Napster And Legal Movie Distribution

FreakzZ sent us linkage to an MSNBC story which talks about Napster and Hollywood getting in bed together by forming a new start up known as AppleSoup. It doesn't really say what sort of stuff will be on the site, but one can only hope that this isn't just vapor.

Comments

Too Good to be True?

[Captain Derivative]

Before we start celebrating about how AppleSoup is going to give some legitimacy to Napster-type file sharing systems, read the article, especially this sentence:

"As for what will be carried over the networks, Biondi said he expects short videos to be distributed first, but eventually he envisions the Internet having either network television on demand or its own programming, or a combination."

It sounds like Hollywood is planning on using AppleSoup as a platform to have other computers host videos it wants to distribute. In this sense, it wouldn't really be a file-sharing system, but a way to take the load off of their own servers when Hollywood starts moving toward computer-based distribution. In other words, you can share only what they want you to share. Also, from the article:

"AppleSoup promises to actively police its network to try to find and weed out any file that is violating copyright law."

I'm wondering how they plan to do this. My best guess is that AppleSoup will have a list of the "only" legitimate files allowed to be distributed. Again, this will allow AppleSoup to distribute only what Hollywood wants. There's a good chance, in my opinion, that the average Joe won't be able to post his own homemade shorts or anything. "Actively polic[ing]" the system sounds like they're going to use a whitelist instead of a blacklist.

And of course, the article doesn't say what format these videos will be in. Possibly something specific to AppleSoup, and I'd bet they aren't going to release software for the average user to create these files either.

At least, that's the feeling I get from reading this article.

--
"Better dead than smeg."