Contentinople - Ryan Lawler - MediaDefender Backs P2P Player PiCast

Written by Ryan Lawler

Friday, October 3. 2008 at 04:00 PM EDT 1 comment

Digg

Del.icio.us

Email This

no ratings

Here's an interesting twist: A new company called PiCast is entering the increasingly crowded market for peer-assisted video delivery -- but it's doing it with the expertise of a firm known for helping media companies thwart distribution of video via P2P.

You probably have not heard of PiCast, which is just coming to market with a new offering for peer-assisted video streaming. But you may have heard of ArtistDirect, its parent group. And if you pay any attention to P2P filesharing news, you probably have heard of MediaDefender -- the ArtistDirect subsidiary and anti-piracy firm where much of PiCast's technology originates.

MediaDefender, which claims to have been "contracted by every major record label and every major movie studio, video game publishers, software publishers, and anime publishers," is best known for its practice of "decoying" or "spoofing" major releases of high-profile content -- essentially flooding P2P filesharing networks with fake copies of popular videos and music in an effort to frustrate downloaders into purchasing the real deal.

"There's nothing more difficult than trying to intercept a 3-gigabit file of a new movie release," says PiCast vice president of business development Jonathan Lee. The company hopes to leverage some of that expertise from sister company MediaDefender in rolling out its own P2P-based streaming solution.

PiCast's technology, which was built from the ground up, requires an end-user browser plug-in and a centralized "broker server." The broker server keeps track of which peers have which pieces of content -- and then helps to control the distribution of streams via the plug-in.

The technology is platform-agnostic, so it doesn't matter whether a user is watching a live or on-demand stream, or if the stream uses Adobe Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: ADBE) Flash technology or Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT)'s Windows Media. Because the technology is plug-in based, the user stops sharing when the stream or browser is shut down. And finally, content owners can therefore deliver from their origin servers or run the PiCast technology along with an existing content delivery network.

In addition to all the experience and data collected from MediaDefender's spoofing activities, PiCast could also benefit from existing relationships with content owners in the RIAA and MPAA, says Marty Lafferty, president of the Distributed Computing Industry Association (DCIA) .

"They have relationships with rights holders already, and can build on those relationships," Lafferty says.

While the company has yet to sign up any paying customers, PiCast is in testing with an indie record label and an online comedy video site to provide streaming of its on-demand content. PiCast expects to begin tests of live streaming content in the coming months.

This is not the first time that ArtistDirect has attempted to set up an affiliate firm using peer-to-peer technology gained from MediaDefender. Last year, the company launched video-sharing site at Miivi.com, which used P2P to distribute user-uploaded videos. But not long after launch, P2P activists derided the site as an MPAA "honeypot" that was being used to entrap users downloading copyrighted content. The site was taken down not long after.

Lee says Miivi was "hugely misunderstood," and that the intent was not to entrap anyone, but to provide a YouTube-like experience that benefited from the efficiencies of P2P.

In the move from Miivi to PiCast, there's a shift from a consumer-facing Website to providing technology that can be leveraged by content owners. "Fundamentally, there's a big difference in what we're trying to accomplish. We're not trying to get people to come to a Website, but be the backend infrastructure" for content distribution, Lee says.

"PiCast is not so much a repurposing of Miivi technology, but the progression of one of our ideas," Lee says. "We're taking the lessons learned from Miivi, releasing this separately from MediaDefender, and aligning with the DCIA."

Tags: BitTorrent, Content Delivery Network (CDN), Movies, MPAA, P2P, RIAA, Technology, Video, Video

Digg

Del.icio.us

Email This

Comments

How Cheap is Cheap and who wants a content owner using their PC to deliver content?
Christopher Levy
Rank: Caliph
Saturday October 4, 2008 6:35:42 PM

no ratings

It is hard to believe P2P delivery companies keep entering this already over-saturated market.

CDN services are so cheap now that the P2P story's fundamental premise that they are cheaper is completely negated.

Then when you talk to users, they tell you they don't want Acme MediaCo. using their PC to deliver content to other users when they don't get compensated for it.

Furthermore, the degraded performances of their PC makes the value proposition bland at best for end-users.

Until these three pieces are addressed, P2P delivery is just DOA in the marketplace.

Start your Own Board

Messages List | Post a Message | Reply