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Mercora - New Radio P2P Network
jtids writes "The maker of P2P Client, Shareaza, is working
on a new Radio P2P project called Mercora.
This network gives users the ability legally webcast
music to other users on the network. Users can also share images, send instant
messages, and join groups where they can participate in forums and chatrooms.
Although the program itself is still in beta, the project looks promising."
doesn't that depend on what you broadcast?
I thought it was ruled a year or so back that all webcasts have to pay royalties to the artists if they boradcast the music over the net. How can this be legal if that is still the case?
roche
Bah Humbug!
legality is based on country of origin and content broadcasted, not the technology
Hopefull now everyone will be able to listen to Howard Stern again,
It seems it's a legal loophole project which relies on the fact that you can broadcast (since they got the license) music that you legally own (so what happens when I transfer over my collection from Kazzaa? - who is liable?). There seems to be little useful technology as such. And it's not anonymous, so basically 1st (can't really do multiple sources for broadcasting of things you own and so ripped yourself, can you?) p2p with a an IM/etc. layer tagged on.
And if it catches on there will likely be a patch so save the streams... bringing on a lawsuit or continuos updates/kracks.
I remember that webcast sites (in essence indexes to internet radio stations) were attacked by the BIG R sometime back...anybody have an update on that?
It seems streaming MP3/RealAudio(lower quality ofcourse) would be the next way to share music, what with Kazaa etal becoming extinct. Ofcourse, Bittorrent, and these webcast stations have the same problem - they need to have an index page to publicize the tracker/links.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
You share pictures on Mercora right from your local directory on your computer. You "tell" the Mercora client about which pictures you want to share and with whom (people on your friends list, etc.) and those pictures can then be viewed by those people when you are both online on the Internet. People who have the permission to view your pictures will also have the ability to download those pictures.
Hmmm...look--somene is sharing Harry_Potter_the_Everlasting_MoneyMill.jpg.
This should be interesting.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
Then the MyTunes software is illegal, not the broadcasting software.
So what? If you're the original source, and you're wanting to send out 128kbits/sec, then you have to have 128 kbits/sec of bandwidth to send it out, at least. You may not need to support multiple users with this, but you'll still need to be able to stream at a good chunk of speed. Most cable modem/DSL users don't have that much upstream. So unless this thing reencodes at a lower rate, online streaming radio from these people will still suck.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Can you get pr0n off it?
At this point there is giant void between 'hobby' P2P webcasting solutions like this and PeerCast and P2P-Radio (http://p2p-radio.sourceforge.net/) and the professional applications like Abacast, ChainCast and the others. The hobbyist applications fail to deliver the counting tools needed for us to report our listenership numbers appropriately to ASCAP, BMI and the others and still have some flaws in terms of functionality. The proprietary options have these tools available but they are currently not much of a savings compared to the traditional bandwidth options.
What's needed is something like Shoutcast which provides a professional means of distribution, but built on a P2P architecture. To my knowledge that simply doesn't exist, but I have my fingers crossed. As a new webcaster who sees his listenership growing week after week, there may come a time when I can no longer afford to be popular without a REAL P2P webcast solution.
-pjc
Broadcasting LIVE from a Bonus Room Over the Gara
More interesting would be tuning in to a station (or a category of stations), lets say classic rock and using a plugin that rips the streams to disk and checks for duplicates. Run it for a few days and you have a nice [category here] collection. This has already been done with Shoutcast, so we might as well adapt to new technology! The RIAA doesn't really care about this happening with FM radio, because the quality is sub-par, but if a web station is streaming at 160kpbs or greater...
I dunno. I don't think the program contains Ad-ware or spyware though. Perhaps they are just decent people ;D
"I can't really see how this is going to work."
Maybe it's because you are an idiot, or maybe you didn't RTFA.
The reason this is legal is because they are licensing the music. For every song that plays, they pay. For example, ASCAP is one of the big licensing groups. To play 1,000,000,000 (1 billion) songs, of which 1/3 are theirs, only costs $40,200 if you use fee schedule C.
The question remains, how do they plan on making money? Do they?
Presumably, Mercora will pay some sort of royalties on the Webcasts. Even if they get a free ride somehow, they will still have to administer the network (there *does* seem to be some form of central admin for the system) and pay for bandwidth and hosting. What's their business model for supporting the project? I see no visible source of revenue there. If there is no business model, will it all be run from a residential DSL account somewhere, with attendant performance and scaling problems?
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."