Word: kazaa
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Music Store's slick, easy-to-navigate interface is a welcome relief after free but controversial file-sharing programs like Kazaa. Still, there's room for improvement. Since Music Store works only on Macs (and then only on those with OS X), the other 97% of consumers who use PCs can't try it until a Windows version, promised by year's end, comes out. And the slender song library, lacking a single tune by Madonna or the Rolling Stones, needs beefing up too. --By Anita Hamilton...
First order of business: evolve some claws. Some labels (they're reluctant to identify themselves) hire professional counterhackers, companies like Overpeer, based in Manhattan, that specialize in electronic countermeasures such as "spoofing"--releasing dummy versions of popular songs onto file-sharing networks. To your average Kazaa user they look like the real thing, but when you download them, they turn out to be unplayable. Movie studios, meanwhile, staff screenings with ushers wearing night-vision goggles to suss out would-be pirates with camcorders. When Epic Records distributed review copies of the new Pearl Jam album last fall, it sent them...
...that's it. But even that might annoy consumers who are used to making as many copies as they want. Even if the smart CD of the future becomes a reality, to work at all it will have to work absolutely perfectly. If just one copy leaks onto Kazaa, anywhere in the world, millions of people can have all the copies they want...
...these services face competition you wouldn't wish on Bill Gates. Unlike, say, Kazaa, they have to clear each song or movie or show for digital distribution with each individual artist and studio. They have made significant progress--Pressplay, for example, has upwards of 300,000 tracks available for download, with membership starting at $9.95 a month--but it's slow work. The for-pay services also mire users in a mesh of restrictions that limit what they can do with the music they download. That $9.95 plan at Pressplay buys you unlimited downloads, but you can't move...
Pressplay and the other "legitimate" music services are more reliable than Kazaa and its ilk. For one thing, there's no porn and no spoofing, and Apple's new offering is expected to give the whole process a more streamlined, user-friendly feel. These services also give customers the peace of mind that comes with not breaking the law. It will be interesting to see how much that's worth. But for now listeners are staying away in droves; industry analysts estimate that the legitimate downloading services have fewer than 300,000 users in all. Still, if the retail-music...