Vuze Blog

Vuze Advises FCC On National Broadband Plan

Big Ideas Workshop at the FCC

TV Everywhere is like oil companies saying “Oh you can have all the electric cars you want, as long as you still spend $250/month on gas.”

Last week, Vuze was asked to participate in an FCC workshop focused on Internet TV and its implications for national broadband policy.  The workshop was organized by Jon Peha, the FCC’s Chief Technologist, and aimed to inform the FCC as it charts the course on the National Broadband Plan.  It was great to be back at the FCC again, after our very productive conversation last year surrounding the Comcast throttling issue.

Vuze CEO Gilles BianRosa and FCC Chief Technologist Jon Peha

A few themes emerged from the workshop that I found particularly compelling.

First, within the broadband video ecosystem, we discussed how troubling it is that both the delivery system and the content are dominated by very large incumbents that prefer to operate without meaningful competition. If you think about it, the “TV Everywhere” concept under development by the cable operators is an attempt to ensure that consumers will still pay their TV cable bill, even if they don’t need it anymore. It’s like oil companies saying “Oh you can have all the electric cars you want, as long as you still spend $250/month on gas.”

Second, and very related, online video content should be separate from the network pipes it rides on. There is an inherent conflict of interest in network providers (cable companies / ISPs) providing content services, especially when they’re also arguing that they should be allowed to prioritize some content types over others.

And third, we continued to be your advocate in arguing for the ability to move your content around and watch it anywhere, anytime you want (PC, Mac, Mobile, TV), unencumbered by format incompatibilities and DRM handcuffs. Let’s face it, you already have this benefit through DVDs and MP3s. Why should the broadband video experience be any different?

At the end of the day, as an entrepreneur, I find it really bothering that cable companies are using their two-pronged monopoly (on TV content access and internet access) to arm-twist their way into broadband video, and trying to prevent innovative, more consumer-friendly concepts to emerge. Think about what e-commerce would be today if it had been left to WalMart to invent, instead of Amazon or Ebay…

You can read more in my opening statement posted here and you can view a webcast here.

Gilles

Tags: fcc, vuze

Believe in the Future

“I’m a guy who doesn’t see anything good having come from the Internet.  Period.”

- Michael Lynton, CEO Sony Pictures Entertainment

Over the weekend, I caught up on the news and came across this quote from the CEO of Sony Pictures.  It reminded me of an old quote from a Hollywood leader in a bygone era:

“Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?”

- Harry Warner, President of Warner Brothers (1927)

After getting over my initial disbelief and amusement, I came to realize that it’s tempting to be pessimistic about this new medium.  Media’s early forays onto the Internet showed great promise on the dream of delivering content to consumers  anytime and anywhere.  To date, however, we’ve only delivered on part of the promise.  We’ve built the technologies for distributing media over the Internet, but the industry has only begun to solve the business model side of how we productively monetize this distribution.

As a result, Sony and others find themselves navigating through a formidable set of challenges:

• The Internet has enabled widespread piracy
• The economics of video on demand haven’t emerged (yet) as a viable replacement for the industry’s DVD business
• The music industry’s business model has been disrupted by the “unbundling” of songs (good for users, challenging for the industry)
• Segments of the younger generation are watching less and less TV, and spending more and more time online and playing video games.

Like every other distribution platform before it (radio, TV, VHS, e-commerce), online media distribution is being adopted by users much faster than by content owners and advertisers, thereby leading to a short-term net destruction in value.

So, if you’re a studio executive, how do you begin to navigate these turbulent waters?  One thing is for sure — ignoring the sea change going on around us is not an option.  Cowering in fear at the thought of translating “analog dollars into digital dimes” will have only one effect — converting these dimes into pennies.  Rather, we believe content owners ought to adopt the burning platform paradigm.  Recognize that content distribution will be heavily disrupted anyway, and that the worst strategy is to move too slowly. Instead, experiment like your business is at stake:

• Understand the need to re-think and evolve Hollywood’s traditional licensing windows (ad-supported versus purchase or rental)
• Understand the user experience that end consumers desire (HD versus SD, streaming versus download, PC viewing versus devices)
• Evaluate the real trade-offs that DRM introduces
• Understand WHY people are free-riding content today, since these same people also spend more money than the average Internet users on non-digital platforms (more on this later).

Technological disruption can be brutal and uncomfortable for a CEO in the media industry navigating turbulent waters.  However, nothing good can emerge from a focus on short-term pain rather than long-term gain.  The key is to focus on what’s important to the end consumer, and what this consumer would be willing to pay for what’s important to them.

Consumers are changing.  Let’s change with them, and identify business models that embrace this change.

None of us want to end up with a quote like this to our name:

“While theoretically and technically television may be feasible, commercially and financially I consider it to be an impossibility…a development of which we need waste little time dreaming.”

- Lee DeForest, a pioneer in the development of radio (1926)

Gilles

Introducing Vuze To Go

Find, Download, Play from any portable drive

We’ve spent a lot of time lately thinking about portability of your content. Across our efforts to deliver your videos wherever, whenever you want them, we’ve been focusing on devices that you already care about and own – notably iPhone, iPod , Xbox 360, and PS3 to date.

In addition, there’s another device that most of you own. Based on a recent survey, 72% of you (Vuze users) own a portable hard drive to carry around your media files. Combine this with the fact that you use an average of 2.9 computers on a weekly basis, and we decided to focus some attention on making it easier for you to take your media with you.

Let’s face it, you don’t always have the ability (or desire) to install Vuze on the multiple computers you use at work, in school, or at a friend’s place. With this in mind, we set out to make it possible for you to run Vuze from the same portable drive where you store your media files, anywhere you go.

To do this, Vuze teamed with a company called Ceedo to create a simple, elegant app we’re calling Vuze To Go - a completely portable, self-contained version of Vuze.

Vuze To Go installs on any portable disk drive, like a USB hard drive or a flash thumb drive, rather than on your computer’s hard drive, and enables access to the full functionality of Vuze – anytime and anywhere. Just plug your portable drive (complete with Vuze To Go) into any PC and you’re ready to go. Vuze will run seamlessly from the portable drive, and all of your downloads can also go directly to that drive. And, like Vuze on your main computer, you’ll be able to play all the content in your Vuze Library even when you’re offline.

For you techies, Vuze to Go contains a virtual operating system, plus your familiar Vuze application.

While the core version of Vuze remains free (and always will), we’re offering a PC version of “Vuze to Go” for only $9.99. Try it out free for 2 weeks, and let us know what you think.

Look forward to hearing your thoughts.

Chris

Cox Cable Delaying Traffic: Comcast Revisited?

Like many of you, we’re watching with growing concern recent announcements by Cox Cable that they’ll be taking steps to classify different types of Internet traffic as  “time-sensitive” and “non-time-sensitive,” and may “delay” certain traffic deemed to be “non-time-sensitive.”   Squarely on the list of “non-time-sensitive” (read “second-class citizen”) is all traffic using peer-to-peer protocols.  That includes all bittorrent applications, including your Vuze application.   We take that personally, and think you should too.

Cox outlined their plans at a very high level in their recently published Congestion Management Policy.   The complete list of low priority uses includes:

• File Access (bulk transfers of data such as FTP)
• Network Storage (bulk transfers of data for storage)
• P2P (peer-to-peer protocols)
• Software Updates (managed updates such as operating system updates)
• Usenet (newsgroup related).

That means if you’re engaged in any of these apparently “second-class” activities and the network gets bogged down, you may see your connection slow — even though you’re paying the same price as everyone else for access. Cox’s announcement also notes that the low-priority list may change or expand in the future.  Of course, the one of these that hits home for us (and you) is “peer-to-peer.”

Here’s what concerns us.  While Cox may consider our content and business to be unimportant or of lower priority, all of the content we deliver through the Vuze HD Network is delivered using our bittorrent-protocol-based technology.    That means that when you’re downloading Vuze content using Vuze, whether its a PBS documentary, the latest episode of “Pink” or some great user published content, it will automatically be classified as “non-time-sensitive,” and thus may be subject to delay at Cox’s sole discretion.  Suffice it to say, our 10 million users who access over a petabyte of Vuze HD Network content every month care about “delay” of their content.

This is all both odd and troubling.  On the list of “time-sensitive” activities entitled to higher priority is “streaming video and audio.”  Apparently, Cox doesn’t know or perhaps doesn’t care that we offer a progressive download (“virtual streaming”) option for much of our content.   Like other streaming experiences, you push “Play” and within seconds the content begins playing for the user.  That’s the experience our users expect.  So it would appear that under the new Cox regime YouTube and Hulu (and of course Cox services) are high priority, while Vuze’s similar services are relegated to the back of the bus.

Granted, Cox’s new classification system does not appear to mean that content will be automatically “delayed,” but it’s unclear what the criterion will be for making the determinations of the nature and extent of any delay.  Nor is it clear what the actual impact will be on the Vuze user experience or others who enjoy the benefits of peer-to-peer technologies.  This greatly concerns us.  There’s no doubt that Cox would minimize such potential impact, but we are loath to trust the judgments of a network operator about what does or does not hurt our business, particularly when they too are in the content business.

It also remains to be seen whether Cox’s plan and actions fully comply with the standards enunciated in the FCC’s recent order against Comcast.  Some of you will recall that Vuze became involved last year in a similar controversy with Comcast.  In that case, Comcast was accused of improperly interfering with Internet traffic through the use of false reset packets, also known as the “man in the middle” technique.  Several consumer groups filed complaints at the FCC against Comcast, and Vuze filed a Petition for Rulemaking requesting the FCC to promulgate a set of clear rules that would govern “reasonable network management.”  Vuze even testified at the FCC’s first field hearing at Harvard University.

The FCC eventually came down hard on Comcast, finding that their use of false resent packets was an “unreasonable” network management technique and a violation of Federal law and policy.  In the Comcast case, the FCC found that Comcast’s interference with peer-to-peer protocols appeared to contravene the federal policy of “promot[ing] the continued development of the Internet” because that interference impedes consumers from “run[ning] applications . . . of their choice, … including the video programming made available by vendors like Vuze.”  [Comcast Order, p. 25]

It remains to be seen whether Cox’s techniques will withstand FCC scrutiny, particularly under a new FCC Chairman to be appointed by President Obama, a known supporter of net neutrality.

Not surprisingly, FreePress.net, one of the original complainants against Comcast, was quick to express concern over the Cox announcement:

As a general rule, we’re concerned about any cable or phone company picking winners and losers online. These kinds of practices cut against the fundamental neutrality of the open Internet. We urge the FCC to subject this practice to close scrutiny and call on Cox to provide its customers with more technical details about exactly what it’s doing.”

We join Free Press and others in calling for close scrutiny by the FCC of Cox’s activities affecting peer-to-peer traffic.  In the meantime, we will also be taking steps to monitor instances of actual interference with the delivery of our programming.  Fortunately, this task just got a bit easier thanks to the efforts of Google’s Chief Internet Evangelist, Vint Cerf, and Google who, working with MLab, recently made available online tools for measuring interference with bittorrent traffic.  We encourage all of you to use them and speak out about any irregularities.

Thanks for helping to keep Vuze and the Internet open and free.

Jay Monahan

General Counsel

The low down on downloading

Last week, Ernesto from Torrent Freak asked us a question, “What are your top tips for optimizing download speed?” so our co-founder and CTO, Olivier Chalouhi set to responding. Seems to me that as many people as possible should profit from his wise words, so here they are:

1. Seed. Downloading speeds will be sub-optimal for everyone unless everyone plays their part and seeds. Private tracker sites are a great example of how the overall speed of the swarm increases when everyone is seeding and downloading in equal measure. So, play your part in seeding and tell others to as well.
2. Be connectable. Make sure you’re not fire-walled by opening up your incoming ports or by enabling UPnP in your router otherwise you’ll be leaving bandwidth on the table.
3. Manage your upload speed. It is all about striking a balance. You don’t want the upload speed to be too high, nor do you want it to be too low. Ideally you want to set your upload speed to be 80% of the maximum possible line speed.
4. Select the right torrents. Your download will be faster if you choose to download a torrent where there is a good balance of seeds and peers. For instance, Vuze ranks its search results according to the number of seeds and peers to make this easier.
5. Be realistic. Check the swarm average and if you’re already above average, then you just need to be patient. If you’re below average, go back and check some of these other things I’ve mentioned.
6. Get a Friend Boost. I wouldn’t be a Vuze developer if I didn’t give a plug for the Friend Boost feature we recently developed. When you create a network of Friends on Vuze, you agree to seed content to each other on a preferential basis. That is, if one of your friends has a torrent that you want, you will be able to directly use a portion of their bandwidth to get it. In most cases this will increase your download speed.

Obviously ways in which to actually implement some of these tips will differ from client to client. If you want to find out how to do it on Vuze, you can check out our wiki.

Happy downloading.

Search and you will Find

Some of you have already discovered our new search functionality, but for those of you that haven’t, we want to make sure you don’t miss out on this great new feature.

Now, when you type the name of the video you’re looking for into our search box, you’ll get a list of all the torrents from the Vuze Network and from some of the most popular other sites. If you can’t see the name of your favorite site, you can always search for templates that have been created by members of our community and add it. And for the developers / hackers out there, you can always create your own custom template too, and share it with others on the web.

We’d love to know what you think of this new feature, so please leave your comments here or in our forums.

Happy Finding,

Olivier

More than just a (great) bittorrent client

If you think there have been a few changes around here lately, you’re right. We’ve been busy in Palo Alto. We thought we’d take the time to tell you a bit about why we made these changes, what they are (in case you haven’t spotted them all), and what other changes are on the horizon.

We have a big vision here at Vuze. We don’t want to be just the bittorrent application you came to love. Rather, we want to create the best all-in-one application for finding, playing and sharing great content, especially the high-quality content you’ll discover on the Vuze Network.

Finding torrents: Improved search

We want you to be able to discover great content wherever it lives on the web. Our new search engine lets you search for content on Vuze, as well as sources outside Vuze. Try a search and see what we mean.

Sharing torrents: new Friends feature

Everyone likes to share stuff with their friends. Well, now we’ve made it really easy to share your favorite torrents with friends. All you have to do is to become Friends on Vuze and then you can share any torrent with them, without ever leaving the application. If they’re a good friend, they’ll share what they find with you, too.

Get a Boost

And, you get another added bonus when you create a group of friends on Vuze. Your friends automatically become your own personal swarm where you give each other preferential access to each other’s bandwidth and make downloading faster. It’s what we call a “Friend Boost”. So, the more friends you have, the faster it is to download. So boost and get boosted.

Try out all our new features, leave us comments here or in our forums telling us what you think and what you’d love to see in future releases. If you are curious about what other people think, you can also check out these articles from ZeroPaid, NewTeeVee, Slyck and TorrentFreak. And remember, these changes are only the first step. We have more upgrades in store, so stay tuned.

Gilles and the Vuze Team