In late January, the Distributed Computing Industry Association (DCIA) began to invite leading content and technology companies to join our Members in forming the P2P Digital Watermark Working Group (PDWG) to establish business standards and practices for the use of digital watermarking to help secure licensed content in the steadily growing P2P distribution channel.
We are very thankful for Digimarc’s support of that effort, and are pleased with current progress that our Members and other industry participants are making in their introduction of new business models and technologies – real market solutions – that will enable P2P file sharing to reach its full potential as a mainstream channel for the distribution of copyrighted works.
P2P functionality, with attractive easy-to-use interfaces, expansive depth and breadth of available content, efficiency of discovery, speed of delivery, and addition of complementary features, continues to improve, particularly with the increasing integration of swarming technologies.
The consumer P2P marketplace as measured by average concurrent users and monthly cume P2P universe, both domestically and globally, also continues to demonstrate substantial growth.
During February, progress was made in recruiting participants and defining the mission and objectives for PDWG, and we are grateful to all who are investing their time and energy to contribute to this effort.
There is not yet an established system for protecting against the analog hole, exposure to which will be widened by current trends. The PDWG will actively engage in addressing this issue; and new forensics solutions, such as the protection services of Friend Media Technology Systems, will help tremendously.
The narrowing of the theatrical window for motion pictures ultimately will reduce online movie piracy, provided that file-protection, filtering, as well as forensics – the three Fs of file-sharing security – are deployed with care.
With properly balanced deployment, it will be possible to begin evolving towards such future practices as condensing the window for DVD and even offering day-and-date delivery of theatrical features for a premium price at home, to eliminate the piracy-only windows that now represent growing gaps in the digital video marketplace.
Meanwhile ad-supported licensed content delivery can generate enormous revenue – much as broadcasting grew to generate billions-per-year free to consumers before ever adding the equivalent of digital rights management (DRM) to charge for subscriptions and pay-per-view (PPV) and its successor video-on-demand (VOD).
A formative meeting of the PDWG is now scheduled for Wednesday March 29th at 8:30 AM, hosted by INTENT MediaWorks at its private suite in Loews Hotel Santa Monica, CA during Digital Hollywood, at which the PDWG mission statement will be presented for participant review and discussion.
The proposed mission of the PDWG will be to work jointly and cooperatively with leading content and technology companies to provide leadership in establishing common practices for the use of digital watermarking to secure and facilitate the legitimate consumption of licensed content through the P2P distribution channel.
P2P software providers are increasingly supportive of business practices and technological processes which will help ensure that licensed versions of copyrighted works, rather than unlicensed versions, are being redistributed in ways that generate revenue for rights holders and channel participants, and are in favor of forensics-supporting implementation of digital watermarking as an important step in realizing this transformation.
As the content community has already begun adoption and experienced success with digital watermarking technology for other purposes, the extension of their current uses of the technology into P2P environments should be a true win-win proposition.
Recommended PDWG objectives comprise enabling and leveraging the power and efficiencies of P2P file sharing, and expanded file-sharing channels, by offering consumers licensed content; providing P2P software providers with the ability to help rights holders effectively identify infringing copyrighted content so that appropriate action can be taken; and establishing P2P distribution models and technology implementations that are transparent to the end-user and easy for consumer use.
Additional intended goals include creating an effective mechanism within the P2P environment to support e-commerce; as well as establishing and facilitating deployment of watermarking technology implementations to meet the above identified objectives in ways that can be sustained by all necessary participants.
A key issue before the PDWG will be how to reset the balance and establish a new equilibrium in the rapidly evolving and increasingly inter-related environment of decentralized file-sharing and swarming technologies. PDWG’s path to progress includes completion of recruitment of a critical mass of participants broadly representing affected parties, identifying agreed upon-goals and deliverables, and publishing the mission statement and objectives of the working group once ratified by participants.
The PDWG will then plan to identify sub-groups to work on specific aspects of the mission and objectives and to set timelines and task owners for its goals and deliverables. We encourage interested qualified parties to contact the DCIA to sign-up or for more information. Share wisely, and take care.
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