March 29, 2010
Volume XXX, Issue 3
Alcatel-Lucent Unveils Velocix Digital Media Delivery Platform
Alcatel-Lucent this week announced the introduction of its Velocix Digital Media Delivery Platform, which enables service providers to support their own dedicated advanced digital media delivery capability, as an alternative to relying on shared content delivering networks (CDNs). The platform consists of a suite of appliances that service providers can deploy in their network to bring multimedia content closer to their subscribers, enabling them to offer differentiated video stream quality and faster file downloads at significantly reduced costs. Elements of this suite have been deployed by service providers worldwide.
The introduction of this new platform builds on Alcatel-Lucent's acquisition of Velocix in 2009, and provides a unified delivery layer for Alcatel-Lucent's Multimedia Solutions portfolio, also unveiled this week. Alcatel-Lucent's Multimedia Solutions simplify the delivery of multi-screen video, TV, and multimedia content to any connected device, be it a TV, PC, or mobile phone. These new solutions will enable service providers to introduce a wide array of new service offerings and deepen their connection with their subscribers by satisfying consumers' desire to access all of their services and content wherever they are, on any device.
The surge in consumer demand for high quality multimedia entertainment that is increasingly delivered over IP networks to TV sets, PCs, and mobile devices is having a profound impact on network service provider infrastructures and established business models. By deploying the Velocix Digital Media Platform in their networks, service providers are able to fully leverage their strategic infrastructure assets and subscriber relationships to create high-value services and new revenue streams based on delivery of premium content services over the Internet.
The Velocix Digital Media Platform includes five appliance types, each designed and optimized for a specific purpose such as content publishing, storage, delivery, routing, and utility (management and analytics).
"The launch of the new Velocix Digital Media Platform marks an important milestone in Alcatel-Lucent's efforts to support service providers in the development of their multimedia delivery strategy," said Paul Larbey, the recently appointed head of Velocix. "By offering such a flexible, scalable and high capacity set of appliances we have greatly simplified the deployment of service provider-owned content delivery networks."
The Velocix portfolio is a key element of the company's High Leverage Network architecture - a fully converged, scalable, next generation, all-IP multiservice infrastructure that enables operators to deliver traffic more reliably, efficiently and at the lowest cost, while also leveraging the network to generate revenue from sophisticated managed services and applications.
Alcatel-Lucent is the trusted transformation partner of service providers, enterprises, strategic industries, and governments worldwide, providing solutions to deliver voice, data and video communication services to end-users.
A leader in fixed, mobile, and converged broadband networking, IP technologies, applications, and services, Alcatel-Lucent leverages the unrivalled technical and scientific expertise of Bell Labs, one of the largest innovation powerhouses in the communications industry.
With operations in more than 130 countries and the most experienced global services organization in the industry, Alcatel-Lucent is a local partner with a global reach.
Happy Birthday, Gnutella: P2P Protocol Turns Ten
Excerpted from NewTeeVee Report by Janko Roettgers
Ten years ago this week, online music pioneer Justin Frankel released a little application dubbed Gnutella that enabled file sharing through a distributed P2P network. Frankel, whose previous claim to fame was programming the then hugely-popular Winamp MP3 player software, supposedly named the client after his favorite hazelnut-cream spread, and the first version published online was really more of a proof of concept than anything else.
Still, Gnutella hit a nerve. Napster had been sued three months before, and many file sharers were rightfully fearing that the music industry would eventually prevail in court and force Napster to switch off its servers. With Gnutella, no such switch existed, as the client was allowing direct P2P connections without the help of any centralized server. Add to it the fact that Gnutella, unlike Napster, allowed users to swap videos and software as well as MP3s, and you begin to see why many immediately viewed Gnutella as the next step in P2P file sharing.
A step, one should add, that made Frankel's employer AOL more than a little nervous. It only took the Internet giant a day to force Frankel and his colleagues to take down Gnutella - but even that was too long, as countless sites quickly started to first mirror, then build upon Frankel's official Gnutella client. There's always been a little bit of mystery surrounding the exact happenings of those days, but some people have been musing that a person with a surprising amount of insider knowledge showed up in one of the first IRC chat rooms dedicated to Gnutella soon after AOL pulled the plug, only to provide some very detailed information about the inner workings of the client's P2P protocol.
Speaking of IRC: Early versions of the software didn't really have any way for users to connect, save for entering another user's IP address, which is why IRC quickly became an integral part of the early days of Gnutella. It was also in those IRC chat rooms that the myth of Gnutella as a seemingly invincible P2P protocol was born, and the fact that AOL tried but couldn't contain the software seemed to fit right into that picture. Gnutella was one of the very first P2P apps I ever wrote about, so I lurked in those chat rooms as well, where people were cheering the fact that someone finally found a file sharing solution that couldn't be shut down. I still remember one IRC user saying: "We've started a damn cult again!"
Only Gnutella wasn't really ready to be a cult. The network routed search requests from peer to peer, leading to an exponential growth of traffic as its network became bigger. Napster programmer Jordan Ritter described the problem early on in a paper titled "Why Gnutella Can't Scale. No, Really" and Frankel himself, who has hardly ever gone on the record about Gnutella, once stated that he was fully aware of "how poorly it would scale" when he released the client.
Still, Gnutella captured the imagination of many, one of them being Mark Gorton, founder of the New York-based Lime Group. Gorton was at the time pursuing a vision of automating businesses through structured data, and Gnutella, as something that could, for example, distribute real estate listings wrapped in XML, seemed to fit that image quite nicely. Early versions of the Gnutella client of Gorton's LimeWire venture were still written with this vision in mind, hoping to build a P2P network that could eventually be used to do all kinds of things with which we're now familiar on the web, thanks to web services.
LimeWire's engineers joined a growing group of developers loosely connected through web sites like the long-defunct Gnutella.wego.com (whose admin Gene Kan tragically committed suicide in 2002) and mailing lists like the one for the Gnutella Developer Forum, and one of the first issues to be tackled was scalability. The introduction of a two-tiered system of ordinary clients and so-called Ultrapeers helped grow both the network as a whole and each user's search horizon. The idea was also later adopted by the developers of Kazaa, whose own take on this two-tiered approach still lives on in Skype's P2P network.
Technical improvements like these helped Gnutella to grow, but the competition was quick to catch up. Bram Cohen unveiled a first version of BitTorrent only two years after Frankel had published Gnutella, and BitTorrent quickly became the file sharing client of choice for sharing videos online. Part of BitTorrent's quick rise to fame was its modular simplicity: Cohen had outsourced much of the search and indexing of files to torrent websites, only handling the actual distribution of data within the client. Gnutella on the other hand was meant to work without any web server. That made it much more invincible, but also much less accessible to users who migrated from apps and clients to a world of web services.
LimeWire's client also utilizes BitTorrent these days, but LimeWire's VP of Product Management Jason Herskowitz said that Gnutella has "worked really well" for the company, and that its engineers are looking into ways to make Gnutella once again more attractive to developers by exposing some of its functionality through web services. "There is still a long future ahead for Gnutella," he predicted.
Verizon Skype Mobile: Unlimited Free Voice Calls & Messaging
Excerpted from OzCar Guide Report
From today, Verizon users can use Skype Mobile on the Verizon network allowing for free Skype-to-Skype voice calls and instant messaging (IM).
Previously users were restricted by using WiFi across the data networks, now 3G will also be supported for Skype Mobile on Verizon and will substantially lower the cost of international calls, too.
With IM also utilizing 3G, you will always be able to stay "connected" and view which of your friends are online at the moment so you can begin chatting instantly.
At the moment, the Skype mobile service on Verizon networks is built to work with a host of phones, including the BlackBerry Storm and Storm2, both Curve models 8330, plus the DROIDs, including Motorola DROID and HTC DROID ERIS.
Expect more devices to be supported soon.
Report from CEO Marty Lafferty
 What we've been asked most often this week is how "cloud computing" or the fundamental concept of "the cloud" can be optimally applied to the entertainment sector. What should be the ideal characteristics of "music in the cloud" or "movies in the cloud" or "games in the cloud?"
What lessons can be learned from successful implementations of cloud computing in government and enterprise categories other than the media and entertainment space? Is it even possible or desirable to deploy cloud competing for high-value mass-market popular content? If so, how? And what pitfalls should be avoided?
Our first response to these questions is that these are exactly the key questions that should be asked right now and we will attempt to more fully answer them, or at the very least deeply explore potential answers to them, through a full-day conference totally dedicated to this subject matter on Thursday May 6th during the P2P & CLOUD MEDIA SUMMIT at DHS in Santa Monica, CA.
Meanwhile, perhaps we can articulate a general vision for how cloud computing COULD be deployed to bring its greatest benefits to the entertainment sector.
As DCINFO readers know, we view cloud computing as the most advanced example of distributed computing to go mainstream to date. It can generally be subcategorized as software-as-a-service (SaaS), infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), and platform-as-a-service (PaaS), which have mostly to do with how the underlying technologies are packaged for industrial customer utilization.
We also view cloud computing as the next step in the evolution of distributed computing after hybrid-P2P computing.
The first mainstream deployment of distributed computing was file sharing, where discrete data files are redistributed among participants in ad hoc networks of computing devices using the same or compatible software. This is still a fundamental and very important characteristic of cloud computing.
Advances came as P2P computing added efficiency and security enhancements such as swarming (breaking these discrete data files into small components), traffic caching, content acceleration, and most importantly P2P streaming, which vastly expanded the potential for the implementation of P2P-based solutions beyond only downloading pre-recorded content to also delivering live events online.
Hybrid-P2P essentially adds the ability to seed content into a flexible, scalable, increasingly efficient distribution system, whose characteristics come closest to emulating broadcast economics - the more popular the content, the lower the unit cost to distribute it. And most important - the more reliable, fast, and efficient the ongoing delivery of the content. Clearly the greatest advantage of hybrid-P2P is its scalability.
A handy way to think about how cloud computing takes distributed computing further than hybrid-P2P is that it adds more computational power than mere data-transfer to the value proposition of a having fungible, on-demand, ad-hoc network of interconnected devices available.
In simplest terms, cloud computing adds the possibility of having the applications on these other computers - not just the data stored among them - available whenever and wherever and however you want them. It's like having an expandable bank of extra computers at your disposal. Cloud computing offers managed hosting with the ability to remotely serve software functionality.
You can determine when and where and how to use this computational power with minimal lead times. And just as important, you can decide when to stop using - and paying for it - just as easily.
For entertainment sector participants, therefore, initial uses of cloud computing have tended to be in the areas of data-center cost reduction, post-production efficiency improvements, catalog or library management, and such so-called upstream activities.
The vision that most industry observers immediately ascribe to "entertainment-genre-of-your-choice in the cloud," however, has to do with the other end of the distribution chain: how cloud computing can benefit consumers. Generally, this can be summarized as having an all-inclusive ubiquitously available catalog or library of entertainment content online that will give fans access to their music, videos, or games on-demand wherever they go.
End-users don't really care about the back-end plumbing, or whether that involves hybrid-P2P downloading and streaming, caching, edge-provisioning, the cloud, or some combination of these, as long as the entertainment content they want instantly plays on the device of their choice - whether or not they're connected to the net.
Of course this, too, can also benefit content rights-holders by having the distribution channel capacity expand and contract in sync with a popular entertainment property's life cycle.
And some very advanced technology firms are in fact already bringing cloud-based solutions to the intersection of post-production and content delivery in the areas of licensing and providing access, which they have identified as a bottleneck in the distribution chain.
We believe these three views - content-manager, end-user, and technology-provider centric - should not be seen as representing distinct and separate concepts, but rather as part of the whole of a full benefits cluster that cloud computing can bring to the entertainment sector. A holistic vision should be based on integrating and intelligently applying cloud solutions to the acts of creation all the way through the activities involved in consumption, while providing real-time feedback to the entire system.
Cloud computing should make it possible to provide a great deal more popular-entertainment content to many more people through a lot more distributors much faster and at a much lower cost in such a way that content rights-holders also make more money. And, at last, to be able to apply such marketing innovations to the delivery of entertainment as elastic pricing and packaging to maximize the profitable response to each property or offering.
That's the vision that all involved in this process should share. It's one where cloud computing advances the entertainment sector towards a more frictionless marketplace. We, at the DCIA, will work towards that end. Share wisely, and take care.
Skype Founders Close Second Venture Fund with $165 Million
Excerpted from AltAssets Report
European early-stage technology investor Atomico, founded by the brains behind P2P industry leading Internet telephony company Skype, has closed its second fund with $165 million. The fund, known as Atomico Ventures II, will focus primarily on Europe, and will seek to invest in early-stage technology companies.
The partners of Atomico are the largest investors in this fund, but have been joined by several institutional investors, according to the firm. Atomico Founder and CEO Niklas Zennstrom said, "We are delighted to announce that we have completed the fundraising for Atomico Ventures II, which will be focused primarily on early-stage tech companies in Europe."
"We will seek to invest in exceptional entrepreneurs who are building exceptional businesses. We will target companies that we believe have the potential to generate significant growth, transform their industries, and deliver strong returns," he added. Atomico was founded in 2006 by Zennstrom, who co-founded Skype and P2P-based file-sharing program Kazaa. Investments from its first fund include UK internet radio site Last.fm and online ticket exchange Viagogo.
Atomico Ventures II has already started putting its capital to work, with portfolio companies including online gambling site Betable, health-and-beauty online store Chemistdirect, and game-focused social network Playfire.
Babelgum Promotes US Staff
Excerpted from C21Media Report
Peer-to-peer television (P2PTV) service Babelgum has made a series of promotions in its New York office. Douglas Dicconson has been upped to Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) and Seth Graeber is now VP of Sales.
Furthermore, Melissa Grossman is now VP of Sales & Marketing and Jackie Garcia has been upped to market development executive. Babelgum's US president Ethan Podell will be responsible for business development.
Spotify P2P Streaming Music Service Targets US in Q3
Excerpted from Business Week Report by Kristen Schweizer
Spotify, a virtual digital jukebox exemplifying P2P streaming technology and Europe's largest legal online music site, aims to start US operations in the third quarter.
The Stockholm-based company, which has 7 million users in Europe, is in talks with unnamed US Internet and mobile-phone service providers about partnerships, Senior Vice President Paul Brown said in an interview yesterday. Spotify is also in discussions to start an application on Research in Motion's BlackBerry and Palm's smart-phones, he said.
"We're buying server space in random parts of the states and there are licensing discussions, too," Brown said "But they are going fine because we're in a long-term partnership with the labels and publishers."
Digital sales of music accounted for 27% of revenue, or $4.2 billion, at the biggest record companies last year, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI).
Record companies are trying to curb online infringement and unauthorized downloading by backing licensed music services such as Spotify, MySpace Music, and MOG while urging governments to pass laws requiring Internet providers to penalize unauthorized downloaders.
The worldwide music market has shrunk 30% to $17.2 billion since 2004, according to IFPI.
Spotify, which has 325,000 users paying a monthly $15 for the service ad-free, is partially owned by the biggest record labels. The site has had more than 10 million euros in ad turnover since starting in October 2008 and users are buying "tens of thousands" of tracks each week through a third party, Brown said.
In the US, Spotify would compete with online music services like MOG and Rhapsody. Spotify already has an application for its paying customers on Apples iPhone and the operating systems of Google's Android and Nokia's Symbian, Brown said.
Is Cloud Computing Ready for Prime-Time?
Excerpted from eBizQ Report by Jessica Ann Mola
Vic Morris, CEO of Vordel, joined Jessica on a podcast recently to discuss the following points.
Why is cloud computing such a compelling model and which verticals are adopting cloud computing most? What are the major challenges hindering the adoption of cloud computing by large enterprises?
How can companies overcome their concerns to ensure they benefit from cloud computing? What is the role of SOA in cloud? Is there a space for specialist vendors in a market dominated by giants such as Amazon, Google, Rackspace, Microsoft, etc.?
Listen to or download the podcast by clicking here.
LimeWire Brings Vegas Music to the Masses
Excerpted from Las Vegas Weekly Report by Laura Davis
No one knows the Las Vegas music scene better than Las Vegas.
Which is why LimeWire Store, the new digital music store belonging to the popular file-sharing software, agreed to team-up with UNLV's Music and Entertainment Industry Student Association (MEISA), to release "Ear to the Ground: Las Vegas."
The Vegas version is one in a series of music-scene samplers from various cities across the country. The chosen locations weren't just the music-heavy Meccas, but also some towns with vibrant but lesser-known music scenes.
"The first edition of 'Ear to the Ground' focused on NYC," says Tom Monday, Director of Partner Relations for LimeWire. "When we decided to reach further, we wanted to make sure we spotlighted not just the locales that had a known music scene like San Francisco, but also spots like Athens, GA, who have a lot going on but don't get a lot of attention paid to them. It's a lot more fun discovering entire scenes we didn't know existed."
Available only at LimeWire's online store, the free digital download of "Ear to the Ground: Las Vegas" features 30 local bands from a variety of genres.
The collaboration between MEISA and LimeWire Store came about when Paul Bordenkircher, Adjunct Instructor for Music Business and Technology at UNLV and faculty advisor for MEISA, received word of the "Ear to the Ground" project, designed to promote LimeWire's newly opened online store. Bordenkircher leapt at the chance to expose local music to the masses and get his students some hands-on experience in the industry at the same time.
"I had gotten a news release on 'Ear to the Ground' focusing on local artists - I didn't know if they were doing a cooperation, but I contacted them right away thinking it would be a great practical experience for our students," explains Bordenkircher. "We know we have a sullied reputation as the only thing here being Elvis impersonators and stripper poles, and we wanted to purpose that there is a valid music scene here."
Agreeing to the collaboration with a local university was a first for LimeWire Store, but they saw the potential of getting in with the locals. As Bordenkircher says, "Who would know the local music better?"
Choosing the featured bands - ranging from indie-pop outfit The Big Friendly Corporation to punk-rock staples Happy Campers - was put into the hands of MEISA members, who spent their winter break evaluating acts according to a set of criteria.
"The students started researching bands and listening to music off of home music websites or MySpace - then ranking them on product quality, musical quality and style of music," says Bordenkircher, adding that LimeWire Store was happy with students' final results.
"LimeWire was very flexible. They liked all the bands that were brought on the list, so they wanted to leave it open to all 30 bands to be included." As for the bands themselves, being included on the mix allows for greater exposure - for free!
"I said, if there is no cost we would be in," says Happy Campers singer Isaac Irvine. "Cause I get like three emails a week asking us to be on [compilations] that want you to chip in a couple hundred bucks or something."
Irvine also says he feels as though the opportunity to represent the local community is important. "We have always been proud to be from Las Vegas and want to help showcase what our town has to offer."
Another artist perk? Each act was allowed to personally choose which song was to represent them to the nation.
With the arrival of Ear to the Ground: Las Vegas on April 27th, the nation will get the chance to see Las Vegas music at its best.
Cloud Computing Reaches the Final Frontier
Excerpted from GigaOM Report by Derrick Harris
I remember attending the inaugural GridWorld Conference in 2006 and hearing Argonne National Laboratory's Ian Foster discuss the possible implications of the newly announced Amazon EC2 on the world of grid computing that he helped create.
Well, 2010 is upon us, and some of the implications Foster pondered at GridWorld have become clear, among them: For many workloads, the cloud appears to be replacing the grid. This point is driven home in a new GigaOM Pro article (subscription required) by Paul Miller, in which he looks at how space agencies are using the cloud to do work that likely would have had the word "grid" written all over it just a few short years ago.
Miller cites a particularly illustrative case with the European Space Agency, which is utilizing Amazon EC2 for the data-processing needs of its Gaia mission, set to launch in 2012. The 40GB per night that Gaia will generate would have cost $1.5 million using local resources (read "a grid" or "a cluster") but research suggests it could cost in the $500,000 range using EC2. The demand for cost savings and flexibility isn't limited to astronomy research, either.
Research organizations that need sheer computing power on demand are looking at EC2 as the means for attaining it. Several prominent examples come from the pharmaceutical industry, where companies like Amylin and Eli Lilly have publicly embraced the cloud, as has research-driven Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute.
A related case study comes from CERN's Large Hadron Collider project, which is using EC2's capabilities as a framework for upgrading its worldwide grid infrastructure. So high is demand cloud for resources, in fact, that even high-performance computing software vendors, such as Univa UD (which Foster co-founded), are building tools to let research-focused customers run jobs on EC2.
Unlike HPC-focused grid software, however, the cloud opens up doors beyond crunching numbers. Miller also highlights NASA's Nebula cloud, a container-based internal cloud infrastructure used to host NASA's many disparate web sites. Built using Eucalyptus software, NASA users can provision the resources they need for their sites as those needs arise.
In theory, they could call up some of those resources for parallel processing, too. While grid computing projects often federate resources and democratize access to them, they do so at a scale that makes tasks like site-hosting impractical, and grids don't provide the nearly bare-metal access that makes cloud resources so flexible.
Of course, none of this is news to Foster. In early 2008 he noted the myriad similarities between the two computing models, including the ability to process lots of data in a hurry.
In late 2009, the cloud market having matured considerably, he observed that a properly provisioned collection of Amazon EC2 images fared relatively well against a supercomputer when running certain benchmarks.
There are plenty of reasons why cloud services will not displace high-end supercomputers, but where simple batch processing and cost concerns meet, the cloud could make in-house grids and clusters things of the past.
Sky Downloader Helps You Pull Music and Video from the Web
Excerpted from Washington Post Report by Preston Gralla
Looking for a simple-to-use way to find music, video, TV shows, and other goodies to download? Then try the free SkyDownloader, an attractive downloader with a built-in music and video player.
Search for what you want from right within SkyDownloader; select your downloads; and Sky Downloader gets to work. Each download is rated by other users, so you have some advice to go on before you download. SkyDownloader uses both the Gnutella file-sharing network and the BitTorrent file-sharing protocol, so that you get the best of both worlds.
You can pause and resume downloads, and SkyDownloader handles your downloaded files as well. Its media player is exemplary. And SkyDownloader does more than just search for files, manage them and play them. You can also watch TV shows from inside it from Hulu, and listen to Internet radio stations.
If you're looking for a pleasing-looking download and media player, SkyDownloader is a solid bet.
New Belkin Router Boasts "Computer Off" Torrent Downloads
Excerpted from Broadband Genie Report
Electronics firm Belkin has confirmed the freshen-up of its range of routers and modem-routers which also double-up as multi-media hubs. Known as the "Surf, Share, Play and Play Max" range these new devices include a range of apps designed to enhance the home broadband experience.
First up is the "Self-Healing" feature - designed to automatically detect and resolve network problems as well as run routine maintenance scans. Belkin suggests this would help provide the user with the clearest wireless channel.
As well as the Print Genie feature, designed to allow users to wirelessly print from any computer on the network, it's also possible to purchase a separate Memory Safe addition to back up important files to an external hard drive.
Belkin claim the Dual-Band N technology featured on the the new Play and Play Max Routers work to eliminate interference. This means it should be a little quicker to carry out intensive online tasks such as streaming HD movies, online gaming and downloading large media files. These routers also include a Music Mover option, making it possible to play music libraries on external devices such as an Xbox or a PS3.
One of the router options available in this new "Surf, Share, Play and Play Max" range also includes a couple of features which might be attractive to enthusiastic movie lovers or gamers, but probably won't help you make friends with your Internet service provider (ISP). The most expensive new device, the Play Max, includes an app known as Bit Boost which prioritizes traffic on your network for video, gaming and VoIP and allows you to select your most important data streams for seamless network traffic.
The Play Max also has the capacity to download torrent files such as music, movies and games even when your computer isn't switched on.
Belkin has done the old Apple trick of just flipping those $'s round to £'s for the most part which means the UK gets a bit of a sore deal on pricing. The top-notch Play Max Wireless Router/Modem Router will be priced £99.99 and £119.99 respectively. Meanwhile, its other options are priced relative to the features they boast and range between £49.99 and £99.99.
For more information on pricing and specifications visit the Belkin website.
Live Video Streaming Service Justin.tv Releases iPhone App
Excerpted from Digital Media Wire Report by Mark Hefflinger
Live streaming video service Justin.tv has released an application for Apple's iPhone, which allows users to watch every channel available on the website, and chat live with other viewers of the video streams they're watching.
NewTeeVee notes that rival Ustream's iPhone app also lets users upload video and broadcast live video streams from their iPhones, a feature that Justin.tv plans to add in a later release.
GSA To Update Cloud Computing Website
Excerpted from Information Week Report by J. Nicholas Hoover
The federal government's cloud computing Website, www.apps.gov, hasn't met all the General Services Administration's (GSA) initial expectations, a GSA official said Tuesday at FOSE, the annual government IT trade show and conference.
That means a number of changes are on the way for the site, including a revamped request for quotations for infrastructure-as-a-service (due out "very soon"), a new informational section of the site, a GSA-based social media hosting capability, and a redesign of some of apps.gov's user interface and content.
"From our research, right now, people aren't buying much, but are using it as a source of government information," said Katie Lewin, the GSA's new cloud computing program manager, underscoring the fact that cloud computing is clearly still a new idea for government agencies. "Ultimately, our goal is to make this a viable procurement vehicle as well as a source of information and social media."
A number of changes are on the way. For instance, pieces of the site's user interface will get an overhaul. Right now, Lewin said, the display "isn't exactly conducive to immediate buying." For example, the taxonomy isn't currently set up to make products and services on the site intuitive to navigate, but that will change, she said.
GSA recently canceled its first cloud computing request for quotations, which aimed to add infrastructure-as-a-service vendors (specifically, web hosting, storage, and virtual machines) to apps.gov. However, said Mike Anastasio, Director for the Strategic Solutions Contract Division at GSA, a new RFQ is due out "extremely shortly" pending completion of some pre-solicitation documentation.
Late Monday, GSA posted a Special Notice about the upcoming RFQ, informing cloud computing vendors that they'll need to be on the federal supply schedule in order to be considered for the RFQ and that they'll have to ensure that their products meet Federal Information Security Management Act "moderate" security level. The GSA has also assigned officials to help vendors modify their schedule listing to meet Apps.gov requirements.
Anastasio said that the GSA was disappointed with the cancellation of the first RFQ, but called it the "correct decision." He said that the GSA expects more interest this time around, and better communication with vendors.
In addition to more typical SaaS and cloud computing applications, Apps.gov hosts social media. Currently, Apps.gov makes 33 social media applications available to federal agencies, including social bookmarking apps, RSS feeds, social networks, media hosting and WiKis.
As it now stands, the social media portion of the site simply provides agencies with consolidated terms of service for the different social media sites, and allows agencies to sign up for external services like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. As soon as this spring, , however, according to Gwynne Kostin, director of new media for GSA's citizen engagement office, the GSA will begin experimenting as a service provider that will be able to host and provision blogging and other social media services for federal agencies.
Another coming feature is an information portal, which will post documents like the original, now-scrapped RFQ, and papers created by the government's cloud computing working groups (such as documents looking at standard processes for security certification).
Finally, Lewin said, GSA is working to improve the way it communicates with agencies about apps.gov.
InformationWeek has published an in-depth report on cloud computing and service-level agreements. Download the report here (registration required).
EU Seeks Publication of Anti-Piracy Deal
Excerpted from AP Report
The European Union said Monday it wants the United States and others to publish a draft global anti-piracy deal to end rumors that it advocates cutting off Internet access for unauthorized downloaders.
European Internet service providers (ISPs) said last month that they were alarmed by leaked details of the secret talks that they feared could lead to criminal sanctions and "three strikes and you're out" cease-and-desist orders to cut off access for users who share copyrighted content.
They worry about legal changes that could make them liable when users break the law and warn that this would damage users' rights to privacy and freedom of expression and ultimately stifle innovation and competition in Europe's Internet industry.
EU trade official Luc Pierre Devigne told a European Commission public hearing that the EU would seek to get the US, Canada, Mexico, South Korea, Japan, and others to agree on publishing a draft text of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) at April talks in New Zealand.
He said details of international talks are usually secret but that the EU was anxious to assure European users that it wasn't planning to strike a global deal that would force any changes to EU law.
"We want to have the negotiating document released so that rumors can be dispelled," he said. "Three strikes is no one's idea, no one has ever proposed that."
French President Nicolas Sarkozy had advocated a "three strikes and you're out" rule, under which Internet use would be tracked and users caught downloading would be warned twice before their Internet access would be cut off for a year. Britain is considering similar legislation.
ACS:Law Threatens Slyck with a Lawsuit
Excerpted from Slyck Report by Tom Mennecke.
It's no secret that ACS:Law has been intimately involved with copyright enforcement against alleged file-sharers in the United Kingdom. At the very least, thousands of letters have been sent to alleged file-sharers, who have been accused of transmitting the copyrighted works of their clients. Similar to the now abandoned practice in the United States, recipients of this letter are requested to settle at a reduced rate, rather than face costly litigation.
ACS:Law has been accused of bullying tactics in its pursuit of alleged file-sharers. There have been many documented cases where recipients of these letters are completely dumbfounded and unaware that any file-sharing took place whatsoever. In response to the lawsuits in the UK, three major discussion threads were started on Slyck.com, where people talk about their experiences and lend help to each other on the legal matters facing them. These discussion threads were targeted by ACS:Law Solicitor Andrew Crossley in a letter threatening a lawsuit against Slyck.com.
In the UK, as part of the Digital Economy Bill debates, ACS:Law has been featured several times in the House of Lords, an unelected part of the legislative body. There has been considerable concern over the actions taken by ACS:Law on behalf of their clients. Two Lords, Lord Clement-Jones and Lord Lucas, have been especially vocal.
Lord Clement-Jones is the current spokesman for the Liberal Democrats in the Lords for Media, Culture and Sport and is an experienced legal professional. He was admitted as a solicitor in 1974 and chaired the association of liberal lawyers from 1981-1986.
Lord Lucas describes himself as a libertarian. He runs an e-commerce business and holds a physics degree. He is an elected hereditary peer, edits the Good Schools Guide, and is a member of the All Party Internet Group in the Houses of Parliament.
The following are some extracts from the opinions of the two Lords, as recorded in Hansard (the official record of UK Parliamentary business - all mentions of ACS:Law can be found here.
Lord Lucas of Crudwell and Dingwall - January 26, 2010: "We must also do something about the quantum of damages that is being sought. In a civil procedure on a technical matter, it amounts to blackmail; the cost of defending one of these things is reckoned to be £10,000. You can get away with asking for £500 or £1,000 and be paid on most occasions without any effort having to be made to really establish guilt. It is straightforward legal blackmail, and we should do something about it by making sure that where damages are asked for, they are, at least for first offenders, at a rational level."
Lord Lucas of Crudwell and Dingwall - March 1, 2010: "This scam works because of the impossibility of producing proof against this allegation. How can you prove that you did not do this thing? You have an internet connection, and they say that it was done over that internet connection. It is no good producing your computer, because you committed the offence using a different computer. It is no good saying that you are a 97 year-old widow and that you hardly know how to use the telephone, let alone the internet, because, nevertheless, you have an internet connection and they say that it was abused. It is extremely difficult to produce evidence to gainsay this. All you can do is deny it, and one of the things that they say in the letter is, "Don't bother to deny this without producing evidence that you didn't do it."
Lord Clement-Jones - March 1, 2010: "However, in the meantime we learn of new entrants to the hall of infamy, such as Tilly Bailey & Irvine-the second law firm which I do not think anybody has mentioned in addition to ACS:Law. We also know more about the firm responsible for the investigations, Logistep. As my noble friend mentioned, the activities of these two law firms and Logistep are an embarrassment to the rest of the creative rights industry. We have seen more letters since Committee stage which demonstrate the methods being used by these law firms, which are of a threatening nature-some six or so pages as a first letter is grossly disproportionate."
Please click here for the full report.
Congress Needs To Clarify Who, What, When of Regulatory Authority
Excerpted from Multichannel News Report by John Eggerton
Verizon Executive Vice President Tom Tauke said Wednesday that the Communications Act no longer fits the digital space and needs a major rethink.
That process could incorporate Congress, which will need to step in and clarify the Federal Communications Commission's jurisdiction over the Internet, or whether the Federal Trace Commission or some other agency will have the regulatory authority.
In a speech at the New Democratic Network in Washington, billed as a major telecom address, Tauke said that there is a new sense of urgency on the issue driven by efforts to seek new behavioral advertising rules across the industry and the Comcast/BitTorrent case that have raised questions about the FCC's jurisdiction in the Internet space.
He said that if the court in the BitTorrent case decides that the FCC does not have the authority under Title I information service regulations, Congress will need to step in quickly, and he wants it to be thinking in broad terms.
Tauke said he understood that FCC chairman Julius Genachowksi will have a challenge if the court pulls Title I authority out from under him, but said he would be surprised if the agency tried to reclassify net service under Title II (which has mandatory access provisions). If it did, he added, it would wind up in court.
Tauke said that no one is suggesting the Internet should be the wild, wild west.
"We ought to have an Internet rule of law," he said, and Congress should determine that rule and who should enforce it," he said, noting that rule of law should apply to everyone in the Internet space, not just the networks.
Now is the time for Congress to address the issue, he added.
But Tauke said he was remaining agnostic about whether Internet regulation should be taken away from or kept within the FCC. He said it was not important what agency it was, but what the policy was, who would enforce it and how quickly it can be done. He said Congress can decide whether it is the FCC or the FTC or some new agency.
Why Google Made BitTorrent a Success
Excerpted from All Things Digital Report
BitTorrent is undoubtedly the most efficient way to share large files on the Internet. The key to BitTorrent's widespread adoption can nevertheless not be exclusively attributed to its technical superiority. Much of BitTorrent's success lies in the fact that it is web-based, easy to monetize and indexed by Google.
BitTorrent has emerged as the dominant filesharing protocol in recent years. Hundreds of millions of computers have a BitTorrent client installed and torrent sites are among the most frequently visited websites on the Internet.
BitTorrent's leading role can be partly attributed to its technical superiority, but there are other, perhaps even more defining factors that have propelled BitTorrent's popularity. One could argue that Google has been one of the greatest contributors to its success.
Unlike competing filesharing applications, BitTorrent has a dominant presence in search engine results. A site like isoHunt for example, has 13,500,000 million indexed pages on Google and The Pirate Bay has 3,760,000. All public torrent sites combined, there are probably over a billion torrent pages indexed by Google alone.
It is needless to say that this overwhelming web presence has created a huge advantage for BitTorrent compared to P2P applications such as Limewire, that mostly rely on searches within the application. Over the years, millions of people have been introduced to BitTorrent through search engines like Google.
We're now at a point where torrent sites top the search results for nearly search phrases related to downloading movies and music. For example, a Google search for "Shutter Island download" returns 6 torrent sites in the top 10 results and no legal authorized download options. The same is true for nearly all similar searches.
While Google and other search engines have helped BitTorrent popularity to a great extent, this could not have been possible without the people who developed the torrent indexes in the first place. That is where another key aspect of BitTorrent's popularity, which also ties into the web-based nature, plays an essential role. Money.
BitTorrent sites can generate some serious revenue, enough to sustain the site and make a decent living. In general, ad rates per impression are very low, but thanks to the huge amounts of traffic it quickly adds up. This money aspect has made it possible for sites to thrive, and has also lured many gold diggers into starting a torrent site over the years.
Initially, most torrent sites were operated by students or hobbyists with a passion for filesharing and coding. Most of the larger sites today started out that way, but in the years that followed they were joined by groups of people that are mainly interested in the cash, not so much in offering a good service to their users.
Despite this darker side, the possibility to monetize torrent sites has been essential to the success and the survival of BitTorrent. Without a return on investment, nobody would spend tens of thousands of dollars each month to keep a large site or tracker online.
All in all it is fair to say that BitTorrent is as popular as it is right now simply because it's web-based and findable through search engines. Although we don't have any numbers to back it up, it would not be an outrageous claim to say that most of the people who use BitTorrent today were introduced to it through a Google search.
Former MiniNova Users Flock to Other Sites
Excerpted from Zeropaid Report by Jared Moya
It's been a little over 4 months now that MiniNova, once among the most popular BitTorrent tracker sites around, was forced by a Dutch court to remove all torrent trackers that link to copyrighted material or face fines of $1,422 per link up to a maximum of $7.13 million.
At first, Mininova tried testing out several filtering systems, but "found that it's neither technically nor operationally possible to implement a 100% working filter system."
So it went legit.
It should be pretty obvious to everyone that users simply switched to one of the other thousands of alternative BitTorrent tracker sites to choose from, but the Future of Copyright, a copyright discussion blog, points us to a study that where researchers went so far as to monitor traffic on MiniNova before and after its removal of infringing content to see by how much and perhaps where to.
On November 26th, 2009, the day MiniNova removed all infringing torrent trackers site searches dropped from 8-to-9 million to 2 million per day, and downloaded torrent trackers fell from over 10 million to a mere 500,000 per day.
So where did they go?
According to their research, by the first week of January visitors to the top twenty BitTorrent tracker sites was up 3.75% compared to the four weeks prior to MiniNova's torrent removal. Of the top four sites, The Pirate Bay (TPB)and BTJunkie each saw a traffic increase of some 46% while isoHunt and Torrentz each saw an increase of 29%.
"TPB is now more used than it has ever been according to these statistics and is, on this data, by far the most used torrent portal with nearly twice as many visits as the next most visited site, Torrentz," says the report.
However, it also concludes that the loss of MiniNova has had a profound effect on the BitTorrent community because it was such a "reliable" tracker site with a relative "lack of fake content, the ease of use, and the high levels of user engagement."
It thinks that its loss has now forced former users to spend more of their time trying to find content in general, and even moreso in order to find stuff that isn't fake or filled with malware.
I guess nobody's emphasized the importance of private tracker sites.
Either way, although the report doesn't tell us anything more than what regular BitTorrent users already know, it is interesting to see perhaps where former MiniNova traffic went and to be reminded of the fact that one torrent tracker site gets shut down several others take its place (OiNK anyone?).
Stay tuned.
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.
Cloud Computing for Government Conference - June 7th-9th in Washington, DC. Learn how to cut costs and create a more efficient, scalable and secure IT infrastructure. In addition, learn how to develop a cloud computing strategy, along with helpful tools, tips, and techniques to get started. Hear practical advice, firsthand, from leading experts including the NASA Ames Research Center, US Department of Energy, Silicon Valley Education Foundation, and many more. Mention "DCIA" to receive a $200 registration discount.
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.
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