March 16, 2009
Volume XXV, Issue 9
Abacast Powers P2P MARKET CONFERENCE Live Webcast
Abacast, the leader in hybrid video delivery, was recently selected by the Distributed Computing Industry Association (DCIA) to power the live webcast of the second annual P2P MARKET CONFERENCE, being held in New York, NY this Tuesday March 17th in conjunction with Media Summit New York (MSNY), which follows on the 18th and 19th.
To sign-up for this first-ever live webcast of a DCIA event, please call +1-410-476-7964 or click here.
The P2P MARKET CONFERENCE will feature keynote speeches from top P2P, cloud computing, and social network operators, advertising agencies, sponsor companies, content providers, online ad networks, and Internet service providers (ISPs), plus case studies, panels of industry leaders, and more.
"We're thrilled that our Live Webcasting solution was chosen by the DCIA," said Jim Kott, Co-President of Abacast. "Working with organizations like the DCIA helps us showcase what we do best: scalable, live video streaming with support for popular business models."
Abacast, a commercial-quality hybrid CDN whose clients include Clear Channel, Next Media Broadcasting, and Regent Communications, has worked with the DCIA on archival webcasting of previous events using the Abacast On-Demand streaming technology.
"The DCIA is excited to be working with Abacast to provide our Membership with state-of-the-art live video streaming," said Marty Lafferty, CEO of the DCIA. "With the Abacast solution, we'll be able to extend our reach geographically and serve industry participants all over the world who cannot physically attend this year's conference."
In order to capture the live event from the Cornell Club of New York, Abacast will be using its Live Presenter technology for webcasting conferences or webinars and synchronizing presenter slides with live Flash video.
Abacast is a commercial quality, hybrid content distribution network (CDN), offering the most options in the industry to distribute and monetize Internet distribution of rich media, including live video and online radio, video-on-demand (VOD), games, and software. Abacast is headquartered in Camas, WA and is a privately held company. For more information call +1-360-834-5229 or e-mail sales@abacast.com.
Oversi Wins Principal ISP Project with VTR Chile
Oversi, a pioneer of over-the-top (OTT) delivery solutions has been selected by Chile's largest cable communications company, VTR Global Com SA, to provide caching and content acceleration services.
David Tolub, President & CEO, Oversi, said, "We are delighted to have received this milestone project with Chile's top ISP and technology leader. This deal is another important ISP-operator win for Oversi, symbolizing a vote of confidence in our technology and products. VTR has built a reputation for superior customer service, upgrading their Internet service to customers on a frequent basis. The Oversi platform will help them to secure their competitive leadership in the marketplace."
Hernan Benavides, Engineering Manager, VTR Chile, said, "We are totally committed to providing the best possible Internet service for our customers. Oversi's platform enables us to fulfill this commitment, speeding up download times and vastly improving users' quality of experience (QoS). OverCache also helps us to save on OpEx and CapEx, crucial in this global financial climate."
OverCache multi-service platform (MSP) offers a one-stop-shop caching and acceleration solution for online media content delivery, which is optimized for large networks. OverCache MSP enables VTR to offer its customers a superior Internet experience for both video and P2P applications. At the same time, OverCache improves the efficiency and performance of VTR's network and generates bandwidth savings.
With OverCache, VTR's subscribers benefit from a much faster download time. Internet video clips are downloaded within seconds rather than minutes. Subscribers can skip forward or backwards quickly to any point in their chosen video clip, with no risk of the video stopping halfway through.
Oversi offers a breakthrough multi-service platform for over-the-top (OTT) content, including Internet video, P2P, and other media applications.
Oversi's solutions enable service providers to cope with the huge traffic load on their networks while significantly improving subscribers' quality of experience (QoE).
By assuring QoE, Oversi's solutions open up new monetization opportunities with content providers and facilitate the delivery of tiered services, increasing average revenue per user (ARPU).
Oversi systems are deployed in service provider sites around the world. Oversi has offices and representatives in EMEA, the US, Asia-Pacific, and Latin America.
Report from CEO Marty Lafferty
 We hope to see you Tuesday at the Cornell Club of New York for the second annual P2P MARKET CONFERENCE.
We are very fortunate to have attracted a stellar line-up of speakers for this year's special event, whose contributions will provide attendees with a unique perspective from the cutting-edge of innovation.
This year's P2P MARKET CONFERENCE will focus on innovative business opportunities for revenue generation, market trials, financing opportunities, and case studies that demonstrate the benefits, including cost reductions, of P2P and cloud computing technologies for consumer entertainment and enterprise data deployments.
To sign-up now, please call +1-410-476-7964 or click here.
To extend the reach of the P2P MARKET CONFERENCE to those unable to travel to New York, for the first time, we are also offering a live interactive webcast of the event, powered by industry-leading hybrid CDN Abacast. In addition to being available in real-time, the webcast will also be recorded and viewable on-demand after the conference.
Our CONFERENCE LUNCHEON will feature Dr. John Cartoux, Managing Director, FTI Consulting, who will introduce Jim Kremens, whose revolutionary FHTML offering will premier publicly for the first time at the P2P MARKET CONFERENCE.
KEYNOTE ADDRESSES will be presented by Jim Kott, Co-President, Abacast; Rick Kurnit, Partner, Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz; Mitchell Edwards, CFO & General Counsel, BitTorrent; John Desmond, VP, MediaSentry Services, SafeNet; George Searle, CEO, LimeWire; Michael Einhorn, Consultant, Media/Technology/Copyright; Robert Levitan, CEO, Pando Networks; Alex Mashinsky, CEO, DigiMeld; Scott Brown, USA CEO, Octoshape; Charles Perkins, Founder, Virtual Rendezvous; Saul Berman, Global & Americas Strategy & Change Practice Leader, IBM; and John Waclawsky, Software Architect, Motorola.
P2P MARKET STRATEGIES will explore consumer and enterprise categories and answer the key question: what are the strategic implications of P2P in key market segments?
How are the market strategies different for using P2P to distribute consumer entertainment and corporate enterprise data? What characteristics are required for P2P companies to succeed in key market segments? Should P2P software companies concurrently pursue multiple strategies? How do live P2P streaming and P2P file downloading impact major market segments? What unique market attributes can yield new opportunities for monetization?
Panelists will include Steve Mannel, Cable & Broadband Solutions Executive, IBM; Steve Masur, Managing Partner, MasurLaw; Morgan Reed, Executive Director, Association for Competitive Technology (ACT); Colin Sebastian, SVP, Equity Research, Lazard Capital Markets; and Chuck Stormon, CMO, PacketExchange.
P2P BUSINESS MODELS will examine advertising-supported, subscription, paid download, and other approaches and answer the key question: how do the various approaches compare?
What are the best current alternatives for monetizing content distribution via P2P and social networks? How can value be added by using or not using digital rights management (DRM) such as content tracking, usage measurement, and end-user validation? How can P2P distributors and social network operators upgrade their offerings and improve quality of service (QoS) in ways that are valuable to sponsors, advertising agencies, and online ad networks? What new business models are coming for P2P-based service offerings?
Panelists will include Daniel Leon, SVP, Business Development, DigiMeld; Rick Lerner, Chief Executive & CTO, Clickshare Service Corporation; Steve Lerner, Founder, P2P Cleaner; Ira Rubenstein, EVP, Global Digital Media Group, Marvel Entertainment; and Neerav Shah, VP, Business Development, Verimatrix.
P2P CASE STUDIES will evaluate experience to date and answer the key question: beyond theory, what's working and what's not in the marketplace?
What techniques have proven best so far in terms of monetizing the enormous traffic that P2P generates? What successes have been achieved in the wholesale entertainment and enterprise categories? What has been the relative worth of the different formats and interactivity that this channel supports? What case studies from related businesses can be applied to P2P and how?
Panelists will include Jonathan Anderson, CEO & Founder, SelfBank Mobile; Mick Bass, VP of Alliance Management, Ascent Media; Alex Limberis, COO, Syabas Technology; Rob Manoff, CEO & Co-Founder, Jambo Media; and Aaron Markham, VP, Research & Development, BayTSP.
P2P FUTURE OPPORTUNITIES will discuss network efficiency and content protection and answer the key question: how can participants optimize the channel?
What can the industry do to ensure that the benefits of P4P and similar mechanisms are applied to the distribution of copyrighted works? How can participants at various levels of this channel gain support of rights holders? Which identification techniques (e.g., watermarking and/or fingerprinting) should be used to protect content and enhance the ecosystem? What new solutions will impact P2P software developers and distributors to the greatest degree?
Panelists will include Simon Applebaum, Producer, Tomorrow Will be Televised; Betty Chan-Bauza, VP Strategy & Product, LifeLock; Dan Pifer, EVP, Operations & Technology, The Orchard; Laird Popkin, Co-Chair, P4P Working Group (P4PWG); and Rob Sandie, CEO, Viddler.com.
If you are interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at DCIA events, please contact Laura Tunberg at 310-415-0330 or laura@dcia.info. For DCIA Membership and conference speaker information, please contact Karen Kaplowitz at 888-890-4240 or karen@dcia.info. Share wisely, and take care.
Norwegian Broadcaster NRK Embraces P2P
Excerpted from PaidContent Report by Robert Andrews
Norway's NRK public broadcaster is embracing P2P like only Scandinavians know how - it's beginning to give away its TV shows as torrents. It's a radically different strategy - broadcasters usually regard P2P file sharing as a problem.
NRK ran a limited test of the idea in 2008; now it says the practice was "very successful" and is setting up its own torrent tracker, using the same software that powers The Pirate Bay, to distribute more, high-quality, full-length shows more regularly.
Not only will NRK save on distribution costs (with P2P, it's the recipients who transfer the files), it will also attract more viewers from the community of torrent fans and - as an interesting by-product - more international viewers for its publicly-funded programming. Viewers have already begun writing fansubs - homebrew English subtitles - for the shows.
Project manager Erik Solheim said, "Experience from our early tests show that if we're the best provider of our own content, we also gain control of it." And NRK should even be able to overcome cross-border rights issues with producers.
"It seems like it should be possible to find a solution where NRK gets the rights it needs and the rights-holders get the compensation they want." NRK is endorsing the peer-to-peer television (P2PTV) player Miro.
GigaTribe Wins Award for Best Web 2.0 P2P Community
GigaTribe, the company revolutionizing P2P file sharing, has won a Trender "Best of 2009" Award. GigaTribe won for its free, community-based file-sharing software that lets users easily share unlimited amounts of photos, videos, music, and other files with their "tribe" of friends, family, and coworkers, quickly and securely, in a private, fully-encrypted P2P environment.
The Trender Awards honor gadgets and services that are not only novel and technologically advanced, but also improve people's lives in some way and have appeal to everyday folks. In presenting GigaTribe its award, Brian Mahony, Trender Research CEO, said, "Taking lots of digital photos is no problem for people, but sharing large folders of photos/videos with friends and family with little effort was a bit tricky, until now. GigaTribe is the best option if you want to set up a highly-secure network to safely share large files directly from your hard-drive without size limitations."
Trender Research looked beyond products and services that would only appeal to tech-savvy consumers and early-adopters. They looked at factors such as price, ease of installation/use, customer support, understandability, branding, appeal to a wide demographic set, and accessibility of channels. Almost 100 tech products and services were considered and awards were given for tech categories, including video, audio, photo, security, robotics, HDTVs, communications, mobile, GPS, and accessories.
"It is our view that these products have a good chance of becoming mainstream, have already been embraced by everyday consumers, or have what it takes to be adopted by customers in their intended target markets," added Mahony.
"We are honored to have been selected for a Trender Award for our ground-breaking P2P file-sharing community," said Stephane Herry, CEO, GigaTribe. "With over 1,000,000 users in the US and Europe, GigaTribe is becoming the de facto standard for sharing photos, music, video, and other files with your friends and family."
GigaTribe lets users set-up communities of friends, family, and coworkers. Completely secure, users choose friends or coworkers to invite into their community. Friends can then access the user's shared files: photos, videos, music, and more. Community members can invite others, and communities grow as each new user offers his/her own files for sharing with others. There are no files to upload, no size limitations, and all transfers are encrypted, so file sharing is fully secure. Users can share individual files or entire folders, and file transfers can be resumed after a user has been off-line.
Raketu Shines With Flexibility, Unification, Low Price
Excerpted from Voice Over IP Guide
Raketu is a P2P communications, social networking, information, and entertainment service that is accessible on any device.
People like to refer to Raketu as Skype meets MySpace meets YouTube meets Joost. Raketu offers these services in a unified manner - you can access Raketu using your computer, mobile phone, fixed phone, or any SIP-compliant hardware and software.
The service is very rich in features, which include many of those that services like Jajah, Gizmo, Truphone, and Fring provide. Raketu even compares, on its site, its prices against those of Skype. Please click here for a complete review of Raketu.
In-Browser P2P LittleShoot Now Supports Torrents
Excerpted from CNET News Report by Seth Rosenblatt
Amidst the crowd of P2P file-sharing options comes an attempt to return file sharing to its utilitarian roots by emphasizing file-publishing. Free and open-source LittleShoot is the brainchild of Adam Fisk, a LimeWire developer who wants LittleShoot to be "like Google for files instead of web pages." LittleShoot manages torrents as well as scouring the web for most major file formats.
Where most P2P programs are standalone clients, LittleShoot is a browser plug-in like QuickTime or Shockwave that should work with all major browsers. It utilizes an AJAX-based interface to search, publish, and download files. Once you've downloaded and installed the plug-in, it will take you to the LittleShoot search page unless you opt out. From there, entering any search term will return results with hits from YouTube, IsoHunt, Flickr, Yahoo, and LimeWire. A SafeSearch option restricts inappropriate content.
The most recent version introduces torrent-handling abilities. Check out any torrent site, download the torrent, and LittleShoot will automatically start downloading it. Helpful links on the side make it easy to Twitter or Facebook the torrent, and a drop-down menu gives you access to dozens more sharing options. Non-torrent files found by LittleShoot will open in a new window.
LittleShoot looks like an interesting attempt to demystify file sharing by making it more accessible than it's been so far.
Seven Things You Should Know About P2P
Excerpted from Educause Report
For his senior project in computer science, Zach wrote a program that pulls weekly regional economic data - including statistics such as jobless claims, housing starts, changes in average wages, and other financial metrics - from a variety of government, industry, and nonprofit sources.
Users of the program can represent these economic factors on a map of the United States, showing regional differences and trends over time. The program allows users to correlate economic conditions with a wide range of social and demographic data and build digital maps that represent these relationships. For example, a user can combine wage data with gate receipts at sports parks to investigate whether people whose real wages are declining go to more or fewer ball games.
Zach released his application as an open-source program, available from a server in the computer science department. Because researchers from across a wide spectrum of disciplines found the application useful, however, the server quickly bogged down due to the number of people trying to download the program.
The department didn't have a budget for more servers to meet the demand, so Zach used BitTorrent to allow people to share the application through a P2P network. With this approach, anyone who wants the program can get it from anyone else on the P2P network who has a copy of it.
Over the course of the semester, Zach made continual improvements to the application, and each new version was distributed through the P2P network, allowing many users from around the world the ability to access the updated version quickly and easily, without having to rely on a server at Zach's university.
To remain current, the application uses large data files that are updated weekly, including economic and demographic data from a variety of sources. These frequent and large updates to the data files are also distributed by the P2P network.
In this way, academics around the globe are easily able to conduct research based on up-to-date versions of both the application and the data files. For his part, Zach can spend his time improving the program and looking for ways to enhance its functionality, rather than managing an overtaxed server or trying to find the money to buy more servers.
Peer-to-peer (P2P) is an approach to content distribution in which digital files are transferred between "peer" computers over the Internet. In a client/server structure, servers store content and, when requested, send that content to client machines - a one-to-many distribution model.
With P2P, the client machines are peers and communicate with one another. A computer in the network can submit a request for specific content, and any peer in the network that has a copy of the file can send it, resulting in a many-to-many model that does not rely on a central repository.
Because they do not rely on a central server to deliver content, P2P networks tend to be faster and much more reliable - as long as at least one other computer in the network has a file, others can access it. Any user of a P2P network is as likely to be a contributor as a consumer, and, in this sense, P2P approximates the original conception of the Internet as a network of connections among individuals and organizations that give and take information.
P2P is used as an efficient, robust means to distribute a wide range of content including software, games, books, movies, and music. Many distributors of Linux, for example, use P2P networks to distribute the latest versions of the open-source operating system. Similarly, OpenOffice can be downloaded through any of several P2P networks, and corrections and updates for computer games such as "World of Warcraft," which are popular with students, are frequently distributed through P2P.
Wikipedia compiled a CD with more than 2,000 articles selected specifically for schools and children, and this resource can be downloaded from a P2P network. Researchers routinely share data and computer code using P2P technology, and scientists at NASA use the technology to distribute satellite imagery.
Commercial providers of news, music, and video have begun to use P2P methods as well. In January, CNN used Octoshape's P2P solution to stream the Presidential inauguration to more than 650,000 simultaneous users. Amazon and Google have experimented with consumer services based on this technology, and media distributors such as Time Warner have used it to relieve the traffic pressure on their download servers.
P2P networks require installing an application on Internet-connected computers, which become nodes, or peers, that communicate with one another. The nodes create large, interconnected networks through which files are transferred. P2P users can see lists of files that are available on other nodes in the network and can submit a request to the network for any available file.
In some services, the entire file is transferred from one peer computer to the requester; with other protocols, such as BitTorrent, different parts of a file are downloaded from multiple nodes on the network and reassembled on the requester's computer, further improving the efficiency of file transfers by reacting to moment-by-moment fluctuations in network traffic.
In both models, files are exchanged between peers without access controls or oversight of transfers. Any node can share or request any file on the network.
By some estimates, a quarter of all adults - including half of all college students - have used P2P networks, and, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, users are not significantly differentiated by income, gender, or race. By lodging copies of files in numerous locations, P2P balances traffic loads, which might otherwise overwhelm servers, and minimizes the chance of service breakdown due to localized server or communication outages.
P2P helps optimize network bandwidth and the storage and processing resources of connected computers by building a relationship of trust among peers, creating new opportunities for the efficient transfer of files - particularly very large files and those that are in extremely high demand.
As a new channel for content distribution, P2P changes the conventional hierarchy of information. The roles of producer, consumer, and gatekeeper of digital content blur, and the structure that gives content owners control over who can have what is replaced by one in which information and resources are available much more widely than before.
At the same time, however, removing the central authority over content distribution has resulted in copyright infringement on some P2P networks. Music and other media files can easily be reproduced and exchanged outside the distribution channels of the individuals and organizations that hold the copyright for those materials. The music and movie industries, in particular, contend that file sharing has cost them enormous amounts of money in lost sales, and representatives of media companies have gone to great lengths to try to mitigate this activity, including prosecuting alleged violators.
Because file traders are frequently only identified by a network address, complaints of copyright infringement generally go through Internet service providers (ISPs) to identify individual users. Because colleges and universities often function as the ISPs for campus users, higher education has found itself in the middle of this controversy.
Special care may be necessary to ensure the integrity of shared files because of the multiple, dispersed sources in play. Some programs based on P2P expose considerable vulnerabilities. P2P networks have been used for transmission of viruses, malware, and corrupted or mislabeled files.
Individuals who inadvertently place sensitive files in network-shared directories have been victims of identity theft when those files were downloaded by others. Moreover, some networks have seen their bandwidth sapped by users trading music and movies.
The advantages that P2P offers have largely been overshadowed by controversy. The recording and motion picture industries, the US Congress, and some colleges and universities tend to use P2P as a synonym for unauthorized transfers of files, and some have sought to ban the practice altogether.
Rather than looking for ways to put P2P to use in the service of teaching or research, colleges and universities instead find themselves wrangling with resource usage and legal issues. Students are frequent targets of copyright-infringement legal actions, and legislation on higher education sometimes includes requirements that colleges and universities step up efforts to enforce copyright.
P2P technology has the potential to play an important, positive role in the fulfillment of institutional missions of teaching, research, and the dissemination of knowledge.
For the moment, however, P2P has become a highly visible and rancorous front in the battle over copyright and sustainable business models in the age of digital reproduction and electronic distribution.
P2P is one of a range of technologies that have upset the traditional balance of control over the creation, reproduction, dissemination, and consumption of knowledge and information. New expectations and relationships must develop to support intellectual property (IP) considerations while expanding access to digital content and taking advantage of new technological capabilities.
P2P has the potential to bring more information and resources to more people and applications than otherwise would be possible.
In some fields, P2P already facilitates an efficient, easy exchange of files between researchers around the world without relying on a single location to meet all of the demand.
As rising numbers of academics in a widening array of disciplines use technology in their scholarship, a higher premium is placed on the ability to access the disparate data that will drive research and teaching in the years to come, and P2P can be an important tool in this effort. The conflict over copyright, however, continues to color policy discussions about its use on campus.
P2P to Enable Remote Heart Monitoring
The possibility of remote monitoring for chronically ill patients will soon become a reality. Now, researchers in South Africa and Australia have devised a decentralized system to avoid medical data overload. They describe the P2P system in a forthcoming issue of the International Journal of Computer Applications in Technology (IJCAT).
People with a range of chronic illnesses, including diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart problems can benefit from advances in monitoring technology. Such devices could send data on a person's symptoms directly to a centralized computer server at their health center. This would allow healthcare workers to take appropriate action, whether in an emergency or simply to boost or reduce medication in response to changes in the patient's symptoms.
However, as tele-monitoring is set to become widespread, there will inevitably be an issue of data overload with which a centralized computer will not be able to cope. Computer scientists Hanh Le, Nina Schiff, and Johan du Plessis at the University of Cape Town, working with Doan Hoang at the University of Technology, Sydney, suggest a decentralized approach.
Computer users are familiar with the concept of P2P networks in which individual users share the workload across equivalent personal computers on a network.
This avoids overloading any single server or swamping bandwidth on individual connections. The P2P approach is commonly employed by software companies and others to distribute large digital files, such as operating system updates, and high-definition movies.
A P2P network overlays a network on the individual peers, known as nodes, without a central control point and uses their idle processing cycles, storage, and bandwidth via the Internet.
Le and colleagues have developed an application to demonstrate proof of principle of how a P2P network could incorporate patient sensors including thermometers, blood-pressure units, and electrocardiograms (ECG). It is the latter on which the team has focused to build a P2P heart-monitoring network.
The system builds on the team's concept of a physically-aware reference model (PARM). Their PARM acts as a small but scalable model of the kind of network overlay that could be built on the Internet. Tests have already demonstrated that a continual and unintrusive heart monitoring application could be developed into a working e-health system quickly and simply at low cost using P2P.
Ultramercial Offers Newspapers Proven Business Model
Two new revenue streams desperately needed by the flailing newspaper industry were unveiled this week by Ultramercial as part of its Newspaper 2.0 Business Model initiative. The patented model, six years in the making, introduces two streams of revenue that allow newspapers to break away from the "free" model without alienating readers, by giving consumers a choice about how to pay for their content.
Six years of experience have proven that consumers are glad to pay for what they consume, while advertisers get better return on their advertising dollars and publishers receive more revenue for their content. While online readers have come to expect a rich news experience without opening their wallets, publishers have been trapped into a single revenue stream that doesn't replace lost subscriptions and ad dollars from print.
Ultramercial's patented ad format eases the transition from free to fee with their socially-engineered value exchange that allows consumers to access premium content by choosing to either pay for a subscription - or - engage with a 35-second full-screen interactive ad in exchange for a "free" day pass that is underwritten by the advertiser.
The full-screen interactive ad allows infrequent consumers to experience the newspaper's site without sacrificing revenue to the newspaper; the subscription option allows frequent consumers to access their favorite sites free from interruption.
"We brought this bridge between free and fee to Salon.com six years ago, at the height of the Dot Bomb," said Janelle Amrhein, Ultramercial's Director of Sales. "Pundits said then that no one would pay for content, yet Salon doubled its paid subscription base, while at the same time increasing its advertising revenue. One of the big upsides of our model is that it creates an ongoing trial-and-usage program that has proven itself able to convert readers from 'free' to paid."
In the transition from print to online, multiple revenue streams from subscriptions, newsstand sales, display advertising, classified ads, and subscription lists sales have been replaced by a single stream: small space ads. Not only is this limiting, it is also risky, as advertisers can measure the effectiveness of these ads, and the findings are not friendly. The average click-through rate for in-page ads has fallen to 0.10%. That's one click per 1,000 ads displayed. This has sent CPMs falling because these ads are just not effective. Advertisers in the Ultramercial model experience click-through-rates 40 times higher, and this is reflected in the CPM.
"If newspapers do decide to charge for their content, how do they keep the eyeballs that the free model attracted?" asked John Osborn, Ultramercial's new Director of Business Development. "Give them the option to 'pay with their attention' instead of paying with their credit card. This keeps the content 'free' to the reader, and it provides big benefits to the advertiser, such as a guaranteed engagement, a full-screen canvas, total-time-spent metrics, and a historic click-through rate above 4.0%."
ISPs Best Positioned to Sell Content to Broadband Users
According to the latest research from Strategy Analytics, French broadband users show a high preference for buying online content directly from their telecom service provider.
The report, Digital Media Survey: France Country Profile, asked broadband users in France from which sites they would prefer to buy downloaded music, video, and games. The results revealed that telecom operators were preferred ahead of digital media retail giants such as Apple iTunes and Amazon in both the music category and the games category.
"While unauthorized P2P downloading is still a widespread phenomenon in France, about a quarter of French broadband users paid to download some form of online content in the last year," said Jia Wu, Analyst at Strategy Analytics' Digital Consumer Practice and author of the report.
"Online retailers are now jostling for position in the emerging market for downloadable content in France".
"Operating in the most fiercely competitive broadband market in the world has forced French broadband service providers to become more innovative than their peers in other markets, and to introduce digital media services earlier than other telecom operators," commented Martin Olausson, Director of Digital Media Research at Strategy Analytics.
"Our survey results show that this has resulted in French telecom operators becoming well established in consumers' minds as preferred retailers of downloadable content."
The survey polled 500 broadband users in France. The questions on retail brand preference were addressed to users who expressed interest in and willingness to pay for online digital music, video, and games.
File Sharing the New Normal for Online Canadians
Excerpted from Exchange Morning Post Report
While music industry executives huddled to come up with digital media strategies during this week's Canadian Music Week conference, a recent survey by Angus Reid Strategies indicated that they may face significant headwinds in public opinion.
From March 6th to 9th, Angus Reid Strategies conducted an online survey among 1,395 randomly selected Canadian adults. The margin of error - which measures sampling variability - was +/- 2.6%.
The results have been statistically weighted by age, gender, and region according to Statistics Canada's Canadian Internet Use Survey to ensure a sample representative of the entire adult population of Canadian Internet users. Discrepancies in or between totals are due to rounding.
A majority of Canadian Internet users see no major problems with P2P file sharing. Nearly half of respondents (45%) say those who use P2P file-sharing services to download music and movies are "just regular Internet users doing what people should be able to do on the Internet."
In contrast, only 3% agree with what has often been the music industry's position that file sharers "are criminals who should be punished by law."
The survey shows that P2P file sharing is prevalent in Canada. Among Canadian Internet users, 23% say they have downloaded free digital music files from P2P file sharing sites in the past 30 days, while just 12% have paid a fee to download digital music files from an online music store such as iTunes.
A significant proportion of online Canadians have not bought into the idea of paying for online music. Proponents of file sharing have long held that the music industry is doing itself a disservice by attacking its own fan base, noting that these consumers are often the most voracious music enthusiasts.
This survey supports that notion, as those who downloaded an MP3 file from a free file-sharing service are significantly more likely to say they will buy a CD in the next month (41% vs. 34% for non-file sharers), and are more likely to have gone to a concert in the past year (65% vs. 52% for non-file sharers).
Addendum to DCINFO March 9th Issue
Jimmy Schaeffler, Chairman and Chief Service Officer of The Carmel Group, who moderated the first-ever DCIA-backed panel, P2P - What Business Models Are Making Money in This Uncharted Territory, at CeBIT earlier this month, has announced that the presentation given by Harris Interactive's Dr. Thomas Rodenhausen, "How Consumers Feel About P2P Today," can now be offered free-upon-request to DCINFO readers.
Please e-mail HARRIS@dcia.info for a copy of this valuable study.
Jimmy also added the following summary of remarks from panelist Jesse Patel, Director of Business Development, Miro.
"P2P needs to mesh better with the technologies used for traditional web publishing, so that it can be adopted more easily by mainstream consumers and publishers."
"Compensation for copyright holders is an important issue that needs to be solved, but the solution will have to look more like P2P with serious flexibility for end-users than it does like the old model, inherited from the brick-and-mortar world, of paying a lot for every piece of media you have the chance to consume, regardless of whether you actually watch it or enjoy it."
The archival version of our CeBIT panel coverage will be amended to include Jesse's comments.
There was also a CeBIT cloud computing panel featuring industry experts and innovators coming together to discuss the nature, value, risks, and future of cloud computing. The panel included Martin Buhr, Amazon Web Services; Dion Hinchcliffe, Hinchcliffe & Co.; Mark Masterson, CSC; and Manford Schwendinger, Lovely Systems AG.
Some of the questions addressed were: who are the players in the space, where are the industry "big boys" when it comes to cloud computing, under what circumstances does cloud computing make sense, what are some of the different types of cloud computing, what are the risks to cloud computing, what does cloud computing mean for IT Departments, and what concerns do large enterprises express about cloud computing?
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Coming Events of Interest
P2P MARKET CONFERENCE - March 17th in New York, NY. Strategies to fulfill the multi-billion dollar revenue potential of the P2P and social network channel for the distribution of entertainment content. Case studies of sponsorships, cross-promotion, interactive advertising, and exciting new hybrid business models.
Media Summit New York - March 18th-19th in New York, NY. Sponsored by McGraw-Hill and Digital Hollywood, the 2009 MSNY is the premier international conference on media, broadband, advertising, television, cable & satellite, mobile, publishing, radio, magazines, news & print media, and marketing.
Future of Television West - March 24th-25th in Los Angeles, CA. A cutting-edge community of content creators, technology innovators, advertising representatives, and distributors forge relationships and share ideas about the future of television. The event is interactive.
Les Rencontres - April 15th-16th in Montreal, Canada. The fourteenth annual meeting of the music industry sponsored by ADISQ in Quebec for professionals from the world of recorded music. The event gives industry players the opportunity to discuss defining issues including new media, regulatory framework, and new business models.
LA Games Conference - April 28th-29th in Los Angeles, CA. Focused on business, finance and creative developments in the games industry, including mobile, online and console markets and the increasing intersection of Madison Avenue and Hollywood with the industry.
P2P MEDIA SUMMIT LA - May 4th in Santa Monica, CA. The fourth annual P2PMSLA, the DCIA's flagship event, featuring keynotes from industry-leading P2P and social network operators; tracks on policy, technology and marketing; panel discussions covering content distribution and solutions development; valuable workshops; networking opportunities; and more.
Digital Hollywood Spring - May 5th-7th in Santa Monica, CA. With many new sessions and feature events, DHS has become the premiere digital entertainment conference and exposition. DCIA Member companies will exhibit and speak on a number of panels.
Streaming Media East - May 12th-13th in New York, NY. The number-one place to see, learn, and discuss what is taking place with all forms of online video business models and technology. Content owners, viral video creators, online marketers, enterprise corporations, broadcast professionals, ad agencies, and educators.
World Copyright Summit - June 9th-10th in Washington, DC. The international forum that brings together all those directly involved in creative industries to openly debate the future of copyright and the distribution of creative works in the digital era. WCS is organized by CISAC, the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers.
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