribution search engines, as well as groupware and office automation, are yet another set of applications or uses with huge enterprise potential. How are businesses today and tomorrow set for bandwidth, storage, and computing power? Ready, set, P2P. "
We are especially thankful to mini-presenter Dr. Thomas Rodenhausen, Head of German Office, Harris Interactive AG; and panelists Stephane Herry, CEO & Co-Founder, GigaTribe; Thomas Reemer, CEO, CUGate; and Jesse Patel, Director of Business Development, Miro.
Thomas' presentation was based on a survey that Harris Interactive conducted between February 20th and 24th involving 400 Germans aged 18-years and older, who use online services.
Of this base, almost all had heard of P2P, but 62% had not yet tried a P2P service. Use by younger respondents was higher, and only 28% said they used P2P because they could obtain content via P2P without paying; the remaining 72% noting they used P2P to share content with others, find content not otherwise available, and find new content.
31% do not download music, while 52% do not download video using P2P. A remarkable 70% said they "abide by copyright," when using P2P services. Indeed, in a related sense, almost half of all the survey respondents felt it "was a crime to share and download commercial files without paying."
Finally, the data suggested that well over 50% would prefer a free P2P service supported by ads over a subscription model. Please contact the DCIA for a copy of the survey.
Following Harris Interactive's P2P scene-setting, the three other panelists took on the definitions of several of the session's terms and phrases.
Miro/Participatory Culture's Jesse Patel opined that P2P was "a technology used to exchange files directly," while GigaTribe's Stephane Herry noted that "private P2P is a way to give direct access to your hard drive to people you trust." Stephane went on to note that Web 2.0 has put the user at the center of the internet; but P2P had done it years before.
CUGate's Thomas Reemer emphasized the social networking aspect of P2P, which lets you share your collection of files (videos, songs, etc.) with people who share the same interests.
In response to a question about the distinction between private P2P and open P2P, Stephane explained that open P2P is focused on content (you search for files from whoever can deliver them), while private P2P is focused on people (friends and family). You need to invite your friends before transmitting any content.
In terms of business models, Stephane described GigaTribe's current business model as based on a free version with additional features available to paying users (easier connections, faster downloads, additional sharing options). Other content-based P2P models are the classic ad-supported or subscription services, without any real innovation.
Thomas Reemer pointed to LimeWire's innovative proposal to monetize the search aspect of P2P, compensating content rights holders for advertising associated with queries for terms associated with their content.
Thomas sees the greatest challenge facing P2P currently as truly becoming an industry; and Stephane added that it is extremely important to disassociate P2P from copyright infringement. Along with that, litigation against P2P companies must stop. The problem is not with the technology, but rather with abuses of it. There is arguably more infringing content on streaming websites than on P2P networks at this point.
Jesse noted that, "P2P needs to mesh better with the technologies used for traditional web publishing, so that it can be adopted more easily by mainstream consumers and publishers."
He added, "Compensation for copyright holders is an important issue that needs to be solved, but the solution will have to look more like P2P with serious flexibility for end-users than it does like the old model, inherited from the brick-and-mortar world, of paying a lot for every piece of media you have the chance to consume, regardless of whether you actually watch it or enjoy it."
Asked in closing to predict the future of P2P in the year 2015, Stephane concluded, "Sharing content will come to be appreciated as promoting content. People sharing content will be rewarded, based on the volume of data uploaded thanks to them." Share wisely, and take care.
Join the Isle of Man P2P Music Initiative
For those who missed the opportunity to personally meet Ron Berry, the Isle of Man e-Commerce Advisor, at Digital Music Forum East, but would like to learn more about the exciting Isle of Man P2P Music initiative, please call +1-410-476-7965 or e-mail P3PWG@dcia.info.
The DCIA has established the P3P Working Group (P3PWG) to support this historic and potentially industry-transforming effort, and cordially welcomes your participation.
After preliminary formative meetings in Douglas and New York in the past two weeks, and internal planning sessions currently underway, there will be another chance to meet Ron at South by Southwest Music Conference (SXSW) next week in Austin, TX. Feel free to contact the DCIA to arrange for a meeting.
The vast majority of P2P, peer-assisted CDN, P2PTV, hybrid P2P, live P2P streaming, and other services that exploit the cost savings and enhanced quality of P2P are now distributing licensed entertainment and/or serving enterprise customers that own their content.
However, an enormous amount of consumer-driven P2P traffic, generated through file-sharing applications, remains unmonetized. And it is this issue that the IOM P2P Music initiative's P3PWG seeks to address.
The Island (population 80,000) is located in the Irish Sea at the center of the British Isles. It is a self-governing 221 square-mile territory with the world's longest standing parliament and legal system. IOM has become one of the fastest growing economies in Europe in recent years, led by its international financial services sector, favorable tax structures, and sound regulatory regimes.
There is 100% broadband penetration on the Island, which is served by three Internet service providers (ISPs). In addition, many leading consumer product and services organizations conduct market research and launch trials on the Isle of Man.
The P3PWG intends to operate in an open, inclusive, and transparent way, where a number of digital music distribution models will be evaluated using comparative test cells. The Isle of Man is ideally situated to host and lead this important effort.
A mission statement for this effort is now posted online here. A leadership summary can be found here. And membership information is posted here.
FamilyNet Selects TVU Networks for P2PTV Solution
Excerpted from Multichannel News Report by Thomas Umstead
Atlanta-based independent cable network FamilyNet Television will offer select content via the web as part of its full-time broadband channel powered by industry leading peer-to-peer television (P2PTV) service TVU Networks.
While the online service will not feature a simulcast of the net's 17 million-subscriber cable feed, the broadband channel will feature real-time accessibility to such FamilyNet shows as "EveryDay with Marcus & Lisa" "Mornings," "Judie Byrd's Kitchen," and "Wretched," according to the network.
"We've explored a broadband channel for quite some time," said Van Mylar, Senior Vice President of National Distribution and Marketing for FamilyNet Television.
"What attracted us to TVU was the standalone BD1000 broadcast appliance with its unlimited reach and scalability. Unlike streaming through traditional content delivery networks, with TVU's P2P technology we are assured of a high-quality viewing experience for an unlimited number of viewers."
Dailymotion in US Deal with Hulu
Excerpted from Rapid TV News Report by Pascale Lebailly
French peer-to-peer television (P2PTV) platform Dailymotion has signed a distribution agreement with US online video service Hulu. This deal will give Dailymotion's audience access to an "additional 40,000 premium videos from Hulu's extensive library" from television studios and well as other content from more than 130 providers.
Videos will be programmed in channels including Funny, Film & TV, Music and Sports & Extreme, alongside the site's library of licensed professional and independently produced content.
Using dedicated tools, viewers will be able to program Hulu content into their own channels and playlists. But this deal is geographically restricted and concerns US users only. Hulu's content is blocked from France where networks TF1, M6, and Canal+ still demand the territorial exclusivity of the content they buy from US studios and file suits against consumers using P2P BitTorrent applications to access Hulu's US platform.
Dailymotion attracts over 44.2 million unique monthly viewers worldwide, uploading daily over 15,000 new videos among the 18 localized Dailymotion sites. Hulu was launched in 2007 by NBC Universal and News Corp.
Obama Names DC CTO as Chief Information Officer
Vivek Kundra, the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for the District of Columbia, this week was named the nation's federal Chief Information Officer (CIO) by President Barack Obama. Kundra, who also previously served as Virginia's Assistant Secretary of Commerce and Technology, will now be charged with directing the policy and planning of federal IT investments, and will ultimately be responsible for the oversight of federal technology spending.
He also is expected to work closely with Obama's yet-to-be-named CTO to advance the President's overall tech agenda. Obama said that Kundra "will bring a depth of experience in the technology arena and a commitment to lowering the cost of government operations to this position."
Kundra has won high praise for approaching his office with the passion of a tech start-up, routinely implementing consumer technologies such as YouTube and Twitter to get quick results. In November, Kundra was named the Government Sector "IT Executive of the Year" by the Tech Council of Maryland. He also was named to InfoWorld's "CTO 25" for 2008.
Alternative Media Segment Forecast Up
According to Veronis Suhler Stevenson (VSS), revising its forecast downward in response to the current economic downturn, overall media spending is forecast to decline by 0.4% in 2009 after an increase of 2.3% in 2008. The revised forecast is down from a previous estimate of 5.4% growth for the year. The figure for 2009 represents the lowest industry growth rate, and only the second decline, in the three decades that VSS has been collecting data, the company reported.
John Suhler, Co-Founder and General Partner of VSS, said, "Though the downturn in our economy has added pressure to the secular trends already present and has accelerated the downward pressure on the traditional consumer advertising and marketing services sectors, the newer alternative segments of both sectors continue to experience positive growth in '08 and '09 and the end-user sectors, both consumer and institutional, have been revised to show slower but positive growth, also in both years."
Communications segments that will drive growth are those supported by institutional and consumer end-users seeking necessary data and information, says the report.
The pure-play Internet and mobile services segment is still growing albeit the growth rate is slowing down. Previously expected to grow by 15.5% in 2009, VSS now projects an increase of 9.1% for 2009, down from 11.6% in 2008.
Mobile content and videogames will continue to be in demand and record double-digit growth (34.2% and 19.5% respectively), however also at lower percentages than originally predicted.
The institutional end-user sector, in particular the professional and business information segment, will remain the fastest growing of the four communications sectors in 2009.
Various alternative communications segments included in both consumer and institutional end-user sectors, such as branded entertainment, digital out-of-home, and professional business information services, are also growing faster than other communications segments and the broader economy.
For more about The 2009 VSS Mid-Term Forecast, please visit Veronis Suhler Stevenson here.
ISPG Compliance Reports on Protecting File Sharers
The DCIA-sponsored Inadvertent Sharing Protection Working Group (ISPG) announced its consumer protection program in July 2008, culminating a year of work among leading P2P companies along with US federal regulatory authorities. A document summarizing the program is posted here.
In recent weeks, the DCIA has received submissions from top brands that use P2P for downloading, live streaming, open-environment sharing, and corporate intranet deployments, and to distribute both user-generated and professionally produced content.
There has been enormous progress on this important issue; and providing users of file-sharing programs with as safe and valuable an experience as possible remains a top industry priority.
In addition, DCIA Member companies increasingly use P2P technologies for the delivery of licensed entertainment and/or corporate communications content where rights-holders, rather than end-users, introduce files and/or live streams for online redistribution. Following is a summary analysis of the ISPG compliance report submissions. The complete report can be read here.
It should be noted, too, that P2P software implementations of the popular BitTorrent protocol typically require users to conduct a deliberate conversion process from whatever native file-format their content is in to a torrent file before it can be shared, thus minimizing this risk of user error.
All respondents now have default settings for file sharing at the point of software installation that only permit redistribution of files that users subsequently download from the respective P2P network, which is disclosed to users clearly and conspicuously in advance. User-originated files are not shared by default.
100% of respondents also provide complete uninstallation of the P2P file-sharing software that is simple-to-do and explained in plain language (e.g., by using the standard "Add/Remove Program" functionality on Windows or its equivalent on other operating systems).
86% of respondents (all where this principle is applicable) now offer a simple way for the user to stop sharing any folder, subfolder, or file that is being shared by using controls provided in a designated share-settings control area of the software that is easy-to-access and provides simple instructions.
A similar number of respondents make best efforts to ensure that as many users of their applications as possible upgrade to the new versions of their software that contain new safety features. And during such upgrades, great care is taken regarding both the file-sharing settings themselves and communications regarding them.
Can Peer-to-Peer Coexist with Network Security?
Excerpted from CNET News Report by Elinor Mills
Security experts have long cautioned about the risk posed by the use of peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing by individuals working in corporations, warning that the practice creates holes that let malware in and sensitive data out.
Their message may be having an impact in the P2P development community.
A trade group representing P2P providers has just published a report that finds P2P software companies are modifying their programs in an effort to make it harder for users to inadvertently share sensitive information.
For corporate IT administrators, that shift can't come soon enough. The problem was highlighted by the recent news that avionics blueprints of President Obama's helicopter had leaked through a file-sharing network used by a defense contractor to an Internet protocol (IP) address in Iran.
This isn't the first time sensitive data has trickled out via popular file-sharing networks. Last summer, personal information of some 1,000 former patients of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center was believed to have been leaked via a P2P network. Sensitive health care and financial data has also been found on file-sharing networks, according to studies from Dartmouth University and P2P network monitoring service provider Tiversa, which also uncovered the leaked presidential helicopter data.
P2P use at ABN Amro and Pfizer led to the exposure of personally identifiable information (PII) of more than 20,000 consumers in 2007. And then there was the symbolic slap in the face when politicians called P2P networks a potential "national security threat" at a Congressional hearing that summer.
The problem, experts say, is that employees are violating corporate policy by using P2P at work or on work laptops to download MP3 files, or they take the work laptop home and their children install file-sharing software on it.
93% of P2P disclosures in the enterprise are inadvertent, said Tiversa Brand Director Scott Harrer. "You can't really guard against human error," he said.
The problem is compounded by the fact that the employees also tend not to be savvy enough to configure the settings so as to protect files they don't want to share from being distributed.
"The default settings tend to err on the side of being more open than more closed," Mark Loveless, a research scientist at technology non-profit Mitre, said. This mirrors the security-versus-usability trade-off that software and web services providers, like Microsoft and Google, often find themselves making.
If the P2P user isn't careful in establishing a shared folder for other users of the file-sharing network to access, sensitive files anywhere on the computer can be exposed. For instance, a user can inadvertently open up files in the "My Documents" folder or anywhere in the entire C: drive.
"There are methods to configure the software to only share from a particular directory," said Loveless. "But you're talking about someone who has problems, in many cases, using Microsoft Word or corporate e-mail, apps they've had training on. So I would not expect them to necessarily know how to go about that and correct it."
Beyond having default settings that err on the side of openness and not security, the software is also designed to circumvent firewalls and other attempts to block it, Loveless said.
"P2P programs will use encrypted and sophisticated protocols to be able to talk to the Internet and evade network monitoring tools," he said. "They'll use multiple ways to try to get out on the Internet, undetected."
Historically, P2P programs used one specific TCP/IP port for the traffic, but now they can pick a random port to use or they use Port 80, which is used for all kinds of web traffic, thus thwarting administrator attempts to block P2P traffic by plugging the port, said Sam Hopkins, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Tiversa.
The software also has tricks to get access to files behind firewalls. If a user wants something that is on a computer that is located behind a firewall, the system can communicate behind the scenes to get a third computer to ask the firewall protected computer to send the file out to the seeking user, he said.
And some of the P2P programs can be buggy, particularly software written by young enthusiasts as opposed to paid professionals. Meanwhile, P2P files are being used to spread viruses and other malware to unsuspecting downloaders. For instance, a Trojan circulated on BitTorrent in January in pirated copies of iWorks 09.
There is also malware that can automatically scan a computer and when it finds a media file anywhere on the system it changes the P2P software configuration to share the entire drive the media file is in, Hopkins said.
IT administrators need to have a written policy that specifies whether or not employees are allowed to use file sharing. And they need to use perimeter security software, including firewall and intrusion detection, "to lock down the ports used by P2P or to look for specific P2P network traffic," said Tony Bradley, director of security at Evangelyze Communications, a unified communications software and service provider.
Corporations also might consider encrypting sensitive information and using data loss prevention tools to block data leakage, experts said. And if they want to see if any of their data has found its way onto a P2P network, they can hire Tiversa to probe Gnutella, eDonkey and FastTrack file-sharing networks.
Tiversa probes the networks, searching for specific terms and lets customers know when it finds any data out there specific to that firm and helps pinpoint the source of the leak and stop it.
After lawmakers accused them of being part of the problem nearly two years ago, P2P providers and their trade group - the Distributed Computing Industry Association (DCIA) - formed a working group to figure out ways to minimize the risk for P2P users and their networks. The DCIA prepared a report this week on Inadvertent Sharing Protection Compliance that lists guidelines for better protecting P2P users and percentages of its members who are following them.
The latest version of popular file-sharing software, released earlier this year, LimeWire 5, includes a number of the suggested changes and served as a "poster child for compliance," said Marty Lafferty, chief executive of the DCIA.
The report shows 100% compliance with the guideline that recommends that default settings prohibit the sharing of user-originated files, while 57% of the respondents said they were complying with the guideline to offer a simple way for the user to disable the file-sharing functionality.
Other guidelines, with compliance percentages ranging from 29% to 71%, included requiring users to select individual files within a folder to share rather than sharing the entire folder, requiring the user to take affirmative steps to share sensitive folders and preventing the sharing of a complete network or external drive or user-specific system folder, such as "Documents and Settings." Among the guidelines are requirements for warnings to the user when particular settings might jeopardize security.
"We were concerned about user error in earlier versions of file-sharing software where it was easier for users to make those mistakes," Hopkins said. "But a lot has been done to close those loopholes for the new versions."
How to Secure Cloud Computing
Excerpted from Search Security Report by Neil Roiter
Cloud computing is attractive, seductive and perhaps irresistible. The benefits are compelling, particularly the pay-as-you-go model that has been likened to buying electricity (or, if you, prefer, buying your drinks by the glass rather than the bottle).
There's a powerful business case for buying computational power, disk storage, collaboration, application development resources, CRM, on demand. Rather than buying more servers and disks or expanding or deploying expensive infrastructure and programs, cloud computing is flexible and scalable. It can meet short-term initiatives and requirements and deal with peaks and valleys in business cycles.
But where does security fit into all this? Security analysts and practitioners generally say proceed, but proceed with caution. All the risks to sensitive corporate data associated with outsourcing apply to cloud computing, and then some. Enforcing security policy and meeting compliance requirements are tough enough when you deal with third parties and their known or unknown subcontractors, especially on a global scale. Add the blurry characteristics of the cloud and the entry of non-traditional vendors into the technology market, and some red flags go up.
In an IDC survey of 244 IT executives/CIOs published last fall, 75% of the respondents cited security as a significant or very significant challenge with cloud computing. Compare that with 63% cited for the next two concerns--performance and availability. So, you'd better get ahead of the risks of cloud computing before your business colleagues get ahead of you.
"I recommend security people get some exposure to it," says Craig Balding, technical security lead for a Fortune 500 company. "Because the CFO, attracted by the numbers, or the CIO who is told by the CFO, is going to come knocking on the door and ask 'What's this cloud thing all about? What can we do in the cloud?'"
Let's examine some of the risks versus the benefits of cloud computing, and what your company can do to mitigate those risks and reap some of its benefits.
Please click here for the rest of the report.
The Myth of the Darknets
Excerpted from NewTeeVee Report by Janko Roettgers
Ars Technica published an intriguing piece by Nate Anderson this week predicting that file-sharing programs like the new version of LimeWire will lead to users just swapping files among friends. These private sharing networks are oftentimes called darknets, and Anderson believes that entertainment companies should be afraid of them because they put users out of reach of their P2P investigations.
People that don't share their files publicly can't be sued, and darknet-like features in applications as popular as LimeWire could have a dramatic impact on the entertainment industry's efforts to enforce their rights online, Anderson believes.
I have a problem with this argument for a number of reasons: First of all, it's overstating the need for darknets. Users haven't felt like they had to hide in the past, and I don't think they'll go underground now that the music industry has announced its intention to stop filing lawsuits.
Secondly, darknets just don't work all that well for video content. And finally, looking at person-to-person file-sharing features through just your darknet glasses is severely underestimating their potential to make P2P more social.
First of all, let's be clear what we are talking about here: LimeWire recently revamped its file-sharing client, adding a feature that makes it possible to share files solely with your contacts. LimeWire uses existing Jabber services to facilitate this type of personal file sharing, which means that you can pick any of your Google Talk buddies and share some files with her or him. It's a great feature, and it offers the added benefit of privacy and relative security: Rights holders will have a tough time trying to find out about your file-sharing habits if all you do is swap with your friends.
Of course, this idea is hardly revolutionary. The developers of the once-popular file-sharing software eDonkey briefly pursued a project called KDrive that offered a similar setup of private and public sharing within the same client. There are also applications like Waste that add strong cryptography to the mix. And users have been swapping files with chat buddies for years through their AIM and Yahoo IM clients.
Researchers and copyright critics alike have been using examples like these to argue against file-sharing lawsuits, contending (much like Anderson does in his piece) that increased legal pressure will just drive users underground. However, most users apparently never got that memo. The RIAA sued more than 30,000 file sharers in recent years, but The Pirate Bay (TPB) and similar sites are as popular as ever.
Even countries like Germany that have seen literally hundreds of thousands of file-sharing lawsuits still see significant levels of public P2P traffic. It's hard to imagine that users will be scared into hiding by the now-proposed warning notices from their ISPs, which may never actually have any real consequences.
Private P2P file-sharing features like the one included in the new LimeWire version also work best for smaller files, but file sharers have been rapidly moving toward downloading TV shows, movies, and even HD content. Getting a TV show episode in reasonable time through BitTorrent is possible exactly because BitTorrent is a public network with hundreds, if not thousands of participants sharing bits and pieces of each file.
Downloading the latest Hollywood blockbuster from just one of your friends, on the other hand, will take forever, thanks to the sorry state of US broadband, which more often than not is based on "high-speed" DSL connections with 128kbps upstream bandwidth.
The biggest problem I have with the whole darknet argument is that it misses the point of personal file sharing. Part of the charm of the original Napster system was that users had conversations about content, recommending music to each other and pitching their own creations in the process. These social interactions got lost when P2P services moved toward a more decentralized architecture to shield the companies involved from lawsuits.
However, the conversation never really stopped. It just moved to torrent sites, forums and even social networks. Reintegrating these social features into P2P software will help to make it even easier to discuss and discover new content - something P2P has been notoriously bad at.
That doesn't mean that users won't share publicly anymore, they'll just have better access to content that they really like. And eventually we'll see that users won't start to swap files with their buddies out of fear, but because they like to be social.
Smart content owners won't see this as a threat but as a feature that may actually help to promote and even monetize new content.
The Pirate Bay Trial Ends, Verdict Due April 17
Excerpted from The Channel Wire Report by Chad Berndtson
There isn't a decision yet in The Pirate Bay (TPB) trial in Sweden - that won't come until April 17th. But as the trial itself wrapped up on Tuesday, all one defendant could say was, "I think we're going to go party."
According to various news reports, that was the way Peter Sunde Kolmsioppi left a press conference Tuesday, after closing arguments for the defense brought an end to court proceedings.
"It's quite obvious which side is the good side," Kolmsioppi said. Convicting TPB, he suggested, would "be a huge mistake for the future of the Internet."
TPB site indexes and tracks BitTorrent files and has listed between 22 million and 25 million users since its 2003 debut. It is accused of aiding copyright infringement by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), which in the trial has represented major music labels and movie industry heavyweights like Universal, Warner Bros., MGM, EMI, Sony BMG, and 20th Century Fox.
Kolmsioppi and his co-defendants, fellow TPB Co-Founders Gottfrid Svartholm Warg and Fredrik Neij, and an investor, Carl Lundstrom, could face a year in jail and fines of about $135,000 each if convicted.
"I believe that the correct punishment should be one year in prison and that is what I am requesting that the district court hand down in this case," said prosecutor Hakan Roswell during closing arguments.
"It is important to see organizations representing rights holders from all over the world show their support in the trial of TPB," said Ludvig Werner, Chairman of IFPI in Sweden, after the trial ended for the day. "It's particularly encouraging to see support coming from the thousands of small, new, and independent creative companies. That's a powerful response to TPB, whose propaganda very often misrepresents this as a battle between young and old, and between new and old techniques."
Lawyers for the defense in their closing statements explained how BitTorrent file sharing works - the core of their argument is that TPB does not host any copyrighted material, and that the site operates legally in every sense.
Neij's lawyer, Jonas Nilsson, argued that TPB is open in nature and that the users, not TPB's owners and operators, decide what content the service tracks. Therefore, to condemn TPB would be to condemn any site in the world that could link to copyrighted material. It's the Internet's problem, the defense argued, not TPB's.
Norwegian ISP Rejects Demands to Block The Pirate Bay
Excerpted from Digital Media Wire Report by Mark Hefflinger
Norway's Internet service provider (ISP) Telenor has rejected a demand from record label and movie studio trade groups that its ISP service block access to Sweden-based file-sharing hub The Pirate Bay (TPB), Billboard reported.
"Asking an ISP to control and assess what Internet users can and cannot download is just as wrong as asking the post office to open and read letters and decide what should and should not be delivered," the company said.
"At the same time, Telenor does not condone copyright infringement and unauthorized file sharing."
"We comply with all relevant laws and regulations and can see no legal basis for any ISP to act in the interests of digital intellectual property (IP) rights holders by blocking individual websites," said Ragnar Kaarhus, head of Telenor Norway.
The entertainment industry trade groups were previously successful in getting a Danish court to compel Denmark-based Tele2 to block access to TPB.
Coming Events of Interest
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.
Future of Television West - March 24th-25th in Los Angeles, CA. A cutting-edge community of content creators, technology innovators, advertising representatives, and distributors forge relationships and share ideas about the future of television. The event is interactive.
Les Rencontres - April 15th-16th in Montreal, Canada. The fourteenth annual meeting of the music industry sponsored by ADISQ in Quebec for professionals from the world of recorded music. The event gives industry players the opportunity to discuss defining issues including new media, regulatory framework, and new business models.
LA Games Conference - April 28th-29th in Los Angeles, CA. Focused on business, finance and creative developments in the games industry, including mobile, online and console markets and the increasing intersection of Madison Avenue and Hollywood with the industry.
P2P MEDIA SUMMIT LA - May 4th in Santa Monica, CA. The fourth annual P2PMSLA, the DCIA's flagship event, featuring keynotes from industry-leading P2P and social network operators; tracks on policy, technology and marketing; panel discussions covering content distribution and solutions development; valuable workshops; networking opportunities; and more.
Digital Hollywood Spring - May 5th-7th in Santa Monica, CA. With many new sessions and feature events, DHS has become the premiere digital entertainment conference and exposition. DCIA Member companies will exhibit and speak on a number of panels.
Streaming Media East - May 12th-13th in New York, NY. The number-one place to see, learn, and discuss what is taking place with all forms of online video business models and technology. Content owners, viral video creators, online marketers, enterprise corporations, broadcast professionals, ad agencies, and educators.
World Copyright Summit - June 9th-10th in Washington, DC. The international forum that brings together all those directly involved in creative industries to openly debate the future of copyright and the distribution of creative works in the digital era. WCS is organized by CISAC, the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers.
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