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The Distributed Computing Industry Association (DCIA) is a trade organization with more than 100 member companies representing peer-to-peer (P2P) and social networking software providers, content rights holders, Internet service providers (ISPs), and service and support companies.

 

For the upcoming P2P Media Summit in Los Angeles, DCIA announced the next steps in a new P2P Best Practices initiative, which it plans to advance at the Summit.

 

The P2P Best Practices initiative is being introduced with the purpose of developing business practices to ensure the safe and efficient use of all P2P services that are currently being provided by P2P companies, ISPs, and content providers. This current effort being made by the DCIA will supersede the previously announced proposal to develop a “P2P Bill of Rights & Responsibilities.”

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DCIA CEO Marty Lafferty said this initiative is being taken to broaden the scope of the endeavor. The new effort will be conducted along the lines of other DCIA working groups, which have addressed policy, technology, and consumer issues with participation open on a voluntary basis, not only to DCIA Member companies, but also to other interested parties.

 

The P2P Best Practices initiative has been developed through consideration of input and help from all P2P companies, ISPs, content providers, and other qualified participants. The DCIA is currently proposing to facilitate the creation of a new working group to address P2P Best Practices by the end of June.

 

In the end, the finalizing and implementing of the P2P Best Practices document and next steps will follow a set deadline established by the DCIA and other working group participants engaged in drafting the P2P Best Practices. However, the current intent is to finish the work well within the end of this year.

 

An initial challenge for this effort will be to recruit a critical mass of participants to conduct a formative meeting for the P2P Best Practices Working Group (PBPG) in New York during the week of May 19th. This will help address concerns of content rights holders, broadband network operators, and end users.

 

The P2P Best Practices initiative is different from the DCIA’s ongoing P4P Working Group (P4PWG), in that the former will focus on P2P business practices, while the P4PWG focuses on technical solutions for optimizing P2P traffic across ISP networks. Although both groups are sponsored by the DCIA, the subject matter and focus of each working group is different from each other.