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Grokster in Talks to Be Bought By Mashboxx

Posted by Hemos on from the potentials-to-be dept.

Carl Bialik from the WSJ writes "The Supreme Court's ruling in Grokster has driven the P2P company to enter talks with Mashboxx, 'an upstart that is attempting to establish a legal peer-to-peer music company, according to people familiar with the matter,' the Wall Street Journal reports. Mashboxx would let users sample free but charge for downloads. The WSJ adds: 'To encourage the file-sharing companies and their users to go legitimate, the labels are seriously considering dropping such claims, some record executives say. In fact, say people close to the talks, Grokster is negotiating a settlement with the RIAA. The RIAA and Grokster declined to comment.'"

8 of 71 comments (clear)

  1. Why P2P? by garcia · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What I need someone to explain to me is why I should have to forfeit my upstream to a company for downloads?

    If I'm paying I shouldn't have to share shit. It's not going to help w/the costs of the songs. If anything, the RIAA will want to increase the costs just so that there isn't anyone saying that P2P is acceptable (legal or not).

    Apple and allofmp3.com have it the right way. Pay for the songs, download them w/o sharing, and be done with it.

    People shouldn't be charged twice for shit. P2P was popular because it was free and no other reason.

    1. Re:Why P2P? by BewireNomali · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Apple has it right for a company that sells consumer electronics. they don't make any money off song sales. Therefore, this model is not appropriate for a music company.

      Ringtones sell for 3-5 bucks and sell pretty well. this suggests that songs are underpriced, or at least priced significantly less than the market will bear. To that end, it seems that Apple is artificially depressing the cost of music, to the detriment of music companies.

      I can't speak for allofmp3.com, but ITMS is probably a loss leader as opposed to a viable revenue generation model for sales of music.

      Record companies can't make money at a dollar a song. Peer networks would help because they kill bandwidth costs and presumably pass saving on to the consumer.

      --
      un burrito me trampeó.
    2. Re:Why P2P? by nEoN+nOoDlE · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Ringtones sell for 3-5 bucks and sell pretty well.

      keep in mind, people have thousands of songs on their hard drives, but only a couple of ringtones on their phones. The usage is not consistent so therefore the price can't be.

      Record companies can't make money at a dollar a song.

      Ridiculous. Record companies have been making money - and lots of it - at a dollar or less a song when the songs were on CD and tape. And at least the consumer got a hard copy of a product. In the case of digital music, it costs the record companies even less since there are no shipping, packaging, or production costs after the music is recorded.

      --
      Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
  2. Re:Ruling? by AviN456 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Read all about it here http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/06/27/15 5212

    --
    - Just because we CAN do a thing, does not mean we SHOULD do that thing.
  3. Grokster? by Conspiracy_Of_Doves · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Does anyone still even use Grokster?

    --

    Technoli
  4. Silly Names by L.+VeGas · · Score: 3, Funny

    Can anyone explain to me why P2P companies / applications have such silly names?

    Grokster
    Napster
    Kazaa
    Mashboxx (now with two x's!)
    EDonkey
    etc.

    Say what you will about Microsoft, at least their name makes sense.

    --
    Best Windows Freeware
  5. No DRM by drgonzo59 · · Score: 3, Interesting
    My problem is with DRM. I got some song of iTunes and I thought (I clicked through the agreement and what not) that if I buy the song I can play it anywhere like any other music file, especially on my Linux machine. Oh no! My windows drive died so I never reinstalled and am using Ubuntu, BUT I could not play the songs I payed for. Of course, I found out DVD Jon's site with his FairKeys and DeDRMS programs and removed the DRM from my songs, but I had to go through all that trouble to play songs that I already payed for!

    For me at least,the main advantage to iTunes was an accessible and convient way to download music and $1 is the price of convinience more than anything. I could go to any P2P network and find and download the music for free, but the time it takes usually is worth more than $1 (at least for me). So if there was a site that you can get your music in plain mp3 or ogg or other non-DRM-crippled format, I would pay $1 just to save time. I don't know how they can do it with a P2P network though, but the underlying mechanism doesn't matter as long as I can get my songs faster.

  6. Big Surprise... by joshsnow · · Score: 3, Insightful

    an upstart that is attempting to establish a legal peer-to-peer music company

    Well what a surprise

    The recording industry reasserts control over the means of distribution, benefitting not the artists and the consumers, but the big recording companies who own the artists and control the consumers.
    This is what happened with Napster and the end game for the RIAA and MPAA etc is to be controlling all means of distribiution of electronic media via the internet.

    It's worked with DVDs and CDs to an extent.
    If they lowered the price of albums and gave consumers what they want, maybe people wouldn't engage so much in illegal file sharing.