April 10, 2006
Volume 12, Issue 12
Jillian Ann’s Diary
Excerpted from NewsBlaze Report by Alan Gray
DCIA Member Jillian Ann, web icon, fashion model, and indie musician, has just released what may be the first real show designed for Internet distribution entitled "Jillian Ann’s Diary."
Jillian Ann has gained international acclaim as an independent musician - her last album release generated more than 50 million search requests in 9 months on peer-to-peer (P2P) networks. She developed "Jillian Ann’s Diary" as a sort of video blog for her fans.
The new show is centered on her life and struggle as a New York City based independent musician. "We chose the Internet as a launching platform for the show because it allows visitors to give us their comments and feedback directly," Jillian Ann said.
Judging by comments left on the Jillian Ann’s Diary MySpace Profile, it looks like this show has some staying power. "This is so cool! I sat back, watched and loved it, laughed, and think it is just great! Looking forward to seeing more," MySpace member Shawn Davidson posted.
Digital River Pact with Fisher-Price
DCIA Member Digital River, a global leader in e-commerce outsourcing, signed an agreement with Fisher-Price, the world’s leading brand of infant and pre-school toys, to manage the online sale and download of children’s songs and stories for Fisher-Price’s new Kid-Tough FP3Player. The songs and stories will be sold through Fisher-Price’s Song & Story Online Store, to be built and hosted by Digital River for launch during the summer.
"Fisher-Price is packaging up digital media in a way that is fun and accessible for families," said Dave Alampi, Digital River’s Vice President of Marketing. "By leveraging our secure, reliable infrastructure and e-commerce best practices, we can help Fisher-Price deliver a user-friendly online shopping experience for today’s tech-savvy families."
The Fisher-Price Kid-Tough FP3Player will come preloaded with six songs and two stories that are pre-school appropriate. Parents can add more content either by uploading music they already own to the player or by downloading songs and stories from today’s popular children’s artists and authors through the Fisher-Price Song & Story Online Store. In addition to managing orders, processing transactions, and providing downloads for the store, Digital River will implement e-marketing promotions and provide customer service.
PlayFirst & Konami Digital Entertainment
Konami Digital Entertainment is partnering with DCIA Member PlayFirst, the leading full-service publisher of casual games, for the licensing, development, and distribution of PlayFirst titles for mobile. Together, Konami and PlayFirst will expand the international market for casual games by bringing highly original content to cell-phones worldwide.
"As a full-service publisher, maximizing the reach of our games is a top priority," said Rich Roberts, Vice President of Sales & Business Development, PlayFirst. "With Konami’s deep experience in both mobile and the international market, this partnership will introduce the world’s mobile audience to PlayFirst’s high caliber games and further enable casual gamers to access our exciting titles wherever they play."
Under terms of the agreement, Konami will manage the mobile publishing and distribution of popular PlayFirst games such as the award-winning "Oasis" developed by Mind Control Software and "Egg vs. Chicken" developed by Gamelab.
Report from CEO Marty Lafferty
 Thank you to INTENT MediaWorks for hosting the formative meeting of the P2P Digital Watermark Working Group (PDWG) in Santa Monica, CA, and to the fifteen participants, comprising a balanced representation of content rights holders, P2P software distributors, and digital watermark solutions providers, for investing their time and constructively contributing to this useful session.
The origin of PDWG was a P2P digital watermarking presentation made by Digimarc at the Fall 2005 DCIA Meeting. Subsequent follow-up discussion among DCIA Members and a broad constituency of affected parties resulted in the decision by year’s end to establish the new working group to facilitate adoption of digital watermarking as a way to help secure the redistribution of copyrighted works via P2P and encourage entertainment content licensing in the channel.
A public invitation was issued by the DCIA in January and, in response to inquiries from prospective participants, a draft mission statement was prepared and distributed among qualified parties for review and feedback, with their input incorporated in the document for presentation at the formative meeting.
At the meeting, a summary of the now revised and updated P2P digital watermarking presentation was also given, explaining how digital watermarking can play an important role in the efficient and effective distribution of content in the P2P channel to protect rights holders’ interests
Examples of commercial digital watermark product offerings were described that may be of relevance, depending upon the specific problems that the PDWG articulates that it is trying to solve.
In addition, information was shared regarding the newest P2P platforms for content packaging, distributing, promoting, and transacting in closed and open P2P systems, as well as the integration of private-label closed file-sharing software, swarming technologies, and related social-network applications.
The increasing importance of consumer recommendations versus top-down marketing in influencing media consumption was underscored in this discussion, as was the desire of leading P2P developers to explore the integration of digital watermarking detectors in their clients.
The current draft mission statement was presented and discussed, along with a vision for the PDWG to be a small (6-to-12 participant) body with balanced representation similar to that of meeting attendees, working to produce a tangible deliverable, that will demonstrate how digital watermarking can begin to be implemented in P2P, in a relatively short time-frame.
Recommendations were made to focus the objectives of PDWG more narrowly than those outlined in the draft, with other broader objectives logically to follow in actual practice, and further document refinements were also recommended.
Input was provided for the PDWG to work as a body that will recommend business practices and not technical standards, with suggestions that PDWG create a test bed or pilot study for perhaps one or two of the most promising examples of how digital watermarking can help P2P become a more viable channel.
With resource limitations and competing priorities among companies that are interested in participating in the PDWG, an action item is to carefully define the most efficient process for direct and indirect involvement.
PDWG’s immediate next steps are to complete internal reviews of meeting notes and the revised mission statement and circulate these to attendees and absentees who requested copies; finalize PDWG’s initial active participants; and then regroup with those entities to plan the contemplated pilot study.
The PDWG will then identify sub-groups to work on specific aspects and to set timelines and task owners for goals and deliverables. There is also now the new possibility of establishing one or more additional parallel working groups focused on other P2P content-protection technologies, such as acoustical fingerprinting, hash-code identification, and/or metadata analysis. We encourage interested qualified parties to call 888-864-3242 or e-mail PDWG@dcia.info for more information. Share wisely, and take care.
Skype Partners with PIXmania
DCIA Member Skype, the global Internet telephony company, announced a partnership with PIXmania, a leading online retailer of high-tech and digital leisure products. The PIXmania online shop will be home to a wide range of Skype certified products, and will feature exclusive offers and packages for its customers.
The Skype corner on the website will enable visitors to search, compare, and buy the complete range of Skype certified products (headsets, earpieces, USB telephones, cordless telephones, etc.) with a constantly updated range of packages and special offers. They will also be able to access information about Skype and the latest innovations from the Skype ecosystem.
"Thanks to our agreement with e-commerce leader PIXmania, we now have a real online ‘Skype Corner’ accessible to all European consumers," said James Bilefield, General Manager of Skype Europe. "This is an extremely important step in the development of our distribution channels in Europe."
Small Telephone Networks with P2P
Excerpted from PhysOrg.com Report
Siemens has developed a telephone system that doesn’t require a switchboard. The HiPath BizIP telephones are directly connected to one another and communicate much like participants in an Internet file-sharing service where computers exchange data without detours through a central server. Designed for up to 16 telephones, the solution is intended primarily for small companies and will make costly installations and maintenance work on telephone systems a thing of the past.
The developers at Siemens shifted the switchboard function to the telephones themselves. Users simply connect BizIP-410 model phones to an existing network. The phones recognize one another via the integrated P2P protocols and automatically configure themselves. New telephones connected to the network will send an electronic notice to the other phones.
Finally, each telephone receives the next free internal telephone numbers. The configuration data is stored on the telephones. The P2P protocol requires only 400 kilobytes of memory. If one telephone fails, the data that was stored on it is provided by other phones, which makes the system very reliable.
Bertelsmann Plans Social Network
Excerpted from MediaPost Report
The array of social networking choices on the Web for kids these days is exhausting: MySpace, Facebook, Friendster, Connexion, MSN Spaces, etc., but what about social networking for older folks?
According to a Reuters report, German media group Bertelsmann, parent company of DCIA Member arvato mobile, is planning to transform its Direct Group of book, CD, and DVD clubs into an Internet networking destination for older people. The media conglomerate aims to unify Direct Group’s aging customer base of around 35 million users in 22 countries by changing its traditional clubs into little Internet communities organized by cultural interests.
The initiative would have to be supported by advertising, but analysts warn that it could be difficult to persuade the older set to use these kinds of social networking tools. As Jupiter analyst David Card said, "It may not be a natural thing, but it could work if they do a good job data mining and finding people with like passions." If they can find the audience, and that’s a big if, then advertisers will surely follow.
MSFT Leverages P2P in BitVault
Excerpted from Ars Technica Report by Jeremy Reimer
Microsoft Research consists of over 700 people in five separate labs all over the world, from Redmond to Bangladore. Recently, the team in Beijing has come up with an interesting project called BitVault: a "content-addressable retention platform for large volumes of data."
BitVault is a distributed application that runs on multiple PCs, called "bricks." Each brick is a bare-bones PC with a large hard drive, and hundreds or even thousands of bricks can be connected together to run the application. BitVault then allows users to search for information that is stored anywhere on the brick network, and guarantees that the data will be valid even if it has been modified or deleted on some of the bricks.
BitVault works using a principle called Distributed Hash Tables (DHT), a technology that played a key role in recent decentralized P2P applications such as BitTorrent. A single file need not be completely stored on a single computer in order for all the others to have access to it – as long as each individual piece of the file is stored somewhere, the complete file can be retrieved.
BitVault stores data as immutable "objects," with a 160-bit key used as the handle to retrieve them. As long as a single valid copy of an object survives, the system can repair damaged copies on all other bricks in the system. Automatic network load balancing ensures that the system is scalable and remains accessible even if many of the bricks are damaged or inaccessible.
Software Out There
Excerpted from NY Times Report by John Markoff
The Internet is entering its Lego era.
Indeed, blocks of interchangeable software components are proliferating on the web and developers are joining them together to create a potentially infinite array of useful new programs. This new software represents a marked departure from the inflexible, at times unwieldy, programs of the past, which were designed to run on individual computers.
As a result, computer industry innovation is rapidly becoming decentralized. In the place of large, intricate and self-contained programs like MS Word, written and maintained by armies of programmers, smaller companies, with just a handful of developers, are now producing pioneering software and web-based services. These new services can be delivered directly to PCs or even to cell-phones. Bigger companies are taking note.
Amazon recently introduced an online storage service called S3, which offers data storage for a monthly fee of 15 cents a gigabyte. That frees a programmer building a new application or service on the Internet from having to create a potentially costly data storage system.
Google now offers eight programmable components — elements that other programmers can turn into new web services — including web search, maps, chat and advertising. Yahoo offers a competing lineup of programmable services, including financial information and photo storage. Microsoft has followed quickly with its own offerings through its new Windows Live Web service.
Smaller companies are also beginning to share their technology with outside programmers to leverage their competitive positions. Salesforce.com, a fast-growing company that until recently simply offered a web-based support application for sales personnel, published standards for interconnecting to its software not too long ago. That made it possible for developers inside and outside the company to add powerful abilities to its core products and create new ones from scratch.
One result is that sales representatives using Salesforce’s customer relationship management software to organize their workday can now make telephone calls using Skype, the popular Internet service, without leaving the Salesforce software.
The shift toward sharing, which in its grandest conception has been termed Web 2.0, has touched off a frenzy of software design and start-up activity not seen since the demise of the dot-com era six years ago.
YouTube Uploads $8 Million
YouTube, a consumer media company for people to watch and share original videos through a web experience, announced it has received $8M in Series B funding from Sequoia Capital. This contributes to the initial $3.5M in Series A funding from Sequoia Capital completed in November 2005. The additional capital will be used to advance the company’s rapid growth, expand sales and marketing efforts, and to accelerate the build-out of its world-class data centers.
"This is the birth of a new clip culture where the audience is now in control more than ever," said Chad Hurley, CEO & Co-Founder of YouTube. "With more than 35 million videos being watched daily on YouTube, our community is extremely passionate about watching and sharing videos.
"We are pushing the boundaries of the Internet in ways that are unparalleled," said Steve Chen, CTO and co-founder of YouTube. "By accelerating the build-out of our data centers around the world, we are poised to continue to serve up billions of videos in the most scalable and cost-effective way."
Movielink & CinemaNow Download
Excerpted from MultiChannel News Report by Matt Stump & David Cohen
Internet movie rental service Movielink and on-demand movie provider CinemaNow entered the download business Monday.
Movielink now offers movies to purchase on the same day-and-date as their DVD-release windows. The company will offer subscribers the ability to download and own movies for playback on PCs. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Twentieth Century Fox, Universal Pictures, and Warner Bros. will supply the movies.
A quick look Monday found Movielink offering "King Kong" for $19.99, a special offer compared with its regular $26.99 list price. "Walk the Line" and "The 40 Year Old Virgin" were also available for $26.99. Buyers can share the movie on several PCs and burn a DVD of the movie using MS Windows Media 9, but encryption software prevents them from playing the DVD in a DVD player for display on a TV. Buyers can use a MS Media Center Edition PC to stream a copy of the movie to a TV set connected to a Media Center Extender on an Xbox.
The purchase price is higher than what DVDs sell for in stores, with Movielink executives citing the download convenience and multi-PC access for the roughly $10 in price difference.
CinemaNow reached licensing agreements with Sony and Lionsgate to offer movies for download-to-own purchase through its website, for unlimited playback on the download device. The company said the agreements mark the first time content has been made available on CinemaNow in the traditional home-video window.
CinemaNow customers can now choose from more than 85 premium Sony, MGM, and Lionsgate films for download, at prices from $9.95-$19.95. The service is also offering a limited-time promotion, under which customers who buy one movie at regular price can purchase another for $4.95. All content will be copy-protected by MS Windows Digital Rights Management (DRM) software, CinemaNow said.
Prime Time No More
Excerpted from Wharton Marketing Report
It’s open season on the television industry’s business model. In recent years, the three pillars of the industry’s profits – advertising, regional programming, and syndication deals – have come under fire from a band of technology companies, including Sling Media, TiVo, Orb Networks, and Apple Computer, that are rewriting content distribution rules.
As one Wharton professor notes, TV won’t necessarily be viewed via TV anymore. What are the dangers and opportunities of digital distribution? How easily can the big media companies adapt to new technologies, and can they continue to attract viewers who spend more time these days on the web than with their remote controls?
P2P Radio Now Free
Excerpted from The Register Report by Andrew Orlowski
The Mercora music service unveiled a major upgrade. The service allows you to share and stream your playlists across the net to other Mercora users. Artists and rights holders are compensated.
Mercora offers a music locker service to allow you to upload your songs to its servers, and stream them back in Ogg format, and has added useful biography and discography information to searches. These can link back to discover who’s playing this artist, and links to product and podcasts.
Mercora has abandoned the subscription-based model. Instead, the compensation kitty will be powered by targeted Google-style advertisements, which Mercora calls ‘MadWords’.
"Most people will not pay for listening and will not pay for discovery," Mercora CEO Srivats Sampath told us. "We grew up with radio and radio is free. If people like something, they’ll buy it". And so, Mercora provides links to online stores.
As before, Mercora’s servers sort out the complex task of rights clearance and compensation. The company says it works with collection agencies covering more than 140 countries. The Mercora website is here.
StreamCast to Seek Trial in Copyright Case
Excerpted from AP Report by Alex Veiga
StreamCast Networks, the company behind Morpheus online file-swapping software, said Friday negotiations to settle a five-year copyright battle with the entertainment industry have failed and it will now fight the case in court.
"I am really disappointed that we weren’t able to reach settlement terms with the plaintiffs," said StreamCast CEO Michael Weiss. "Now we want our day in court."
The move by StreamCast represents a turnaround from only a few weeks ago, when StreamCast and representatives for the film studios and music companies began talks to settle the case.
Some companies behind services such as i2Hub and WinMX, shut down. Others, including Grokster and iMesh, settled with the entertainment industry as a precursor to launching licensed versions of their services.
Companies behind popular file-sharing services eDonkey, LimeWire, BearShare, and others have also reportedly been pursuing settlement talks.
In December, Weiss said the company was focused on settling the case, if it could find acceptable terms to continue operating. The company has spent some $4 million over the past five years defending itself from entertainment industry litigation.
"We haven’t induced anybody to do anything since day one," he said Friday. "We’re not going to lose this."
Time to End the Lawsuits
Excerpted from Straight.com Report by Mark Moldowan
With falling music sales, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) finds it easy to call "Piracy!" and blame all of its woes on digital music. DCIA Member Nettwerk Music Group CEO Terry McBride disagrees, however, and will be sharing this opinion at his company’s SYNC music lounge on April 13th.
"Basically, it’s an open forum to talk about the future of music," McBride told Straight. "There’s been a lot of moaning and groaning about how devastated the music business has been. I tend to take a different view of it. I tend to look at all of the opportunities and ask people to use their imaginations."
The free seminar will let people find out what a record-business veteran feels about P2P file sharing, and the general direction of the industry. Please visit www.nettwerk.com/sync or www.savethemusicfan.com
Coming Events of Interest
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Translating Your Brand Online — April 12th in Minneapolis, MN. Online advertising, blogs, and a million other communication channels are growing, and fast. This makes telling a consistent brand story to target audiences challenging. What’s a savvy marketer to do? Learn about the forces that move customers to action -- in their online and offline worlds. Get the skinny on owning a unique brand identity and creating equity-building brand campaigns.
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Web Analytics Conference – April 18th in Santa Barbara, CA and May 3rd in London, England. A forum for discussing your most critical issues: Which metrics justify Web projects? How do you spot your most valuable customers? How do you calculate the value of Web intelligence? Senior Web executives, focused academics, software and service vendors, and members of the press working together to identify and address e-metrics issues.
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LWNW Canada 2006 – April 24th-26th in Toronto, Canada. LinuxWorld & NetworkWorld (LWNW) Canada Conference & Expo 2006 is "Where the IT Industry Meets!" and the number one marketplace for management and IT professionals to interact and learn about the newest applications and solutions and see demonstrations of leading information technology based products, services, across all computer platforms. Exceptional educational programming, dynamic keynotes, case studies, tutorials, and hands-on labs provide valuable information demonstrating real-life applications and solutions.
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Games & Mobile Forum – April 25th–26th in New York, NY. This year’s topics include: Games & Mobile Innovations from Around the World; The Business of Casual Downloadable Games; Mobile Games: The State of The Industry; Online Games: The State of The Casual Games Industry; Portability & Brands: Strategies for Multi-Platform Content Development & Brand Integration; Advertising in Games; International Games & Mobile; and Brands Going Mobile.
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First Annual DCIA Conference & Expo – The first-ever global "P2P Media Summit" will cover policy, marketing, and technology issues affecting commercial development of this emerging high-growth industry. June 22nd-23rd at the Intercontinental/HI, Tysons Corner, McLean, VA. Exhibits and demonstrations will feature industry-leading products and services. Alston & Bird’s Aydin Caginalp & Renee Brissette will conduct a special session on corporate value optimization for firms in the distributed computing industry. For sponsor packages and speaker information, please contact Karen Kaplowitz at 888-890-4240 or karen@dcia.info. DCIA Members Music Dish Network and Javien are our media and e-commerce partners respectively. Plan now to attend.
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Washington Digital Media Conference – June 23rd at the Ritz-Carlton, Tysons Corner, McLean, VA. DCIA Conference & Expo attendees can attend this executive briefing on emerging business, policy, and technology issues & opportunities at half-price. This is a must-attend event for media, entertainment and technology businesses, educational institutions, and government agencies involved in the digital distribution of media. The Washington Post calls the event: "a confab of powerful communicators and content providers in the region."
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