Kazaa Trade Group Suggests Plan To Pay, Not Sue Song Swappers

from the good-luck-with-that dept

The Distributed Computing Industry Association (DCIA), an "industry trade group" which is really backed by the folks behind Kazaa, have submitted a proposal to the entertainment industry to pay file sharers instead of sue them. The plan is basically the business model Kazaa is working on with Altnet (which they announced last year), but which is unlikely to go very far. It's not really embracing file sharing - though Altnet wants people to believe it is. Instead, it's putting digital rights management around files, adding in a payment mechanism, and then giving a portion of the proceeds to whoever shared the file. They figure that this will encourage people to copy-protect their own songs, as it could lead to them making some money. Of course, this takes away some of the advantages of music file sharing, which is that you get to discover new music. Sooner or later the industry is going to realize that the music is just a promotional item for other things, and you do better in business giving away promotional items than trying to sell them.

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