Industry Interview: Jibe Inc.
sm.com: So is this a software or a service?
Neal: It’s a service. There is peer software that’s loaded in all of the PCs and then an admin server that’s going to broker all of the connections, so when a PC requests some content we intercept that request on the desktop and we go to our admin server and say "who already has this content?" Let’s say we come up with 500 peers that have it, we’re going to select the top twenty peers that have it and then our software’s going to download from those twenty peers concurrently. Again, to maximize the download to that peer. We integrate transparently with the content provider’s Web site. So let’s use Transmission films as an example: they’re not changing their Web site for us; they are under the covers because they’re going to put some tags in that say this is Jibe supported and enabled content, but to the user they don’t even know we’re there, other than the initial download of our client.
sm.com: How is that different from a Blue Falcon or a CenterSpan solution?
Neal: The CenterSpan solution I believe has their own client user interface so they integrate natively with the content provider’s Web site. We’re under the covers as far as the user is concerned; they don’t even need to know we’re there other than downloads happen a lot faster, they have progressive downloads now, and it’s a better user experience because the content providers can encode in a higher quality encoding bit-rate now.
sm.com: What is the advantage of downloading content versus streaming it?
Neal: The advantage is that once the file is downloaded on your system, you can have a higher encoding rate so you get better quality video so it’s a better user experience. You eliminate the skipping and buffering when you’re watching the playback.
sm.com: So that’s the value proposition?
Neal: Yes. But there’s more to it than that. I don’t want to portray it as just a high speed download because we also have content integrity. This is a gated network in that only authorized users can register content into our admin server. So it’s not like a Kazaa or a Napster where anybody can inject content. The content provider is the only one who’s going to put any content in the network. At the time the content’s registered, we hash that content and we come up with a hash key and we keep that in a secure place. When the file is downloaded, we again recalculate the hash and those two must match or the file has been tampered with.
sm.com: Do you classify yourselves as P2P?
Neal: I have said that we are a "managed secure P2P sire for content delivery." The problem is, when you say P2P people think it’s an open network that anybody can inject content in to. That’s their biggest fear: What about security? What happens if this file from MovieLink is on my desktop and then I put it on Kazaa? Well guess what – you’ve got that problem now. We are expecting the content providers to apply DRM to their files. We are going to maintain the content integrity, with our hashing key to make sure that somebody doesn’t tamper with it and that what gets downloaded is what the content provider wanted downloaded, but you’ve got to protect the file with DRM.
sm.com: So your solution and service then is not incorporating any type of DRM protection?
Neal: No, that’s where we’re partnering with Empire DRM. We are just the delivery piece and we’re partnering with [Empire DRM] for the DRM component. And we’re going to work closer and closer together – right now they’re two different solutions and we’re going to do a lot of integration so that we bring those two together more.
sm.com: Can content providers take advantage of this service in any sort of a pilot program?
Neal: No, we really don’t have anything like that. We’re working with content providers on a one-off basis. They want to see the benefits and we’ll do it for them on a one-off basis, but we don’t have an open program where anybody can just go in and do it. Before we make their files available, we need to make sure that they understand that these files are protected, they are registered with our server, and we want to be extra safe that content doesn’t get loose.