Mobile Content Portal Lets You Move Content To New Devices

from the it-can-store-what-you-have dept

A mobile content player that has struggled in the past is trying again with a new name and a new strategy to differentiate it from others. It's deceptively simple: when you buy something, they keep a record of what you bought so that if you later switch mobile phones, you can just login and re-download all the content you already purchased. It's the basic online locker strategy, recognizing the power of connectivity when it comes to digital goods. Others have tried it with regular downloadable content, but they often run into legal issues as the entertainment industry isn't necessarily comfortable with such an arrangement. They, obviously, have no qualms about asking you to buy stuff again if you switch devices. What's not entirely clear, however, is how they're doing this. Google's video offering has a similar feature, but in order to do so you have to give up quite a bit of privacy, by agreeing to "check in" every time you play a video. From the description in the article, it doesn't sound like this system does that, but then it's not clear how they prevent you from downloading the same content to many, many devices which would obviously upset the entertainment industry.