SafeMedia Corp. Calls On Universities To Preserve Copyright Holders Rights And Protect Student Privacy By Eliminating Illegal P2P Filesharing At Congressional Hearing

“Colleges and universities are fiercely protective of their own intellectual property. Why are they so cavalier when it comes to the intellectual property of others?” said SafeMedia CEO & President Safwat Fahmy.

Washington, DC — SafeMedia Corporation CEO and Founder, Safwat Fahmy, challenged colleges and universities to work to eliminate illegal peer-to-peer (P2P) filesharing of copyrighted material on campus networks in written testimony submitted today (Tuesday, June 5, 2007) before the House Committee on Science and Technology. In his written testimony, Fahmy briefed the committee on SafeMedia products designed to address the illegal sharing of copyrighted materials on campus P2P networks. The hearing, "The Role of Technology in Reducing Illegal Filesharing: A University Perspective," focused on the experiences of universities that have implemented technological measures to reduce P2P sharing on campus networks.

In his written testimony, Fahmy highlighted a disturbing report recently issued by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) that identified the serious security and privacy risks that major P2P filesharing programs create for their users.

“Some colleges and universities have been reluctant to adopt effective policies to deal with illegal filesharing. Some cite student privacy as a concern for refusing to stop clearly illegal filesharing, but how does it protect student privacy to allow P2P filesharing services to freely roam students’ computer hard drives for folders and documents without their explicit permission?” asked Fahmy in his written testimony to the committee. “I would ask if there isn’t a double standard here. Colleges and universities are fiercely protective of their own intellectual property. Why are they so cavalier when it comes to the intellectual property of others?”

Since the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998, colleges and universities are not held liable for copyright violations taking place on their campus networks, they are, however, required to cooperate with copyright holders who complain that their intellectual property is being freely distributed over campus networks. The music industry has sent nearly 60,000 notices of copyright violations to more than 1,000 campuses and has many lawsuits have been file against students at more than 130 schools. P2P filesharing of copyrighted material in the U.S. alone cost the movie industry $500 million, of which some 44-percent was attributed to college and university students in 2005. Research also reveals that in 2006, 1.3 billion music tracks were illegally downloaded by U.S. college students compared to an estimated 500 million legal downloads.

Fahmy's written testimony briefed the members of the Committee on SafeMedia's global "P2P Disaggregator" (P2PD) technology which is designed to destroy contaminated P2P networks by draining the illegal content of those networks. The company offers this technology to the global internet community in a variety of implementations to support different bandwidth and customer requirements locally, nationally and internationally:

• DSL/cable ISPs: to be integrated in their modem/router the ISP implements in the customer site. This is targeted to home users and small business. This does not require any investment by the user
• Network devices manufactures: to be integrated in their network devices (such as edge routers and concentrators) supporting T1 to OC198. This is targeted to universities and business and requires incremental costs of upgrading the current network edge routers and concentrators
• “Clouseau™” stand alone network appliance, which supports bandwidth of 10MB/s to 10GB/s (and high availability models). Clouseau™ protects the customer investment and requires no incremental costs to upgrade any existing network device. “Universities can purchase Clouseau™ for immediate implementation,” Fahmy explained, “Clouseau™ will detect and prohibit illegal P2P traffic while allowing the passage of legal P2P such as BitTorrent. Clouseau™ is inexpensive. Users simply plug it in the subnet as a bridge and it goes to work without altering their network topology."

SafeMedia's products utilize groundbreaking technology to:

• Protect user privacy
• Provide 100 percent accuracy with no false positives
• Easily adapt to small or large network environments
• Cause no slowdowns for legitimate network traffic (no network latency)
• Self-correct with no additional administrative burdens to network managers
• Adapt quickly to changes in illegal P2P networks and transmissions
• Install easily and is available at a reasonable price

Campuses generally have two means for dealing with illegal P2P filesharing on their networks. A significant majority of campuses approach the issue by using traffic-shaping systems to control and modify the rate of file transmissions on their networks. A smaller number of campuses have deployed network-filtering systems, which seek to block transmission of copyrighted material by identifying the content of copyright-infringing files. Both traffic-shaping and the current network-filtering systems were unable to capture any of the encrypted illegal P2P-traffic (encryption is used in 90 percent of all illegal P2P downloads), and as such, the results were not accurate and were less than marginal. “SafeMedia’s technology P2PD is capable of capturing and stopping all encrypted or non encrypted illegal P2P transmissions, while allowing all legal encrypted or non-encrypted P2P transmission,” said Fahmy.

“I take very seriously the concern about preserving personal computing privacy,” said Fahmy in a separate interview. “That is why our P2PD implemented in Clouseau™ never opens any transmission packets. Rather, we monitor the ever-changing and adapting myriad of illegal P2P protocols/networks and continually update our systems to block only these illegal transmissions.”

There is a tremendous cost avoidance of Internet connectivity fees to college campuses. According to Fahmy, traffic-shaping is not effective in reclaiming bandwidth, nor does it eliminate, “the outright theft of copyrighted material via P2P filesharing on campus networks.” Fahmy stresses the need for campuses to take more drastic measures by implementing technologies to effectively “stop illegal P2P filesharing in its tracks, thereby reclaiming up to two-thirds of campus bandwidth currently used for illicit purposes.”

SafeMedia’s Clouseau™ has been effectively installed for clients across the country, from Florida to California to Oklahoma and Texas in a variety of educational and commercial settings. The company is in talks for further deployments at a number of additional college and university campuses.

[Editors note: For more about USPTO Study and other facts sheets on SafeMediaplease visit http://www.mayocommunications.com/00-2007-SafeMediaCorp/MediaCenter.htm.]