KaZaA's Altnet tackles piracy

[Wenchie]

Simon Hayes
December 17, 2002

CONTROVERSIAL Australian file sharing network Altnet has moved peer-to-peer a step closer to legitimacy with file identification technology designed to stop piracy.

Altnet - which piggybacks Australian-owned peer-to-peer network, KaZaA - has hired well-known technologist and investor Ron Lachman as chief scientist, licensing his Truenames system to better identify its files.

Truenames - known in the peer-to-peer community as hashing - assigns a unique number to each file by multiplying its size by a patented algorithm.

The move could help reassure the music industry Altnet is serious about stamping out piracy in file sharing.

Altnet offers copyright-protected, authorised music and videos for a fee, competing with its host network and other file sharing systems, many of which offer pirated content uploaded by users.

Altnet also operates as a distributed computing network, allowing users to rent unused storage and computing power to corporate clients.

Altnet owner, Brilliant Digital Entertainment, chief executive Kevin Bermeister admitted a successful attempt by the US recording and movie industries to include KaZaA in legal action for copyright violations had influenced his plans.

"It already has affected us, and has always affected us," he said. "But you either believe that KaZaA as an application is legal and right, separate from what users empowered by KaZaA may be doing with it, or you try to enjoin them (to the actions of users).

"KaZaA is an application - what users do with it is an issue of user behaviour."

The former Sega Ozi-Soft boss said Mr Lachman had participated in two rounds of venture funding for Altnet, personally and through his venture capital fund Lachman Goldman, which has a portfolio including FastNet and Nielsen/NetRatings.

Lachman Goldman was founded on the back of the $US30 million ($53 million) 1994 sale of Lachman Technology to Legent Corporation.

Distributed computing is Brilliant Digital's great hope, as it moves its business model away from the highly competitive animation and online advertising market.

The company - which emerged from Sydney in 1997 and ended up in Los Angeles - has scaled back its animation business as it eyes distributed computing opportunities.

It spent the past year trimming costs through redundancies in both the US and Australia.

The company - which generates most of its revenue through advertising sales and animation work - laid off 53 of its 60 Sydney-based research and development staff while also reducing the headcount at its Los Angeles head office.

The Australian




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