According to ProjectOpus, UMG is urging a tougher stance on music used in viral videos. Someone must've sent them one to many links to an Elaine-from-Sienfeld-esque dancing video featuring an RIAA member artist's music as the soundtrack.

"Some YouTube users have reportedly received cease and desist letters from the RIAA, demanding that the posted video be taken down. YouTube, however, is confident in its copyright policy because it warns people about violation, and pulls material upon request of the copyright holder."

This has been itching under the surface for a very long time. Back in February, Weblogs, Inc. founder Jason Calacanis generated quite a stir with a blog entry flatly titled, "Youtube Is Not A Real Business". In a classic moment of say-what-everyone-in-the-room-is-thinking, Calacanis wrote, "Napster and Kazaa had a ton of traffic too--it just wasn't web-based. If you could do an Alexa graph of Kazaa, BitTorrent, Usenet, and the old Napster they would be number one through four on Alexa"

ProjectOpus goes on to explain what may be the impetus for UMG's fresh take, "Until lately, videos were always seen as a promotional tool for the song, and therefore the industry didn't see sharing of videos as any sort of threat. The viral aspect of videos was encouraged to help promote the sales of the songs themselves. Recently, though, the videos have found value, mostly proven with Apple selling digital music videos at $1.99 as part of the larger move which also includes TV shows."

Could we see Youtube as the next lawsuit-target-practice victim?

According to Mitch Bainwol, who sits atop the RIAA as its CEO, illegal file-sharing via the Internet has been "contained".

"The problem has not been eliminated," says Bainwol. "But we believe digital downloads have emerged into a growing, thriving business, and file-trading is flat."

According to USA Today, Bainwol acknowledges that legal digital downloads are making up for long-slumping CD sales, and cites this evidence along with surveys of 12,000 households to back up his statement on containment.

Why would Bainwol, stalwart anti-P2P man that he is, come out in the press selling the story of how the RIAA has "contained" the battle against P2P services? Surely the news that P2P has been "contained" must be a relief to the RIAA and all those pesky lawsuits will be over post-haste, right?

Simply not so, according to Eric Garland, CEO of Internet measurement firm Big Champagne, who says more people than ever are using file-sharing networks. "Nearly 10 million people are on-line, swapping media, at any given time,". That May figure is up from 8.7 million people in 2005, he says.

Bainwol's motivation may come from slipping public perception of the RIAA lawsuits. Mitch's predecessor, Hillary Rosen, recently stated the suits had outlived their useful lifespan. Calling P2P "contained" in the press would give the RIAA a perfect exit strategy. Using this logic, the RIAA can gracefully point to a time-line that looks roughly like this...

1. We sued some people
2. P2P growth flattened
3. File-sharing was contained
4. We diverted our efforts to stopping those nasty thieves at XM

All before the PR pressure of suing those who are young, old, dead or without a computer gains any real traction with average Americans.

CEO Garland of Big Champagne points out that the RIAA has made some inroads. "They have removed the profiteers from on-line piracy," he says. "They've also embarked on a very successful education campaign. Kids now know about copyright, and the consequences."

What Garland, Bainwol and USA Today forget to tell you is, the RIAA has also succeeded in stifling innovation. Save for the few indie music distributors on-line (Magnatune, eMusic, and the like who offer non-RIAA music only), the digital music market looks like a sea of clones. Subscription services with sub-par quality, similar prices, terms and selection, or iTunes with it's proprietary iPod, fixed pricing structure and non-transferability.

They've managed to redefine fair-use, and continue to tweak the definition. They are the only show in town, and that's just the way they like it. The RIAA's cartel status allows its member companies to bully the rest of the industry, refusing to license music for other distribution models, price fixing, and allegations of cheating artists on royalties from digital downloads are just a few of the strong-arm tactics they continue to pursue.

If the RIAA won, this is all they won. A bland and lifeless digital music market with few real players, where a veritable sea of possibilities once lie open to discovery.

I don't imagine that anyone thought EMI's deal with Qtrax would allow non-DRM files of EMI artists to run free on the Internet but, is a completely new and proprietary format the way to win over users?

According to the Washington Post, when launched, the service will not only be ad-supported but, the free songs will be in a proprietary ".mpq" format that can only be played a limited number of times and only on the computer to which they were downloaded.

Add to that the fact that tracks player will force "click-to-buy" advertising on listeners and you have the makings of a truly subpar offering. This is starting to look less like P2P and more like a listening post in a brick and mortar record store. Actually, with the listening post, you aren't subjected to anywhere near the captive audience style marketing that is promised from Qtrax and EMI.

A flat fee monthly service will be offered by Qtrax, and the files provided under that agreement will be in the Windows Media format. No word on bitrate, but if Qtrax's Windows Media based competitors are any clue, the subscription purchased tracks will be of sub-par quality. Tracks purchased leased through the service will no longer play if your subscription lapses.

Financial terms of the EMI deal were not disclosed, but EMI does get a share of advertising revenue generated by Qtrax.

"Advertisers are willing to pay a lot of money to be associated with music, and the music industry is willing to cooperate as long as the value is preserved and the artists get paid," Parks said.

[via The Washington Post]

Several South Korean P2P providers, in response to music industry requests to block illegal music sharing have completely disabled the ability to download Mp3s through their services.

``We held an urgent meeting last week, and eight of 11 member companies agreed to block MP3 files until we find ways to charge users,'' said Jun Hyun-sung, chairman of the association of P2P service providers.

P2P services like Soribada and Purna have been widely used for file sharing, where thousands of users can give and take their music and movie data. The music companies say such file sharing on the Internet has severely damaged the industry.

According to the Korean Association of Phonogram Producers (KAPP), the offline sales of music albums plummeted from over 400 billion won in 2000 to 120 billion won in 2005, as most young people tend to listen to music on digital players rather than carrying bulky CD or tape players.

Soribada, the first and most popular P2P music sharing service in South Korea, said last month it postponed the launch of its new subscription service indefinitely, as it has failed to make a deal with copyright holders on the price of the songs.

[via The Korea Times]

Former head of the RIAA, Hillary Rosen says she's against the continued litigation her former employer continues to pursue.

"I don't honestly know what I would have done about the individual lawsuits had I stayed. I certainly participated in multiple planning and debate sessions about them. There were good arguments on both sides ... But for the record, I do share a concern that the lawsuits have outlived most of their usefulness and that the record companies need to work harder to implement a strategy that legitimizes more p2p sites and expands the download and subscription pool by working harder with the tech community to get devices and music services to work better together"

Rosen went on to say, "Speaking of DRM, it is time to rethink that strategy as well." but failed to give any details on how her version of a DRM or non-DRM universe would look and act.

Rosen is on point when she says that the lawsuits have outlived their useful lifespan. New suits tend to bring anti-RIAA press to a boil for a few days, especially when the named defendant is young, old, dead or without a computer. The RIAA are crafting a villainous persona in the press, and where the original public spin on the lawsuits pointed in favor of the RIAA a very serious shift has occurred towards the side of the consumer. When Hillary Rosen tells you to go work with the technology in order to grow your business rather than suing what remains of it out of existence, we can only hope the current management over at the RIAA takes heed of the warning offered by a former colleague.

[via The Huffington Post]

The Beeb has a terribly interesting back-and-forth between two very powerful people who are fighting to control (or remove control from) your digital future.

John Perry Barlow, former lyricist for the Grateful Dead and founder of the user rights watchdog Electronic Frontier Foundation squares off with Dan Glickman, former Congressman turned U.S. Secretary of Agriculture turned MPAA president.

These are men who are working to lead us into the next stage, struggling to define the framework within which we will exist as a digital content consuming society. Battling for a future riddled with, or removed from, digital rights management, litigation and the pitfalls of monopoly control.

"These are aging industries run by aging men, and they're up against 17-year-olds who have turned themselves into electronic Hezbollah because they resent the content industry for its proprietary practices. And I don't have a question about who's going to win that one eventually." says Barlow of the MPAA.

I'm afraid I can't share Barlow's optimism. While the EFF and the "electronic Hezbollah" have won several notable victories along the way, the fight is far from over and it seems that where it counts most, in the halls of Congress, the MPAA and RIAA are winning on a regular basis.

With all due respect to John Perry Barlow, the biggest risk the EFF faces, as it becomes an established and vital part of the discourse surrounding personal rights in the digital age, is to be forced to the fringes by outrageous, headline grabbing language like the above. A phrase like "Electronic Hezbollah" creates an image for Americans, an image of impudent fringe groups unable to join a productive discourse and pushed to radical, sometimes violent, means to convey their message.

We can do so much better. We are not the Electronic Hezbollah, Mr. Barlow. We are pioneers, philosophers and the generation that will define the line between corporate interests and consumer rights for a very long time to come. Much more akin to the founding fathers of the land we love than the radical terrorists of Hezbollah.

I understand fully the need to use strong language to make points, attract attention and get the message out. I do sincerely hope though, that our dear John pays attention to the fine line between language that gets noticed, and language that removes you from the debate.

EMI said it would make music from its catalog available on Qtrax, which bills itself as the world's first ad-supported, legitimate P2P service.

A quick look at Qtrax reveals vaporware, with a pretty website that offers few details and no P2P client for download. The companies have said the two-tiered business model is intended to attract a broad base of consumers to try out the service, and then graduate those consumers to purchase music permanently or subscribe.

"We think that any ad-supported model should be offered in a way that maintains, or even enhances the value of music, and we believe Qtrax does that by offering a good consumer experience and significant up-selling opportunities," said EMI CEO David Munns. "Our collaboration with Qtrax will give us great consumer insight and help us gauge the boundaries between sampling and purchasing music. Ultimately, the feedback we get from Qtrax will help EMI be more responsive to consumer demand."

So far no details are available on Qtrax prices for upsell opportunities or subscriptions. No financial details of the deal between EMI and Qtrax have been released thus far.

[via Tech World News]

I recently blogged about an article by one of my favorite Tech pundits, Om Malik, in which he wrote about the up and coming personal P2P market. These services allow you (or even your mom) to send large files to many people without bringing your ISP's mail server, and the patience of your friends and relatives, to their respective knees.

Om is back with another look, this time on his own blog, and he's included two newcomers to the growing list of companies who want to help you send large files back and forth.

Zapr (or, until recently, Zingee) is a somewhat low tech, windows only system that stores your file and emails your friends with a link to download. It's a point and click version of uploading your file to your own webserver and emailing your friends the URL. Not very P2Pish, but it gets the job done (if you use windows)

Far more interesting to the P2P set is PeerFactor. Based in France, PeerFactor has a two way approach to delivering large files. If only a few are downloading the same file, PeerFactor uses the same method people have used for years, HTTP. However, when many people download one file, PeerFactor goes into overdrive, requiring the download of a small P2P client and leveraging the bandwidth available to the peers to boost the download speeds for all involved. PeerFactor intends to market to ISPs directly, offering an in-house and brand-able solution to large files for end users.

The fact that someone is looking to market this to ISPs directly says volumes. PP2P, or Personal P2P is hot and getting hotter. It's one of those simple but revolutionary ideas that you wonder why no one thought of sooner.

[via GigaOm]

Hollywood faces big challenges from the digital age, and so far it's been unwilling to meet them head on. Instead, the studios have preferred a strategy that has them working a very 20th century business model in a 21st century world.

What, if anything, will save Hollywood from the P2P menace? iTunes and the video iPod, according to a few. Ask others and you'll hear Bittorrent (if those others you ask are Warner Bros. executives). Still others are convinced that Hollywood won't win out unless it offers choice, ownership and the ability to easily play downloaded movies on your home TV.

For sure, what has been done so far doesn't work. Prosecutions and P2P awareness advertising have been less than successful, it's time for new strategies.

Hollywood seems to be awakening to the challenges of a digital world. Warner Bros' recent deal with Bittorrent, if taken at face value, is a strong sign that Hollywood is looking to make a change. The BBC has a feature article today on what Hollywood is doing, and it contains a few surprises.

Not the least of the surprises is the vitriol of Richard Dreyfuss, who says, "the guys who started this business all cheated somebody to get there, and now they're being cheated, perhaps, by all these crazy, geeky people all over the Internet.", he continued, "I must say, my anguish level is not great."

For now, expect heavily DRMed digital releases as the norm. You may be able to download movies legally, but you still face an uphill battle to use them the way you wish.

[via BBC]

A settlement has been announced between the Federal Trade Commission and a scam artist who'd been duping P2P users by inducing illegal downloads of copyrighted material with guarantees of legal immunity.

The scammer, Cashier Myricks, who had operated "mp3downloadcity.com" agreed not to misrepresent his service and to refund $15,000 to over 600 customers who signed up before an injuction was granted in September of last year.

According to the complaint, Cashier Myricks charged $24.95 for a membership, which actually got the customer a tutorial on the use of free p2p file-sharing software and claimed that downloads of video and audio files, including movies and songs, were 100% legal.

A few of the outrageous claims made by "mp3downloadcity.com" during the period in question:

• AND BEST OF ALL PEOPLE ARE NOT GETTING SUED FOR USING OUR SOFTWARE. YES! IT IS 100% LEGAL;
• Why Are We The #1 Free MP3 Music Download Site?
• Download and Watch DVDs and Movies Still in Theaters; and
• Rest assured that File-Sharing is 100% legal.
• 250% Faster Than Any Other Download Site!

As part of the settlement, Myricks must now disclose the civil and criminal liability of downloading copyrighted material without permission.

[via Slyck]

Have you ever had a large file you wanted to distribute to many people at once? For most of us, it's not the sort of problem you face every day but, on the odd occasion you find yourself with a large file or set of files to distribute, Bittorrent can be the answer to your ills.

The issue with distributing content via Bittorrent can be the confusion that lies in how, exactly, to create your own torrent. Many p2p tools have a "shared folder" concept, making it as easy as moving a file into the folder in order to share it with the network. Bittorrent, for many reasons, operates in a different manner. Confusing terms like "tracker", and ".torrent", can make this a real hassle for the uninitiated.

This great how-to on creating a torrent using linux helps clear up some confusion. Even for the windows or Mac user, aside from the obvious difference in tools, the concepts reamin the same.

What are you waiting for? Get torrenting!

[via Newsforge]

At times it seems as though the labels plan to settle with everyone in the western hemisphere. The IFPI has announced 3500 new lawsuits against Germans, as a result of sting operations on the eDonkey 2000 network, making this the largest such single barrage of lawsuits from the European worldwide equivalent to the RIAA.

The IFPI claims that in Germany, "legal physical sales of music have fallen by a third in five years, while more than 400 million music files were downloaded illegally in 2005 alone." At the same time, many labels are reporting a rise in earnings, as consumers rebuy their music collections as digital files rather than physical discs.

John Kennedy, IFPI chairman and CEO said: "No one should be surprised that we are stepping up our campaign in this way.  The music industry has run numerous education campaigns aimed at audiences from parents to schools and Internet users. Most people clearly know that file-sharing without permission is illegal - unfortunately it takes legal actions such as this make a real impact on behavior. Today, there is every reason for music lovers to download legitimately. There is a huge choice of legal services available to consumers. There is really no excuse for stealing music on-line."

More after the jump...

Last week, 30 UCSC students participated in a face to face peer to peer (f2fp2p) session, trading discs, artwork and more. Flyers were distributed, "seeding" the date and idea of sharing between peers. Audio spots and flyer variations were created and the event info circulated on the social networking sites, and at 5:17 on 5/17, participants exchanged unlabeled mix cds, mp3 DVDs and even pieces of art.

It all goes to show, that when you take away the tools, protocols and infrastructure that we normally think of as p2p, you're still left with the most important aspect of p2p culture, the people.

More pictures of the event in a flickr stream.

[via FreeCulture]

P2Profitability? We'll find out soon enough. Pando, a Bittorrent based approach to moving large files between parties, has closed a $7 million dollar second round investment.

"Pando's unprecedented ease of use and direct desktop-to-desktop functionality is perfect for people who don't have the time or inclination to maintain a social network site. Pando lets you simply send your personal media, hassle-free," said Robert Levitan, Pando Networks co-founder and CEO. Levitan also co-founded media site iVillage, which was sold recently to NBC/Universal.

Since its closed-beta launch five months ago, Pando has become a viral success story with more than a half-million people having installed the software. To date, Pando has delivered more than a petabyte, or 1 billion megabytes, of data.

We mentioned Pando recently, after they caught the attention of CNN's Om Malik.

This definitely qualifies as quirky. Experts at SophosLabs, have discovered a Trojan horse that seeks out and wipes movies and MP3 music tracks that it believed infected computers are illegally distributing via file-sharing networks.

The Troj/Erazer-A Trojan horse scours folders used for peer-to-peer file-sharing peer-to-peer for AVI, MP3, MPEG, WMV, GIF, ZIP and other files. If files are found by the Trojan it wipes them, and plants a copy of itself in the folder using tempting names such as game.exe, goporn.exe, nero7.exe and officexpcrack.exe.

"The Erazer Trojan is a vigilante worthy of a Charles Bronson movie, taking the law into its own hands. However, it's perfectly possible for the Trojan to aim poorly and wipe out innocent files too," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos. "The Erazer Trojan targets internet users it believes are involved in piracy, but fails to discriminate between the true criminals and those who may have MP3 music files or home movies that they have created themselves. Malware is not the way to fight internet piracy."

True weirdness. I've seen this story a few places today and I just have to wonder who built it? From the list of file extensions that Sophos has released, the trojan seems to have a serious bent for destroying media files. Is this a case of independent vigilante justice or could this be the latest anti-piracy scheme from the cartel?

To be fair, no one is accusing the RIAA, MPAA or any other official body of anything. I, however, do imagine that reading this in any press today gave a few record company execs a little bounce in their step.

via Techworld