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kgb provides this interesting informative link< regarding p2p distribution Record labels vs. MusicCity.com & EFF ala napster.

I wonder if anyone has looked into who is providing venture capital for these types of companies. They look like a spoof of a CIA operation to discredit open paradigms and get legal precedents set useful in curtailing constitutional freedoms. Perhaps they are merely surviving remnants of the dot.com imploding frauds fiasco ( or diff ...{tm} all rights reserved). Either way I think the Electronic Frontier Foundation ought to pick or set up their legal battles more carefully.

While I agree with the overall assessment regarding fundamental freedoms in electronic media in this article, MusicCity.com appear to me to be an incredibly poor test case for the righteous freedom loving peasants of the world against the greedy capitalistic totalitarians currently running megalith america and prattling incessantly about the alleged benefits (to the peasants) of globalization.

American judges will often go with a duck rule. (If it quacks, waddles, eats, and looks like a duck, then its a duck ..... even if it is an odd pink with red racing stripes, unless of course it has a large constituency of irritated vocal voting citizens like the spotted owl, subject to appellate review and reversal.) The U.S. Supreme Court can then safely ignore the issue until some sort of palatable solution appears near in the form of societal consensus or buy in.

Notice that while the defense theory claims the technology can provide a service to distribute electronic information of all kinds via p2p type technology pioneered by napster, the MusicCity.com store is dedicated strictly to selling equipment and supplies useful in ripping, burning, and consuming custom music CDs.

Why not include some original music CDs from original artists who have embraced their business concept and their legal defense theory that free exposure via p2p can be as effective at selling CDs as megalith record labels bribing radio stations?

Love has built most of the business case and offered to work with smaller companies. The PR the bands get from the distributed p2p network would provide compensation to the bands via reduced distribution costs.

All they require is some type of artistic distribution license that allows the music to be freely (as in beer and freedom) given away but not charged for. Then the central site sells authorized music CDs direct for retail profit. Once the novelty of burning CDs and giving them away has worn out this should have little impact on the overall market. People with cash will buy rather than impose on friends to manufacture CDs as a handout. Operations ripping, burning, and selling copyrighted material illegally will still have to contend with the FBI. Might even get a lot of help from the p2p net in reporting infringement if situation is handled with care and consideration for the honest users of the system.

The p2p net is then not assumed criminal youth misguided by subversive libertarians and wildly out of control ..... they are a valued community of music trendsetters and promoters. An Amazon style affiliate program to compensate click through from the p2p net with a sales commission might work handily. A new artistic field might form where music enthusiasts create their own CD arrangements out of the available components. Producers could negotiate reasonable/fair licensing fees with all the artists involved and the site can then mass produced an authorized arrangement for commercial sale on the site. Appropriate bookkeeping and micropayments should certainly be feasible.

To strengthen the EFFs case that the file sharing technology can also be used in other legal ways perhaps something similar could be established with gimp artists around publishing of art. The electronic form could be given away freely and even printed out for personal use or as gifts, the site would sell high quality hardcopy and printers and compensate the artists either up front, with royalties, or both.

The upfront cost of investment to advertise and deliver new content is potentially greatly reduced, the public is now exposed to the new material via a self financed (off balance sheet ...... a potentially useful term to interest enronrized U.S. business majors and peanuts scale VCs convinced that only crooked behomeths prosper and can offer desirable scales of salary, options, perks, and benefits) p2p network, this generates sells of authorized label CDs.

Instead MusicCity.com has setup a transparent workaround scheme. They appear to make money only from selling equipment and supplies to napster like clients swapping copyrighted works inappropriately (illegally, apparently or allegedly in violation of copyright). Where is the delivered value to the content creators? Ethical business practice does not depend on random fallout to compensate its suppliers. Indeed, Nike has been embroiled in controversy over this identical issue with grossly underpaid manufacturing labor in China. Globalization may be faltering on this and similar issues and we have unscrupulous VCs attempting to bring it home to the U.S. domestic economy and online into our brave new Electronic Frontier.

Where is the value to the target customers? Why will a 2 bit music pirate purchase common gear from MusicCity.com rather than saving ten percent by walking into a mall nearby and walking out with the goodies today rather than ordering via credit card over the internet and waiting 2 to 14 days for delivery?

Alas, I do not have the hackerly skills or bandwidth access to tackle this opportunity myself in the near term.

Maybe I should writeup a coherent business plan and submit it the EFF for endorsement, this might assist in recruiting the necessary talent sufficiently to get started.

Better yet, get it semi coherently posted on a wiki controlled by a known organization with a publicly posted charter and see if it clarifies. If it does, then myriads of small teams with some of all the critical pieces might spring up to deliver value to all parties. Dispersion effects inherent in innovative competitors in free markets will probably make it difficult for stodgy megaliths to successfully have all entrepreneurial teams rolled up into one collective lawsuit.

Needed: Some open p2p napster like code. Gnutella looks nice. Remember, we are not attempting to control the net through a central site. Rather we encourage the net to advertise, publicize, distribute freely our licensed content. If someone wants to buy it in a convenient alternate form (such as professional labeled CD or 3'X5' photoglossy poster) then they have to buy it from the licensed manufacturers ...... our site store.

Some artists

Some hackers

Some administrators (both system and paper)

Some hardware and bandwidth access.

Some product definition and packaging. Will not make many profits selling $2 posters and adding $10 shipping and handling unless suppliers and customers are arithmetically challenged.

Some shipping & handling ..... preferably in a sales tax free state such as Oregon. Simplifies our bookkeeping and reduces the price to our consumer. Net gain, we get no revenue from collecting 48 states sales taxes, only the bookkeeping expense.

Some organization. Corporation is a marvelous invention for limiting risk and tracking vested interests. Might be phase two for small teams with limited cash for startup, takes a few thousand in most states to have the paperwork processed by lawyers.

One nice thing about an open business concept, it cannot be stolen only copied. Should someone else prove this out, I can always start up small when I gather the necessary resources. One only has to be first to market and get humongo fastest, if substantial barriers to entry exist and large sums of capital investment are required to get started, requiring one to control the market and exclude competitors to provide desirable rates of return on the capital invested.

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