Peer-to-peer file-sharing involves free software, and much of the technology is certainly still legal in the United States (for now). However, once you start trading copyrighted material like movies and music, that's where legal problems arise. If you're trafficking, uploading or downloading copyrighted digital material without consent of the owner, you are infringing. You are risking the likelihood of massive penalties also, more if the work in question has not yet been released. This weekend, a company called Qtrax made a major splash by announcing "the world's first free and legal peer-to-peer digital music site." It turns out that line of marketing nonsense was only the beginning of the company's misdirections. Qtrax didn't give me free music downloads, but I was taught by it a lttle bit about the Oracle Application Server 10g. After announcing deals to provide music from Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group, Sony Music Group, and EMI Recorded Music at the Midem music conference in Cannes, France, Qtrax CEO Allan Klepfisz told CNET News.com on Sunday that there might not be agreements "written in stone." With such shenanigans involved, it's unlikely those agreements will ever be signed. Music WithMe tries syncing iTunes on BlackBerry. What's most unfortunate about the whole affair is that the name of a fine open-source project gets dragged through the mud. Songbird is a Firefox analog that adds media library-management and playback features to the popular browser. It's very cool, with tons of potential, but it's still unstable and in need of much development. Qtrax grabbed the Songbird code simply, slapped in a few of its own extensions, added a huge advertising banner on the top and a bookmark to the Qtrax Web site, and launched this version of Songbird as its own then. Qtrax didn't even write a new license or even rename the installer. Shenanigans, Part 2. In essence, if you download Qtrax, you will get a beta application, hijacked by beta advertising modules, and offering zero free content. Sorry. Not good enough for me, and not yet good enough for CNET Download.com. Forgive me if the need is felt by me to sic Netdisaster on the Qtrax Web site. I would love to see a viable, advertising-supported digital-music model, but I would be very surprised if Qtrax is the one to provide it. Would a "free is employed by you," advertising-supported P2P file-sharing client? If not, what's on your list for the perfect digital-music delivery system? Tell me about it in the comments.
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