File Sharing Growing Like a Weed
Found on Wired on Sunday, 21 November 2004
Shared Media Licensing, based in Seattle, offers Weed, a software program that allows interested music fans to download a song and play it three times for free. They are prompted to pay for the "Weed file" the fourth time. Songs cost about a dollar and can be burned to an unlimited number of CDs, passed around on file-sharing networks and posted to web pages.
Each time the song is downloaded by a new listener, the Weed file resets itself so the same rules apply: three free plays, then pay. The music can also be transferred to Windows portable media devices.
One analyst said the Weed service is an admirable idea and is important for the growth of digital music. The challenge is building the traffic for Weed services.
I've tested it a few months ago when it first hit the news. It basically uses DRM to restrict the songs and unless you can change your personal key, you can't get around it. Unfortunately, I cannot burn in my testing environment; it is possible to burn and rip some protected files from others. But even if everything else fails, you can still run a recording software (of course unless the DRM club gets the total control over your computer)...