Another Attempt At Legal P2P... Using DRM
from the missing-the-point dept
Ever since Napster first came on the scene, companies keep showing up, claiming some form of "legal P2P" offering, ignoring that there are plenty of perfectly legal uses of just about any P2P system. However, each of these so-called "legal" offerings seems to miss the point. The latest is a company called NetCableTV, which makes the bold claim that: "There simply isn't a better way to get set up to distribute video over the Internet..." They are using some amount of P2P technology, as the downloads don't come from a central server but from other users' computers. What do users get for offering up their bandwidth? Two (count 'em!) different layers of copy protection and "a propriety chapter segmentation scheme which make piracy virtually impossible" (yes, that's the people who have already figured out how to break it that you hear snickering). The point of P2P file sharing is that while it spreads out the bandwidth issue, it also lets people sample, experiment and find new items from people they trust. This doesn't allow for that. In fact, all this really is is a system to get users to give up their bandwidth, while still not being able to do what they want with the content they have. Not particularly compelling. Looks like this one gets tossed into the useless professional BitTorrent wannabes pile.
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the story
lemon
"ain't no juice, unless you squeeze"
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the file-sharing story...
lemon
"ain't no juice, unless you squeeze"
ps. it ain't sharing if your pay'n
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check out FAIRCOPY
FAIRCOPY (www.faircopy.com) is a service that allows to use P2P to commercially distribute digital content. Consumers get sales commissions for their bandwidth. It does NOT use DRM.
Artists can efficiently and directly sell through this service, setting the prices and distribution commissions. FAIRCOPY also makes easy to offer Creative Commons-licensed free samples (see this, for example) thus still letting users explore and discover interesting content.
(disclosure: I'm the author of FAIRCOPY)
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Re: check out FAIRCOPY
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Re: check out FAIRCOPY
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