KMBlog :: Knowledge Management Blog

P2P coverage on Download Squad

As of now, the P2P Weblog is retired and archived. We're not losing the incredible Grant Robertson, though! Grant has joined the blogging team of Download Squad, our intensive blog about software, online services, and the on-screen lifestyle. Check out Grant at the Digital Music Weblog, and remember that you can bookmark the P2P category of Download Squad. You can also roll a P2P-only feed with this link:

http://www.downloadsquad.com/category/p2p/rss.xml

But i recommend trying Download Squad in its entirety. A little geeky, but still accessible, very investigative, and always a great read, the blog provides something for everybody.

Thanks for reading!

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Spain Outlaws P2P Networks

A new law in Spain 86'es P2P networks, bans ISPs from "facillitating filesharing" and imposes a blanket tax on blank media.

"The tax will go into a fund which will be shared among copyright holders to compensate for piracy."
But, the story goes on, according to a European Commission statement, "The logic of levies would also have to be applied to broadband and infrastructure service providers including telecommunications providers that carry content."

Yikes, this bill sounds like it was drafted by the record labels themselves. The scary thing is, for most crazy bits of legislation like this one, there is a bit of public outcry and at least some internet coverage of the badly formed bill as it makes its way into badly formed law. Not such in this case, as avid followers of P2P news got their first taste of this new law only this week.

[via P2Pnet]

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RIAA Sells Anti-Piracy Propaganda To Your Children

The rapid expansion of the definition of intellectual property continues unabated, with the RIAA taking the battle for hearts and minds directly to the auditorium of your kid's school.

The RIAA has teamed with iSafe, "a nonprofit organization that teaches kids, teachers and parents how to be safe on the Internet, with topics such as awareness about predators, not to give out too much personal information, and the risks of getting on P2P networks."

Sounds fine so far. When you add in the idea of the RIAA feeding iSafe the propaganda and iSafe in turn showing up to your kids school under the guise of saving them from MySpace predators, only to tell them about how music wouldn't be made if the RIAA didn't get thier cut, it becomes something quite different.

Obviously the information presented will be biased in favor of the industry, and I'm going to go out on a limb and bet that no one will talk about the crappy record deals your kid's favorite artists are living with.

Beware, and if iSafe is coming to your kid's school, maybe you should drop in so you can drop a little science of your own.

[via Project Opus]

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P2P Legal Insurance Available in Sweden

Such an obvious idea, but what perfect timing. According to Slashdot, a Swedish company is now offering insurance against possible P2P lawsuits.

"A new insurance company in Sweden is offering a new policy to protect you from the RIAA [Swedish]. For a mere 140 SEK ($19 USD) per year, they will pay all your fines and give you a t-shirt if you get convicted for file sharing. Interesting development in Sweden indeed."

I don't speak a word of Swedish, but I'm pretty sure the T-Shirt loosely translates to, "I got sued by the RIAA and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt"

[via Slashdot]

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Swedish Police Keep Pirate Bay Servers

We've reported on the Pirate Bay raid and ensuing mess several times over recent weeks. Now it seems, according to p2pnet, that the Swedish Police have decided to keep the Pirate Bay servers confiscated during the recent raid.

"Internet hosting company PRQ had demanded the return of both paperwork and computer equipment seized by police, saying that the material had no significance for the investigation and arguing that it was vital for PRQ's work," says The Local.

Appeals are said to be in the works, but this is just another minor blow to The Pirate Bay and its ISP, PRQ of Sweden.

[via P2Pnet]

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BitTorrent Movie Distribution Deal is about Real-Time Delivery

Today saw the announcement of a partnership agreement between BitTorrent and San Jose based ISP GNi. GNi will provide BitTorrent with a single connection that peers into six networks to ensure consistent access to fast connections.

"Essentially we partnered with GNi because as BitTorrent becomes a key player in the online video distribution space, it is imperative that we have reliable IP support," said Lily Lin, director of communications for BitTorrent. "With a secure,
scalable and fast network solution in place, BitTorrent can focus on delivering the best user experience."

When the Bittorrent distribution deal was announced a little over a month ago, I was sceptical about the benefits for wither company involved. But details in this PC Magazine story shed a whole different light on what may be going on here.

"It's a higher performance content delivery system," Wise said. "A lot of times when someone is downloading, it's smaller or the real time is not important because it's about the end result. Because this is a real-time streaming issue, it requires higher IP support. BitTorrent were more interested in finding a high-performance solution for bandwidth and that's what we do."

So, it's now a "real time streaming issue" which sounds much different than the internet movie delivery system were were talking about when the deal was announced. Since when is Bittorrent about real time, and just what are they cooking up here?

[via PC Mag]

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German P2P Users Feel Safe Despite Lawsuits

Based on traffic figures for P2P networks popular in Germany, the German people aren't scared of recent enforcement efforts.

Barely a month after 3,500 file-sharing network users were placed under investigation by the public prosecutor's office in Cologne, the figures for P2P network use are back to where they were. This is a result of an analysis undertaken by the Leipzig-based company ipoque GmbH.

This seems to be the story all over the world, the RIAA / MPAA / IFPI / CIRA / et al lawsuits against individual P2P users are having little effect on filesharing. In fact, many sources sight growing numbers even in the face of mounting lawsuits.

[via Heise Online]

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Sweden Pressured To Take Down Pirate Bay

The raid and take-down of Bittorrent tracker site The Pirate Bay led to a veritable shower of press, and a substantial backlash from the Swedish people. During the course of Pirate Bay events, several sites and news organizations have cited pressure from the U.S. as a contributing reason for the raid.

Reports of U.S. involvement stem from a report by SVT.se, a respected Swedish news organization, who reported that the MPAA and the US government pressured the Swedish Minister of Justice to take enforcement action. Now, P2P fanboy site Slyck has details of the U.S. government and the RIAA's involvement with the raid.

It seems the U.S. government may have threatened sanctions under the WTO to force Sweden's hand in the matter. The WTO allows sanctions against member countries that fail to enforce the WPO's strict stance on copyright.

"I know that the USA has opinions on the effectiveness in our system when it comes to copyright and that if Sweden and other countries aren't following their international agreements there are sanction mechanisms in the USA, which have been pointed out from their side." said State Secretary Dan Eliasson.

This is a severe blow to public relations efforts surrounding the raid in Sweden. the public has raised serious concerns over the Justice Ministry's involvement with a specific criminal/civil case. Under the Swedish constitution, the government or ministry cannot become involved with a local police action or prosecution.

It's nice to see there is a population somewhere in the world that will figuratively stand in front of the RIAA's tanks as they try to storm through town. We reported the other day that things were heating up on the political front in Sweden, adding in these additional variables could make for an interesting Swedish election.

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P2P Fear Mongering or Vaild Business Concern?

Former White House security advisor Howard Schmidt, turned private-sector president of R&H Security Consulting warned corporations they need to address a "new generation" of security weaknesses enabled by peer-to-peer (P2P) networks on the systems of third-party contractors and business partners.

"It's a very important and emerging issue," Schmidt said. "We [talk a lot] about intrusion detection and antivirus...but one thing we're not paying enough attention to is P2P file sharing networks and how much data we're really exposing inadvertently, which we have no control over."

Shenanigans. Yes, you heard me, shenanigans. This is an excellent example of a security "expert" using the spooky acronym P2P to sell security audits. This is the equivalent of telling you how dangerous your neighborhood is while trying to sell you an alarm system. Schmidt didn't stop there, he went on to expose exactly what this enormous P2P threat is:

"Schmidt said IT managers typically control the use of file sharing networks within their own networks but contractors or agents working for their organisation can often keep or access corporate data on their laptops or home PCs, alongside P2P clients. He added that these users may then look for music or movie downloads on P2P applications, and inadvertently expose the entire contents of the hard drive."

I'm not buying it. Sure, theoretically someone could make several mistakes in setting up eDonkey or a similar file-sharing app, and potentially expose some data. However, from a risk management point of view the threat of spyware/malware or keylogging applications is a much larger blip on the radar.

It seems villainizing P2P as a concept hasn't gone out of style. Sometimes I wonder if it ever will.

[via IT Week]

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Swedish P2P Gains Political Boosters

It looks like The Pirate Bay raid may have done more harm than good, at least if you're on the side of the content owners. Swedish politicians are looking towards a September election, and 5 of the 7 major political parties have agreed to look at Swedish copyright law reform, even in the face of an EU directive that prohibits "unauthorized downloading or uploading of copyright-protected files"

"The fallout from the May 31 raid on The Pirate Bay has made clear just how widespread and deeply entrenched file-sharing has become in Sweden. On-line forums have been filled with protests against the raid, and a pro-piracy demonstration in early June drew close to 1,000 people. A poll published in early June showed that three out of four Swedes between 18 and 21 supported file-sharing, even if it was illegal."

With 1 million potential votes hanging in the balance, Swedish politicians are salivating at this huge swing vote.

"As a country at the forefront of information technology, we also have to be at the forefront of how we legislate the issue. Above all, we have to say yes to technological development, and encourage people to use computers and to download." said justice minister, Thomas Bodstrom.

[via International Herald Tribune]

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Models for crowdsourcing -- now, FLIRT

Sami Viitamaki emailed me this model for crowdsourcing. He calls it the FLIRT model. I like this -- it offers a useful way of viewing many crowdsourcing efforts.

I think what would be fascinating would be some kind of meta-view of crowdsourcing in general. In the main it's not new. And some of the "old" methods have their places, still. And some of the old methods have undergone and will continue to undergo change. For example, marketing research is an "old" method that is scoffed at by many today, but it has its uses even in the crowdsourced world.

And crowdsourcing brokers, as Sami quite rightly calls Innocentive, are serving yet another purpose. I don't think there's any one way that's best for companies to open themselves to customer communities, but discovering all the ways to do this and all the ways Web 2.0 is changing this landscape is immensely helpful.

Happy New Year!

Yes, I know, New Year's was a couple of months ago, and even the dawn of the Year of the Pig has passed us by. But this is the first time I've posted this year, so I owe you a New Year's greeting!

I should be back with posts several times weekly, focusing on book reviews and author interviews. Not all of these will be reviews of books specifically about innovation and creativity, but in each book I will look for insights that would be helpful for innovators.

I'm also still quite interested in the blooming of customer co-creation and crowdsourcing (or whatever the new buzz term is for this these days). So expect to see more on that in posts to come.

New Chief Innovation Officer course being offered

Think you know what a Chief Innovation Officer is supposed to do? The folks at BMG -- Breakthrough Management Group -- do. They are offering a two-day Chief Innovation Officer course at the end of April in Denver. Topics to be covered -- "The Emerging Role of the CIO," "Fostering An Innovative Company Culture," "Establishing A Systematic Innovation Process," and "Accelerating Innovation In Your Organization."

Speakers include some heavy hitters -- David Silverstein of BMG, who is also author of Insourcing Innovation; Robert Tucker of The Innovation Resource, who is also author of Driving Growth Through Innovation, Dr. Phil Samuel of BMG, and Cheryl Perkins, President of Innovation Edge, LLC, and former CIO of Kimberly Clark.

Regular IdeaFlow readers may remember that this post that mentioned David Silverstein when he was quoted in Business Week last year.

Chuck Frey's new mindmapping software book

Chuck Frey of Innovation Tools fame, also author of the Mind Mapping Software Weblog and the ebook Power Tips & Strategies for Mind Mapping Software, has a new ebook out on mindmapping software. This one's about choosing mindmapping software, called Mind Mapping Software: How to Select the Perfect Program for Your Needs. I have not read the book, but as someone who has tried to choose mindmapping software in the past, I wouldl welcome a guide as experienced as Chuck to point out the way.

It's up to CMOs to drive customer co-creation (updated with link)

Last summer I got involved in a big discussion at the Corante Innovative Marketing Conference about exactly where the responsibility should lie at companies for involving customers in innovation. Our consensus was in the marketing department. We are not the only ones – a new Forrester report on Customer-Driven Innovation concurs: “CMOs need to use their expertise in connecting with customers to lead the way in building bridges between customers and key parts of the organization.”

Customer-Driven Design and Development was prepared exclusively for the CMO Group at Forrester Research, so if you want the whole report, you’ll have to join the CMO group to buy it – however, you can get a free summary brief at this link.

The report includes six case studies of customer-driven design and development initiatives at various companies, as well as:

--Best practices
--Information on common objections CMOs may run into at their companies and how to overcome these
--Specific advice from 25 experts in this space, including both Gwen Ishmael and myself from Decision Analyst, who were interviewed as sources for the report.
--Information on a variety of tactics such as ethnography. online communities and consumer brainstorming (which is, of course, one of the things we do)
--An overview of 18 different vendors (including us!) who can help CMOs with customer-driven innovation initiatives

I have to offer kudoes to author Cindy Commander on this report. She's presented a wealth of information and some thoughtful analysis, including a Customer-Driven Design Maturity Model. Essentially, this is an illustration of how organization progress in their engagement with customers in the co-creation process, from minimal customer engagement through continuous customer engagement. The four stages start at a company-centric orientation and moving toward a customer-centric orientation:

--Stage 1: Customer-tested design and development
--Stage 2: Customer-involved design and development
--Stage 3: Customer-focused design and development
--Stage 4: Customer-driven design and development

If you looked at your company with just this one analytic in mind, what would you find? How far is your company from Stage 4? How close would your company like to be to Stage 4?

If you're serious about customer co-creation, this report would be a worthwhile read. Of course, I've already disclosed that we were sources, but even if we weren't, I would at least take a peek at the free brief!