RSSPeer Impact to Offer Legal P2P Sharing
By David Worthington and Nate Mook | Published November 24, 2004, 12:39 PM
Wurld Media was teamed up with three the world's largest record labels to pioneer a new peer-to-peer distribution system for licensed content.
Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group will open up their media vaults to the service, called Peer Impact, which will in turn provide customers with access to legal music, videos and other miscellaneous forms of content. The proprietary service is billed as being a low-cost infrastructure for file sharing that respects artists and copyright holders.
While Peer Impact operates like all other P2P systems, there is one important distinction: All file sharing occurs within the boundaries of closed networks. Ultimately, if the service is populated, Peer Impact will lower distribution costs for the content provider.
"The online media market is presently split between authorized legal paid-download services and unauthorized free services; the consumer is stuck somewhere in the middle, and that's where Peer Impact comes in," said Greg Kerber, Chairman and CEO of Wurld Media. "From the beginning our objective has been to reach out to the consumer and help build a secure and legal file-sharing community, created by -- and for -- the fan, but which also ensures that digital-rights owners get compensated."
Although Peer Impact has yet to leave the confines of Wurld Media beta testers, industry analysts have already raised some red flags and questioned the viability of service's business model.
"I see the 'legal' peer-to-peer sharing concept as fundamentally misunderstanding why people trade songs to begin with. If file traders are looking for free stuff, what incentive would they have to pay for it? And if they're going to pay, why wouldn't they go to an established store, like iTunes, MSN, MusicMatch or Napster?" remarked Jupiter Research senior analyst Joe Wilcox.
Unlike current online music stores that distribute songs directly from centralized servers, Peer Impact is expected to rely on the bandwidth of its users. Some pundits have wondered if Wurld Media is simply latching onto the P2P hype to save distribution costs, and whether paying customers want to receive their music downloads from other users.
"The established stores would offer essentially the same catalogs, with great discovery and search mechanisms and high assurance that music buying wouldn't also lead to virus infection or spyware installation. Who knows what dangers might lurk on someone else's hard drive," said Wilcox.
Peer Impact is currently undergoing internal beta testing and is expected to be given the green light for a public unveiling in the first quarter of 2005.
One thing I would say about this, is it would probably be easier to trust that the file is really what you are meaning to download. Instead of all the downloads you get that turn out to be some other file than what you are looking for.
Score: 0
Is it actually a P2P File-sharing community or just a leech network where downloads are made from the main servers + some cheesy chatrooms?
P2P should stay as Peer to Peer. Soon it will just become PSPP - Peer to crap servers to passive peer.
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"And if they're going to pay, why wouldn't they go to an established store, like iTunes, MSN, MusicMatch or Napster?"
Because maybe they want file sharing, not file buying, genius.
"Who knows what dangers might lurk on someone else's hard drive"
Who knows what dangers lurk when u give your credit card number to a company just to buy a few $0.99 songs now and then. I suggest getting a good antivirus, along with a clue.
Anyway, ill give Sony (who i usually can't stand) a little credit here, their trying to offer a legit way to truly have file sharing. Only time will tell if it's reasonable (to the general public).
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It doesnt take some 22 year old geek to work out that this will be a complete failure.
Who dreams up these pay schemes, dont they realise that whats make p2p; is the FREE portion of the "business model"
The only people making money here are Wurld Media, and that 2 will be short lived.
Score: 1