I have a little more “off topic” but still related news. Our friends over at Weedshare.com are in the news and this time it is related to MS’s recently announced music/video player called the Zune.
Apparently one of the services that has been presented by Microsoft promising some really great things for peer to peer music file sharing/trading. Let’s get to some of the details shall we?
- You can send music from the [tag]Zune[/tag] to another person’s Zune, to share it with them.
- If the file has been purchased free and clear, the file will transfer without DRM.
- If this file has been purchased with a Zune DRM, the file will still transfer, but will is restricted to play up to 3 times before being disabled, prompting you to purchase the song.
Obviously, this promises to be a huge boon to P2P supporters, allowing for a legal avenue for people to share their music collection, but still retaining the artist’s rights. Everyone wins, finally a [tag]DRM[/tag] that works for both the listener and artist.
It’s just too bad that they didn’t come up with it.
Since 2003, [tag]WeedShare[/tag]’s DRM technology has been doing the same thing, only better, in fact, a Microsoft PDF file published by Darko Kirovski and Kamal Jain from [tag]Microsoft[/tag] Research appears, which you can find it online, here:
Offline Economies for Digital Media, was referenced in the link found at Geek News Central.
This document outlines the strategy that MS is following with the Zune, and starts off by crediting WeedShare for coming up with the concept. The problem? They also credit [tag]John Beezer[/tag] with the patent on the concept and technology. John is a founding member of Weedshare.com.
From what we’ve seen, the Zune and Weed DRM appear identical, albeit Weedshare’s is much more fleshed out, tested, and functional. It seems very odd that MS wouldn’t want to at least license proven software, but instead have decided to copy the design and concept while rebuilding it from the ground up.
Make sure to check out the news source below:
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