Distribution

The new digital ways content was becoming distributed

Skype Launches VoIP to Phones
SkypeOut has launched, allowing subscribers to make cheap calls to phones around the world. Customers sign up for an account and pre-pay for voice minutes. Accounts can be topped up with between US$12 (€9.85) and US$62 (€51).
The cost of calls depends on where the subscriber is and where the call ends, but are generally considerably cheaper. Calls between Skype clients are still free, of course.
The Skype client runs on the subscriber’s computer (and a Linux version is avaialble) and for best results needs a broadband internet connection.
Skype’s 17 million downloads make it quite a force in the communications world, yet it doesn’t need massive amounts of infrastructure to be able to offer a service to its customers as the customer provides uses their own hardware and internet connection.
As Michael Powell, chairman, Federal Communications Commission, said to Fortune Magazine this year: “I knew it was over when I downloaded Skype,” “When the inventors of KaZaA are distributing for free a little program that you can use to talk to anybody else, and the quality is fantastic, and it’s free – it’s over. The world will change now inevitably.”
Skype
27 July, 2004
RealNetworks Deliver iPod Compatibility Through Harmony
RealNetworks have unveiled Harmony – a DRM translation tool that now makes it possible to transfer and play Real music downloads to Apple’s iPod. This new development means that Real’s music service is compatible with virtually every music player in the market.
Harmony is obviously Real’s answer to the resounding silence they met with after Rob Glaser contacted Steve Jobs with about Real and Apple working together.
Apple’s response is sure to be interesting as it means that iPod owners now have a choice of digital music online stores to fill their players from, and so they might not be entirely happy.
Real’s developers worked out how to make their player FairPlay-compatible purely by analysing publicly available information. This could be seen by some against the DMCA which expressly forbids reverse engineering and tampering with content protection systems.
This shouldn’t cause a problem with the legislation, however: Real are not defeating the FairPlay copy protection system, rather they are wrapping their own files in the FairPlay DRM.
Although potentially bad news for Apple, Harmony is great news for digital music fans – they can now transfer music from their various music stores to any music devices they may have. Not only does Harmony work with the iPod, but users can now perform the same trick with their Windows Media Player hardware too.
Harmony is built in to RealPlayer 10.5, which is available for download now.
Real.com
26 July, 2004
IFPI: 35% of All CDs Sold Worldwide are Illegal Copies
The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry has published a report claiming that 35% of all CDs sold around the world are illegal copies – that’s 1.1 billion pirate disks. The report also includes a list of countries recommended for government action: Brazil, China, Mexico, Pakistan, Paraguay, Russia, Spain, Taiwan, Thailand and Ukraine.
Sales of illegal discs rose 4% in 2004, though the year saw the slowest increase since 2000, an indication that increased anti-piracy activity is having a positive effect.
Clearly the biggest threat to the record industry today is not P2P networks but the more traditional CD copying seen in the the IFPI’s ten priority countries where anti-piracy offensives are most needed.
The report contains a four point “Call to Governments” asking for strong and updated copyright laws, sentences to deter pirates, the regulation of disc manufacturing and a commitment to prosecute copyright infringers aggressively.
IFPI Chairman and CEO Jay Berman said: “Commercial music piracy dominates large swathes of the world’s music markets, despite an encouraging slowdown in growth in 2003. This illegal trade is funding organised crime, fuelling widespread corruption and costing governments hundreds of millions of dollars in lost taxes. It is destroying artist careers and music cultures, and robbing countries with high piracy rates of billions of dollars of investment they would otherwise enjoy.
“The responsibility now is for governments – and especially on the 10 priority countries our report names – to act decisively against the problem. This means proper enforcement, deterrent sentences against pirates, effective regulation of disc manufacturing and, above all, the political will to make sure real change happens.”
The report
23 July, 2004
Survey: 10.8 million Next-Gen Music Players to be Sold in 2004
New research from Informa Media predicts that the world is going to rush out and buy 10.8 million digital music players in 2004. By the end of the year, there will be 21.5 million of them – most of them on the Central Line, I predict.
Informa say that this spending will have a mixed effect as consumers will fill the players with their existing CD collections before venturing out to buy music from online stores. “It’s great news for the actual manufacturers, but for the music companies at the moment it’s not going to be an instant boom,” said Simon Dyson, an analyst with Informa.
I know my own music purchasing took a dip as I spent my first couple of months with my iPod listening to things that I’d bought years ago and not really bothered, with before buying new music.
Online music services are doing spectacularly well nonetheless, and will only do better as more players get into the market and people experiment with new music.
Projected snags are the public’s realisation that they can’t transfer tunes from devices and that many music stores are incompatible – something bought from Napster won’t play on your iPod, for example. Writing about music services means that I have a vast array of music in different formats and remembering what track plays in what programme or device is extremely irritating.
“Incompatibility between some downloads and the most popular portable players could become an issue in the very near future,” Dyson commented.
You don’t say.
Informa media
22 July, 2004
ICANN Adds IPv6 to Root Servers
ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers has added IPv6 to its root servers – meaning that every object on the planet can now have its own IP address. Vinton Cerf from ICANN confirmed the news at their annual conference in Malaysia.
Every device needs a unique internet protocol address to be able to connect to the internet – this applies to computers, phones, printers, web cameras, your robot dog, everything. IPv4 is limited to only 4.3 billion addresses, and already two thirds of them have been assigned.
“This is a big, big step,” Cerf said. He’s not joking: IPv6 can potentially accommodate 2^128 (2 to the power of 128) unique addresses. To give it some scale, that would allow 100 million IP addresses per square meter of the Earth’s surface. I guess engineers really do think ahead. Though my nanobot army might use them all up fairly quickly.
IPv4 will continue to run alongside v6 for about 20 years to ensure ease of migration and stability, so don’t throw that old Ethernet card away yet.
ICANN
21 July, 2004
Duke University Gives Away iPods
There was a time the idea of handing out a device capable of holding 5,000 MP3s free to students would have caused sweating, outcry and at least a couple of writs from the music industry, but Duke University have made this into a unique opportunity.
New freshmen at Duke will receive a 20 gig iPod loaded with course information, calendars, and maps – and students will be able to download language lessons, music, recorded lectures and audio books from the university’s website. They’ll even be able to buy music from their own music store. Students get to keep the iPod, but will have to pay for its replacement if they lose it.
Duke will be handing out 1,650 iPods on August 19th during the freshmen orientation sessions.
Apple have long had a relationship with academia, from donating Macintoshes and equipment to schools to offering iTunes on Campus. This new version of iTunes dissuades students from downloading music illegally by giving them branded alternative whilst at the same time giving academic institutions another communications channel with their students.
iTunes on Campus
21 July, 2004
Samsung’s Vixlim – World’s Thinnest CRT
The cathode ray tube will be with us for a while longer – Samsung have developed a new display that’s less than half the thickness of a traditional CRT, and is as thin as some LCD panels on the market.
The 81cm Vixlim is only 35cm thick, and Samsung claim it has a far higher picture quality than a comparable LCD. A standard 81cm CRT-based display is generally about 50 to 60cm deep, often more.
The company are promoting their technology for use in digital televisions, stating that their new tube could reduce the price of a digital television by about a third. They will begin mass production early next year, with a view to replacing all of their large CRT products with this tube by the end of 2005.
The Vixlim may not be as light as a TFT display, but it is considerably cheaper – and may well prolong the use of cathode ray tubes as a display technology for some time.
Samsung
21 July, 2004
BBC May Launch Broadband Service
The BBC had planning meetings to explore the possibility of providing a cheap broadband service to UK homes. Ashley Highfield told the Guardian newspaper: “A few people have come together to see if we could put a low-end connected PC into the market. Could we do it? I don’t know, but we would have to be clear about why.”
This is something that’s obviously been on Ashley Highfield’s mind as he hinted at a service in response to a question from our own Simon Perry at the FT New Media and Broadcasting conference back in March.
Mr Highfield is determined to overcome the UK’s perceived “digital divide” by perhaps offering a low-cost terminal and connection, in a similar fashion to the successful Freeview service.
Highfield also has plans for a new BBC search engine, to help break up the American dominance of the search engine field. With all major search engines owned by American organisations, a British internet search funded by the license fee was welcomed by the Graf report.
BBC
The Guardian
20 July, 2004
Wanadoo Broadband Home Gateway
Wanadoo, owned by France Télécom, will launch a broadband gateway for home subscribers in August, featuring a unit called Livebox.
Livebox is essentially a router, and its initial selling point will be to allow home users to set up a wireless network easily – but the box has other uses lurking inside. For example, the UK£80 (€120) box is Bluetooth enabled and will soon offer a phone service that will compete with BT’s own Bluephone.
Wanadoo will offer VoIP calls using Livebox from next year and once the local loop is unbundled then they’ll be able to offer fatter broadband pipes – and then video on demand. Subscribers will then be able to watch TV on demand on PCs around their home, wirelessly. Livebox is not a set top box, so will not be muscling in too far on Sky+ territory.
BT are still doing their “yes we are, no we’re not” dance with regards to being a broadband content provider, and have talked down their broadcasting ambitions in the last couple of weeks.
Wanadoo
20 July, 2004
Ofcom Warns: 2010 UK Analog Switch Off Unlikely
Tessa Jowell has described the UK’s progress towards analogue switch-off as astonishing – yet Ofcom has warned that it’s running late: two years late.
Stephen Carter, chief executive of Ofcom has said that 2012 is a much more realistic date for the goal of 95% of homes with digital TV.
“If you want to turn the analogue signal off in 2010, you have to start making the transmitter deployment and regional deployment decisions in 2006, which means that you have to have done all the planning in 2005 – that’s next year.” Carter said. Carter believes that the BBC’s new estimate of 2012 is more likely.
Jowell, the Secretary of State for Culture has previously stated that the UK has been making great progress towards a planned 2010 switch-over.
A Department of Trade and Industry survey has found that, although 52% of home in the UK can receive digital television, 25% cannot – and 13% refuse to convert. Many are possibly thinking of converting nearer the time, but the huge scale of the operation means that planning and adoption needs to happen as early as possible to meet the 2010 target.
Ofcom
19 July, 2004