A rchive Date
[ 05-10-2000 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ U.S ]
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[The clock is ticking on Napster's 15 minutes of infamy
Napster's demise may be caused not by the courts, but by all the clever competitors infiltrating the market while the legal wrangling drags on
By Steve Ulfelder
Special to digitalMASS
With Napster back in court, bravely fighting to make it easier to steal music, this is a good time to revisit an incisive report that Forrester Research issued back in June. The gist was that Napster's legal battles (in which the company would prevail, Cambridge-based Forrester predicted) would prove the least of its worries ?- the true problem would be making money.
Napster would "become just one brand of a new software commodity."
Sure enough, in the past few months, while Napster was sending dump trucks full of money to lawyers, others piled into the online-music business. Natick-based ViaTech Technologies is one; I recently wrote about the company's offering, which ViaTech proudly calls "a legal Napster."
Now, Cambridge-based Akamai Technologies (that's pronounced "AH?kuh?my," the company points out, Hawaiian for "cool") has entered the digital-delivery derby. And given Akamai's track record, Napster ought to be quaking in its pirated little boots.
The stakes are high. As the name implies, "digital delivery" refers to transmitting things over the Net. Things you used to have to go to the store for. Music is the example du jour, but it's just the beginning. Think software. Think movies. TV shows, magazines, books. As more consumers get broadband Internet access, speeding downloads, there's every reason to believe digital delivery will accelerate.
According to Forrester, about $3 billion worth of goods will be purchased this way in 2004.
While you may or may not have heard of Akamai, it's a powerful company in the world of e-business. It specializes in content delivery -- essentially, Akamai developed a new way to send information whipping around the Internet and make sure it winds up where it's supposed to wind up. It truly was a better mousetrap, and the company has been rewarded accordingly. Although Akamai isn't immune to this year's Internet stock roller coaster ride (how does a 52-week range of $45 to $345 sound? Whee!), it is a bedrock Internet outfit.
Until now, Akamai was a business-to-business company, selling to corporations that needed a speedy, reliable Web site. But last week, the
company served up its first consumer-oriented product when it teamed with New York-based Reciprocal Inc. to announce "Digital Parcel Service," which combines digital delivery with the key ingredient missing from Napster: digital rights management.
Akamai brings to the party not just a solid-gold name but a large network that consists of more than 4,200 servers, in 50 countries, hooked up to about 225 telecommunications carriers. Akamai says it will "strategically place" digital goods on the computers that make up this global network. This will optimize delivery; a consumer in Yokohama, for example, won't have to stare at his computer screen all day waiting for his music to download from Ottawa. (Akamai's Stephanie Tilton, product manager for Digital Parcel Service, says these downloads can range up to a full gigabyte in size. In layman's terms, that's a boatload.)
Reciprocal specializes in digital rights management, ensuring that the owner of digital content gets paid. Here's how it works: A consumer decides to download a CD. She gets a message saying, "Pay us $15 and it's yours." She pays. The download commences. And here's the clever, beyond-Napster part: If that consumer tries to email the CD file to a friend, she can't ?- rather, the friend receives the pay-up message. The owner of the content is happy twice -? first because he's not being ripped off, and second because the email from one friend to another is a word-of-mouth advertising.
Bottom line: While Napster bats its eyes at judges and proclaims itself an innocent service being misused by a few bad apples, some sharp local companies are working to do legitimately what Napster does disingenuously.
Steve Ulfelder is a freelance technology and business writer who lives in Southborough.
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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