CNET has reported that the P2P network called Wurld Media has concluded agreements with Sony BMG, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group and is continuing negotiations with EMI to license their music for P2P distribution beginning the first quarter of 2005.
Until now, P2P has always worn the stigma as a distribution system designed to skirt the rights of copyright owners and to make it as difficult as possible to identify individual users or to stop the system.
Although online music models like are wildly popular in offering legitimate music, P2P networks attract a group of people, for many reasons, believe music should be freely available and offer a sense of community by bringing people with a common belief together in 1 forum.
Despite the initial resistance to P2P networks by the recording industry and their (so far unsuccessful) efforts to shut down P2P file sharing, they are now beginning to embrace P2P. Their adoption of P2P allows them to create and attract users to a community that enjoys the efficiency of P2P distribution by allowing quick and broad distribution at low costs.
What remains to be seen is whether they will be able to successfully persuade the following that still engage in illegal file trading over P2P networks. It isn’t clear whether their prior participation in the “sue them all” campaign will serve as an obstacle in their latest endeavors. It is clear that illegal file trading on P2P networks remain robust despite the threat of lawsuits.
We can only speculate how the records label would have fared in winning over the audience to legitimate music had they embraced technological advances early on rather than to fight it and push it into the virtually unstoppable decentralized model used today.
We have already seen that the legal system remains somewhat unpredictable in how they decide online file-sharing cases. Record labels chalk up a win in In Re Aimster and A&M v. Napster. P2P and users see victory in MGM v. Grokster and RIAA v. Verizon. Most recently, the United States District Court for the Northern District of California issued an order to sever cases on November 16 in the recently filed MPAA lawsuit (Twentieth Century Fox v. DOES 1-12) effectively making it Twentieth Century Fox v. Doe 1 and requiring the MPAA to file individual lawsuits against each Doe Defendant because each claim arose out of different transactions or occurrences and joinder would violate FRCP Rule 20.
It will certainly be interesting to learn the true reason why record labels have all of a sudden decided to embrace P2P. Could it be that they have finally begun to realize that they’re not only fighting an expensive, losing battle but alienating the same fans they so desperate need to make their P2P model feasible?
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