Kazaa hopes to develop a legit P2P business

Owner of P2P network Kazaa, Sharman Networks, and its affiliate company, Altnet, have founded an open, cross-industry "alliance" -- or "open discussion group" as they also describe it -- that has a rather interesting agenda: creating a legit P2P business together with record labels and other content owners.

Their plan is nothing new in the industry, P2P legend Napster offered back in 2001 to pay $1 billion to record labels if they would allow it to create a legit business by licensing content to its P2P network.

The group, Distributed Computing Industry Alliance, is currently in its early stages and really functions only as Sharman's spokesgroup as it doesn't have any content provider members or any other big P2P players as members -- most of the big P2P networks are part of group called P2P United that has started lobbying for forced content licensing in the U.S.

DCIA estimates that if content owners would license their material to P2P networks, P2P networks could generate revenue of $900 million per month for record labels alone.

Souce: ZDNet

Written by: Petteri Pyyny @ 8 Oct 2003 15:00

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5 comments

Dela

Hold on a second, they are just trying to make money off their users now?? very bloody smart, that means anytime anyone was uploading something they wopuld be making money for them, go away, they make me sick!

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8.10.2003 15:45 #1

mystic

Really this site is dedicated to the loop hole yes dvd rippers work fine and p2p software is nice to get,and coming to AfterDawn.com is like one stop shopping without the cost... But whenit comes to the morreles of this site since the riaa +mpaa came out there hasnt been aweek when I havent read about them. what about the Hackers and the real backbone of whats new in the computer biz... product lines or whos who and how the got away with it or how they got caught..... when did this site go and start being a media hound for the riaa+mpaa? When is it going to end..... everyone has a choice down load with a p2p or go buy the new cd or be talented and take the song and record it from the radio or tv we dont care.... anymore if your still doing it then you deseve to be caught its part of Darwinisim only the smart will servive....which are you?
I feel like everyone we want them to go away, but they wont...
the riaa is going to get all they can, the mpaa will start up soon, let them find out that @ walmrt you can buy a "DVD RiPPER " for 6.93usdollar and that its located right with the DVDs and all you need is a dvd player and a cdr to make it work 3 hours of time and you have a dvd back up that plays on any dvd player..... and it works even on playstations 2's but you dont see them (MPAA) after Walmart to stop the sale of the program.........and you wont they are to scared to stop walmart because of all the strenght they have as a super store chain...but if you down load it from the web they'll nail you ....so from now on every dallor spent at blockbuster will be rewarded with a copy of the a movie.... to each his or her own... peace I'm outta here....

9.10.2003 06:20 #2

GrayArea

I thought I was cranky today... Dela, Kazaa has been making money off us all along. Maybe not directly off end users, but making money nonetheless. No other reason for them to do it. I can't speak for anybody else but I accept that downloading "free" content will not last forever. At least not the stuff produced by the big media outlets. Those people have servants to pay! Sure there will always be a few die-hard pirates out there who are willing to work hard enough to get it free, but as soon as it takes more that a casual knowledge of computers to do it the rank and file will take out their wallets. At some point if you want a copy of the latest radio hit for your own you're gonna have to pony up the cash. I WANT to see some players in the market with some clout OTHER than Time-Warner, Sony, Disney, etc... We need other companies in there for competition's sake. If the big content owners are able to sew this market up and lock out competitors such as well, Kazaa, then they (again) control what you can get and it's price and you will have to pay through the nose for your DRM "protected" content at stupidly high prices just like before P2P. That's my fuzzy little view anyway...

mystic, in an odd way I can relate to your rant. I figured out that what really bothers me about the RIAA, MPAA, DRM, DMCA, "trusted" computers etc... It's not that they are attempting to clamp down on "piracy". That's just business. It's that in their greed driven frenzy backed up all the way by our "elected" officials they are screwing up fundamental freedoms and rights for everybody. I mean in a BIG way. That�s the real problem to me.

Maybe I need to find another forum too.

We mustn't lower ourselves to the level of those we loathe, lest we become loathsome ourselves.

9.10.2003 08:50 #3

dRD

mystic:

We've covered almost 4 years very limited sector of tech news and continue to do so now and in the future. Namely the areas can be roughly limited to digital audio (MP3, WMA, AAC, DVDA, SACD, etc), digital video (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 and related stuff) and P2P.

If we drop this focus, we start to compete with eat-all-tech-news-you-can services and we can't do that with current resources. By focusing on one niche, we can cover it better than more generic type of sites. Not all sites can be Yahoos.

Petteri Pyyny
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http://AfterDawn.com/

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9.10.2003 13:59 #4

GrayArea

Thank the deity of your choice that all sites are not Yahoos!!!

dRD- Sometimes I get pretty spooked by the political ramifications of all this stuff and even more so by most people's apparent lack of awareness of them. No point in telling people something they won't hear anyway.

The site is cool. Keep up the good work.

We mustn't lower ourselves to the level of those we loathe, lest we become loathsome ourselves.

9.10.2003 15:34 #5

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