News written by James Delahunty (November, 2004)

Today in Sydney, Tony Meagher, a lawyer for Sharman denied the claims the Recording Industry made yesterday, which were that Kazaa not only allowed mass piracy, that it actually encourages it. Mr. Meagher said that there is no way that the owners of Kazaa could be held responsible for the actions of its estimated 100 million users, who share about 3 billion audio and video files. He told the court that this case has similarities to a case in 1984 where electronics giant Sony were found not liable for the actions of its customers when they used their Betamax video recorder illegally, because the technology can be used for many legit purposes. "It is plain Kazaa has lawful uses," Mr. Meagher told federal court judge Murray Wilcox.

The Recording Industry wants the court to find Kazaa liable for the actions of its users so it can actually stand a chance at stomping out P2P filesharing. In the United States in August, the ninth US circuit court of appeals in San Francisco ruled that Grokster and StreamCast could not be held liable for the actions of their users. Mr. Meagher told the court also today that owners of Kazaa did not authorize its use for piracy, but have no way of stopping it. When you install Kazaa you accept an agreement that states you cannot use the network for piracy. Recording Industry lawyer Tony Bannon then decided to make a very strange hit back at the claims of the defense.

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Four major movie studios Warner, Paramount, Universal and New Line Cinema have endorsed the HD-DVD format according to the discs co-creator Toshiba. The 4 studios represent a huge 45% of the major studios' DVD output in the United States. However, it will take at least a year before pre-recorded HD-DVD's will be available. Sony are also promoting their new Blu-ray format. Both technologies use blue laser technology instead of the current red laser technology. Blue light's shorter wavelength means that the 'spots' on the disc's surface used to encode digital data can be smaller. For this reason it is easier to fit higher capacities of data onto a 12cm disc.

HD-DVD offers 20GB a disc, but Sony's Blu-Ray format beats it by 5GB more, offering just around 25GB of data on a 12cm disc. However, the main difference between the two formats is that one would require more change than the other. The Blu-Ray is on the downside because it would require the need for new disc production lines. As for HD-DVD, all it would require is existing DVD pressing rigs to be retooled rather than replaced. Sony will be using Blu-Ray technology in their upcoming Playstation 3 console.

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The controversial Kazaa trial has kicked off in Sydney, Australia today with major recording labels claiming it was the worlds biggest music piracy network, and that Sharman knew about this and encouraged music piracy. Lawyers for Universal, Sony BMG, EMI, Warner and dozens of other labels made this claim. These allegations follow investigations by the Australian anti-piracy organization Music Industry Piracy Investigations (MIPI), a body affiliated with the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA), the Australian equivalent of the RIAA. The trial is expected to last at least three weeks.

It all started several months back when Sharman's HQ was raided by the Recording Industry. Sharman challenged the legality of the raids but it didn't make any difference. In the United States, it has been ruled that creators of P2P software cannot be held liable for the actions of their users. Sharman will be praying for a similar outcome of this trial. Not only does the recording industry want all illegal trading forcefully stopped on the network, they also seek compensation for lost revenue due to illegal filesharing on the network, which would add up to billions.

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Canada is to get its own version of Apple's hugely successful iTunes music store. Apple currently has its iTunes music store available in the U.S. and most European countries, and so far is dominating the business. Apple had planned to launch a store in Canada in November 04 and has assured Canadian audiophiles that it will make the November deadline. “It's still November; we'll launch in November,” Apple's Natalie Kerris said. Canada currently has three main download services including Napster.ca, Archambault.ca and Puretracks.com. The prices in these services are generally around $1 a track, which is the same as iTunes in Europe and the United States.

Kaan Yigit, president of Toronto technology market research firm Solutions Research Group, believes that iTunes coming into the Canadian music download market will be good for all other competitors too, as it will sharply raise the profile of paid music downloading. “If you put three grocery stores on the same corner, everyone benefits,” he said. “It's going to drive a lot of excitement around the whole space.” Alistair Mitchell, co-chief executive of Puretracks says that Puretracks has many advantages over iTunes including a database of music from Independent Canadian Artists. He also claimed that Puretracks files are compressed less than those of iTunes, so they have better fidelity.

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The UK Music Industry is celebrating its biggest ever year for album sales, reporting 237 million sold in the 12 months to September. The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) trade body said albums by the likes of Keane and The Streets had helped drive a 3% rise compared with last year. Also, sales of music singles were up aswell, due to the new available of digital tracks in online music download stores. Next year, the BPI plans to add music downloads to the album and singles charts. 1.75 million tracks were sold altogether from legal music download services such as MyCokeMusic and Wippit. This puts sales of singles tracks up 9% on the previous quarter.

However, if you take away the figures for download sales, then singles sales would be down by a huge 12% so online music seems to be flexing its muscle a little more. However, sales of traditional 7" singles were up for the 11th quarter in a row, with sales topping one million in the year to September - an increase of 74.8%. If you take these record sales into account, and the happy smiles of the BPI, you can’t help but question the comments made by the BPI only a few weeks ago when they launched their first lawsuits against British P2P users they claimed were doing serious damage to music sales.

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The world’s major record labels are gathering their lawyers and experts to prepare for the next steps in their battle against illegal file-sharing. The Recording Industry vs. Kazaa will kick off in court on Monday. The Recording Industry is looking for action to stop illegal file-sharing and of course compensation for past illegal downloads, which could mean billions of dollars. The suit is targeting Sharman Networks (the owners of the Kazaa software), LEF Interactive; Altnet, which delivers so-called "piggyback" technology with Kazaa; Altnet-affiliated Brilliant Digital Entertainment; Sharman CEO Nicola Hemming; Altnet CEO Kevin Bermeister; and two technology directors.

The liability phase of the trial will go ahead on Monday, and if the court finds the named defendants liable for the mass piracy that has taken place through the use of Kazaa, the labels will begin to claim for damages. "We don't want to shut down Kazaa, just its illegal activities," said Michael Speck, general manager of Music Industry Piracy Investigations, a body set up by major Australian record labels to target copyright infringers. I don't understand how Kazaa would survive if Sharman had to pay billions of dollars of damages to the Recording Industry so I personally don't believe Mr. Speck's statement.

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One of the worlds most used P2P applications, Kazaa has been named as the number 1 spyware threat by Computer Associates International. To date, Kazaa has been downloaded a whopping 214 million times. CA's PestPatrol research came to this conclusion while assessing how programs slow down a machine by adding unnecessary registry entries and directories. However, CA does admit that labeling Kazaa as spyware in the first place is a bit complicated. "Kazaa does something useful," said Simon Perry, vice president of security strategy for CA. "I'm not going to say that it doesn't. But turn that around--you're allowing millions of strangers onto your machine. (Kazaa) is No. 1 because of the amount if copies it's got out there."

CA also warned about similar P2P networks including WinMX and Blubster because of software that they have bundled with them. Adware program Ezula came second in the company's top five, beating Adopt.hotbar.com and GameSpy Arcade. Perry said that some programs that have been labeled pests have been given that name because it is not yet clear to the computer world what exactly spyware is. It seems every different anti-spyware program you download has differences in what it classes as spyware. Kazaa coming somewhere in the list was not a surprise but many could argue that it didn't deserve the #1 spot. You can download clean versions of Kazaa called Kazaa Lite (Resurrection) and Diet Kazaa.

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Napster has announced that its UK digital music store now offers 1 million tracks. Napster launched initially with 500,000 tracks in the UK in May 04. Apple then opened their iTunes music store in August and was offering 700,000 tracks. iTunes has reached over the million mark in the U.S. but not yet in the U.K. Apple had said its iTunes UK store would be adding tracks on a weekly basis, so it seems that the total figure should have reached over 1 million by now, but the site still says its 700,000.

This means that Napster is still pretty far ahead of iTunes which would be its biggest rival in the business. It also means Napster is well ahead of other rivals including Tesco and Sony Connect both which launched first with 500,000 tracks. It will be interesting to see how long it will take Apple to respond by expanding their iTunes music store to 1 million tracks.

Source:
The Register

As the market emerges for Digital Music Sales and more and more companies open their very own online music stores, the sales being made will take a long time to beat the sales of CDs, DVDs and other media. Informa Media Group estimates by 2010 global online music sales will exceed $6bn which is quite impressive. However, this doesn’t just include digital music downloads, that also includes CDs being sold by Internet retailer giants like Amazon. It is estimated that $3.1bn of the total amount of money will be from digital music sales. This is good news and bad news for companies like Apple who have quite successful download stores.

As the market gets more competitive, we will probably see many of the online stores disappearing due to lack of business. At the moment, most online stores sell tracks for about the same amount, usually 99c a track so there is no competition and downloaders wont be looking around for cheaper alternatives. When you take the $6bn figure, you also have to remember that $6bn is only 15.2 per cent of total spending on music worldwide. Next year sales of digital downloads will total $422.7m, more than double the $179.5m that will be spent this year, IMG reckons. It seems likely that Apple's current lead in the digital music business will fall as more companies open their stores and get competitive. Also it seems likely that Apple's iPod will receive more serious competition within the next few years.

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It seems the MPAA has realized that the "new" major thing on P2P networks is to trade TV Series. This may seem a bit late to most of you as Series was always one of the most traded material on P2P. The COO of the Fox empire outlined 10 rules at a consumer forum two months ago and ended it by saying, "All the other rules are meaningless, if content is not protected from digital thievery.". High quality copies of TV Episodes are available online usually within hours of their first airing, or even before it. You can even download High Definition TV copies of episodes, which produce higher quality than most cable and satellite networks worldwide.

"People are ignoring the old notion that you watch your program at 8 o'clock when CBS or NBC decides you should be watching it," says Mike McGuire, a digital rights expert with research company Gartner Inc. "And they're using the Internet to do that." Once again, the attention has turned to BitTorrent, which is a clever invention by Bram Cohen to make it easier and faster to spread large files around a network. Despite the fact that it was created for this legitimate purpose, the MPAA would like the world to believe its an evil invention to assist in evil file-sharing, as they have already made indirect threats against Bram Cohen in statements made earlier this year.

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A California Judge has slowed the MPAA's lawsuit campaign against P2P users. Apparently the movie studios have improperly bundled too many separate cases together. The MPAA launched an attack against file-sharers it accuses of infringing its Copyright by distributing Motion Pictures online through P2P networks. As in the case of the Recording Industry, the MPAA filed lawsuits against "John Doe's" where real names will come later. Judge William Alsup said the MPAA had not shown good reason to bundle together 12 separate cases.

Out of the 12, he allowed the first filed suit to go ahead which is against a customer of Pacific Bell, but put the other 11 on hold. The Electronic Frontier Foundation praised the ruling. "This decision helps to give due-process rights to the Internet users accused of infringement," said EFF Staff Attorney Wendy Seltzer. "Lumping them together makes it more difficult for everyone to defend against these claims.". The RIAA also has experienced similar set backs in its campaign against P2P users.

Source:
News.com

Kazaa, which is one of the most used P2P software applications in the world has announced that its newest version, v3.0, will come bundled with Skype. Skype was developed by the same people who are responsible for Kazaa, Nikolas Zennström and Janus Friis. Skype allows its users to make free Internet VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) phone calls worldwide, using a P2P-like system. Sharman Networks CEO Nikki Hemming said, "The inclusion of Skype is a natural extension of the Kazaa product and of peer-to-peer. As pioneers in the P2P field, Sharman Networks believes the integration of Skype – considered the best product in the market for Internet phone calls – will deliver powerful consumer benefits.”.

Besides adding Skype, Kazaa 3.0, has also improved it’s searching, allowing users to get up to 3,000 results per search. Kazaa however, is losing support from the P2P community and is constantly under attack from file poisoners and anti-P2P organizations. Earlier this year, the eDonkey2000 network replaced Kazaa's Fasttrack network as the worlds most used P2P network.

Source:
The Register

The Universal Music Group has launched a new music label aimed at distributing music solely online through legal paid downloads. The label, UMe Digital, will sell everything from individual tracks to full albums completely over the Internet. "Last year the music industry sold fewer than 50,000,000 downloads; this year the industry will exceed 100,000,000. I think every label will have a download-only imprint at some point." said Bruce Resnikoff, the president of UMe. This comes as no surprise as major labels now see that customers prefer the convenience of music on demand that the Internet can offer.

A track sold over the Internet, can move from one side of the world to the other in a matter of seconds with today's Internet connections and digital compressions, unlike music CDs which can take weeks to distribute to stores worldwide, which leaves them open to early piracy that the recording industry is blaming for millions of dollars in lost revenue. Artists will not be forced to sell all their music online, they may sell a CD with another Universal label, and sell something different using the UMe label. With this new label, an artist who was just signed could be selling digital music downloads in a matter of a few weeks. The downloads will be available from all the usual suspects of the legal net music stores including iTunes, Napster, MSN Music, Sony Connect, Rhapsody and MusicMatch.

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BT has launched an online music store in conjunction with DRM software provider, Blueprint, for both mobile customers and fixed line customers. It seems that Windows Media Audio is the prime format for the music store but Blueprint is in talks with Apple over the possibility of supporting its popular FairPlay AAC format. Artists will be able to upload their own music to the online store and configure various settings on the restrictions the DRM protection can enforce, such as how many times a song can be burned to CD or transferred to a portable digital audio device.

Vodafone has similar plans but has a different DRM provider, Coremedia. As mobile networks become bigger and faster, there is an emerging market for digital music downloads that could be done over mobile networks. Microsoft has already made steps to try to corner the market. This new site will also offer ringtones, music videos and skins, but will not have a mobile store until spring 2005.

Source:
The Inquirer

After 26 years of sales, Dixons will stop selling VCRs before Christmas. Sales of DVD Players at Dixons are currently beating sales of VCRs by 40 to 1. Dixons will focus more now on the sales of devices such as DVD recorders and devices it calls the "next generation of home entertainment systems". If you look back even just a couple of years, almost every home had a VCR, it was the ruling technology in home video entertainment but now sales of VCRs are at a crawl as DVD player sales are growing like wild fire. "We're saying goodbye today to one of the most important products in the history of consumer technology," said John Mewett, marketing director at Dixons, "The video recorder has been with us for a generation - and many of us have grown up with the joys - and occasional frustrations - of tape-based recording. We are now entering the digital age and the new DVD technology available represents a step change in picture quality and convenience."

The first VCR ever sold by Dixons was the JVC HR-3300EK, a piano key operated top-loader with a red LED digital clock/timer. After that VCRs were among the biggest sales world wide for years but now the demand has turned to higher quality digital options. The question that most would like to hear an answer to now is how long will DVD rule the market? High Definition TVs and DVD players may be the next thing to see in everybody’s home, but what comes after that?

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Continuing its campaign against music sharers online, the RIAA has filed another 761 lawsuits against P2P users it alleges to be distributing copyrighted music for free online. Of the 761 people, 25 were college students. This comes just days after the Motion Pictures Association of America filed its first round of lawsuits against P2P users it says have distributed movies freely online to other P2P users. The RIAA claims that the growth of legal music services online has had a positive impact on the swappers actions. "The lawsuits are an essential educational tool," RIAA President Cary Sherman said in a statement. "They remind music fans about the law and provide incentives to university administrators to offer legal alternatives."

This is becoming an all too familiar story to us all now and the results never change. Despite these lawsuits, P2P usage will continue to go as steady as it was, or even increase as some studies have shown. The RIAA may also be scared of the potential of anonymous P2P networks that we've seen lately in ANts P2P and Mute which use file-routing and altered search results to protect the privacy of P2P users. The latest RIAA suits brought the total number of file-swappers sued by the recording industry to 6,952.

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The Motion Pictures Association of America (MPAA) is in talks with the Internet2 research consortium for two main reasons. The first of these reasons being that the MPAA hopes to setup next-generation video delivery services and the second reason being the MPAA’s hope to monitor the illegal trading of pirated movies. For those not familiar with Internet2, it is an Ultra-High Speed version of the Internet setup by universities and technology companies, aimed at facilitating research into high-bandwidth hardware and applications, and helping researchers who exchange huge amounts of data. However, as AfterDawn has reported before, illegal filesharing among students has found its way to Internet2.

In order to use Internet2 you have to be a member and it appears the MPAA is hoping to become a member or to at least open up a collaborative relationship. In the time it takes average Internet users to download an MP3 through a fast P2P network; a user on Internet2 could possible transfer an entire DVD movie. Most of the time the speed doesn't depend on the connection, but how fast the Hard Disk Drives can write the data being sent. Researchers sent data from Switzerland to Tokyo at speeds of 7.21 gigabits per second, at these speeds a full DVD-9 disc (Dual Layer Retail DVD) could be transferred in less than 10 seconds.

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DownhillHillBattle.org announced two new project sites in the passed few days. The first site is aimed at kids and students in response to the attempts by lobbying groups for Hollywood and the software industry to force misleading and propagandistic curriculums about filesharing and online rights into public schools. KidsSmellBullshit.com also is running a competition for kids to write letters to the BSA and MPAA about their feelings over the curriculum being pushed into their school. The prize to be won is an iPod mini.

The second site is aimed at adults and was setup to put together a fair copyright and technology law curriculum. Downhill Battle feels that the current anti-piracy advertisements and curriculums being pushed at students by the RIAA, MPAA and BSA are one sided and leave out important area's such as fair use rights. The site states, "The RIAA, MPAA, BSA, and other organizations are pushing curriculums into schools that distort copyright law, neglect fair use and the First Amendment, and mislead our kids about their legal rights and responsibilities. It's time to create some accurate and informative information sources for teachers who want to address these crucial issues".

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The first vending machines that will allow people to download music to their mobile phones or MP3 players will be unveiled later this week. Inspired Broadcast Networks will be adding machines to two London railway stations next month. It is expected to cost about £1 per track and initially is expected to offer 2 million songs, adding about 300 more daily. These machines are expected to appear everywhere from the streets to pubs all over the UK soon. Inspired Broadcast Networks already has 12,000 entertainment terminals in pubs and betting shops linked to a global jukebox of 2.1 million songs.

"All you need is a mobile phone or an MP3 player and a coin in your pocket. You select the track you want and, depending on what type of device you have, it will either download using a wireless connection, or you can plug it in directly," said the company’s CEO, Norman Crowley. Negotiations are still ongoing with record labels for the rights to sell the music. An agreement also has not been reached with Apple over possible support for the iPod music player yet.

Source:
Telegraph.co.uk

StreamCast, which owns the Morpheus P2P Network has formally asked the U.S. Supreme Court to reject requests made by the Motion Pictures Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) to revisit lower court decisions that confirm the legality of P2P networks. In August 2004 the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal's said that a verdict casing in stone the legitimacy of P2P software be allowed to stand. In April 2003 a District Court ruling stated that since P2P networks had many legitimate uses, the software's developers can't be held to account if their code is misused.

"It is our belief that there is no need for the Supreme Court to review the matter," said Matthew Neco, StreamCast's general counsel. "The ruling of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirming the trial court's ruling was based on a perfect understanding of the precedent of the Sony-Betamax case."
In 1984 an attempt was made by the Movie Industry to sue Sony for offering a device that was capable of recording from TV stations. The court rejected this since the device could easily be put to legit uses.

Source:
The Register

Yet another highly anticipated product has leaked onto the Internet before its official release date. U2 - How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb is set to be released on November 26th but is already being distributed online, mainly through XDCC distribution and P2P networks. The group responsible for the release, RNS, has also been blamed by Interscope Records for theft of Eminem's new album Encore last week.

In the last few weeks, many new products including Halo 2, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and Eminem - Encore found their way to the net before they found their way to stores. The Eminem album, along with albums from Destiny’s Child and Snoop Dogg had their official release date brought forward as the labels feared they would lose millions in revenue due to the leaks.

U2 had feared the album would show up on the net months ago when a rough copy of the album was reported to have been stolen from the studio. A copy of the album in high quality MP3 format showed up online in the past few days.

Source:
RTE.ie

According to SiliconValley.com, the Movie Industry is preparing to file copyright infringement lawsuits against file sharers it accuses of distributing movies online over P2P networks with the first of the lawsuits coming as early as tomorrow. The movie studios plan an ongoing litigation campaign as an attempt to deter people from sharing movies online. The Motion Picture Association of America, which represents the major film studios, declined to make any comments on Wednesday but the organization have said its chief executive would be making a major announcement regarding illegal file sharing of motion pictures on P2P networks early Thursday.

The first wave of suits would probably involve about 200 P2P users. The Movie Industry has attempted to deter filesharing using anti-piracy advertisements and other methods but P2P use seems to be only growing worldwide. They may be particularly after CAM and Telesync copies of movies, which are movies recorded in theatres that can come up on the net even before the official theatre dates. Along with the Recording Industry, the Movie Industry has attempted to shut down organizations responsible for developing P2P networks with no success. The respect the movie industry had among file sharers will probably fade away as soon as 1 lawsuit is filed, as it did with the recording industry as millions of people swear never to buy music CD's again.

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A group of hackers have appeared online once again, selling source code to some of the worlds most used and expensive software. According to messages posted in online discussion groups, the group is offering the code for Cisco Systems' PIX firewall software for $24,000. While this seems like a very high price, a lot of intelligence agencies and Government agencies may be interested to purchase it just to find out exactly what it does. The group advertised its return by sending messages to online security discussion groups.

The group first surfaced in July claiming it was selling "corporate Intel(ligence)" to its customers. The club offered the Enterasys Dragon IDS 6.1 source code for $16,000 and the code for file sharing software from Napster, now part of Roxio, for $10,000. However the operation was shut down citing a "redesign" of its "business model." Now that the group is back they raised the price on the Enterasys and Napster code, to $19,200 and $12,000 respectively.

Source:
PC World

Rapper Eminem's new album, Encore, which is set to be released on November 16th has appeared online today, 13 days early. The album is currently being traded and distributed in many ways online, including XDCC bots on IRC, on P2P networks and many BitTorrent sites. This is the third major item from the entertainment industry to appear online in about a month, after two major games, Halo 2 and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas both leaked before their official release date. It seems that Internet release groups are becoming more and more of a nuisance to the entertainment industry, demonstrating their skills in beating several copy protections and acquiring works long before they are due to be released.

It's not a major thing to see albums appear online in MP3 format, but this one in particular is interesting after rumors were circulating online that there were "plans" for this album that would prevent mass piracy of it. The group responsible for the release has left some comments packed with it...

Guess Who's Ripped, Ripped Again? It's
RNS And We Bring A Friend!

He is familiar to us and all of you as
well. We bring you the new Eminem album
to ring in the end of 2004 and the
start of 2005! Consider this your early
Christmas present from RNS.

As well as the main CD, the group has also released a bonus CD containing three more tracks. It will be interesting to see some later comments on this release from Recording Industry. Some have made claims that the major success of the third Eminem album, The Eminem Show was due to many of the tracks appearing on P2P networks. Downloaders who got these early tracks claim it made them go out and buy the album when it was released.

Two men, Dino Simm and Sidney Austin have been jailed for four years for selling pirated movies in the UK. The ring was smashed by police following an 18 month investigation. They sold over 400,000 copies of movies including Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter movies, accumulating around £3 million in just two years. Their actions have cost the movie industry millions in lost revenue. The pirate DVD's were being shipped to the UK from crime gangs in Malaysia. Apparently, these discs were disguised as blank CD's to be smuggled into the UK and were known to damage the laser in DVD players after a few plays. The DVD's were sold for about £10 and usually at the time of selling; the movies were still in cinema or not even in cinemas yet, like Spiderman 2.

When police raided the house the pirates used as their headquarters they found a room piled floor to ceiling with 26,000 DVD's. The pair used their illegal profits for first class travel, casinos and fast cars. When people were buying DVD's from these people, they didn't know that their money was actually funding crime gangs in Kuala Lumpur. They were Britain’s biggest pirate DVD suppliers. This activity is becoming more popular in every country now. In Ireland, people actually go door to door selling pirate DVD's. Usually the sellers are under 18 being sent around by adults with DVD's. After I got my hand on a couple of the DVD's, I found that they came from the Internet, were very badly re-encoded and burned on Princo DVDR's which are very cheap because they lack quality.

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Sony BMG is in talks with P2P Company Grokster about the prospect of a legit P2P service. The new P2P services would be "label friendly" and would also feature some form of DRM protection to protect label owned music. The service has been given the name Mashboxxx but it may not be called that because some clever person has already grabbed it, on October 29th. It seems the network will block some files from being shared but will allow others to be shared freely. Some programmed DRM rules could put restrictions on some things like CD burning, how many devices you could copy a protected file to and even how many times a file can be played. It seems likely that these extra features would require some form of payment.

So to any readers it may seem like a good enough idea by Sony BMG and Grokster as a way to form a legit P2P service and a new way of purchasing music. However, if you look at it from other ways, you have to become skeptical. What if this is only attempts by Song BMG to even further blacken the name of other major P2P networks like eDonkey? Consider what could happen if Sony BMG creates this P2P network then tell a court that they have proven DRM on P2P services works; would the other major networks be ordered to implement their own protections, or even be shut down? In my opinion, this new "P2P service" is another attempt to keep mainstream music dominant in today’s music industry.

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