NOANKMEDIA
Technology Overview

Creative Commons Technology Summit
June 18, 2008
Devon Copley, CTOver. 1.1

Unlicensed P2P: Nobody Wins
The current unlicensed P2P environment serves no one’s interests well. Users get somefree-as-in-beer content, but quality and selection are low. ISPs are seeing bandwidth utilization
skyrocket, but cannot cache unlicensed content without risking liability for copyright
infringement. And creators and publishers alike are losing the major source of their livelihood asonline revenues fail to make up for plummeting physical retail sales.

End UsersCreators and Publishers

Internet Service Providers

No guarantee of quality orauthenticity of content

Catastrophic loss of revenue fromdeclining retail sales

Concerned about copyright liability
for hosting illegal P2P traffic

Unpopular content is difficult or
impossible to find

Data on content usage is hard to
obtain and of limited accuracy

Bandwidth costs for illegal P2P traffic
are high (on average occupies about halfof global bandwidth)

Download performance is poor as
ISPs restrict P2P bandwidth

Data on content usage is hard to
obtain and of limited accuracy

Wish to promote “green ISPservices” with licensed content, butfew licensed content aggregators

NOANKMEDIAA Grand Bargain
Noank believes the best outcome for all players in this environment is a grand bargain
between these three classes of stakeholders.
Users must pay a small surcharge, but receive unlimited access to non-DRM
contentCreators and publishers give up control and pricing power, but get paidISPs receive licenses and technology to enable caching and reduce utilization

We are building a technology infrastructure to support this bargain.

ContentEnd Users$LicensesCreators and Publishers

Internet Service Providers$NOANKMEDIA

Less Grand, But Still Good, Bargains
Locating an ISP - or government - willing to embrace such a radically different model
is challenging. But there are other sponsors who might be interested in enabling thedistribution of specific classes of content for specific groups of users.

The Noank solution is designed to enable these transactions as well.

End Users

Content$Licenses
Creators and Publishers
Device Manufacturers
Foundations

Educational Institutions
Interest Groups$NOANKMEDIAThe NOANK Solution:
A Blanket Licensing Engine• Bundle digital content (music, video, educational content) with services andproducts that users are accustomed to paying for:
Consumer and university broadband Internet access

Devices (mobile phones, MP3 players, etc.)

Almost anything else for which a fee can be charged (e.g., theme park tickets,concert tickets, etc.)• Make the content “feel free” to users, with easy access through multiple
interfaces, and no DRM or other restrictions• Collect a content fee from ISPs, device manufacturers, etc., and distribute a pro-rata share of that fee to each copyright owner based on detailed consumer usage
data that Noank collects

NOANKMEDIA

Ito’s Continuum

NOANKOpen
Free-as-in-beer

ClosedRetail SalesNOANKMEDIA

Technological VisionNoank is developing a general purpose blanket licensing
technology infrastructure to enable both grand and good bargains.
Major goals include:Manage licensing of content across many blanket licensors in many territories

Manage metadata for content in multiple languages

Provide an open API to metadata, allowing third parties to connect licensed
users with licensed content
Collect accurate usage data for payment of content owners, whilesimultaneously protecting user privacy

Provide a means for ISP customers to legally cache content

Limit leakage of content to non-licensed users

NOANKMEDIA

Technology Overview


The Noank system consists offour major subsystems:
Licensing and Metadata Registry

Authenticated P2P Network

Usage Counting Subsystem

User Interface Components

NOANKMEDIAThe Block Diagram
Internet

Client

WebBrowser

HTML

CustomCatalog
Client(devices)

XMLWeb Catalog
ServerREST API
ServerMetadataand LicenseRegistry

Auth Request

AuthorizedContent

SeedingSuperpeers
SeedingServerServerAuthorizedContent

P2P ClientAuthorizedContent

Usage
Counting
ClientNoank

Usage Data

Seeding
Peers
SeedingServerServer

Usage
Seeding
Seeding
Collectors
ServerServer

TicketServerSeeding
Seeding
SeedingServers
ServerServerAggregate
Usage Data

Usage
Database

NOANKMEDIA

Registry
HTMLWeb Catalog
Server(JSP/Servlets)
Metadata andLicense
Registry(MySQL)XMLREST API Server(Restlets/Tomcat)

catalog can be represented with standard• Content
HTML in a browser, or with an XML API• RESTful API with flexible XML representation• Licensing model designed for all media, all territories• Support for metadata in multiple languages• Flexible hierarchical, multilingual tagging• Supports user profiles and social networking features
NOANKMEDIA

Registry: Data Model Notes
on licensing data - prefer to leave• Focuseddomain-specific and subjective metadata tospecialists (MusicBrainz, OpenLibrary)• Supports CC, Noank, and Public Domain licenses
are more complicated than CC licenses• Licenses
as they have terms, territories
of rights can be split among multiple• Ownershipowners, across multiple territories
Agent entity for both creators and• Single
consumers of content -- “everyone can be acreator”• Basic social networking data
NOANKMEDIA

Registry: API Notes• RESTful design (PUT as well as GET)
entities with URL’s are Items,• CoreCollections, Agents, Tags and Groups
entities make sense;• Subordinate“instances” (files) are subordinate to Items
a number of existing representation• Evaluatedoptions (microformats, Yahoo! media,PBCore, etc.) but reluctantly wound up rolling
our own XMLNOANKMEDIA

Registry: API Example

NOANKMEDIA

Usage Counting SystemUSER

SERVICEPROVIDER

UsageCounting
ClientUsageMarshalling
ServerSigned
Ballot

SOAP

NOANK

AggregatedUsage Data

Fingerprint
CacheLOC
Usage
Database

MetadataandLicense
Registry

REST APIServerencrypted ballot to validate usage reports -• Uses
“One user, one vote” limits the risk of gaminguser-identifiable data is reported; IP addresses are• Nodropped• Demographic data is maintained
NOANKMEDIA

Usage Counting System: Notes• UCS Client monitors media file access at the driver level• Various heuristics to identify actual media consumption versus othersorts of file access• To ensure the most accurate revenue distribution, Noank collects

data on actual usage (not just P2P traffic flows) in nearreal-time• Noank counts uses in any player application (e.g., iTunes,Windows Media Player, etc.) without a plug-in• Technology tracks not only whether a song is played, but how muchof the song and which portions, accurate to with a few seconds• Currently Windows XP/Vista only
NOANKMEDIAP2P SystemUSER

NOANK

1TicketServer2

P2P Client

3

Seeding
Peers
SeedingServerServer

Tracker
SeedingServer3
3
Superpeer

CONTENTOWNER

3SeedingServer• Based on BitTorrent protocol
extension to protocol: use of a centrally-generated• Keyauthentication token to verify that a given client has a valid
license for the software• Content can be hosted by Noank or by content owner• “Superpeers” allow ISPs to cache popular content locally
NOANKMEDIAP2P Clients“Accelerator” client for Chinese• Simpletrial deployment
plugin for integration with• Mozilla
Firefox, Songbird, etc.
BT client with all the bells• Full-fledged
and whistles, based on an open-source
clientNOANKMEDIA