Legal P2P opens for business

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iMesh's "premium" service, which means they will be available only by paying the $6.95 monthly fee, once the promotion period ends, or by buying them individually.

Like the basic subscription services from Yahoo, Napster and others, those downloaded songs will be locked to PCs, and cannot be transferred to iPods or other devices. A future version will let the songs be taken to some Windows-compatible devices, Marco said.

Robert Summer,
executive chair,
iMesh

The software also searches the Gnutella peer-to-peer network, often finding results on other people's hard drives that aren't legal to download. Those are identified and blocked as they are downloaded, but some songs from independent or unsigned artists can still be traded freely.

The service still will allow downloads of video, but only of files 15 minutes in length, or 50 megabytes in size, far too small to support a Hollywood movie or even a television show.

To help keep people onboard, the company has transformed half of the service into a social-networking application that lets users find other people by age, gender, geographic region or musical tastes. People can browse the songs on each other's hard drives, and soon will be able to send instant messages to each other.

The subscription service, which will be free to users for the first month or two, initially will be available only in the United States, which represents about 40 percent of iMesh's consumers, Marco said.

Who's next, if anybody?
The big question in iMesh's wake is whether any of the other big file-swapping services will be able to follow suit.

iMesh's onetime peers, such as eDonkey and Lime Wire, are facing new lawsuits by a record industry and Hollywood studios given new legal strength by last summer's Supreme Court decision. Several of those other file-swapping companies are exploring mergers with existing music services, or creating their own filtered service like iMesh's.

Bainwol declined to comment on the organizations' ongoing negotiations with peer-to-peer companies.

But executives at both Mashboxx and iMesh say it turned out to be a much harder task to create a legal, filtered service than they expected. Anyone trying to do the same thing has at least a year of technology development and contract negotiation with record labels ahead, they say.

"Anyone who's not well down the path today is in trouble," predicted Mashboxx's Rosso.

"We thought it would be difficult, but we didn't realize how difficult," agreed iMesh's Marco. For the others, he said, "it's too late."

[madjo]

Fake files?

Now that you have to pay for iMesh, will that mean there will be no fake files on the network? I think not. What guarantee do you have that you actually get the song that you want?

[eBob1]

Crack in 5, 4, 3...

I look for this to be cracked. If not by the end of the day, certainly by the end of the week.

[bobby_brady]

What a joke!

iMesh going "legal"! As the RIAA and MPAA try and kill p2p with their illegal tactics and paying off politicians, the p2p community will have to adapt a better network model. One that is stronger and less breakable, and perhaps anonymous.

When I speak of p2p, I refer to the real and genuine networks, not the ones that crashed and burned, only to switch tactics, get religious with the RIAA and as a last ditch effort to survive start selling DRM infested music.

Thanks to the true p2p model, I've realized the RIAA has screwed over the public for decades and it's time to get back at them. It's time to make them pay for their past and present "mistakes".

[aabcdefghij987654321]

RIAA Puppet

Policed P2P? No thank you.

[R. U. Sirius]

A true joke

Any story that starts with "a team of lawyers" and the "RIAA" is nothing more than big label propaganda. This is a puff piece.

[PDG1]

can't stop the tech train

they can't stop p2p:P
i don't even know why they bother...
i mean, their whole game plan is totally screwed because of the technologies that are being developed now adays... they're trying to hold onto what they did in the past. they have to learn to adapt to the changing market:P
that simple
plus i also saw a python app that acted as a p2p network... it was 15 lines long... i forget how many characters... but it was called Tiny p2p
the whole purpose of the code was to show how easy it is to make a p2p application.
let them turn legal:P they're probably only going pay in the end for trying to team up with record labels... lousy scum

[elperdondejesus]

megusta