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Will Legal P2P Music Distribution Succeed?
SnowWolf2003 writes "It looks like a couple of people are trying to find a way to distribute music legally over P2P networks. The latest is Mercora (with more information here). Also Napster 2.0 is due for release sometime next week. Can any of these Windows alternatives to Apple's iTunes compete though with the inherent restrictions built into the wma format? Note MusicMatch has just launched a windows based service with fewer restrictions equivalent to the iTunes policy. More importantly, can these P2P services lure enough people away from restriction free Kazaa to make themselves successful, where P2P networks rely on a large user base?"
Maybe a large percentage would switch if they could get the music quickly and keep it indefinetly, and they could pay 4 it without really thinking about it.
You can restrict the formats, but it's not the default. The default is play everywhere, on every thing. You have to apply and return a license to get the DRM stuff, and even after that it's just an SDK, you have to write code to implement it onto your media. As for not being able to move, that's not part of the Microsoft DRM rules, I have no idea what's going on there.
(I spend all day working with DRM systems, I actually like the MS one because of it's flexibility. Real's system is awful, it's expensive, and only exposes hooks, you have to write your own DRM on top of that. Can't find anything out about Apples, they refuse to talk to third parties, even if I use my customers' names as a lever).