October 11, 2004
Volume 6, Issue 6
Multi-Platinum Artist Chooses P2P
Multi-platinum Grammy Award winner Sananda Maitreya has become the first major artist to fully embrace peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing. DCIA Member RazorPop developed custom software enabling fans to sample, purchase, and redistribute tracks from his latest album "Angels & Vampires" using a special version of TrustyFiles.
As part of the campaign, the music video "Bella Faccina" and new songs "Glad She's Gone" and "She knows I'm Leaving" are being made available exclusively to the P2P marketplace in Weed format files.
"It's not enough to just create protected files and say 'here's my music, please download," said Sananda Maitreya. "RazorPop's P2P Street Team captures the spirit of fan support and extends it into file sharing. Their custom TrustyFiles software is perfect for me to ask my fans to share my music and at the same time continue to stay close to them."
Marc Freedman, Founder and CEO of RazorPop added, "We've worked with Heart and Steve Winwood on previous P2P promotions. The power of P2P for music distribution is clear. The Heart campaign outsold iTunes. When Sananda Maitreya came to us, we decided to take P2P marketing to the next level."
Fellow DCIA Member Shared Media Licensing (SML) is RazorPop's P2P technology partner, with its innovative Weed technology that allows fans to listen three times for free before being asked to license "Weedified" tracks.
RazorPop's P2P distribution partner is fellow DCIA Member INTENT MediaWorks, which provides emerging artists with comprehensive P2P file hosting and distribution, including media digitization, file protection, and distribution, by means of all major P2P software applications.
MasurLaw, SMARTGuard, Good Witch
Please warmly welcome Masur & Associates, LLC, SMARTGuard Software, Inc., and Good Witch Records to the Platform, Operations, and Content Groups respectively. We look forward to providing valuable services to these newest DCIA Members and supporting their contributions to commercial development of the distributed computing industry.
MasurLaw is an intellectual property and business law firm, which has served some of the most innovative new companies in the entertainment and information technology sectors during the past ten years. Examples include digital music services, record labels, massively multiplayer games, independent films, mobile entertainment, payment systems, and finance. It has focused on helping clients develop novel revenue models in advertising, publishing, media delivery, software, hardware, and licensing. In addition to overseeing strategic agreements, MasurLaw has helped organize, finance, and negotiate successful exits for its clients.
Representative MasurLaw clients include Chaoticom, Digital Club Network, gNET, MusicStream, MusiKube, PlayTV, Vindigo, Yamaha, and Zingy. MasurLaw helped launch Platform.net, a hip-hop content aggregator that merged with HookT.com for acquisition by Sony; LicenseMusic.com, a clearinghouse for music synchronization rights; Film Exchange, an affinity investment club for independent film; and SuperDist, a project for marketing music via peer-to-peer (P2P).
SMARTGuard Software launched in 2003 to address issues related to the safe and legal use of computers. As access to the Internet increased, founders Dr. Jerald Block and Dr. Richard Goldstein turned their attention to online addictions. In their work as practicing physicians, they affirmed the need for tools to manage computer usage. Divorce, loss of relationships, depression, obesity, disturbed sleep patterns, work difficulties, health (eyes, back, carpal tunnel, etc.) and legal problems were frequently linked to excessive computer use. SMARTguard's inaugural advanced protection software is designed to help parents prevent children from accessing computer programs without appropriate supervision.
SMARTguard's "Blockster," now in Beta tests, offers optional, easy-to-use, innovative software that specifically protects from the risks that come with unsupervised peer-to-peer (P2P) software usage by children. Blockster issues an e-mail report when a restricted P2P program is launched, allowing parents the opportunity to monitor access. Any attempt to override the program's patent-pending advanced security features – including hacking the database or changing the password – will generate an alert to the parent. The program is easy to implement and is continuously building on itself as more people contribute to the program's database. Other products from this privately held company promise parents, business owners and ISPs similar innovative solutions to the problems of piracy, computer safety, and abuse.
Good Witch Records is a progressive music label founded by performing artist Glenda Benevides, which has operated since 1999 in partnership with production company In The LITE Productions. Glenda's first project was promoting and producing a benefit concert for the Rainforest. Since then she has produced albums, concerts, and music videos.
Glenda's calling is first and foremost that of a vocalist. Her connection with the audience is intimate and open. Her voice oozes sensuality and passion and delivers raw power. Glenda's album "Feed Your Soul" is an eclectic mix of R&B, soul, world, and Latin beats. From the political anthem "Liberate Me," inspired by the treatment of women in Afghanistan, to the sultry "Black Raven" about an unrequited love affair, it covers a lot of ground. Like the classic Jazz divas of old, Glenda creates a powerful mystique that enraptures her audience. Using her four octave vocal range, she makes an unparalleled emotional impact with her songs.
Report from CEO Marty Lafferty
 With appropriate symmetry, the final House IP Sub-Committee hearing of the 108th Congress held last week had the same subject as its first, peer-to-peer (P2P) usage on university campuses. Now that the fall semester is underway, let's examine this evolving market.
As Chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX) noted, "Since universities are where students first put into practice their values and respect for laws independent of the guidance and oversight of their parents, universities are in a unique position to address this issue, particularly since the activity occurs on their networks."
Panelists included MusicNet CEO Alan McGlade, Penn State University President Graham Spanier, UCLA Information Technology Vice Chancellor Jim Davis, and Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) President Cary Sherman.
Spanier outlined Penn State's LionShare Project, receiving praise from ranking member Congressman Howard Berman (D-CA), for its optimization of P2P for scientific and research purposes.
Commenting on the 18-month old Joint Committee of the Higher Education and Entertainment Communities (JCHEEC), which he co-chairs with Sherman, Spanier compared policing copyright on campus to enforcing traffic laws against speeding. Punishment of a few violators discourages violations by many more.
Sherman said the advent of Internet2 (an ultra-high-speed network run by a consortium of schools, industry, and government) poses new challenges for the music industry beyond P2P: "Already systems such as i2hub have been set up on Internet2, facilitating the abuse of advanced networking technology to illegally distribute copyrighted works for free."
Davis reported on UCLA's Quarantine System, developed by school scientists, that automatically disconnects identified copyright infringers from the college's network until they sign an electronic statement confirming removal of offending files. UCLA's system is similar to the open-source Automatic Copyright Notification System (ACNS) that could be extensible to deactivate copyright violators' accounts on ISP networks.
There are 4,168 US colleges and universities, attended by nearly 16 million students. About 25 schools have now signed up for digital music services, typically made available in residence halls but not to students living off-campus. Most such services cache music locally so that Internet resources are not used. A hotly debated topic is whether these should be optional or packaged with mandatory college fees.
Probably McGlade's MusicNet has the greatest potential for commercial adoption to the broader P2P marketplace. MusicNet is an online music wholesaler, which now has one-million licensed tracks, that has partnered with Cdigix to offer the Ctrax music service to college students.
It offers flat-rate pricing at $3 per month for unlimited tethered downloads (to PCs but not transferable to portable devices). Subscribers average 10 downloads a day. Data from Purdue University, from the first week of classes, cited 2,000 participating students accessing 150,000 tethered song downloads. The company reports interest from a "steady flow of new schools," with 20 more slotted to launch by spring. Beyond that, Cdigix is preparing to offer a service to any student with an "edu" e-mail address, for $6 per month, expanding the program beyond partner schools.
This kind of opt-in subscription is similar to one of the offerings planned for the P2P Revenue Engine (P2PRE) project in development by several DCIA Members and other qualified companies, which many believe holds more promise than iTunes' per download approach. Unrestricted-use downloads at a somewhat higher price-point would be a logical line extension of tethered-download P2P subscriptions.
Since March the RIAA has filed lawsuits against 190 students at 61 universities for allegedly infringing music copyrights using P2P. Attitudes towards this approach are reflected in current student articles like Rock and Roll Pirates in William & Mary's Dog Street Journal, and in documented reactions such as those at Appalachian State, Georgetown, and NYU.
And colleges themselves, including Columbia University, which last week closed down its Direct Connect hub, DC++, reflect uncertainty at this time in the still nascent P2P industry's development.
But above all, as Larry Dignan writes in Baseline's Hack to School, in this new academic year, deployers of technology at universities have to ratchet up their ability to stay ahead of the students they are teaching. Most of the students are 17-to 22-year-olds who already have a decade of technical experience under their belts from poking around school networks, downloading music, circumventing instructors, and using everything from cell phones to instant-messaging devices.
The threats, according to technology executives at universities, include the introduction of viruses into school networks, improper use of file-sharing software, hogging bandwidth when downloading huge graphic files such as movies, and outright theft of information about school records.
College information security will always be an issue. At a corporation, the strategy is clear: you secure everything you can. At a university, you're dealing with academic freedom and information exchange. Nothing is secure unless it has to be.
The strategy is to learn as much as possible from students and implement technology such as messaging and bandwidth partitioning accordingly while not compromising security. And aside from firewalls, network monitoring, and antivirus software, a clearly enforced computing security policy can head off problems better than any technology.
Technology executives, however, say you can't completely segregate students. A more viable strategy is to include students in technology decisions. When bandwidth usage got out of hand, one official went to student government groups for help. The choices: self-regulation or tuition hikes to pay for bandwidth. Now students largely regulate their file transfers in keeping with network constraints.
Dignan advises studying skilled users. See what devices they use. Ask what they're being used for. Watch usage in progress. Set expectations. Let them know that monitoring is legal and possible. Establish penalties for unauthorized use of the network. Encourage involvement. The best security comes from getting intelligent input from affected users.
Spyware Usage Finally Shrinking
Media Life
Although spyware dissemination has not stopped by any means, it has at least begun to tail off according to a new SpyAudit report from Earthlink and computer security firm Webroot Software. The companies scanned consumer PC software 3 million times and found 83.4 million instances of spyware so far this year. Over the first half of 2004 the instances of spyware increased just about every month. But they say the third quarter began to show a slight decrease. Webroot says spyware remains a serious problem but that consumer awareness is rising, which is obviously a good thing. The SpyAudit report found that of the different instances of spyware, the cookie category was the most common.
Hollywood Appeals to Supreme Court
Digital Media Wire
Trade groups for the motion picture and recording industries on Friday petitioned the US Supreme Court to overturn a landmark Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling, delivered in August, which said distributors of peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing software like Kazaa and eDonkey aren't liable for copyright infringement.
Studios represented by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and record label members of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) filed their appeal of the Ninth Circuit's ruling, which was based in part on the Supreme Court's 1984 Betamax decision that legalized the VCR because of its substantial non-infringing uses.
The entertainment industry has also intensely lobbied Congress for new legislation that would allow P2P software providers to be targeted, such as "The INDUCE Act" (S. 2560), which was scheduled for a vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee last week but postponed amid criticism from technology firms and consumer advocates.
Coming Events of Interest
- Telecom '04 - DCIA Member Trymedia Systems' Gabe Zichermann and the DCIA's Marty Lafferty are featured speakers in this IP Video Conference at 11:15 AM this Wednesday October 13th at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas, entitled "Get in the Game — How do Games Play in a Service Providers' Plans?"
Gabe and Marty look at the impact of games on ISP content strategy and different ways ISPs can use gaming as a differentiator in their product offerings.
- DRM Strategies Expo - DCIA P2P Revenue Engine (P2PRE) participant MediaGuide's Steve Lubin will be a featured speaker on the Fingerprinting Panel moderated by Digital Economics' Donald Jasko at 10:00 AM on October 26th at this JupiterMedia sponsored event.
The DRM Strategies Conference & Expo will be held October 25th through 27th at the Sheraton Universal in Los Angeles.
- Digital Entertainment Awards – The DCIA is proud to sponsor this first annual conference and awards show, focusing on innovation, entrepreneurship, and brand development in digital entertainment.
Co-produced by Billboard and Digital Media Wire, the "Billboard Digital Entertainment Conference & Awards (DECA)" will be held on November 4th and 5th at the UCLA Tom Bradley International Center. Seventy industry leaders will be speaking at the two-day conference on content and technology developments, including business, legal, and technology issues impacting the creative and business communities. To learn more about the conference and awards show, please call 323-822-0936.
The DCIA will hold its Fall General Meeting for Members only Thursday evening November 4th in conjunction with DECA. Please contact DCIA Member Services leader Karen Kaplowitz at karen@dcia.info or 888-890-4420 for Membership information.
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