Listening post: StreamCast Networks CEO Michael Weiss lives on the cutting edge of controversial peer-to-peer networking technology currently being scrutinized by Congress.NOT all the innovation in controversial peer-to-peer networking See peer-to-peer network. technology may be coming out of the Silicon Valley. Some of it is coming out of the French Quarter-style office complex along a stretch of Ventura Boulevard Ventura Boulevard is one of the primary east-west thouroughfares in the San Fernando Valley; as it was originally a part of the El Camino Real (the trail between Spanish missions), Ventura Boulevard is the oldest route in the San Fernando Valley. It was also U.S. in Woodland Hills. There, StreamCast Networks StreamCast Networks, Inc., is an American corporation, specializing in peer-to-peer software. Formerly named MusicCity, StreamCast created Morpheus, which was one of the first major peer-to-peer applications. StreamCast was also a defendant in the MGM v. Inc. is creating technology that may one day empower computer users who are swapping song and movie files across P2P See peer-to-peer and point-to-point. networks. Think what Google did to search for music and film. StreamCast, which was founded seven years ago, is headed by chief executive Michael Weiss Michael Weiss can refer to one of several people:
A former disc jockey disc jockey (DJ) Person who plays recorded music on radio or television or at a nightclub or other live venue. Disc jockey programs became the economic base of many radio stations in the U.S. after World War II. in his hometown of Chicago and an intern for Columbia Records For the Columbia Records label which was a unit of EMI, see . For the Columbia Records label in Japan, see . Columbia Records is the oldest surviving brand name in recorded sound, dating back to 1888, and was the first record company to produce pre-recorded records as in Miami during college, Weiss relocated StreamCast from Nashville, Tenn. to Woodland Hills last year, and, went about shaping its business model. In his first stint as executive, Weiss was behind Morpheus, a technology which lost the battle to Kazaa several years ago as the dominant P2P network. It lost, Weiss says, because it went "black" for a few days in 2001, and users switched to Kazaa. While Morpheus hasn't been able to regain the market, it's trying a different approach. Working with a consortium of Harvard computer science alumni, Weiss hopes StreamCast can make a name for itself by improving P2P technology in general. The Neo Network, StreamCast's newest feature, was introduced at the Web 2.0 conference Web 2.0 Conference could mean:
But as NeoNetwork and Morpheus 4.5 (the latest version of that software) are tools to attract more business for StreamCast, the entertainment industry's vehement opposition to P2P technology as a whole may slow down its growth throughout the U.S. Having lost several court battles, include the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling earlier this year that P2P companies cannot be liable for illegal copyright infringements of their users, the powerful industry, has turned to Congress. Legislators have introduced a number of bills and have let the lobbyists. For both sides duke it out in several conferences held in Washington, D.C., but they are unlikely to pass legislation as they get closer to the presidential election and a lame duck An elected official, who is to be followed by another, during the period of time between the election and the date that the successor will fill the post. The term lame duck generally describes one who holds power when that power is certain to end in the near future. session that may ensue. But Weiss is confident his company and P2P will weather the storm. Question: Having created the business model for Morpheus out of thin air, seemingly, did you ever think the entertainment industry would oppose it as staunchly as it is doing now? Answer: We thought hard before launching Morpheus, knowing that if we were successful that the entertainment industry would come after us with all their might and fury. We weighed the options of moving offshore or staying in the U.S. In the end, we decided to launch Morpheus and stay in the U.S. because of our strong belief that what we were doing was legally right (as proven out in our court cases) and that we had a moral right to do so. We weren't going to let the entertainment industry stifle innovation as they have tried to do for the past century--ranging from piano rolls, TV, radio, home video and now P2P. Q: You have a background as a DJ, college training in mass communications and interest in developing technologies. There are numerous technologies to get involved in--how did you end up in such a controversial one ns P2P? A: (After several stints in other businesses) I said I've got to get involved with streaming media See streaming audio, streaming video and digital media hub. as soon as I can ... because this is the future. There were only three companies doing streaming video A one-way video transmission over a data network. It is widely used on the Web as well as company networks to play video clips and video broadcasts. Computers in home networks stream video to digital media hubs connected to a home theater. (then): Microsoft, RealNetworks and a company out of Tel Aviv, GEO Interactive Media. GEO had just opened an American office in Woodland Hills. The president of the U.S operation knew my work at a previous company--so he hired me almost on the spot. GEO was introducing a new streaming media tcctmology called "Emblaze em·blaze 1 tr.v. em·blazed, em·blaz·ing, em·blaz·es 1. To set on fire. 2. To cause to glow; light up. " in 1998. I became vice president of strategic development and put in charge of creating a business plan to introduce the technology to the public. I figured out what we needed was a business example of this technology that could also be in business on its own. Q: So how receptive were they? A: I submitted my 300-page business plan to my boss here and Israel and I got a call back from Tel Aviv that was critical of my plan. The very next day Mark Cuban's broadcast.com went public and at the time was the largest public offering on NASDAQ NASDAQ in full National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations U.S. market for over-the-counter securities. Established in 1971 by the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD), NASDAQ is an automated quotation system that reports on . It was the same business model. Q: So you got called back, of course? A: I got a call back and flew back to Tel Aviv. After six months, the board of GEO agreed to fund my idea with a half-million dollars and I hired a team of 16 people one them is actually still here--and launched webradio.com in January 1999. GEO was traded on the London Stock Exchange London Stock Exchange London marketplace for securities. It was formed in 1773 by a group of stockbrokers who had been doing business informally in local coffeehouses. with a market cap of $330 million. Six months after the spin-off subsidiary Webradio.com (was founded), Wall Street gave it a valuation of $440 million--$100 million more than the parent company. Q: Were investors eager to jump on your bandwagon at that point and what about the entertainment industry? A: I had a deal with Mel Karmazin at CBS (Cell Broadcast Service) See cell broadcast. to come in as an equity player and spin this thing off on NASDAQ and he was going to bring in ClearChannel. Q: But that didn't pan out like you expected, right? So what came of it and what did you do? A: Unfortunately, the technology didn't really meet the standards that CBS and ClearChannel would've liked to seen. The quality wasn't as good. I left the company and was recruited to Tuneto.com and I came in as vice president of strategic development there. Tuneto.com had a technology that involved streaming media, sort of like a radio player. It was great technology, and I went to all the major record labels and said, "what you need is a subscription service online for your music, because you got this company called Napster that's starting to get popular and unless you offer something to consumers Napster will get really big." Q: In other words Adv. 1. in other words - otherwise stated; "in other words, we are broke" put differently , you were on to P2P at that point, asking the labels to work with you legitimately. A: All five (record labels refused) ... this was 1999. Tuneto.com ended up being sold to Listen.com, which started a music service called Rhapsody (1) A subscription-based online music service from RealNetworks that gives users unlimited access to a vast library of major and independent label music. Within a single interface, Rhapsody provides access to streaming music, Internet radio and extensive music information and and was (eventually) purchased by RealNetworks. Q: Where did you go from there? A: I was recruited for a company called Musiccity.com and started working there in April 2000 as CEO (1) (Chief Executive Officer) The highest individual in command of an organization. Typically the president of the company, the CEO reports to the Chairman of the Board. . MusicCity was the predecessor of StreamCast, (and their business plan was to become an Internet radio provider. I wanted to do more than play music online, (wanting to make it a) personalized experience so the software would learn the kind of music a user would like and introduce new music to them. In order to do that, I needed to get interactive licenses from labels, and two of them started to negotiate with me. (Those efforts failed because) the license fee, the revenue share, was just outrageous. Q: So what exactly was the problem with P2P? A: It's the only business that has no economies of scale--the more users you get, the more money it costs. The streaming media cost plus the huge license fees, says ... not a business. Plus, when I just started, the whole stock market crashed. Everything that had to do with consumers was bad news. Q: So what did you do at that point? A: We decided to create something called a business-to-business model. Part of what we were going to do is create a toolbar A row or column of on-screen buttons used to activate functions in the application. Many toolbars are customizable, letting you add and delete buttons as required. Toolbars may be fixed in position or may float, which means they can be dragged to a more convenient location in the that would change shapes and functionality--the whole thing would morph. I did some research on Greek mythology (and found) that Morpheus is the God of dreams, so I realized, "Ah, Morpheus." Q: How did Morpheus then "morph" into a P2P service? A: It had nothing to do with file-sharing at all (at the beginning). But we couldn't get any additional investors ... and were ready to close shop come the end of 2000. (But), really just to prove that we could get this tool out, we launched this peer-to-peer thing--we had no idea what we were doing. When we first launched Morpheus in 200l, we didn't have much of a business plan--and Morpheus became a hot property quickly. By the end of summer 2001, we had 22 million users (and) Morpheus was the No. 1 software on the Internet, with Kazaa at No. 4. We liked what Kazaa had and licensed the technology to them. Q: But you left the company at that moment? Why? A: I left the company at the very end of August 2001 (because I) was forced out by the founder. (Following that) there was a dispute in licensing of Kazaa technology in February 2002 and Kazaa ended up with a lion's share of users. I got rehired on April 24, 2003. The board said they made a horrible mistake about me. We closed the Nashville offices, (assembled) a whole new team, and set out to make Morpheus. Q: So what moves have you made since? A: We bought a company in August 2002 with these two great computer scientists. They had this brand new P2P technology that is able to see the entire network of computers. Previously P2P could only see small clusters at a time (which resulted in) traffic congestion The condition of a network when there is not enough bandwidth to support the current traffic load. congestion - When the offered load of a data communication path exceeds the capacity. on the Internet because of P2P services. Snapshot Michael Weiss Title: CEO, StreamCast Networks, Inc. Born: Aug. 1, 1952 Education: University of Miami This article is about the university in Coral Gables, Florida. For the university in Oxford, Ohio, see Miami University. The University of Miami (also known as Miami of Florida,[2] UM,[3] or just The U , mass communications major, Columbia College (Chicago, Ill.), film studies Career Turning Point: Leaving behind disc-jockeying in Chicago clubs to open one of the first video disc stores in the nation Most Admired Persons: Larry Finley, former KTLA KTLA KCBS TV in Los Angeles broadcaster, entrepreneur Personal: Married with three children, two grandchildren |
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