Sony BMG Gets Into File-sharing

MEDIA CENTER PC NEWS

June 30th 2005

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The headline isn't quite what it seems. Sony isn't about to start sanctionning the sharing of their copyrighted material, but they have signed a deal with P2P network Mashboxx that will see Sony BMG content available, for a fee, on the network.

A Sony BMG track will cost 99c to download from Mashboxx, which unlike other networks, will allow the user to download a trial version of the song before they buy. It will only play a limited number of times and the music is intermittently interrupted by a vocal reminder to buy the song.

Mashboxx is run by ex-Grokster president Wayne Rosso who revealed to p2pnet that the service was nearly ready to roll out.

"We've got our software. We're ready to go. We're going to start with a small group of several thousand for beta testing. We've been collecting email addresses on our web site - people signing up to be beta testers.

"Right now we're waiting for certain pieces of the actual files from record companies so we can do our encoding and load the content into our system."

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