eMusic CEO To Keynote Red Hat Summit 2007

Red Hat announced that the President and CEO of eMusic, David Pakman, will keynote at the third annual Red Hat Summit taking place May 9-11, 2007 at the Sheraton San Diego Hotel and Marina. Pakman joins confirmed keynoter Alan Dechert, President and CEO of the Open Voting Consortium, and other key visionaries who will present at the conference. Pakman's keynote will address current industry issues surrounding digital rights management and the need for open content formats.

The Red Hat Summit 2007 will bring together partners and customers of all kinds in an open source knowledge exchange. The event will feature six tracks designed to address the latest areas of interest in the open source industry including virtualization, Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and intellectual property law. With hands-on workshops, demonstrations, informative sessions and more, the Red Hat Summit will feature industry leaders such as Pakman, Dechert and Chairman of the Software Freedom Law Center, Eben Moglen.

The Red Hat Summit presents an opportunity for attendees to join together to share ideas and learn more about open source, said Pakman. The digital music market has so many exciting issues surrounding digital rights management and open formats that appeal to the open source audience. I am thrilled to be involved in this influential conference and look forward to collaborating with other industry leaders about open source and digital music issues.

Pakman is President and CEO of eMusic, the world's largest retailer of independent music and the second largest digital music service after iTunes. Pakman has been a pioneer and entrepreneur in the digital media space for more than 15 years, focusing on developing music industry business models which exploit the efficiencies of the Internet and other technologies. Prior to his work with eMusic, Pakman was an executive for BeMusic, Myplay and N2K Entertainment and was also an early principal force and co-creator of Apple Computer's Music Group. Additionally, Pakman is a former board member of the Digital Media Association (DiMA), a current board member of Knitting Factory Entertainment and has testified before Congress and the NTIA about the Digital millennium Copyright Act.

Today's digital music market is filled with heated debate regarding digital rights management, open content formats and pricing. With digital rights management, copyright owners attempt to limit the use of digital work and have created controversy over the validity of such restrictions in regards to music files. Many argue over pricing and the need for open content formats to allow access of files to the public. Pakman will address these issues and his view on the need for open formats in the digital music market in his visionary keynote at the Red Hat Summit in San Diego.

For more information, or to register for the Red Hat Summit, visit www.redhat.com/promo/summit/.