P2P合法了?

The old-school peer-to-peer network iMesh has left the murky world of illegal file swapping behind with the launch of a new service that enables users to share up to 2 million tracks from the four major record labels.

The New York-based company is charging its 5 million users an a la carte fee of 99 cents to purchase a track, or $6.95 per month to gain unlimited access to the catalog.

On Monday, iMesh appeared to be off to a good start. It was the No. 4 most popular download on Download.com, and more than 150,000 users have downloaded it since last Tuesday. IMesh 6.0 provides users with three months free access to content. It is not available for the Mac platform.

IMesh was part of the first generation of peer-to-peer file-sharing networks along with Napster, Grokster and Kazaa. Together, these networks jump-started digital music in 1999 by enabling home users to download free (but illegal) tracks to their desktop computers. While other peer-to-peer companies fought and lost a landmark 2004 copyright-infringement lawsuit against the music industry, iMesh settled with a $4.1 million payment and continued to trade.

Now the company has built Microsoft Digital Rights Management technology into its software, allowing users to see a complete list of tracks available on the Gnutella network. However, they can only download tracks that they are willing to pay for, or that are not copyright protected.

"We are the first true P2P company to legalize our service," said Talmon Marco, president and co-founder of iMesh. "Unlike iTunes or Rhapsody or Napster, we will also provide access to another 15 million so-called 'gray market' soundtracks free of charge."

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Shabtai is referring to the 15 million or so soundtracks available on the Gnutella network whose copyright owners have either deliberately or unwittingly left them unclaimed, which allows users to legally download them. Such services are beginning to provide independent artists with alternative distribution for their work.

Still, analysts said iMesh will have its work cut out for it. Not only is it competing with more-established services like Apple Computer's iTunes, RealNetworks' Rhapsody and Napster (which is no longer a peer-to-peer service), it will also face challenges from other legal peer-to-peer music-sharing services like MashBoxx, which will be launched later this year by former Grokster President Wayne Rosso.

"From a business perspective their main challenge is to convert their installed base, which is used to downloading music for free, over to paid subscribers," said Gartner analyst Mike McGuire. He estimated digital music is one of the fastest-growing sectors on the internet, with sales projected to swell to about $1.4 billon by 2009 from just $335 million in 2004.

IMesh said in coming months it will add online community software to its services, enabling members to share (if they wish) their age, gender and lists of favorite artists.

Users will also be able to share video content. However, iMesh has inked an agreement with the Motion Picture Association of America not to distribute any video exceeding 15 minutes in length, thus guaranteeing it will not inadvertently distribute feature-length movies over the internet.