March 22, 2010
Volume XXX, Issue 2
Rovi Acquires Recommendations Firm MediaUnbound
Excerpted from Digital Media Wire Report by Mark Hefflinger
Rovi (formerly Macrovision), a provider of various digital entertainment technologies, has acquired media recommendation service MediaUnbound for an undisclosed sum.
Cambridge, MA based MediaUnbound was founded in 2000 by Harvard undergraduates; clients have included Napster, MTV Networks, NTT DoCoMo, and HMV. Santa Clara, CA based Rovi said the deal will improve its recommendation capabilities and decrease its time to market for new products. Rovi operates the All Media Guide database of metadata on 1.8 million albums and 16 million music tracks, in addition to 1.2 million TV episodes and 430,000 movie titles.
MediaUnbound Founder & CEO Michael Papish will keynote at the P2P & CLOUD MEDIA SUMMIT at DHS in LA on May 6th.
Criminally Obscene Content Curtailment Breakthrough
Excerpted from Herald Sun Report by Greg Thom
A computer-generated snapshot shows Internet-connected lawbreakers accessing criminally obscene content involving minors. The map, captured by sophisticated tracking software used by Victoria Police in Australia for the past six months, shows the extent to which this crime is being carried out.
The head of the Victoria Police sexual offenses squad, Detective-Inspector Glen Davies, said the material being shared by computer users was "sickening." He said, "It goes beyond pornography."
Powerful new software allows police to cross-reference millions of illegal images being shared across the Internet and zero-in on where trafficking in these images is taking place. As the Herald Sun watched, Internet Child Exploitation Team detectives zoomed-in on addresses of Melburnians accessing child pornography.
The map displays clusters of computers being used to store and swap criminally obscene content in real-time. Users range from opportunistic voyeurs, or "dabblers," to hard-core pedophiles.
"The specific detail provided by the software assists police in applying for and obtaining search warrants," Inspector Davies said. "For every warrant we have executed, we have found images of child exploitation, and every person has been charged."
The tracking software has proved vital in helping identify which suspects may also have tried to contact and meet child victims, so police can swoop in before it's too late. "All the public needs to know is that we can remotely detect illegal images downloaded onto your computer," Inspector Davies said. "The next thing you'll know about it is when we knock on your door with a search warrant.
Suspects could also soon be confronted with an on-screen pop-up message warning that they are breaking the law.
This Internet surveillance tool, originally developed by Brilliant Digital Entertainment to allow Internet service providers (ISPs) to fight online music infringement, could also permanently sever connections to websites providing criminally obscene material.
Inspector Davies said it could shut down 90% of networks sharing illegal content.
Opera's P2P Browser Soon on iPhone
Excerpted from World Correspondents Report
A lot of mobile users have been using Opera Mini in their phones to access the Internet. The company Opera offers a P2P-based web browser and Internet suite which allows common Internet-related tasks such as displaying websites, sending and receiving e-mail messages, managing contacts, chatting on IRC clients, downloading files via BitTorrent, and reading web feeds. Opera is offered free of charge for personal computers and mobile phones.
Some mobile phones are pre-installed with the P2P browser already.
For iPhone users, Opera has been looking forward to its approval from Apple to allow a collaboration to proceed. According to Opera's spokesperson, iPhone's web browser would be six times faster if Opera were used rather than iPhone's current browser Safari. The submission for approval is weeks away.
There have been queries as to whether or not Apple will approve Opera because doing so would allow competition with Apple's own product. In the smart-phone market, Opera currently is available on BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, and Android platforms. Opera Mini is huge on non-smart-phone mobile phones as well, accounting for much of its more than 50 million monthly users worldwide.
Report from CEO Marty Lafferty
 With Brad Stone's NY Times article on music in the cloud this week (please scroll down), we'd like to share with you more details from our MUSIC IN THE CLOUD session recently at Digital Music Forum East (DMFE).
The DCIA's speakers included Nicholas Butterworth, CEO, HD Cloud; Steve Lerner, Practice Manager, RampRate; and Jason Herskowitz, VP of Product Management, LimeWire.
HD Cloud focuses on bringing the cost savings and speed of cloud computing to an increasingly critical area at the intersection of digital video post-production and distribution; namely, transcoding. Motion pictures, television programs, and TV advertising essentially need to be reproduced in a growing number of formats for delivery through multiple transmission systems to different digital platforms, and ultimately onto different screens, through both wired and wireless networks, on both fixed and mobile end-user devices. Enter HD Cloud with extremely efficient and highly scalable solutions.
RampRate is a consulting firm that helps media companies and others optimize their spends on such critical items as content delivery and data centers. It analyzes costs, processes, contracts, systems, accounting issues, etc. and advises on ways to improve upon these, including, where appropriate, by migrating to state-of-the-art cloud computing solutions. RampRate keeps its clients apprised of new, efficient digital opportunities as these are proven in the marketplace, and also works with its clients on business models and forecasting, among additional services.
LimeWire develops and distributes highly popular file-sharing software and is just now completing its first decade of operation. Its two flagship applications, LimeWire Basic and LimeWire Pro, access the Gnutella network and offer users BitTorrent-based options. Most recently, LimeWire launched the LimeWire Store, which has licensed music from an impressive array of top independent labels and now offers 5.5 million tracks with both paid-download and subscription offers. LimeWire is focused on creating experiences for its users in ways that these consumers themselves want to access media and connect with each other.
Nicholas views the cloud as making it possible for you to live in a world where you have on-demand computing power available whenever you want it. It's like having an ad hoc network of extra computers at your disposal - you can decide you want to use them, then use them, and then dump them back into the pool with great ease. P2P fits into the distributed computing spectrum in a related but different way - as an attractive way to solve the delivery problem very efficiently and scalably by creating fungible swarms of users sharing the same content.
The content sector needs to partner with the technology sector to lower the cost of participation in what can be described as the legitimate economy. It is now theoretically possible to provide more popular-entertainment content to more people much faster and at a much lower cost in such a way that content rights-holders also make more money. But industry participants have not yet connected all the dots to make this happen.
In terms of business models, on the cost side, Nicholas does not believe that distribution is any longer a huge problem, as bandwidth and related delivery costs have plummeted, but licensing and providing access is now a big cost center and major bottleneck. Such things as packaging, processing, contracting, transferring, and managing associated data involve interactions among many systems, some of which may not be updated and integrated with others, and this is where there's a huge slowdown in the pipeline. These functions can be much more efficiently and scalably handled in the cloud.
On the consumer side, Nicholas still holds a torch for subscription services. Well defined and targeted all-you-can eat packages tend to be most attractive to consumers versus a la carte purchase options. Increasingly, with the frictionless marketplace created by the web, the product is the marketing. If you're just pushing air, it won't work; but if you have a wildly terrific product, it can work extremely well on the net.
Record labels need to examine many more pricing options, especially in lower cost arrangements, and create much more elasticity in pricing to reflect today's delivery mechanisms. For individual musicians, the digital revolution should make establishing a revenue stream much more doable compared to the old methods of shipping thousands of CDs to radio stations and physically touring numerous local venues.
Steve sees distributed computing as migrating from P2P to P2P-and-the-cloud. While P2P was great for consumers, the cloud brings benefits of distributed computing to industrial users, including for enterprise data and computational processes as well as for certain aspects of entertainment and informational content delivery. Hybrid P2P shows increasing promise, especially with technology providers, and cloud computing brings managed hosting with the ability to remotely serve software functionality. A big advantage is that the cloud can support fairly volatile business growth without requiring the creation of much added infrastructure.
There's no longer any way technically to stop people from making and distributing perfect digital replicas of content files and so the emphasis should be on lowering the cost of digital goods relative to the more efficient delivery systems and in that way reduce infringing behavior to tolerable levels. It will not be possible to complete eradicate infringing behavior - and there's so-called breakage in almost every market - so some level should be deemed acceptable, although of course not desirable.
Steve pointed out that when content providers can deliver 1 gig of data - or 200 downloads - for fifteen-cents, distribution costs to the end-user is no longer the problem. The problem is further upstream, getting media from tape onto digital platforms and tracking it out to the delivery networks. There are a lot of inefficiencies in this area, and cloud technology combined with hybrid P2P represent the best ways to address them.
The practice of taking legal actions against young people for infringing content is ineffective and wrong. Please stop it. Instead, come up with truly attractive new business models that work for this valuable large market segment.
Steve urged industry participants on the media side to look within their own companies and identify bottlenecks that could be eliminated with cloud computing. If the license-to-market activity seems to have a thousand steps, that's not acceptable. It needs to be streamlined taking advantage of technological advancements like the cloud.
Jason noted that in many ways, cloud computing also exemplifies what's old becoming new again. There was a time, before the advent of powerful personal computers (PCs), when terminals had very little processing power and memory themselves; storage and heavy computational work were remotely handled by mainframes. In terms of the potential of cloud computing for music, the possibilities are quite extraordinary. Visionaries now more realistically than ever can postulate an all-inclusive ubiquitously accessible music catalog in the cloud, that would give fans access to their music wherever they go.
Consumers are telling us that they want to do the equivalent of being able to walk around with the bits (that comprise music tracks) in their pockets. They don't really care about the back-end plumbing, or whether it ends up being a mix of P2P downloading and streaming, caching, edge-provisioning, the cloud, or some combination of these, as long as the music they want instantly plays on the device of their choice whether or not they're connected to the net.
Jason observed that iTunes dropped digital rights management (DRM) in response to what the market was saying. And at LimeWire, there is a kind of mantra to "take the work out of play" when dealing with marketing mechanisms for recreational/entertainment content.
It's important that we collectively in the content and technology sectors listen as the market speaks to us, and respond with business models that work.
Jason went on to say that content-providing services aren't disappearing because of end-user delivery infrastructure costs. They're being stressed because of costs and delays as a function of outdated structures and expectations associated with licensing activities. These are now severely mismatched with what is really happening on the distribution side. Therefore, certain of these businesses, including some large entertainment conglomerates, are slipping underwater. Change needs to come in the sense of building new business models that respond to the overwhelming migration towards instant access and portability, delivered by exponentially more parties who are able to deliver digital content, at prices people are willing to pay.
LimeWire recently partnered with Converse to put a compelling message in front of people where they actually are, as opposed to where the sponsor might want them to be, with astonishing results - not surprising now that LimeWire is approximating a billion downloads. At the same time, LimeWire is also demonstrating how efficient delivery can benefit small local bands and help them find a global critical mass of fans, for example with its live-at-Brooklyn, live-at-New Orleans, live-at-Tokyo, etc. series of promotions.
The discussion will continue on May 6th in Santa Monica, CA at our first-ever P2P & CLOUD MEDIA SUMMIT at DHS. Share wisely, and take care.
A Dream for Music, but Labels' Nightmare
Excerpted from NY Times Report by Brad Stone
The Apple iPad, which goes on sale April 3rd, will access video, applications, and websites wirelessly - no cords or cables needed. But to move your trusty old music collection onto this wonder gadget and take it with you to work, or on vacation, you'll have to pull out a USB sync cable, plug the device into your PC, and transfer those music files over.
It's kind of a hassle, and it becomes worse when you buy a song on the tablet and then want to make sure it's on your other devices as well. Apple could probably ditch the idea of synching altogether, if it only had the kind of Internet music service that everyone anticipates, but which has not yet caught on: what techies call MUSIC IN THE CLOUD.
Such a service lets people store their music collections on the web - all those Beatles CDs and Blondie albums we ripped over the last two decades - and then stream the songs to any computer, phone, tablet or the coming wave of Internet-connected radios.
The music labels themselves love the idea of bringing people's music collections into the cloud, particularly because it might make consumers excited about buying music again. The number of people downloading digital music dipped slightly last year from 2008, according to the NPD Group.
So moving our music into the cloud and piping it to any device, on demand, should be easy, right?
Actually, there could be several hurdles. But first, let's acknowledge that the very idea of music ownership may be outdated. A whole new generation of music lovers are opting to pay for unlimited "jukebox in the sky" subscription services like Mog and Rhapsody, which let them play any song, whenever they want, to an increasingly wide range of devices.
But if the music industry wants to preserve what is now the more profitable business, in which people actually pay for and own a copy of an individual song or album, it must first work- out practical and affordable licensing terms with tech companies that want to develop cloud music services.
Michael Robertson, an online music entrepreneur, says he doesn't believe that such economical licensing agreements are possible.
In 2000, his former company MP3.com opened a service to let people play any song on the web if they could prove they owned it. The site, which settled lawsuits brought by major record labels, was eventually acquired by Vivendi Universal.
"Music companies want consumers to pay more," Mr. Robertson said. "They consider a copy in the cloud, played multiple times, to essentially be a song that has been bought multiple times."
Mr. Robertson now runs a service called MP3tunes. Customers who take the time to upload their digital music to his servers - the first two gigabytes of storage are free - can then play the music on any computer, iPhone, or Android device, and even on a selection of Internet radios and the Nintendo Wii.
There's just one problem, as the labels see it.
Because Mr. Robertson is just giving consumers a way to listen to music they already own, he never believed he needed licenses from the labels. He cites the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which allows consumers to make digital copies of material they own.
EMI, one of the major music labels, stepped forward for the industry and sued MP3tunes over this approach in 2007. The case is pending.
Executives at music labels like Warner Music, Universal Group, and Sony Music say they are willing to offer reasonable licensing terms for cloud music. "We are definitely looking for the next wave of innovation to improve the quality of service that consumers are getting from legitimate music offerings," says one executive, who did not want to be identified because private licensing conversations were continuing.
This executive eagerly pointed to a company called Catch Media, which has licenses from all of the major labels and many of the independent ones for just this kind of service.
Based in Jerusalem and Los Angeles, Catch Media is building a registration, tracking and clearinghouse system to give consumers legal access to their music anytime and anywhere across a variety of devices.
Mark Segall, its business development advisor, says the company will soon announce which music companies will use the technology but suggests that consumers will have to pay a "convenience fee" for streaming their music from the web, comparable to charges at an ATM.
Won't people balk at paying again to listen to R.E.M. songs they have owned since the 1980s? Catch Media hopes not.
A FINAL obstacle to this vision of cloud music is the issue of interoperability. Music stored on the servers of one company should play on phones and devices made by another.
But will it? Apple, which bought the streaming music service Lala last year, has plans to move people's iTunes collections into the cloud later this year. Considering that it costs a small amount of money to store and stream a song to a device, and that Apple's business is based on selling its own hardware, Apple is likely to balk at letting people stream music to, say, Android phones.
In that respect, Google, Amazon, or even some unknown start-up might actually be a better shepherd of our music collections into the cloud. But they, too, will have to play nice with others.
"In two years there will be a giant tanker truck coming from Asia loaded with $30 devices that will go on every nightstand and plug right into the cloud," Mr. Robertson said. "The music system that allows those devices to freely interoperate with your media - songs, video, even photos - is going to win. There's just no question."
Music in the cloud, an Internet music service that everyone anticipates but which has not yet caught on, would cause problems for the music industry itself.
Music Services Partners with RightsFlow to Target Internet Royalties
Excerpted from Nashville Business Journal Report
Nashville, TN based Music Services, a Christian music publisher, has inked a partnership with New York, NY based RightsFlow.
RightsFlow will identify and account for the use of works in Music Services' catalog on online music services.
Music Services President Phil Perkins said in a news release that the partnership will reduce the company's administrative burden and also help it collect royalties for clients that otherwise would go uncollected.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Hack-Proof Your Personal Info This Tax Season
Excerpted from Business Week Report by Erin Conroy
Whether you're filing your tax return electronically, downloading forms or e-mailing your accountant, identity thieves are ready to pounce on any social security numbers, addresses and bank account numbers you may unknowingly divulge.
While tax preparation software such as Intuit's TurboTax is safe to use, files stored on your computer are still vulnerable to hackers.
"People don't realize that they accidentally expose such sensitive information," said Todd Feinman, chief executive of New York, NY based computer security firm Identity Finder. "Maybe it's a file on your desktop called 'tax form' that someone could find through improperly configured music file-sharing software or a downloaded virus that does nothing but search for those specific types of documents."
Feinman offers these tips for keeping your information secure during the tax season:
Password-protect all tax returns that you print to PDF from your tax software so that social security numbers and financial information are protected.
Configure all file-sharing programs to disable the sharing of your personal folders.
Never e-mail forms with your social security number, or even files used to prepare tax returns if they already contain personal information. If you need to send forms to your accountant, leave your social security number out to be written in just before sending the form to the IRS.
Delete e-mails purporting to be from the IRS that require personal information to process a return, rebate, or refund. The IRS will not contact you by e-mail, so this would likely be a phishing attack.
Install the latest updates to your operating system so known Windows or Mac vulnerabilities can't be exploited by hackers.
Any financial documents containing personal information that were used to prepare tax returns should be permanently deleted from your computer or encrypted with a password.
Don't save passwords in web browsers when accessing banks and other institutions, as they can be stolen if you ever get a virus, Trojan, or are hacked.
Cloud Computing: What is it Really?
Excerpted from IT-Director Report by Simon Holloway
There is a noise going about that cloud computing can cut costs, speed implementations, and scale quickly.
Just what is cloud computing? Search.com provides the following definition, "Cloud computing is a general term for anything that involves delivering hosted services over the Internet. These services are broadly divided into three categories: Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)."
The term cloud is used as a metaphor for the Internet, based on the cloud drawing used to depict the Internet in computer network diagrams as an abstraction of the underlying infrastructure it represents.
Martin Banks, Associate Analyst at Bloor Research for Data Centers, told me, "I prefer the term Exostructure-an externally sourced (and theoretically limitless) seamless extension of an internal IT systems infrastructure that delivers information services on a fee-paying basis. This is looking at the issue from the users' point of view."
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (SaaS), like Amazon Web Services, provides virtual server instances with unique IP addresses and blocks of storage on demand. Customers use the provider's application program interface to start, stop, access and configure their virtual servers and storage.
Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) in the cloud is defined as a set of software and product development tools hosted on the provider's infrastructure. Developers create applications on the provider's platform over the Internet. PaaS providers may use APIs, website portals or gateway software installed on the customer's computer. Force.com, (an outgrowth of Salesforce.com) and GoogleApps are examples of PaaS. Developers need to know that currently, there are not standards for interoperability or data portability in the cloud.
In the Software-as-a-Service (Saas) cloud model, the vendor supplies the hardware infrastructure, the software product and interacts with the user through a front-end portal. SaaS is a very broad market. Services can be anything from Web-based e-mail to inventory control and database processing. Because the service provider hosts both the application and the data, the end user is free to use the service from anywhere.
A cloud service has three distinct characteristics that differentiate it from traditional hosting: 1) It is sold on demand, typically by the minute or the hour; 2) A user can have as much or as little of a service as they want at any given time; and 3) The service is fully managed by the provider (the consumer needs nothing but a personal computer and Internet access).
So what does this really mean to a business? Well, rather than running computer applications on an in-house computer, you run them on an external machine, which could be anywhere in the world, and access the application programs via the internet. It also means that the data associated with the application is held externally to your organization. So the application is hosted on a server with the associated data being stored in a database-all on a server run by a third party.
There is just one more piece that we need to understand and that is that a cloud service can be either public or private. What does this mean? A public cloud sells services to anyone on the Internet. Amazon Web Services is the largest public cloud provider at the time of writing. A private cloud is a proprietary network or a data center that supplies hosted services to a limited number of people. Just one more term that you need to understand and that is virtual private cloud; this is when a service provider uses public cloud resources to create their private cloud.
What makes cloud computing so appealing at the moment? In a recent article, Nigel Stanley, Bloor Research's Security Practice Leader, said the following, "In an economic downturn cloud computing oozes sexiness. Please click here for the rest of this report.
PC Will Lose its Place at Top of Computing Hierarchy
Excerpted from San Jose Mercury News Report by Troy Wolverton
The personal computer (PC) has been at the center of the computing universe for 30 years. But that's about to change.
Within two or three years, smart phones will outsell PCs, if analysts' projections hold true. Already, netbooks - essentially low-cost laptops with more limited capabilities than standard PCs - are the fastest-growing part of the PC market.
In coming years, the very idea of having a center for computing in the home is likely to go away, replaced with a distributed array of linked devices that will include not just smart-phones and notebooks, but TVs, set-top boxes (STBs), tablet devices, appliances and even alarm clocks.
These devices will largely eliminate the need for a powerful PC and allow us to communicate with friends, access information such as stock quotes and control things such as lighting and alarm systems, wherever we happen to be inside our outside our house.
The folks at Google have been talking a lot lately about this transformation. John Herlihy, who heads Google's European operations, stirred up a fuss earlier this month when he declared that the PC will be "irrelevant" in three years, replaced by smart-phones. And last month, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said the company plans to focus on services and applications for high-end smart-phones, not PCs.
Herlihy is overstating the case. Hundreds of millions of PCs will be sold in the next few years, expanding an existing base of about 1 billion PCs in use. For many people, the PC will continue to be their primary computing device for years to come.
The first computer for many others, though, particularly in the developing world, will be a smart-phone. Even in the developed world, many people already use smart-phones for tasks they previously undertook on a PC.
The power of the processors inside smart-phones is increasing rapidly, allowing them to run increasingly complex applications. At the same time, the speeds of the data networks they connect to are increasing as well, allowing the devices to more easily access powerful applications stored in the cloud.
As capable as smart-phones are becoming, though, they're not likely to take over all of the PC's uses. Instead, they'll be supplemented by other devices.
For example, many analysts expect Apple's iPad to follow in the iPhone's path as a hit device and spearhead a new market for tablet computers. There's a good chance that many people will replace notebooks and desktops with those devices for watching Internet-based videos and playing games. That's because they have large, bright screens like notebooks, but they are easier to hold and much more portable.
But the transformation of computing won't end with tablets.
There's a good chance that your TV, refrigerator, toaster oven and other appliances have processors inside them. So do many toys, not to mention your iPod and digital camera. Your car probably has several. Game consoles have processors that rival PCs in power.
Now networking technologies are starting to link these computer-enabled devices together. Some of the devices are even starting to get full-scale operating systems that will allow them to run multiple applications, much like a PC. And new interface technologies offer the possibility of interacting with these devices in more natural ways than a keyboard and mouse.
Together, these developments are paving the way for a new kind of computer, one that's made up of many distributed parts.
You can glimpse the future in things like Sonos' multi-room speaker system. It lets you stream music from Pandora to a speaker in your bedroom while playing a song from your music library in your study. Although a PC can be used in such a setup, it's unnecessary: you can control what's playing with an iPhone and store your music on a networked hard drive.
uTorrent 2.0 Build 18620
Excerpted by Neowin Report by Joshua Seed
uTorrent is a small and incredibly popular BitTorrent client.
Most of the features present in other BitTorrent clients are present in uTorrent, including bandwidth prioritization, scheduling, RSS auto-downloading and Mainline DHT (compatible with BitComet). Additionally, uTorrent supports the protocol encryption joint specification (compatible with Azureus 2.4.0.0 and above, BitComet 0.63 and above) and peer exchange.
uTorrent was written with efficiency in mind. Unlike many torrent clients, it does not hog valuable system resources - typically using less than 6MB of memory, allowing you to use the computer as if it weren't there at all. Additionally, the program itself is contained within a single executable less than 220 KB in size.
Various icon, toolbar graphic and status icon replacements are available, and creating your own is very simple. uTorrent also has support for localization, and with a language file present, will automatically switch to your system language. If your language isn't available, you can easily add your own, or edit other existing translations to improve them.
The developer puts in a lot of time working on features and making things more user-friendly. Releases only come out when they're ready, with no schedule pressures, so the few bugs that appear are quickly addressed and fixed. To download uTorrent, please click here.
Spotify Consumes More Internet Capacity than All of Sweden
Excerpted from TechCrunch Report by MG Siegler
During his keynote address at the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek had a big revelation: "On certain days, we're consuming more Internet capacity than Sweden has as a country."
Ek made the statement when asked why Spotify chose to use a P2P model, rather than centrally store all of its music in one place and stream it from there. Ek noted that if they were to stream from one UK datacenter, they'd consume all the bandwidth. So instead, they leverage the power of the Internet to get their users to help them stream to other users.
Ek also said this was primarily the reason that Spotify is a native application, rather than a web app. P2P streaming is a bit more complicated than streaming from one source on the back-end of things, obviously.
When asked why Apple, which of course, runs the largest music store in the world, iTunes, doesn't use the P2P method, Ek said that was the "million dollar question."
He then speculated that iTunes will move more towards Spotify in terms of being in the cloud and having a subscription model.
Ek noted that Spotify is now in six countries and has over 320,000 paid subscribers. That's up from 260,000 the last time they mentioned it. Overall, they have some 7 million users now. And yes, that's largely without the US where the service only exists in a very limited closed beta as the company negotiates with the labels for music rights.
ROK Entertainment Deal in Russia
Excerpted from Techwatch Report by David Allen
ROK Entertainment Group has launched a streamed mobile P2PTV service in Russia in partnership with the Russia-based mobile television service KOX TV.
This service is the first of its kind in Russia and marks an important landmark for the UK based mobile communications services and technology applications firm.
The service will be targeting customers of the top Russian mobile phone operators Beeline, Megafone, MTS, and Tele 2. In fact the service is workable with any mobile service that provides a data package within the monthly fees charged.
For the subscriber the benefits are clear; KOX TV provides access to around twelve looped television channels as well as the ever popular on-demand services, allowing the user to pick and choose what they watch. In order to entice new customers, KOX TV offers the service free of charge for two weeks.
Downloads of the Day: Pando, QuadCamera, Frostwire
Excerpted from OnSoftware Report by Elana Santos
Windows: If you ever need to share large files you know how difficult it can be. Luckily Pando can help you with it! This tool is based on a P2P network that enables you to send or receive files of up to a 1GB in size, via e-mail. The latest version, Pando 2.3.3, features the new Pando Pro, channel episode queuing and enhancements to the P2P protocol.
iPhone: The iPhone's camera is pretty cool, but the native camera app doesn't really take full advantage. QuadCamera is one example of an application that does. The basis of the app is that it takes four pictures in quick succession, and creates one photo showing the four together, allowing you to capture a feeling of movement in a static image. You can alter the intervals between photos, and choose to take eight pictures instead of four.
Mac: Frostwire is a hidden gem among file-sharing applications. Built on the LimeWire code, Frostwire is one of the most accessible and reliable file-sharing applications you will find, and it doesn't annoy you with pop-ups or ads asking you to buy stuff. The simple search bar, divided by category, makes it a breeze to browse for a file, whether it is a video, image, audio, or program.
Online File Sharing Reaffirmed as Lawful in Spain
Excerpted from Barcelona Reporter Report
Spain is becoming the last bastion of common sense when it comes to file sharing, at least until the big media companies get their own way and change the law in the country.
TorrentFreak, the ever-vigilant blog focusing on BitTorrent and file-sharing issues, points to a recent lawsuit in Spain that ended favorably for file sharers, link sites, and dedicated search engines, and that found these use-cases to be perfectly legal in the country.
A fairly small eDonkey and BitTorrent link site called elrincondejesus.com was sued almost a year ago by a local music industry group, Sociedad General de Autores y Editores (SGAE), for alleged copyright infringement on the site.
The group initially tried to get a court injunction on the site, to take it offline before a full hearing of the case, but the request was denied by the presiding judge, Raul N. Garcia Orejudo, claiming that file-sharing networks by themselves didn't violate copyright law.
The case went to court and, after a somewhat lengthy process, the judge made his decision that just linking to content that might be infringing wasn't a violation and was not the same as distributing that content. He also noted that the law in Spain allows this kind of website to operate.
In the country, file sharing is pretty much legal, as long as there aren't any financial benefits for either party. This also weighed in on the judge's decision, as this site didn't have any advertising or any other form of revenue directly related to linking to the files.
The judge not only declared these types of sites to be legal, but also reiterated that individual users' downloading copyrighted material from file-sharing networks for non-profit reasons was also legal in Spain.
Music Biz Gives Up Trying to Block Pirate Bay in Norway
Excerpted from Zeropaid Report by Jared Moya
It's been a long time coming, but at last TONO, a Norwegian royalty collecting group founded back in 1928, and the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) have given up their bid to force Norwegian ISP Telenor to prevent subscribers from being able to access BitTorrent tracker site The Pirate Bay (TPB).
The affair first began in earnest last March when Telenor refused to block the Pirate Bay, reminding the copyright holders that "ISPs are not complicit in the actions of its customers on the Internet."
Then in November, Norway's Asker and Baerum District Court ruled in favor of Telenor, finding that it is not illegally contributing to any copyright violations by TPB and that there is subsequently no legal basis for forcing it to block the site.
"Telenor and other Internet providers, including private companies, may have to do an evaluation on whether an Internet page or service shall be blocked or not," read the ruling. "This is an evaluation normally assigned to the authorities, and in the court's view, today's situation makes it unnatural to assign such responsibility to private companies."
Fast forward to a few days ago and copyright holders have decided to abandon their plans, opting not to appeal the case before the Supreme Court.
It is "needless to appeal further," reads a joint press release.
"We wanted to get a legal clarification on whether the under Norwegian law it is possible to order the Internet providers to block access to The Pirate Bay," said TONOs Director Cato Strom. "Now we have two clear decisions that there is no legal authority in the Norwegian law for such blocking requirements. Both of us intend to forward the matter to legislators."
Now that copyright holders have their legal clarification, BitTorrent users in Norway can breathe easier, not that there aren't a billion ways to circumvent any site blocking technology, but it's just that who wants the seconds worth of hassle right?
The game of whack-a-mole continues.
Heat Rising on Lawyers Accused of Bullying File Sharers
Excerpted from Broadband Genie Report
Two solicitors have been referred by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) to the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) over bullying claims related to file sharing. Davenport Lyons partner David Gore and former partner Brian Miller will face charges of "bullying" and using "excessive conduct" while acting on behalf of copyright holders against alleged file sharers.
The news, reported by the Law Society Gazette last week, comes a month after we first touched on the Davenport Lyons story in relation to the more recent but very similar situation involving ACS:Law, also brought back into focus today after comments made by internet service provider O2 Broadband. It condemned the company's tactic of using warning letters offering alleged file sharers the chance to pay £500 if they settle out of court.
It is easy to see how receiving a letter such as this could persuade someone who isn't overly strong of character to simply give in and pay. But there have already been a number of letters sent to people who later proved to be innocent, which begs the question, how many have paid without defending themselves - hence the charge of bullying.
This would seem to be the conclusion of the SRA in referring the Davenport Lyons case on to the Tribunal. It has been said that the letters sent out by ACS: Law are worded in a lighter tone, so the fact Gore and Miller have been referred shouldn't raise hopes too high. Also, there will be a long wait until any final conclusion is made on that case - the SDT will now also need to decide if there is a case to be answered. If so, the case will be heard later this year.
The Davenport Lyons case was forwarded to the SRA back in 2008. Its head of legal affairs Deborah Prince was clearly delighted with the SRA's decision, saying if it had not sent the case to Tribunal, it "would have been very serious for the regulation of the legal profession".
Music Fans Will Sidestep File-Sharing Clampdown Says TalkTalk
The majority of music fans will switch to alternative ways of accessing copyright-protected content for free if using file-sharing services leaves them vulnerable to disconnection, rendering futile the Government's attempts to stop copyright infringement, according to research from Internet service provider (ISP) TalkTalk.
The poll shows that the Digital Economy Bill, which is making its way through Parliament now and may become law before the election, will not achieve its aims of reducing unauthorized file sharing and protecting the revenues of the content industry.
80% of 18-34 year olds questioned - the key age group for music companies - said that if new legislation made it dangerous to use file-sharing services they would switch to using methods which are undetectable.
Earlier this week it emerged that copyright infringement in France had actually increased by 3% in three months after its controversial three-strikes Hadopi law was introduced.
There is a large and growing array of non-P2P-based tools available, including applications which scan thousands of Internet radio stations and download the desired tracks in a wholly undetectable way.
There are also services which effectively conceal users' IP addresses, allowing them to download material without detection.
And of course, there is the temptation to hack into other people's Wi-Fi connections to download content; the attraction of which will surely grow if the Digital Economy Bill becomes law in its current form. This will inevitably lead to many more innocent people being wrongly accused of copyright infringement and being disconnected despite having done nothing wrong.
When self-confessed file sharers were asked what fraction of their illicitly accessed content they would buy legally if file-sharing services were no longer available to them, 66% said it would be 2% or less. In fact four-in-ten wouldn't pay for a single track they had already downloaded for free.
One of the primary objectives of the Digital Economy Bill is to protect Britain's creative industries by discouraging access to unlicensed content. TalkTalk's research shows that the Bill simply won't achieve this aim.
"In any case," said Andrew Heaney, TalkTalk's Director of Strategy and Regulation, "the record labels' claims of the demise of the music industry are simply scaremongering. They have consistently claimed that new technology will wipe them out - for instance in the 1980s with the 'Home Taping is Killing Music' campaign. Of course, taping didn't kill music, the industry adapted and survived.
Over the past few years consumers have become used to accessing music and video content online for free. We don't condone it or encourage it but this behavior is embedded in a whole generation of music fans.
It doesn't matter how many sites are blocked, how many families are snooped on, or how many customers are disconnected, music fans who want to can and will get the content they want online for free.
Whatever measures are taken will have little impact on the music industry's coffers but will leave in its wake innocent customers disconnected from the Internet.
We have always said that oppressive and ultimately futile deterrents are not the solution to the music industry's woes. It's the development of new business models and an acknowledgement of how music fans behave in the digital age.
The Digital Economy Bill proposals create a new and unfair duty on broadband customers. It asks them to implement complex and expensive security measures on their connections to make it more difficult for their neighbors and others to use their connection for copyright infringement.
The Bill reverses the core principles of natural justice by requiring customers to prove their innocence."
Coming Events of Interest
Cloud Expo - April 19th-21st in New York, NY. Co-located with the 8th international Virtualization Conference & Expo at the Jacob Javits Convention Center in New York City with more than 5,000 delegates and over 100 sponsors and exhibitors participating in the conference.
LA Games Conference - April 29th in Los Angeles, CA. Over 300 of the most influential decision-makers in the games industry gather for the LA Games Conference to network, do deals, and share ideas about the future of console, PC, online and mobile games. LA Games Conference - now in its 4th year - features a lively and fun debate on timely cutting-edge business topics
Digital Hollywood Spring - May 3rd-6th in Santa Monica, CA. Digital Hollywood Spring (DHS) is the premier entertainment and technology conference in the country covering the convergence of entertainment, the web, television, and technology.
P2P & CLOUD MEDIA SUMMIT - May 6th in Santa Monica, CA. The DCIA presents this fifth annual seminal industry event as a conference within DHS, now expanded to include cloud computing, the most advanced and rapidly growing distributed computing technology.
Digital Media Conference East - June 25th in McLean, VA. The Washington Post calls this Digital Media Wire flagship event "a confab of powerful communicators and content providers in the region." This conference explores the current state of digital media and the directions in which the industry is heading.
|
