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Music Industry Develops Centralized File-Sharing System

Posted by michael on from the missing-the-point dept.

pearljam145 writes "A new file-sharing standard designed to distribute copyrighted music and movies legitimately has been developed by a technology consortium. The system could deliver any content format to any computer, and users might even earn rewards points for sharing the files. Using the new standard, computer users could share small files containing information about music, video or other data, but not the content itself. The Content Reference Forum (CRF), founded by Universal Music Group backed by technology companies including Microsoft, is hoping the sharing file standard will be adopted by technology companies and incorporated into software music players."

3 of 241 comments (clear)

  1. I dunno... by Yakko · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I tend to not want to reward the content industries like RIAA and MPAA by using my bandwidth to share metadata. Also, they mention something about device independence. I'll believe that when I see content play on a FreeBSD machine (for example) without having to install special software.

    It's way too late for these industries to be asking us to trust them at all. For the bulk of us, I'm sure that trust is gone for good.

    This won't really do much to protect content. I think it'll be just like all other protection schemes -- subject to transcoding into a format that can be used (and shared) by anything.

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    Me spell chucker work grate. Need grandma chicken.
  2. Pyramaid marketing scheme here by onyxruby · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Points are given out based on how many people you can get suckered into paying to download a license for these files. Payments for getting friends and family to spend money on a third party product, how long until you get more points for getting them to also become a distributor. Tis nothing more than a pyramid marketing scheme. Pyramid schemes were once known for things like filter queen and herbalife. Perhaps we should call this marketing program "needalife"?

    If they were being honest about they could just market to the masses with commercials and have honest downloads like itunes or the like. Instead they are trying to get the masses to go astroturfing on their behalf. Expose this for the lie that it is.

  3. Advertising by jefu · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It suddenly occured to me to wonder what would happen if you actually put out a bad review about something. Do I really believe that these guys will assist in moving such negative information around? Somehow I doubt it.