April 13, 2009
Volume XXVI, Issue 1
Oversi Wins Red Herring 100 Europe 2009
Red Herring this week announced that Oversi was named a winner of the Red Herring 100 Europe, an award given to the top hundred private technology companies based in the Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) region each year.
"Despite the current challenging economic situation, Red Herring received an impressive list of submissions from companies across the EMEA region, outlining distinct innovative solutions in the global technology sector," said Red Herring Managing Director Farley Duvall. "The exceptional accomplishments of European technology start-ups and entrepreneurs are a testament to the rapid advancements being made in building the European innovation ecosystem."
"A growing company needs strong market potential, technologically-leading products, and an experienced and expert team. We're delighted that Red Herring has included Oversi in this year's Red Herring 100 Europe Winners, acknowledging these three crucial parameters," said Oversi's President & CEO, David Tolub.
Red Herring's lists of top private companies are an important part of the publication's tradition of identifying new and innovative technology companies and entrepreneurs. Companies like Google, eBay, and Skype were spotted in their early days by Red Herring editors, and touted as leaders that would change the way we live and work.
Oversi offers a breakthrough multi-service platform for over-the-top (OTT) content, including Internet video, peer-to-peer (P2P). and other media applications. Oversi's solutions enable service providers to cope with huge traffic loads on their networks while significantly improving subscribers' quality of experience (QoE).
New Media Career Event in NYC Tuesday
Don't miss the Digital Media MBA Career Event this Tuesday April 14th in New York, NY.
Digital Media MBA and Columbia Business School (CBS) are hosting this original and exciting career-day event and cocktail reception at the The Gansevoort Hotel in New York City's meatpacking district.
P2P MEDIA SUMMIT LA Adds Speakers
The DCIA is pleased to announce three new speakers for the fourth annual P2P MEDIA SUMMIT LA: Rick Buonincontri, CEO, Solid State Networks; Mark Isherwood, Director & Co-Founder, Rightscom; and Jeffrey Payne, Founder & CTO, GridNetworks.
The focus of this day-long conference will be P2P analytics - usage data, trends, metrics, etc. - that P2P-based services and other industry participants offer to content providers and enterprise customers.
The P2P MEDIA SUMMIT LA will take place on Monday May 4th in Santa Monica, CA in conjunction with Digital Hollywood Spring.
With social video sharing sites growing exponentially in popularity, the 2009 P2P MEDIA SUMMIT LA could not be more timely.
Pre-registration rates, which save attendees up to $360, end April 27th. To register, please call 410-476-7964 or click here. To extend the reach of the P2P MEDIA SUMMIT LA to those unable to travel to Los Angeles, the DCIA and Abacast will produce a live interactive webcast of the event.
Report from CEO Marty Lafferty
 During these spring holidays of redemption, hope, and renewal in the Judeo-Christian faiths, it is a fitting time to take a fresh look at the greatest conundrum our industry continues to face on a global level - and to commit to supporting new solutions.
While more than ninety percent of today's P2P software companies do not permit copyright-infringing traffic, more than ninety percent of consumer usage of P2P applications still involves infringement.
This has fomented increased tension between traditional entertainment content rights holders and file-sharing services, especially those that have achieved high levels of consumer adoption, at exactly the time the opposite should be taking place - more market trials of more licensed P2P business models - a turning of the corner on this now eight-year-old problem.
The schism has expanded during the past year as the entertainment industry, in desperation, has sought to involve Internet service providers (ISPs) in "graduated response" warnings and penalties against the large and growing number of consumers worldwide who are redistributing copyrighted works online without authorization.
At a Congressional field hearing in Los Angeles this week chaired by Congressman Howard Berman (D-CA), federal legislators and entertainment industry executives bemoaned the worsening situation, in which they estimate that $20 billion annually is now being lost to global infringement amidst failing enforcement efforts.
Zach Horowitz, President & COO of the Universal Music Group, lamented that currently as few as one-in-three music CDs and one in 20 downloads around the world are sold legitimately.
Also at the hearing, film director Steven Soderbergh presented Hollywood's position that rights holders who believe their copyrights have been infringed should turn to ISPs to send successive threats followed by disconnections of accused repeat infringers.
We think this is the wrong direction.
Instead, we support the approach being developed by the Isle of Man (IOM) and backed by our new P3P Working Group (P3PWG).
Rather than involving ISPs in another anti-consumer spiraling expense rubric, where the ultimate outcome would not only be accumulated ill will, but also lost subscriber revenue, the IOM program will provide ISPs with a new source of immediate cash flow, positive PR, and paths to additional revenue and value creation.
In its simplest terms, the IOM plan regulates and monetizes music sharing for non-commercial purposes, as its first step, with a baseline of revenue that, when rolled out globally, will generate a totally new unduplicated, non-cannibalizing annual revenue stream for the music industry of $5 billion - conservatively.
Our understanding is that this figure represents more than the portion of the aggregate $20 billion that can be ascribed to music.
Key to the success of this program, and a point that unfortunately has been missed by its critics, is that it will not harm, but will actually stimulate - proactively - licensed music services, both P2P and otherwise, which as premium value-added offerings will generate much more than the baseline service.
The plan includes promotion of these licensed music services, including ad-supported, subscription, bundled hardware, paid download, etc.; and will only proceed out of its initial limited test phase once this aspect has been fully proven.
It will enhance rather than undermine the inherent value of music.
The program also includes a rational approach for responding to the small percentage of consumers who elect to opt out of the baseline service - but then share music anyway. Rather than "three-strikes and lose Internet access," such scofflaws would simply opt themselves into the program and be billed like everyone else.
Nor does this plan monetarily reward unlicensed services or technologies with any part of the revenue generated. Rather, it preserves the rights of content providers to continue to legally challenge such entities, particularly if they induce infringement.
At the same time, and at least as importantly, however, it also provides positive incentives for innovative and technologically efficient distribution technologies to upgrade to a licensed status where they, too, can participate in revenue sharing.
Doesn't such an approach merit at least a chance to demonstrate its viability? Doesn't this make more sense than yet another draconian regime focused only on enforcement?
Can't we do better than further alienating consumers? And can't we avoid predicted outcomes that will include greater divisiveness between the entertainment and technology sectors, and unintended consequences such as fueling increased anonymization and other technical methods at circumvention?
We certainly believe so, and encourage you to get involved in IOM's fresh approach in any way that you can. Plan now to attend the P2P MEDIA SUMMIT LA on May 4th to learn more. Share wisely, and take care.
French Parliament Tosses out Three-Strikes Bill
Excerpted from The Channel Wire Report by Chad Berndtson
France's National Assembly on Thursday tossed out the country's proposed HADOPI law - a three-strikes rule that, if it had passed, would have required ISPs to cut off customers' Internet access for one year if they were suspected of downloading unauthorized copyrighted material.
HADOPI, which is a French acronym for what in English is known as the "Creation and Internet Law," would have required a graduated response by ISPs to suspected downloaders, and would also have carried fines of up to $400,000 and a few years in prison for anyone caught trading infringing material more than twice.
The proposed measure was rejected by a vote of 21-to-15. The contention point in the final version was an amendment that "third-strike" users continue to pay ISPs after being cut off.
The ways in which lawmakers and recording industry executives are attempting to combat unauthorized downloads have been in the news quite a bit lately, especially in Europe.
In Sweden, for example, a similar bill that made it easier to prosecute unauthorized music, movie, and other content downloaders did pass into law. But according to reports, the law's passage has since meant a 40% decline in Sweden's Internet traffic.
Sweden is also the site of a court trial of The Pirate Bay (TPB), which indexes and tracks BitTorrent files and has listed between 22 and 25 million users since 2003. TPB's three founders and an investor are accused of allegedly aiding copyright infringement, with a decision expected April 17th.
In the United States, the role of ISPs in fighting infringement has also come under scrutiny lately, especially the extent to which ISPs are working with the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) to root-out unauthorized music downloaders.
While the RIAA contends it is working with ISPs like AT&T, Cox, and Comcast on a graduated response system of warnings, the three ISPs have all said that they don't so much have a "deal" with the RIAA as they are continuing to warn users about suspected unlicensed downloading, but do not plan to cut off Internet access.
Welcome Hughes Hubbard & Reed to the DCIA
We are very pleased to welcome Hughes Hubbard & Reed to the Professional Services Group of the DCIA.
Hughes Hubbard is an international law firm of approximately 350 attorneys with offices in major business centers around the world. The firm is recognized in particular for its expertise in new media, entertainment, technology, intellectual property (IP), corporate law, securities, mergers & acquisitions, finance, litigation, alternative dispute resolution, and other areas.
The firm traces its roots to 1888 and Charles Evans Hughes, one of the firm's founders who later became Governor of New York, Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, and Secretary of State.
The firm's New Media, Entertainment, and Technology Group represents and counsels clients in the areas of digital media and the Internet, traditional entertainment and media, and technology and information security.
In digital media and the Internet, the Group handles a diverse range of matters including digital audio-visual content licensing, distribution, and syndication initiatives on all new media platforms; online social networking services, virtual reality communities, blogging, and massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs); mergers, acquisitions, and strategic alliances; online sponsorships/promotional collaborations and joint ventures; and more.
In the area of technology and information security, the Group handles matters such as privacy, data and information security compliance; information technology, business process, website development, hosting, and co-location arrangements; electronic commerce, publishing, and distribution; technology and data export compliance; and more.
Hughes Hubbard has been consistently recognized as a leader in diversity and pro bono work and has been named to The American Lawyer's "A-List" of top 20 law firms in the United States.
Hughes Hubbard Partner Clark Siegel will deliver a keynote address at the upcoming P2P MEDIA SUMMIT LA on May 4th.
Personal Computer Safety at Tax Time
Especially during tax-filing season, the DCIA-sponsored Inadvertent Sharing Protection Working Group (ISPG) reminds users of personal computers (PCs) and other networked devices to keep their sensitive data - such as income tax returns - private and secure.
The US Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) On Guard Online offers seven basic steps to ensure computer security: 1) protect your personal information; 2) know who you're dealing with; 3) use security software; 4) keep your operating system and browser up-to-date; 5) keep your passwords safe, secure, and strong; 6) back-up important files; and 7) learn what to do in an "e-mergency."
For consumers using file-sharing programs, the ISPG adds an eighth step: for the best performance and the greatest safety, upgrade to the most current version of your favorite P2P software.
Thanks to the Internet, access to information and entertainment has been made faster and easier than ever before. But online anonymity can also give online scammers and identity thieves access to PCs and their data. Being "on guard online" helps consumers protect their information, their computers, and their money. To be safer and more secure online, these practices should become part of everyone's online routine.
During the past year, leading file-sharing companies have made substantial software improvements, in compliance with ISPG Principles published in 2008, to help protect users against inadvertently sharing personal files. The ISPG urges people to update to these new versions, which offer many other very attractive features as well.
For example, LimeWire 5, the new version of the most popular file-sharing program, by default does not allow users to share sensitive file types like spreadsheets or documents.
The new LimeWire also allows users to clearly see what is being shared at all times, and even to control with whom they share each file that they choose to share.
These kinds of improvements demonstrate enormous progress from earlier file-sharing programs and underscore the industry's priority on putting consumer safety first. The DCIA also encourages users to visit the FTC's P2P Security site for more information.
Free Tracks from QTRAX
Excerpted from Pollstar Report
Do you want free music? Are you willing to watch advertisements in exchange for downloads? Then QTRAX has what you need.
A subsidiary of Brilliant Technologies, QTRAX launched April 9th delivering free music from all four major labels as well as several indie imprints.
The service's mode of operation is quite simple: Download and install the QTRAX Mozilla-enhanced music player, and search and download music. Along with tunes, the player also serves up advertisements from QTRAX ad partners.
All songs on QTRAX are protected by digital rights management (DRM) technology and are currently compatible with most Windows-based MP3 players, with the service promising iPod playability in the near future. Right now, QTRAX is only licensed to deliver free music in the United States, though the service will expand to additional territories in the coming months.
QTRAX describes itself as the "first free-and-legal P2P music service," and notes that it strips out the possible nasties that might come attached to P2P downloads such as spyware, adware, and mayhem-creating malware. Although the DRM wrapping prevents users from trading QTRAX tracks on open P2P networks, it does enable sharing through the QTRAX system.
QTRAX searches current P2P networks, allowing users to download music that QTRAX is licensed to distribute.
"Over 95% of all digital music consumption may be unauthorized. And the licensed sites only offer free streaming," said Allan Klepfisz, QTRAX President & CEO.
"QTRAX offers free high-quality downloads. QTRAX will monetize all digital plays by sharing advertising revenue, and offers a content rich environment that delivers a clearly superior consumer experience to any of the popular pirate sites."
Please click here for QTRAX and here for the QTRAX press release.
Facebook Reaches 200 Million Users
According to the company, Facebook, one of the most popular social networking sites on the planet, added its 200 millionth user on April 8th.
To mark the occasion, Silicon Alley Insider noted that if Facebook were a country, it would be the fifth-largest in the world after China, India, the US, and Indonesia.
The US has more Facebook users than any other country. However, the largest concentration of users is in the Eastern US and Western Europe.
From January to March, people ages 26-to-44 made up the fastest-growing segment of the US Facebook population, and other countries will undoubtedly follow that path.
While users have been reluctant to click on ads, brands are still looking for ways to leverage the social networking space - and finding them.
Facebook and other social networking sites are providing opportunities for brand marketers to get feedback from users - and even sometimes engage in direct conversations.
"Learn about real or perceived problems relating to your product or customer service - and unleash the wisdom of the user," said Geoff Ramsey, eMarketer CEO. "By looking, listening, and lounging, marketers can gain valuable insights concerning online and offline campaigns."
NY Rapper E-SHY Promotes with P2Pwords
New York City Emcee E-SHY has officially signed to indie label Kosha Nostra Records, which plans to roll-out E-SHY's records with a new media focus including a video for every song, multiple viral clips, and a heavy digital emphasis on P2P distribution.
P2P promotion will be done through Brand Asset Digital's P2Pwords platform, which provides the most detailed data available on who is downloading and where the music is being downloaded. E-SHY's singles and debut Album "MISFIT" are set to drop exclusively this spring on Violator Digital. Kosha Nostra Records is a division of Kosha Nostra Entertainment founded by Brand Asset Digital Co-Founder Joey P. along with J. Barton.
Joey P. will deliver a keynote address at the upcoming P2P MEDIA SUMMIT LA on May 4th.
Online Advertising Pushes Through
Excerpted from eMarketer Report
As strange as it may sound, the economic downturn may speed up the transition to digital advertising for many marketers.
The Internet's share of total media ad spending is rising by at least one percentage point every year. Simply put: Marketers are spending more on Internet ads, while spending less on advertising in other media, such as newspapers, radio, and magazines.
Furthermore, eMarketer projects that the online share of ad dollars will continue to grow, rising from nearly 10% this year to slightly more than 15% in 2013.
"The spending shifts predate the recession," says David Hallerman, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the new report, US Advertising Spending: The New Reality. "But the current economy is reinforcing the new advertising models - and making them more permanent."
Does this make sense in light of the fact that the rate of growth for even Internet ad spending is slowing? Mr. Hallerman thinks it does.
"Digital marketing offers compelling benefits, especially for cash-conscious companies," he says. "Marketers can more readily measure the results of Internet advertising than with most traditional media. This produces more efficient advertising and higher ROI, which in turn pushes traditional media to compete with lower pricing."
Which puts more pressure on traditional media's bottom line.
"At the same time, successful Internet advertising creates a new paradigm for marketing on other media," adds Mr. Hallerman. "Search is the prime example of the new model."
When marketers link ads to an individual's stated interest at the precise moment that interest is expressed - as happens with a search query - relevance breaks down the usual resistance.
"Advertising that consumers welcome is the new reality," says Mr. Hallerman, "combining effectiveness with efficiency for marketers."
And in the not-so-long run, that's where the money will go.
Spotify Becomes a Platform
Excerpted from Wired News Report by Eliot Van Buskirk
Spotify, already the best music app on the planet, is coming to a device near you. We're talking XBoxes, PlayStations, Slingbox, mobile phones, networked audio players, SlimDevices - any place developers want to put it.
The release Tuesday night of libspotify, the company's Application Programming Interface (API), means that the sky is the limit: Any developer can build apps that access Spotify's massive music catalog and use its P2P architecture, which streams Ogg Vorbis files among users like a streaming version of BitTorrent.
The bad news: It's still not legally available in the United States and lots of other places. In fact, this is great news at the moment only for music lovers in Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.
But those who have tried Spotify know it's like a magical version of iTunes in which you've already bought every song in the world - and it's free to use if you can put up with a 20-second ad every half-an-hour.
"With the release of libspotify, we hope to empower our users to build upon what we've started and come up with imaginative and innovative new ways of interacting with Spotify," reads the blog post announcing the program.
"There are hundreds of features that users have suggested to add to Spotify and, by taking this step, we hope to encourage the developer community to expand our service."
Hopefully, for the sake of US music fans, this delay in rolling out the service stateside is a mere matter of getting ducks in a row, rather than another frustrating instance of the music industry dragging its heels on new technology. Otherwise, Spotify could be available on videogame consoles in Europe before it's even available on computers in the states.
P2P-Based Skype Now World's Top International Telco
Excerpted from Computer Weekly Report by Ian Grant
In just five years, Skype, the free P2P-based voice-over-Internet-protocol (VoIP) telecommunications carrier, has become the world's leading carrier of international voice telephone calls, according to TeleGeography, a market analyst.
Skype, which is currently owned by eBay, last year carried some 8% of the world's 384 billion minutes of cross-border traffic, TeleGeography said.
"Skype's traffic growth has been remarkable," said TeleGeography analyst Stephan Beckert. "Only five years after its launch, Skype has emerged as the largest provider of cross-border voice communications in the world."
In its latest market update, TeleGeography said international voice traffic continued to rise at double digit rates, 14% in 2007 and an estimated 12% in 2008.
TeleGeography estimated that Skype's cross-border traffic grew about 41% in 2008 to 33 billion minutes.
It said declining call prices had kept revenues flat. Skype's prices are free among Skype subscribers and cheap to fixed-line numbers.
Not all of Skype's traffic is a net loss for international carriers, Beckert said. Skype's paid "Skype Out" service, which lets users make calls to standard telephones, generated 8.4 billion minutes of calls in 2008.
Skype uses wholesale carriers, such as iBasis and Level 3, to connect calls to the telephone network, and P2P software to route calls among Skype accounts.
Cloud Computing to Top $150 Billion by 2013
Excerpted from eChannelLine Report by Chris Talbot
Worldwide cloud computing services revenue is continuing to grow at a rapid rate, and is expected to top $56.3 billion in 2009, according to a report from Gartner. The lion's share of the market will be made up of cloud-based advertising for the next few years.
Market revenue grew by 21.3% from 2008's $46.4 billion, and will continue to increase to $150.1 billion in 2013.
60% of cloud computing revenue right now is coming from cloud-based advertising like Google Adwords, and while that percentage will decrease over the next few years, it's still expected to make up 51% of total worldwide cloud computing revenue in 2013, said Ben Pring, Research Vice President at Gartner.
"We're regarding it as a form of business process, and we decided to call it cloud-based advertising to differentiate it from some of the more traditional business processes that we look at in the report," Pring said.
Business processes as cloud services in total accounted for 83% of the worldwide revenue in 2008, and it's an area within the cloud computing market that Gartner expects to grow 19.8% from 2008 ($38.9 billion) to $46.6 billion 2009. Cloud-based advertising alone accounted for $28 billion of revenue in 2008, and Gartner expects that dollar figure to grow to $33 billion by 2009 (58% of the market).
Many vendors have also created very small, early stage markets like the fledgling platform-as-a-service (PaaS) market. According to Pring, "A lot of these newer ideas have been in the marketplace for less than a year."
The hype in the market around cloud computing suggests it's catching on big time, and Gartner's numbers show that it really is starting to ramp up on a large scale.
With new tools and methodologies, it's become easier to develop cloud services and leverage the global transport layer that is the Internet. Additionally, people have become much more comfortable with using the technology and have been looking at things like software-as-a-service (SaaS) as more cost-efficient models.
"But now it's being super-charged because cost is on everybody's mind and everyone is under pressure of reducing and taking costs out of capital and also operating budgets. That's why there's an explosion of interest at the moment, because people see it as a potentially cheaper option," Pring said.
Zetta to Launch Enterprise Storage-as-a-Service
Excerpted from Computer Business Review Report by Kevin White
Start-up Zetta is getting ready to supply enterprises with reliable cloud-based data storage services, as an alternative to expensive on-site network-attached resources.
Zetta Enterprise Cloud Storage is being marketed as a housing for primary data in the cloud, and is aimed at medium-sized and large enterprise customers with approximately 10TB of online storage capacity.
It is being priced at $0.25/GB and will generally be available to all customers after the current, second phase of staged customer testing.
The company explained that Enterprise Cloud Storage is intended for all unstructured data types such as active file archives, home directories, data migrations, media storage for online distribution, and data warehouse extensions.
Zetta said its service includes a cloud file system that delivers all the necessary enterprise features such as RAID, PKI-based security, standard CIFS and NFS interfaces, snapshots, and replication.
The company said it is not simply hosting third-party technologies, but has engineered its access, controller, and storage Service Manager Platform from the ground up to be suited for cloud computing.
Zetta's founders have a deep background in operating storage infrastructures, and an even deeper background in leveraging distributed computing principles to solve business problems in new ways.
They developed the Zetta business plan after they experienced the day-to-day difficulties associated with management of large-scale commercial storage deployments.
Zetta is led by Jeff Treuhaft who came in as CEO from VeriSign, where he was GM of the Global Digital Content and Messaging Business unit.
Founded in 2007, Zetta is venture backed by Sigma Partners and Foundation Capital as well as angel investors.
Visit Abacast at the NAB Show
Abacast invites DCINFO readers to take advantage of a free exhibit pass and visit it at this year's NAB Show in Las Vegas, NV from April 20th to 23rd. Click here to register.
Abacast is a commercial quality, cloud computing content distribution network (CDN), offering the most options in the industry to distribute and monetize Internet distribution of rich media.
Abacast powers rich media business models by providing the complete, end-to-end services needed for distributing, presenting, monetizing, tracking, and displaying rich media.
Customers use Abacast's broad toolset for commercial content management and distribution, targeted advertising insertion, real-time and historical analytics, brand promotion, and customer experience differentiation.
Addressable markets include Internet television, online radio, video-on-demand (VOD), enterprise, and file delivery. A hallmark of Abacast's offering is complete flexibility in content distribution options, from its large scale unicast platform to its industry leading hybrid peer-assisted delivery solution.
World's First Free Online Computer: icloud
Xcerion this week announced the launch of icloud, the world's first free online computer, giving everybody in the world their own online computer packed with free storage, applications, virtual desktop, and backup accessible from any computer connected to the Internet.
The icloud service is available in English, Chinese, Russian, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Swedish, and Filipino languages.
The public launch of icloud builds on a closed beta testing program and the incorporation of user feedback from iclouders worldwide. icloud is proud to announce free icloud accounts for everyone.
Daniel Arthursson, the Founder of icloud said, "With icloud, we put a virtual computer together with free storage and free applications in the hands of everybody in the world. It's the PC for everyone without a PC. Everybody can now access and share documents, photos, music, and their complete digital life from any computer."
The public version includes access to your friends and files on any computer; 3 GB free storage space to safely store documents, photos, and music online; 30 free applications such as office, mail, music, video, IM; sharing, games, collaboration and development tools; 20 free widgets; free backup to provide secure storage; and zero installation - icloud runs in your Internet Explorer or Firefox browser.
Media-Sharing Platform DoubleTwist Lands $5 Million
Excerpted from Digital Media Wire Report by Mark Hefflinger
DoubleTwist, the developer of a platform for media-sharing across all devices, announced on Tuesday that it has raised $5 million in its second round of funding.
Investors participating include former Disney President Michael Ovitz; former Warner Music head of digital strategy Alex Zubillaga; Horizons Ventures, the investment arm of Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-Shing; Index Ventures; and Northzone Ventures.
The company, which was co-founded by noted hacker Jon "DVD Jon" Lech Johansen, also launched the PC version of its platform, following a Mac release on February 24th.
"When I first met with the doubleTwist team over a year ago, I saw something consumers had been missing for far too long - a technology that would allow people to play media files across all of their devices and to do it quickly and easily," said Michael Ovitz.
"This new release does it all with simple and intuitive software that recognizes any device you plug into it and helps you manage your music, pictures, and video libraries."
Start-up Aims to Challenge Microsoft, Skype, Google
Excerpted from PC World Report by Mikael Ricknas
Dutch start-up Perzonae Unified Communications is working on a service that will combine e-mail, instant messaging (IM), and, later, calls and teleconferencing on PCs and mobile phones. The first public beta is now available, it announced on Wednesday.
By combining all these methods of communicating, users will eventually no longer need existing tools and software such as Outlook, Thunderbird, MSN, Hotmail, Skype, or Gmail, according to Chris Troost, Marketing Manager at Perzonae.
What Perzonae hopes will set it apart from the competition is the ability to communicate more efficiently using a concept it calls zones. Users can, for example, create different zones for business and private communications. If users don't want to be disturbed by private messages or calls during work, they can shut off that zone and view the messages later on, according to Troost.
The public beta, version 0.6, will at first support just e-mail. Support for IM will be added in about two weeks, Troost said. Perzonae will also support geo-location, so that contacts, with the user's permission, will be able to see where they are.
The company is planning to put out the first stable release, version 1.0, in approximately six months. It will include IP telephony, video, and audio conferencing as well as desktop sharing, according to Perzonae's roll-out plan.
Support for unified communications integrating telephony, e-mail, and IM, is still uncommon among Internet-based services, which leaves an opening for Perzonae if it can get there first. The enterprise space, on the other hand, is a virtual hornet's nest with companies like Microsoft, Cisco Systems, and Alcatel-Lucent competing for corporate dollars.
Currently, the Perzonae client runs on Windows XP. Soon there will be a version for Mac OS X, and there are also plans for Linux and Windows Vista clients. Perzonae also hopes to have a client ready for phones running Windows Mobile soon and is also looking into support for other mobile platforms, including the iPhone, Symbian, and Android.
Software Improves P2P Privacy by Hiding in the Crowd
Excerpted from PhysOrg Report
Researchers at the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science at Northwestern University have released publicly available, open-source software that provides privacy to P2P users by masking download activity in such a manner as to disrupt classification.
P2P systems are incredibly popular, enabling new and important Internet applications such as voice over IP (VoIP), cloud computing, and file sharing. These systems work by establishing network connections among machines that cooperate to perform a common goal.
While many researchers have pointed out that data exchanged over these connections can reveal personal information about users, an interdisciplinary collaboration among Northwestern Professors Fabian Bustamante, Luis Amaral, and Roger Guimera showed that only the patterns of connections - not the data itself - were sufficient to create a powerful threat to user privacy.
The team of researchers, including graduate students David Choffnes and Dean Malmgren and postdoctoral fellow Jordi Duch, studied connection patterns in the BitTorrent file-sharing network - one of the largest and most popular P2P systems. They found that over the course of weeks, groups of users formed communities where each member consistently connected with other community members more than with users outside the community.
After identifying this community behavior, the researchers showed that an eavesdropper could classify users into specific communities using a relatively small number of observation points.
Indeed, a savvy attacker could correctly extract communities more than 85% of the time by observing only 0.01% of the total users. Worse yet, this information could be used to launch a "guilt-by-association" attack, where an attacker need only determine the downloading behavior of one user in the community to argue that all users in the communities were doing the same thing.
Given the impact of this threat, the researchers developed a technique that prevents accurate classification by intelligently hiding user-intended downloading behavior in a cloud of random downloading.
The research team implemented this strategy in software that has already been made available as a seamless extension to the popular Vuze BitTorrent client. The software, called SwarmScreen, downloads randomly-selected content in a way that prevents eavesdroppers from distinguishing it from user-desired content.
SwarmScreen allows users to control the impact of these connections on the download performance for the data they want to keep.
113,000 Have Signed Up for Pirate Bay VPN
Excerpted from DSL Reports
Last month, popular Swedish BitTorrent website The Pirate Bay (TPB) announced that it would soon be offering an unlogged virtual private network (VPN) tunneling service called IPREDator, which it said would be priced somewhere around $6.80 a month.
The service takes aims at the new Swedish anti-piracy law, Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive (IPRED), which gives copyright holders in Sweden the ability to force ISPs in the country to hand over the names and addresses of users who transmit infringing material.
According to Threat Level, more than 100,000 people have signed up for the new service so far. It's expected to go live this week.
Radiohead Supports P2P File Sharing
Excerpted from CD Freaks Report by Michael Hatamoto
As the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and Joel Tenenbaum continue a legal battle in the court room, Tenenbaum's legal team, consisting of Harvard Law Professor Charles Nesson and several students, have a new star witness.
That new witness is Radiohead manager Brian Message, who will testify on Tenenbaum's behalf during the trial. Specifically, Message will discuss the idea that file sharing has the ability to help the music industry, and that there are both pros and cons to the new technology.
"He is leading a wonderful group of UK artists who are coming out in favor of the idea of non-commercial sharing among music fans," Nesson said. "It's clear that one of the issues that's at play in this case is the idea that there's been tremendous damage done to the music business. While there may have been some damage done to the CD business, the music business is going to be saved by readjusting and developing exciting new business models that are consistent with a digital environment."
One of Radiohead's most recent record releases, "In Rainbows," was available as freeware - pay as much as you want to - digital download, with more than 1.75 million copes of the release sold.
High-profile bands have chosen sides in the battle involving P2P and music sharing, with Radiohead a strong proponent of file sharing. Other bands and artists, including Metallica and Madonna, have heavily criticized file sharing, saying it takes money out of their pockets and hurts smaller artists.
Despite the pleas of some musicians, it's up to the record labels as to how they handle the issue of file sharing in the new digital age. Although there has been a growing number of digital download services, problems such as digital rights management (DRM) and pricing still need to be worked out.
Coming Events of Interest
Digital Media MBA Career Event - April 14th in New York, NY. Digital Media MBA and Columbia Business School (CBS) are hosting a career event and cocktail reception at the The Gansevoort Hotel in New York City's meatpacking district.
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.
CloudSlam '09 - April 20th-24th. This virtual conference is the world's premier cloud computing event, covering technology, business models, industry experiences, legal aspects, research, development, and innovations in the world of cloud computing.
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; panel discussions covering P2P usage, analytical tools, relevant trends, and future opportunities; 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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