Cnet is reporting that KaZaA is currently experimenting with paid content. The company has Brilliant Digital pay them in order tolet Brilliant Digital to implent a service that buys keywords on the KaZaA network.
Also songs will be available by this service
and some EMI record labels have already bought some places so their songs will show up. The songs are however distributed wrapped in copy protections software:
The company is starting with relatively modest goals. Beginning Monday, people downloading the Kazaa software will also install a file that serves as an index to all of Altnet's clients. It will contain information on what kind of content those customers want to share and on the search keywords they have purchased inside the Kazaa system. |
From that point, when people search the Kazaa network for content, the search will also check this Altnet index file. If a customer has bought the keyword "MP3," for example, a link to that customer's content might show up in the top three search results inside the Kazaa software.
Altnet is paying Sharman Networks, Kazaa's parent company, for the rights to integrate its own service closely with the popular file-swapping software.
As it launches Monday, Altnet will have a few customers whose content will show up in Kazaa searches, including EMI-distributed Infogrames and 2KSounds. For now, their content will be hosted on their own central servers, not consumers' computers, however.
This content--now, as in later stages--would be wrapped in Microsoft digital rights management, or anti-piracy, software. The content could be downloaded and unlocked in a variety of ways, including via "micropayments" that would be drawn from prepaid cards such as an AT&T phone card, Bermeister said.
Currently this is probably the best businessmodel possible. KaZaA is used by millions of people, and if even a small percentage of the people pay a small fee, there is one winner; Brilliant Digital.
It might not solve the piracy 'problem' but it solves the cash flow of the Brilliant Digital CEO ! Read the entire story here.
Source: Cnet.com
