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Via Yahoo, here, By PETER SVENSSON, AP Technology Writer Fri Oct 19, 9:15 AM ET

NEW YORK - Comcast Corp. actively interferes with attempts by some of its high-speed Internet subscribers to share files online, a move that runs counter to the tradition of treating all types of Net traffic equally.
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The interference, which The Associated Press confirmed through nationwide tests, is the most drastic example yet of data discrimination by a U.S. Internet service provider. It involves company computers masquerading as those of its users.

If widely applied by other ISPs, the technology Comcast is using would be a crippling blow to the BitTorrent, eDonkey and Gnutella file-sharing networks. While these are mainly known as sources of copyright music, software and movies, BitTorrent in particular is emerging as a legitimate tool for quickly disseminating legal content.

The principle of equal treatment of traffic, called “Net Neutrality” by proponents, is not enshrined in law but supported by some regulations. Most of the debate around the issue has centered on tentative plans, now postponed, by large Internet carriers to offer preferential treatment of traffic from certain content providers for a fee.

Comcast’s interference, on the other hand, appears to be an aggressive way of managing its network to keep file-sharing traffic from swallowing too much bandwidth and affecting the Internet speeds of other subscribers.

Comcast, the nation’s largest cable TV operator and No. 2 Internet provider, would not specifically address the practice, but spokesman Charlie Douglas confirmed that it uses sophisticated methods to keep Net connections running smoothly.

“Comcast does not block access to any applications, including BitTorrent,” he said.

Douglas would not specify what the company means by “access” — Comcast subscribers can download BitTorrent files without hindrance. Only uploads of complete files are blocked or delayed by the company, as indicated by AP tests.

But with “peer-to-peer” technology, users exchange files with each other, and one person’s upload is another’s download. That means Comcast’s blocking of certain uploads has repercussions in the global network of file sharers.

Comcast’s technology kicks in, though not consistently, when one BitTorrent user attempts to share a complete file with another user.

Each PC gets a message invisible to the user that looks like it comes from the other computer, telling it to stop communicating. But neither message originated from the other computer — it comes from Comcast. If it were a telephone conversation, it would be like the operator breaking into the conversation, telling each talker in the voice of the other: “Sorry, I have to hang up. Good bye.”

Matthew Elvey, a Comcast subscriber in the San Francisco area who has noticed BitTorrent uploads being stifled, acknowledged that the company has the right to manage its network, but disapproves of the method, saying it appears to be deceptive.

“There’s the wrong way of going about that and the right way,” said Elvey, who is a computer consultant.

Comcast’s interference affects all types of content, meaning that, for instance, an independent movie producer who wanted to distribute his work using BitTorrent and his Comcast connection could find that difficult or impossible — as would someone pirating music.

Internet service providers have long complained about the vast amounts of traffic generated by a small number of subscribers who are avid users of file-sharing programs. Peer-to-peer applications account for between 50 percent and 90 percent of overall Internet traffic, according to a survey this year by ipoque GmbH, a German vendor of traffic-management equipment.

“We have a responsibility to manage our network to ensure all our customers have the best broadband experience possible,” Douglas said. “This means we use the latest technologies to manage our network to provide a quality experience for all Comcast subscribers.”

The practice of managing the flow of Internet data is known as “traffic shaping,” and is already widespread among Internet service providers. It usually involves slowing down some forms of traffic, like file-sharing, while giving others priority. Other ISPs have attempted to block some file-sharing application by so-called “port filtering,” but that method is easily circumvented and now largely ineffective.

Comcast’s approach to traffic shaping is different because of the drastic effect it has on one type of traffic — in some cases blocking it rather than slowing it down — and the method used, which is difficult to circumvent and involves the company falsifying network traffic.

The “Net Neutrality” debate erupted in 2005, when AT&T Inc. suggested it would like to charge some Web companies more for preferential treatment of their traffic. Consumer advocates and Web heavyweights like Google Inc. and Amazon Inc. cried foul, saying it’s a bedrock principle of the Internet that all traffic be treated equally.

To get its acquisition of BellSouth Corp. approved by the Federal Communications Commission, AT&T agreed in late 2006 not to implement such plans or prioritize traffic based on its origin for two and a half years. However, it did not make any commitments not to prioritize traffic based on its type, which is what Comcast is doing.

The FCC’s stance on traffic shaping is not clear. A 2005 policy statement says that “consumers are entitled to run applications and services of their choice,” but that principle is “subject to reasonable network management.” Spokeswoman Mary Diamond would not elaborate.

Free Press, a Washington-based public interest group that advocates Net Neutrality, opposes the kind of filtering applied by Comcast.

“We don’t believe that any Internet provider should be able to discriminate, block or impair their consumers ability to send or receive legal content over the Internet,” said Free Press spokeswoman Jen Howard.

Paul “Tony” Watson, a network security engineer at Google Inc. who has previously studied ways hackers could disrupt Internet traffic in manner similar to the method Comcast is using, said the cable company was probably acting within its legal rights.

“It’s their network and they can do what they want,” said Watson. “My concern is the precedent. In the past, when people got an ISP connection, they were getting a connection to the Internet. The only determination was price and bandwidth. Now they’re going to have to make much more complicated decisions such as price, bandwidth, and what services I can get over the Internet.”

Several companies have sprung up that rely on peer-to-peer technology, including BitTorrent Inc., founded by the creator of the BitTorrent software (which exists in several versions freely distributed by different groups and companies).

Ashwin Navin, the company’s president and co-founder, confirmed that it has noticed interference from Comcast, in addition to some Canadian Internet service providers.

“They’re using sophisticated technology to degrade service, which probably costs them a lot of money. It would be better to see them use that money to improve service,” Navin said, noting that BitTorrent and other peer-to-peer applications are a major reason consumers sign up for broadband.

BitTorrent Inc. announced Oct. 9 that it was teaming up with online video companies to use its technology to distribute legal content.

Other companies that rely on peer-to-peer technology, and could be affected if Comcast decides to expand the range of applications it filters, include Internet TV service Joost, eBay Inc.’s Skype video-conferencing program and movie download appliance Vudu. There is no sign that Comcast is hampering those services.

Comcast subscriber Robb Topolski, a former software quality engineer at Intel Corp., started noticing the interference when trying to upload with file-sharing programs Gnutella and eDonkey early this year.

In August, Topolski began to see reports on Internet forum DSLreports.com from other Comcast users with the same problem. He now believes that his home town of Hillsboro, Ore., was a test market for the technology that was later widely applied in other Comcast service areas.

Topolski agrees that Comcast has a right to manage its network and slow down traffic that affects other subscribers, but disapproves of their method.

“By Comcast not acknowledging that they do this at all, there’s no way to report any problems with it,” Topolski said.

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

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.

I’ve been reading Wikinomics recently. Its an amazing book that others who are involved in the UGC and SN spaces will just ‘get’, and which I fear those outside of this space will not get. It speaks of entirely new ways of building value and building businesses which take advantage of peer production - the ability of large numbers of losely coupled people to compete head on with the largest business organizations.

The fundamental principle is that self-organizing groups, directed at a common goal, present a resource that is many times more powerful than any organization can possible employ directly, and that such groups (examples wikipedia, various open source movements, and others) are tackling some of the most successful organizations head on, and winning.

The challenge to businesses is to harness that power and make it work for them, not against them (examples: myspace, youtube, goldcorp, even cisco and pfizer). Afterall, no matter how many smart people you employ, you can NEVER match the almost limitless resources of ‘all the others’ out there.

So why this sudden interest in peer production, why so relevant now and not sooner? Well, in my opinion the answer is twofold: 1. its a process of evolution, we had to go via the centralised corporation route to get this far; and, 2. Its because of advances in communication and collaborative tools like the internet, wikis, blogs, social networks, email, IM, and the whole web2.0/read-write-web principle. Without these tools readily available and easy to use its too difficult for large groups to self-organize and be productive.

What is happening is the creation of entirly new business models that even a few short years ago would not have been thought possible. Wikipedia? OK, maybe a few people could have forseen that (yet some still dont), but what about businesses like Zopa and Prosper - peer lending.

Here is what Techcrunch reports today about peer lending, maybe you didn’t know this has been happening since March 2005 (with Zopa):
Peer to peer lending startup, Prosper, is expanding operations to Japan and other Asian countries as a shared partnership with Tokyo-based SBI Holdings, Inc. SBI will be helping prosper navigate Asia’s regulatory environment. SBI Group has a market capitalization in excess of $8 billion and consists of 65 consolidated subsidiaries and 12 affiliated companies, including 9 public companies.

Prosper handles loans of up to $25,000 (the average funded loan is $5,000), broken into smaller loans to distribute risk. Money for the loan is then supplied by Prosper lenders bidding for the most attractive interest rates. Prosper earns revenue by taking 1% of the loan amount in fees from the borrower up front, and charging a 0.5% yearly loan maintenance fee to lenders. Prosper currently has over $79 million in funded loans and more than 380,000 members. So far it appears a lot of those members are logging on to pay off credit card debt at a lower rate. Prosper’s backer, Benchmark, has also invested in another P2P lender, Zopa.

Full Techcrunch article is here

Cisco announced at the tail end of last week that it will purchase social networking software maker Five Across, a developer of technology that enables companies to easily add social networking features to their Web sites. The sale price was not disclosed.

“With the acquisition of Five Across, Cisco is taking an important step towards helping its customers to evolve their Web site experience into something more relevant and valuable to the end user,” said Dan Scheinman, senior vice president and general manager of the Cisco Media Solutions Group.

The word from Cisco…

The Five Across platform, Connect Community Builder, empowers companies to easily augment their websites with full-featured communities and user-generated content such as audio/video/photo sharing, blogs, podcasts, and profiles. These user-interaction functions help companies improve the interaction with their customers and overall customer experience on their websites. Social networking functions are of unique interest to media companies, sports leagues, affinity groups and any organization wishing to increase its interaction with its online constituency.

“Cisco believes the network is the platform for organizations to connect with their constituents and for individuals to connect with each other,” said Dan Scheinman, senior vice president and general manager of the Cisco Media Solutions Group (CMSG).

Five Across was founded in 2003 and has 11 employees in San Francisco, Calif.. Upon close of the transaction the Five Across team and product portfolio will be integrated into CMSG led by Scheinman.

Rise of video downloads threatens gridlock on net
The Guardian

· Online jams loom as filesharing services grow
· Internet providers urged to increase investment

The growth in video downloads could create an internet traffic jam that threatens the net’s development, according to Google. Services such as YouTube, which is owned by the Californian giant, are proving tricky for internet providers to deal with and new developments could create even more problems, senior internet executives were told yesterday.

“The web infrastructure - and even Google’s - doesn’t scale,” said Vincent Dureau, Google’s head of TV technology. “It’s not going to offer the quality of service that consumers expect.”

OA by Bobbie Johnson (The Guardian) is here

BUT, Keep in mind that Google has just announced its making inroads to searching (not just internet burt) other TV streams, as well as delivering video over those other streams. So, the whole story is probably part scare marketing to draw attention to Googles other (new) activities. See here…

The company [Google] instead said it would work together with cable operators to combine its technology for searching for video and TV footage and its tailored advertising with the cable networks high-quality delivery of shows.

Google’s warning comes in the same week that BSkyB announced it is to launch a user-generated content channel called Sky Cast on TV and the internet, with video technology powered by Google.

Unlike existing UGC channels, Sky Cast will link user-generated content to other programming strands and Google will provide the search bar on the portal and share ad revenues with Sky.

This last bit is from Brand Republic, here

Our PR guru James Warren pointed me to this bunch www.qnext.com who are doing some P2P stuff which at first glance looks a little like Izimi.

Its a bit like Izimi in some ways, which is a good endorsement of what Izimi is doing (like I said before, I always expected someone somewhere to pop out of a garage with a similar idea), but they talk about webcasts which sounds a little odd - I want ANYONE to be able to see my stuff, anywhere on the Internet with just a web browser. Sometimes those people may be known to me (in which case I guess a webcast works), but others may not already know me and they may find my content through another website, search engine, blog, forum, or via a search on Izimi.

Here’s one of their interesting FAQs:
Does my computer need to be turned on for my friends to access a Webcast?
Yes, your computer must be turned on and Qnext must be running in order for your friends to access the Webcasts that you send them. This is because Qnext shares your stuff securely right off your computer; that’s why it only takes seconds to share an unlimited amount of music, photos, and files.

And another…
How do I know if another Qnext user has shared something with me?
When someone shares a Webcast with you, you will get a notification by IM. In the future, you can just click on the ‘+ sign’ beside their name to see all the Webcasts that are available.

So, like many P2P apps it still sounds a little ‘closed’ and a bit ‘point to point’. One of Izimi’s strengths is its openness: that ANYONE ANYWHERE ON THE WEB WITH JUST A WEB BROWSER can see my published media.

I think the talk of webcasts introduces another layer of complexity that the recipient doesnt want to have to bother with, why not just a URL???

D

With P2P seeming to be gaining a bigger and bigger slice of attention, I keep wondering what the next P2P applictaion will be.

Like a lot of people I first came across P2P apps with file sharing like Napster and the like. Next i heard it spoken about in enterprise computing discussions, particularly in relation to a supply chain management product i was working on at the time (the guy who was talking about it then was John Ball), but back then I found it hard to grasp how P2P could be turned to anything more than the file sharing apps. How could a P2P platform be used for more than file sharing and actually be used to provide an enterprise computing platform for a set of business process applications? Now, I hear its called grid computing or various other names, Dion Hinchcliffe writes a lot on this subject.

So whats the next applictaion of P2P? Lots of news is out there about Joost (PKA The Venice Project), and its ‘effectively’ P2P TV. It was founded by Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis the founders of Kazaa and Skype.

So here’s the pattern… Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis develop Kazaa (P2P file sharing, not the fist but nonetheless successful). Next they stay in P2P, and develop Skype (P2P computer telephony, VoIP or Voice over IP). Now they remain in P2P again and develop Joost (effectively P2P TV). See the pattern, its like they sit there and say “right, thats done, now what else can we turn P2P to”.

I have a new one, or rather I think Izimi may have a new one…. P2P Web site publishing. Here it is: At the moment websites get hosted centrally, and then distributed time by time upon demand to browsers that request the site’s pages (content).

Now, i contend isn’t that just like old fashioned media broadcast? OK, its not quite broadcast, but its still server to peer; the content gets centrally gathered, then delivered point to point to the media’s consumer.

With Izimi you could self-publish a website right there on your own computer. When you use Izimi to self-publish the content stays on your machine (no uploading to a hosting company) but its available to any one anywhere on the internet with just their browser via a regular URL (no need for them to have any special client software as you would with most P2P apps). You can do this with Izimi now.

But what happens when you turn your machine off? Hosting companies are useful because they give you resilience and allow your website to stay available even when you turn your computer off. Well, if Izimi were to remove that ‘problem’, is it a real alternative for central hosting? Almost.

The other point is bandwidth. When I am self publishing with Izimi it is my bandwidth that is used to deliver content to people who request it. Well, way back when we started Izimi we already had the multipoint download capability (its pretty standard P2P technique to distribute content to various places to allow co-operative supply of content). In this way a person requesting my content could be serviced by a whole bunch of peers in the network each delivering a fraction of the whole website, and this all happens in the background. So, the question of bandwidth becomes a moot one. P2P has always been good at this, so its nothing new.

SO, whats the point of all this? Simple. Izimi just may prove to be the next revolutionary P2P application, and that is website hosting. Afterall, why use a hosting company when you can do it easily yourself with no negative impact?

Strictly speaking of course you’d have to call it something different to P2P. Afterall its not really P2P (peer to peer) its P2B (peer to browser), and that is a GREAT advantage. It truely means that your content/media/website is available to ANYONE ANYWHERE ON THE INTERNET - no need for them to first have downloaded your proprietory client. Imagine is you could use Skype, Kazaa, and Joost without any download. Just think how fast and far it would spread.

izimi.com is about to launch a neat way to self-publish any sort of media content, without the need to upload it anywhere and without the need for your audience to download any client software…

With Izimi you can self-publish any to anyone anywhere on the internet (all they need is a web browser). This means you can show your friends your photos and videos, in full high quality original form. You can serve any content (eg images, video, etc) straight into any website, forum, blog, or in an email. You can even serve an entire website from your own machine. You dont need any tech skills and you dont need to understand FTP or other upload techniques. Its as simple as click and save (in this case its click and publish).

How its different to social networking and user generated content sites like MySpace, YouTube, Bebo etc - because there are NO restrictions on the type, size, quality, and quantity of media that you can publish.

How its different to P2P file sharing - because P2P requires both all people to have the downloaded client on their machines. So, you cant see the stuff I publish unless you have downloaded and installed the P2P client.

How its different to Pando and Dropsend - because they still require your content to be uploaded to a server, and they then hold it for a period so your friends can connect to retrieve it.

How its different to Photobucket, Flickr etc - because like the SN sites they place restrictions on storage, file types, file size, etc. Izimi places no restrictions.

Story broken on Mike Butchers excellent blog (www.vecosys.com)

Also featured on John Wood’s blog here

Disclosure: I am the product director at Izimi, so of course I am a great fan

TAGS: Izimi, MySpace, P2P, social media, social networking, user generated content, YouTube

AOL partners with Napster

AOL Music Now bites the dust as customers are transferred

AOL Music Now will roll its 350,000 paying subscribers into Napster. AOL has ditched its own music service in favour of Napster’s rival subscription platform. AOL set up Music Now after buying Circuit City Stores’ online music business in 2005. As part of the deal, AOL will advertise Napster on its free AOL Music site.

Napster is also considering a buyout offer after a third-party expressed interest in the music provider. Napster chief executive Chris Gorog confirmed that the company is involved in “multiple conversations”.

Napster was originally a pirate peer-to-peer service offering copyrighted material for free download before being shut down in July 2001.

The company was bought by Roxio in 2002 and reopened as a legitimate music retailer in 2003.

OA by Matt Chapman, vnunet.com is here