The newly formed Distributed Computing Industry Association will gather in Los Angeles to discuss how the long-reviled file-swapping networks can gain legitimate access to music and movies.
The high-level meeting represents a shift for the entertainment industry, which has favored confrontation — in the form of lawsuits and technological counter-measures — over cooperation with the creators of file-swapping software.
Last week, the Recording Industry Association of America announced it would sue hundreds, even thousands, of individual computer users who exchange unauthorized copies of music on popular services like Kazaa, Grokster and iMesh.
But this new group, while bankrolled by entertainment industry pariah Sharman Networks, corporate parent of Kazaa Media Desktop, nonetheless has an aura of entertainment-industry legitimacy.
It is the brainchild of former Hollywood agent Derek Broes — who, at age 21, started a production company with actor Cuba Gooding, and by 2000 had developed technologies to prevent piracy of music and films across peer-to-peer networks.
Broes, 36, has testified before Congress on the evils of unauthorized Internet piracy — and called on both the entertainment and technology industries to work together “to find solutions to this problem that is threatening the very essence of our business.”
He has since switched corporate allegiances — joining the executive staff of Brilliant Digital Networks, which, as Altnet, distributes paid content across the 50 million users of the Kazaa network. But he remains the driving force behind bringing entertainment executives and technologists together in a coalition that’s intended to turn Internet “pirates” back into customers.
His entertainment-industry background helped woo long-time television executive Martin Lafferty, a veteran of NBC and Turner Broadcasting, as the group’s new chief executive.
Other digital entertainment heavyweights, including Phil Lelyveld, director of digital industry relations at Walt Disney, and Ted Cohen, senior vice president of digital distribution for EMI Recorded Music, are expected to attend the session.
But Laffety has not, so far, won over other members of the file-swapping community. Grokster President Wayne Rosso said he plans to pursue another approach, joining with other Internet download services in lobbying Congress for blanket licenses for the right to distribute content across peer-to-peer networks.
“Frankly, we’re late coming to the party. There’s no question about it. We realize that,” Rosso said. “We realize there’s a lot of work to be done. We’ve got a lot of tar on us that we’ve got to wash off.”
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