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The policy of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) to sue users caught downloading music illegally has done nothing to slow the trade of copyrighted music on peer-to-peer networks, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

Here is a short excerpt from the report:

The music industry initially responded to P2P file sharing as they have always responded to disruptive innovations: they loosed the lawyers on the innovators, in hopes of smothering the technology in its infancy. Beginning with the December 1999 lawsuit against Napster, the recording industry sued major P2P technology companies one after the other: Scour, Aimster, AudioGalaxy, Morpheus, Grokster, Kazaa, and iMesh.5 This despite the fact that these same technologies were also being used for non-infringing purposes, including sharing of authorized songs, live concert recordings, public domain works, movie trailers, and video games.

The legal attacks on P2P technologies were initially successful in the courts.6 But as it was winning the legal battles, the recording industry was losing the war. After Napster was shut down, new networks quickly appeared. Napster was replaced by Aimster and AudioGalaxy, which were then in turn supplanted by Morpheus and Kazaa, which were in turn eclipsed by eDonkey and Bit Torrent. The number of file sharers, as well as the number of P2P software applications, just kept growing, despite the recording industry’s early courtroom victories. More recently, music fans have been turning to new so-called “darknet” solutions, such as swapping iPods, burning CD-Rs, and modifying Apple’s iTunes software to permit direct downloading.

“The lawsuit campaign has enriched only lawyers, rather than compensating artists for file sharing,” the EFF declared in a 25-page report (PDF). “One thing has become clear: suing music fans is no answer to the peer-to-peer dilemma.”

The EFF claims that traffic on peer-to-peer file-sharing services has ballooned since the RIAA began suing individual users, from 3.3 million monthly users in August 2003 to more than 8.8 million by June 2005.

The recording industry trade group is also singling out a small group of copyright violators and saddling them with unnecessarily steep financial penalties, the EFF lamented.

“There is no question that the RIAA’s lawsuit campaign is unfairly singling out a few people for a disproportionate amount of punishment,” reads the report.
“Tens of millions of Americans continue to use peer-to-peer file sharing software and other new technologies to share music, yet the RIAA has randomly singled out only a few for retribution through lawsuits.”

Instead of pursuing action against individual users, the EFF recommended that the RIAA and its members should adopt policies to bring customers back to purchasing music.

David Ingram> or perhaps seek out and adopt new business models which are aligned to the new generation of consumers’ behaviors

Lowering music prices and abandoning digital rights management technology would provide a far better incentive for users to purchase legitimate copies of music, the group suggested.

“If the recording industry is serious about luring music fans away from peer-to-peer networks and other methods of sharing, it should focus on dangling a tastier carrot, rather than swatting more individuals with the lawsuit stick, ” said the report.

via: VNU net

YouTube has secured an agreement with the UK societies that collect royalties for 50,000 composers, songwriters and publishers to legitimise the use of recorded music on Google’s popular video-sharing website.

The agreement to license 10m pieces of music to YouTube – in return for a flat fee which has not been disclosed – is the first of its kind, said Steve Porter, chief executive of the MCPS-PRS Alliance.

“This is the first fully formed agreement,” he said, although some US collecting societies had reached interim arrangements with YouTube.

The agreement marks another milestone in YouTube’s attempts to win over owners of media content, who have expressed alarm at the amount of material available on the site that is either pirated or that generates no revenue for the companies that created it.

YouTube is to pay a blanket fee to the MCPS-PRS Alliance, exactly as many radio and television broadcasters do, for music to be used in its partners’ professional sites and in amateurs’ videos. The alliance will decide about how to distribute the revenues to its members based on an estimate of what music has been played on the site.

Andrew Shaw, the alliance’s managing director for broadcast and online, said it would work with YouTube to implement technology to improve the monitoring of which pieces of music are played. While it was impossible to monitor the millions of videos available on the site, they would concentrate on the top 5 or 10 per cent that attract the highest audience, he said.

“The long-tail is not worth calculating,” he added.

Mr Porter said the high rates of internet access and online video usage in the UK were among the reasons that YouTube had struck the deal with MCPS-PRS first, but forecast that it could become a model for ag­reements in other territories. Composers and performers have been eager to gain revenues from new services such as YouTube, however small, to help compensate them for the income they have lost from declining CD sales.

Global Findings Show Decline of TV as Primary Media Device

A new IBM online consumer study, a component of the upcoming report “The end of advertising as we know it” planned for the fall, shows that among consumer respondents, 19 percent stated spending six hours or more per day on personal Internet usage, versus nine percent of respondents who reported the same levels of TV viewing. 66 percent reported viewing between one to four hours of TV per day, versus 60 percent who reported the same levels of personal Internet usage.

When it comes to mobile and Internet entertainment, consumers are seeking consolidated, trustworthy content, recognition and community. Despite natural lags among marketers, advertising revenues will follow consumers’ habits, concludes the report.

To effectively respond to this power shift, the study sees:

* Advertising agencies going beyond traditional creative roles to become brokers of consumer insights
* Cable companies evolving to home media portals
* roadcasters and publishers racing toward new media formats
* Marketers forced to experiment and make advertising more compelling

Bill Battino, Communications Sector managing partner, IBM Global Business Services, says “Consumers are demonstrating their desire for both wired and wireless access to content… an average of 81 percent of consumers surveyed globally indicated they’ve watched, or want to watch, PC video, and an average of 42 percent indicated they’ve watched, or want to watch, mobile video…”

The steady growth of consumer adoption of digital music, video, and other entertainment services — though markets are still small by comparison to traditional media — show households are no longer one size fits all:

* 23 percent of respondents reported using a portable music service
* 7 percent reported having a video content subscription for their mobile phones
* 11 percent reported a PC-based music service
* 18 percent reported an online newspaper subscription

Saul Berman, IBM Media & Entertainment Strategy and Change practice leader, said, “The Internet is becoming consumers’ primary entertainment source. The TV is increasingly taking a back seat to the cell phone and the personal computer among consumers age 18 to 34. Just as mobile communications have replaced traditional land-lines, cable and satellite TV subscriptions risk a similar fate of being replaced as the primary source of content access.”

In the largest digital video recorder market, says the report, 24 percent of U.S. respondents reported owning a DVR in their home and watching at least 50 percent of television programming on replay. 33 percent in the U.S. reported watching more television content than before the DVR.

Additional survey highlights say that:

* More than twice as many U.K. consumers surveyed use video on demand services than own a DVR
* Less than a third of U.K. consumers have changed their overall TV consumption as a result of DVR ownership
* In Australia, despite owning a DVR, most respondents prefer live television or replay less than 25 percent of their programming

Consumers are increasingly contributing to online video or social networking sites:

* 9 percent of German and 7 percent of U.S. respondents claim to have contributed to a user-generated content site
* 26 percent of U.S. respondents reported contributing to a social networking site
* While the numbers were slightly less from other countries like the
* 20 percent from the UK
* 9 percent in Japan
* Australia topped all countries surveyed with 36 percent contributing to social networking sites and nine percent contributing to video content sites.
* An average of 58 percent worldwide, who contributed content, did so for recognition and community, not monetary gain

In the UK, nearly a third of users who watch mobile TV reduced their standard TV set viewing patterns as a result of new mobile device services:

* 18 percent said they reduced “normal” television by a little and another
* eight percent reduced “normal” television by a lot
* four percent substituted television on their regular TV with their new device altogether
* 23 percent of respondents in Germany who had watched mobile video prefer to view user generated content, and 21 percent prefer video trailers or promotions

Read the complete release here, or visit IBM here for the complete study download opportunity.

via MediaPost, by Jack Loechner, Tuesday, Aug 28, 2007

Its rumoured that MySpace is about to start letting users place adverts on their pages, opening the door for users to monetize their profiles. It might be expected that MySpace will want a share in the revenue that users earn.

Famster, best known for providing social networking for families, has announced it is launching a white labeling service today, letting companies build their own networks on the Famster code.

The new service will allow companies to launch their own social networks with integration of their brands and logos in a controlled manner. Each company’s network will be hosted and serviced by Famster, reducing the headaches of designing a service of your own from the ground up. In short, Famster is looking to take on Ning. The platform’s features include photo and video sharing, virtual scrapbooking and blogging.

from Mashable! by Sean P. Aune

See my other posts on white label social networks here , here, here, and here.

The RIAA’s (Recording Industry Association of America) argument that merely ‘making files available‘ is in and of itself a copyright infringement, argued in January in Elektra v. Barker (awaiting decision), is raging again, this time in a White Plains, New York, court in Warner v. Cassin. Ms.

Cassin moved to dismiss the complaint; the RIAA countered by arguing that ‘making available’ on a p2p file sharing network is a violation of the distribution right in 17 USC 106(3). Ms. Cassin responded, pointing out the clear language of the statute, questioning the validity of the RIAA’s authorities, and arguing that the Court’s acceptance of the RIAA’s theory would seriously impact the Internet. The case is scheduled for a conference on September 14th, at 10 AM (PDF), at the federal courthouse, 300 Quarropas Street, White Plains, New York, in the courtroom of Judge Stephen C. Robinson. The conference is open to the public.”

Another case built on this arguement was found in favor of the record company, see here which may go towards setting a precedent for future cases.

We should note that this action by RIAA is directed at end users of file sharing websites and services, not the operators of those websites and services.

Article from Slashdot here

So, we’ve all seen the various stories over the last year or so about ISPs blocking P2P and other bandwidth intensive services. I’ve been reading yet another one this morning and and it just occured to me: this is a parody of the music industry’s biggest mistake - trying to block the adoption and distribution of MP3 with law suits and DRM.

I’ve written previously about this here and here and here.

You can’t stop an advancing tide, forget it. If you try to prevent the natural progress you’ll lose, instead consumers will go elsewhere (either to your more open mined innovative competitors, or to new disruptive competitors who will enter the space).

The best option is to embrace the change AND work out how your business can make money from it. You either see it (and treat it) as a threat, or you see it (and treat it) as an opportunity. Its widely accepted that DRM is dying and that music companies must embrace new revenue models, same goes for ISPs and P2P.

A friend just alerted me to a Forrester paper on RIA’s entitled “eBay San Dimas Marks A New Era For RIAs”. (You can buy it from Forrester here).

Here is the introduction paragraph to whet your appetite…

The much-anticipated beta version of eBay San Dimas has arrived, ushering in a new era in rich Internet applications (RIAs). Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR, formerly known as Apollo) applications like eBay San Dimas take RIAs out of the browser and put them on the desktop. These desktop applications enable occasionally connected use, customized content views, and a branded experience that can act as a platform for closer relationships with customers. But desktop RIAs aren’t for everyone. Companies must assess whether their power users will benefit from the capabilities of AIR applications in a world in which the desktop will likely become very crowded.

What’s interesting is seeing this new class of application that is made up of both software (run locally) and services (accessed over the cloud). I love the model because it’s bang in line with the ethos behind izimi/sharenow in which I am involved. Of coures there are other examples of note, including Desksite, Maven, the eBay San Dimas project, plus a whole raft of new apps that are being developed on Adobe Apollo and Google Gears.

You’ll probably recognize the swing cycle we’ve seen over the last 15 – 18 years in software: dramatic swings from dumb terminals (all server side), through client/server, to internet (server side), back to java (it its inception, which promoted NCs that downloaded applets as needed which were run on the client), back to internet (as java initially fell out of favor), to …

History has seen different groups promoting their own points in the spectrum as the ‘correct’ best way, depending upon their own vested interests. But I think that is now passing.

What I think we see now is a maturity that causes us to take a less ‘fashion-conscious’ view, and one that sees us asking “where can we best do this bit of processing?”, and then creating systems which partition parts of the whole application where they are most appropriate. So, I love the principle of RIAs.

Its very interesting to think that the traditional Google supporters (with the concept of SaaS - software as a service) used to find themselves at war with the Microsoft supporters (and the concept of software that is installed and owned). Yet today with Apollo, Gears, and even Microsoft’s own positioning (they now speak of (”software AND services”) there may yet be a recognition that you choose the architecture that best suits each particular application on a case by case basis.

Video advertising is coming to YouTube, but it won’t be the type common at sites elsewhere.

Starting Wednesday, the popular video-sharing site plans to feature semitransparent ‘overlay’ ads at the bottom of selected video clips. The ad disappears after about 10 seconds if the viewer does nothing; the featured clip automatically pauses if the viewer clicks on the overlay to launch the full pitch.

YouTube said it was trying to avoid pre-rolls that precede the main feature at sites like Microsoft Corp.’s MSN, which partners with The Associated Press on a video news service.

Shiva Rajaraman, product manager for YouTube, said internal tests show more than 70 percent of people give up when they see a pre-roll. By contrast, less than 10 percent decide to close an overlay, which they can exit by clicking on an ‘X’ in a corner.

The overlay format also gives advertisers more flexibility, he said, because they aren’t constrained to keeping a video ad at 15 or 30 seconds to avoid defection. Because a viewer chooses to watch, a video ad can run much longer — clicking on one pre-launch overlay launched a 2-minute trailer for ‘The Simpsons Movie.’
YouTube, which Google Inc. bought last year for $1.76 billion, is still trying to justify its hefty sales price. Despite its huge audience, YouTube generated about $15 million in revenue last year, based on figures provided in Google’s annual report.

The site already has been showing display ads, but video ads look to be far more lucrative, particularly as they attract brand-name advertisers already used to buying video spots on television.

Initial video advertisers on YouTube include Warner Music Group Corp. (NYSE:WMG) , News Corp.’s (NYSE:NWS) 20th Century Fox and Time Warner Inc.’s (NYSE:TWX) New Line Cinema. They will accompany video clips from selected partners, including Warner Music, the band Killswitch Engage and dozens of heavy video contributors accepted into a user-partner program.

Marketers can target their ads by user demographics, location, time of day or genre, such as music videos or sports. They won’t be able to buy ads by keywords, though, the way Google allows merchants to purchase text ads triggered by a user’s search terms.

And unlike Google’s pay-per-click search ads, advertisers will be charged by eyeball — $20 per thousand viewers — regardless of whether the user clicks on the overlay.

Revenues will be split with the video owner, although officials won’t say how. The video owner can decline all ads or selected ones, such as those from competitors.

Despite differences with Google’s keyword ads, which generate the bulk of the company’s revenues, officials said the two share a common goal of being nonintrusive.

‘Ads need to provide value to the user community,’ said Eileen Naughton, Google’s director of media platforms. ‘We’ve proved over and over again on Google that ads are really useful information when users raise their hands and engage with them.’

This article is found on CNN money here

Also a great write-up with stats on Mashable

Metacafe Raises Huge $30 Million Round

The money keeps piling in for some online video sites: Metacafe is announcing a series C round today of $30 million led by new investors Highland Capital Partners and DAG Ventures. Existing investors Accel Partners and Benchmark Capital also returned for this round. The money will be used to achieve global growth, expand the “breadth” of content available on the site and further develop the Producer Rewards revenue sharing scheme.

from Pete Cashmore at Mashable!