Masterminded by former McAfee CEO, Mercora is a P2P audio streaming service. The Register reports:
The software allows users to share and catalogue digital photos, and provides instant messaging functionality too. But it’s focus is sharing music. Essentially, it streams the music files on a user’s hard drive out onto the Net. Other Mercora users can tune in and listen.
The company’s reckons it’s safe to do so because it has acquired a non-interactive digital audio webcasting licence as mandated by the notorious Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). “This license pertains to the digital performance rights of sound recordings and the associated reporting and royalty payments to SoundExchange (the independent non-profit organization that represents over 500 record companies and associated labels),” Mercora says.
Will the record labels cut Mercora some slack? We’ll be keeping our eyes on this service, as it seems to be compliant with the legal demands of the DMCA while offering some flexibility to consumers.
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I found an older reference to Mercora:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1306684,00.asp
In the article [from Oct. 2003], the author says of Mercora:
“And then this past Monday, September 29, Srivats Sampath, former president and CEO of McAfee.com, announced a new alternative to services like Kazaa and Morpheus. Mercora, due to launch early next year, will be an online marketplace where individual Internet users and businesses can come together to buy and sell digital songs. Much like Apple’s iTunes and RealNetwork’s Rhapsody, online services where you can purchase songs for a small fee, Mercora will let you download music without sparking the ire of the RIAA.
The difference between Mercora and existing for-pay online music services is subtle. With iTunes and Rhapsody, the operators license songs from record labels and independent artists and then sell those songs to individual users. Mercora, by contrast, will simply provide the technological means by which labels and artists can themselves sell digital songs to individual Internet users.”
It seems they have changed their tune with the launch and have morphed in P2P radio. Or maybe they are just setting the stage for this “music eBay.” Should be interesting!
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