Sharman Networks’ DCIA:
Kazaa owner Sharman Networks has succeeded once again in bamboozling the mainstream media into portraying its one-string DCIA (Distributed Computing Industry Association) as a genuine “industry trade group”.
“Internet users could collect paychecks rather than lawsuits when they share music through ‘peer-to-peer’ networks like Kazaa, under a proposal outlined by an industry trade group on Thursday,” says a Reuters report by Andy Sullivan here.
The DCIA purports to represent elements of the commercial p2p file sharing community. However, far from being a trade group it is, in fact, a shadowy enterprise owned and financed by Sharman Networks and its partner Altnet, which is to be delisted for failing to meet minimum stock market financial requirements.
The DCIA’s sole raison d’etre is to lend a veneer of legitimacy to Sharman’s Kazaa p2p app, and products and ’services’ touted by Altnet and hangers-on.
There’s no visible DCIA membership list and neither Sharman nor the DCIA have any association with P2P United, the only genuine trade group representing the mainstream p2p community.
P2P United’s members are, in marked contrast, extremely visible. They are BearShare (FreePeers, Inc), Limewire (LimeWire, LLC), Grokster (Grokster Ltd), eDonkey2000 (MetaMachine Inc), Blubster (Manolito P2P) and Morpheus (Streamcast Networks Inc).
However, now Grokster’s former president Wayne Rosso has joined another p2p company, Grokster has bought into Altnet’s game and we wonder if it may eventually become the DCIA’s only real member.
Nah ….
Be that as it may, for many months Sharman has been using one transparent ploy after another in its efforts to climb into bed with Big Music and the ‘current’ story is nothing more than a re-hash of the plan Sharman attempts to float every chance it gets.
“Rather than losing millions of dollars in potential sales to online song swappers, the recording industry should give them a cut of the revenues when they distribute songs in a protected format, the Distributed Computing Industry Association said,” says Reuters, once again quoting Sharman’s DCIA as a ‘trade group’.
The ‘protected format’ is, of course, Altnet’s.
“The scenario follows two others put forth by the trade group in an effort to forge peace between peer-to-peer networks and the major record labels that have hounded them and their users in court,” says the agency.
“DCIA chief executive Marty Lafferty said record labels could see sales grow by 10 percent over the next four years if they embraced the new technology, much as movie studios increased their market when they embraced the videocassette recorder in the 1980s.”
A spokesman for the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) declined comment, as he usually does when Sharman’s name comes up.
In the meanwhile, Sharman is an add-on as Morpheus (StreamCast Networks) and Grokster Ltd take on Hollywood.
