Morpheus MusicCity, a service that allows users to trade copyrighted songs and films, has quietly added an anti-piracy feature to its site, its first move to protect some artists from unlawful downloads of their music.
Beginning in April, Streamcast Networks, the U.S. company that operates the popular site, will add technology to erase a downloaded song from a computer after the user listens to it a certain number of times.
But it will apply the anti-piracy measure only to benefit artists who do business with Morpheus, as it seeks to become a major venue to promote lesser-known, unsigned acts. Users would sample songs but ultimately would have to buy them.
Morpheus said it will invite artists to provide music samples to the service.
"As we roll out this new way of distributing content over the Internet, you will discover how easy it is to get your music out to millions of people without selling your soul to the bank," the site says in trying to entice artist participation.
But it hasn't silenced the critics who maintain the company is still flouting copyright law by facilitating trade in protected pieces.
Elsewhere on the service, users will still be able to swap a variety of copyright-protected materials that are already circulating on the network, from Kylie Minogue singles to digital copies of Harry Potter books.
News source: Wired
Beginning in April, Streamcast Networks, the U.S. company that operates the popular site, will add technology to erase a downloaded song from a computer after the user listens to it a certain number of times.
But it will apply the anti-piracy measure only to benefit artists who do business with Morpheus, as it seeks to become a major venue to promote lesser-known, unsigned acts. Users would sample songs but ultimately would have to buy them.
Morpheus said it will invite artists to provide music samples to the service.
"As we roll out this new way of distributing content over the Internet, you will discover how easy it is to get your music out to millions of people without selling your soul to the bank," the site says in trying to entice artist participation.
But it hasn't silenced the critics who maintain the company is still flouting copyright law by facilitating trade in protected pieces.
Elsewhere on the service, users will still be able to swap a variety of copyright-protected materials that are already circulating on the network, from Kylie Minogue singles to digital copies of Harry Potter books.
News source: Wired
Griffin said the new indie-promotion service was a business decision, and any legal by-product was "not the intent for doing it." StreamCast, along with two other file-swapping companies, is being sued by the big record labels and Hollywood movie studios in a federal court in Los Angeles.
Morpheus has been in the spotlight in recent weeks after its file-swapping network, once deemed nearly impossible to shut down, went black almost overnight. The mystery sent ripples of confusion and anger through the Morpheus audience, which numbered in the tens of millions.
Griffin said that his software and its users were being "attacked," and he pointed the blame at the Dutch software company that had created the peer-to-peer technology that served as the core of the Morpheus program. That company, Kazaa, later said StreamCast hadn't paid its software licenses.
StreamCast's new promotion plan is scheduled to kick off April 1, at the same time it releases a long-awaited new version of its Morpheus software. The current "Preview Edition," which taps into the open-source Gnutella file-trading network, was rushed out early this month to replace the mysteriously defunct previous version.
The company will launch a new MusicCity.com independent music promotion page, initially featuring 10 artists including 1980s one-hit-wonder and Silicon Valley entrepreneur Thomas Dolby, Griffin said.
Commenting has either been disabled on this article or you are not logged in. Click here to login or register, its free!
Note: Anonymous commenting is disabled in order to keep the quality of responses to a high standard.