RIAA Supporting Commercial P2P

cgibby98 writes "The AP reports: 'In the last few months, major record labels have signed licensing deals with companies working to field file-swapping services that would block unauthorized files from being traded online.' Most interesting is a service called Peer Impact, which 'can be used to find and purchase tracks from an initial catalog of a half-million songs from all the major labels.... After a user buys a song from Peer Impact, future buyers get it from that member -- or others who have gotten it in the meantime -- instead of from a central server. Users have to pay for each track they download, but sharing songs they've purchased from Peer Impact earns them credits they can spend on the service.'"

Comments

Re:Artists

[Peyna]

If the artists aren't going to get any royalties from this, then this is the RIAA committing piracy.

Was there any claim that they wouldn't be receiving the royalties guaranteed them in their contracts? Oh, and most of the time, the artists don't hold the copyrights to their works anyway, they sold them along with their soul in order to get signed to a particular label.

If the RIAA didn't give the artists any royalties due, they would be breaching their contract with the artists, but not committing piracy.

Reflections

[myrick]

So the RIAA is at least trying to tap into a fantastic resource for content distribution, albeit five years too late. The problem, as with all current implementations of "legal" online music stores, is that this is going to be too restrictive. As with most /.'ers and most folks in general, if I purchase music, I expect to be able to use it however I like. Most troublesome to the geeks is that it forces Windows and WMA. Most troublesome to the mass market is that it doesn't support the iPod. How can you expect mass-adoption if you don't even support the media player with the largest market share?

This service's restrictions will keep it from being a major player, and until the RIAA gets it that no one will change until they open up their restrictions, piracy will always be huge, and the one music store that supports the most popular player will remain the most popular option (and only option for many) for purchasing legal music.

This market needs competition! Be creative, RIAA!