Lee, a 14-year old student, is sitting in her bedroom late at night with her broadband connected PC. She fires up her software which continuous scans the Internet for her favourite song as she’s chatting online with her friends. The software finds what she is looking for and prompts: “File found: Download now?.” Lee smiles (she’s been looking for this song for a while now) With a click of the button, Lee begins to download her song for free and within a couple of minutes has her song on her computer and synchronised automatically with her iPOD. She says goodbye to her friends online and jumps into bed listening to her newly downloaded song. As she falls asleep, she leaves a download running of a movie that was recently released on DVD and not even available in Australia yet.

Lee is part of the Download Generation. She feels no guilt and no shame in consuming digital music that is freely available on the net. So what are the tools of the trade that the Download Generation use to get access to free digital content?

P.O.F.G.S. (Plain-Old-Fashioned-Google-Search)

Performing a Google search for “Free music” or “free software” can result in some fairly interesting links. However, IP lawyers representing copyright holders continually scan the Internet and will aggressively pursue the owners of illegal sites. Obvious problems with this is that these site owners are created off-shore with minimal legal protection for copyright holders.

Peer-to-Peer

A peer-to-peer (or P2P) computer network is a network that relies on the computing power and bandwidth of the participants in the network rather than concentrating it in a relatively low number of servers. This means that rather the file exists on a central server, they are shared amongst the participants of the network. The file is broken into small chunks of data and shared. So in the case of Lee, as she downloads these chunks of her music file, they are automatically uploaded directly to other computers who are also interested in the same song. Once she has finished downloading the chunks are re-combined and ready for use. BitComet, LimeWire and Napster are the more common software on the market that utilises P2P networking.

Key Generator Cracks

Software programs generally ask the user to a key to verify that you have a legitimate piece of software. This key can be generated (“KeyGen” in Internet slang) by combining two or more bits of information (say the serial number and customer name) into an algorithm that spits out the code. The code is then transmitted to the publisher’s central server to acknowledge that a legitimate copy is present on the user’s machine. Unfortunately, as with all codes, they are crackable. A downloader can look up so-called KeyGen cracks and break it so that it emulates a legit piece of software.

DeCSS for DVDs

CSS stands for Content Scrambling System, an encryption used for movie DVDs. Since 1999, DeCSS was created that breaks the CSS encryption and allows the reading of movie DVDs. Why is this significant? This feeds the belly of the Download Generation. Cracking the CSS code means that DVD quality movies can be downloaded over the net. In Lee’s case, she just has to download a free DVD movie player and she can watch the latest releases on DVD on her PC.

Apple iTunes

All is not lost however. Apple have announced that 1 billion legitimate songs have been downloaded worldwide through their online iTunes store. This shows that there is a market for people who want to legally download their songs. It is only a matter of time that DVD-quality movies, games and software become legitimately downloaded. Part of the reason why iTunes is so successful is that it easily integrates with Apple iPods. The other stems from the fact that Apple have developed their own Digital Rights Management tool that constrains the songs use. For example, users are not allowed unlimited CD burns of playlists, or to play the songs on more than five computers within 24 hours. However, they are allowed to copy the songs to an unlimited number of iPods (Source: WikiPedia). Apple’s Digital Rights Management makes it attractive as publishers have some level of control on the distribution of their music.

Conclusion

There are a number of ways that the download generation can consume, legitimately or otherwise, digital media. The key for content providers is to take a long term view and examine the fundamental trends that are occurring. Children who grew up with the Internet are now in the workforce and becoming more affluent and are more comfortable in paying for goods, services and content online. Remember the Internet is the cheapest global distribution channel to get your content to your customers. Protect yourself and your valuable IP as best you can but the global wave of the “Download Generation” is just too large to ignore.

You’ve probably heard about Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) around the traps and wondered what the fuss about it. If you are one of the lucky owners of an e-Tag in Melbourne and Sydney you will have already experienced the wonders of this technology. I hope this hasn’t put you off the rest of this article, which will give you an overview of what an RFID system is and some news about Coles-Myer and Wal-Mart and their RFID ambitions.

RFID Primer

First, what is an RFID? Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is an automatic identification method, relying on storing and remotely retrieving data using devices called RFID tags or transponders. RFID can communicate, wirelessly, with each other and exchange all manner of information. For example, an RFID can be stuck onto products, just like a bar code. The RFID tag can be coded with information about the individual product such as serial number, product group, time/date/place of manufacture etc.

RFID’s come in three types: passive; semi-active and active; – it’s important to know the difference so that you can decide what type of RFID you need for your business [1]:

Passive RFID tags have no internal power supply. A small electrical current is induced a an incoming RF signal and is just enough to transmit a reply back. An example is Figure 1 from The Kennedy Group. Due to it’s small size you, some human implant experiments are being conducted, that places the tags just under the skin (see Figure 2). Passive tags have practical read distances ranging from about 10 mm up to about 6 metres.

Figure 1: Thin, passive RFID that can be produced using a printing press technology

Figure 2: Photo of Amal Graafstra, a Washington state native and business owner, having an RFID chip implanted in his left hand in early 2005.

Semi-Active RFID tags are very similar to passive tags except for the addition of a small battery. This battery allows the tag IC to be constantly powered. This removes the need for the aerial to be designed to collect power from the incoming signal.

Active RFID tags, on the other hand, have an internal power source which is used to power any ICs and generate the outgoing signal. Think of tollway e-Tags. They may have longer range and larger memories than passive tags, as well as the ability to store additional information sent by the transceiver.

In 2004, Nokia released a kit that can enable cell phones to act as readers. Tek Industries has released an add-on to iPAQ, Handera, and Palm handheld devices that does the same.

At large volumes passive RFID tags can cost as low as 10c each (1 million units or more). RFID readers traditionally cost between $1000 to $3000, but new low-power readers may come onto the market from as low as US$20.

As with all technology deployment you must take into account the re-training and project management costs.

Case Studies

Wal-Mart

Wal-Mart have been actively working with their top 100 suppliers, since 2003, to label all of their stock with RFID tags to enable merchandise to be identified without visually inspecting them, thus improving supply-chain efficiencies. Originally Wal-Mart mandated that all of its suppliers use RFID technology by the end of 2005, but suppliers have asked for an extension to this date, due to difficulties in switching to this new technology. Wal-Mart was the pioneer of bar-code technology in the 1980s.

The University of Arkansas recently (October 2005) conducted an independent study that showed a 16 percent drop in out-of-stock merchandise in RFID equipped stores compared to the non-RFID equipped control group. RFID stores were 63 percent more effective in replenishing out-of-stocks. The study also showed that manual orders reduced by 10 percent.

This is an important milestone for the RFID industry. While there have been plenty of technical research and a lot of theorising about it’s benefits, there had been very little hard evidence of actual significant return-on-investment on such systems.

Coles Myer

Last year, Coles Myer teamed up with Sun Microsystems, Accenture and EAN to develop an RFID tracking system for their distribution centres. Equipment installed at the distribution centre’s dispatch door and the supermarket receiving dock will allow real-time tracking of the roll-cage’s arrival at the dock. The readers will register on Coles’ database the arrival of the roll cage [2].

Sun Microsystems managing director Jim Hassell said “The use of RFID technology is seen as the technology that is going to revolutionise the supply chain. By automatically tracking the movement of stock and assets, this technology will enable organisations to increase efficiency, reduce cost and complexity not only for the supply chain but all company assets.” (via ZDnet)

About Klassic Ventures

Klassic Ventures is a technology consulting company that offers highly personlised service. If you have a technology question, we can answer it! There’s no charge for initial background research work. Contact our CEO, Graeme Klass, at graeme@klassicventures.com.

References

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=RFID&printable=yes
2. http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/business/0,39023166,39151152,00.htm
3. http://www.kennedygrp.com/home.cfm?cfid=116634&cftoken=72986022

If you would like more information on Wireless Networks, please contact graeme@klassicventures.com.