Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review – December 13th, '03

[TankGirl]

Thanks for the WiR, Jack!

And hi jaan!

Meta-Music for the Masses
Seth Jayson

….
The latest attempt to stymie file-swappers comes from a consortium called the Content Reference Forum (CRF) founded by Universal Music Group and technology firms as diverse as Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT), ARM (Nasdaq: ARMHY), VeriSign (Nasdaq: VRSN), and Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NYSE: NTT).

The CRF is proposing a new standard media meta-file. This digital nibblet would contain information about the sound or video file, but not the media itself. Instead, the home users' media software would be directed by the meta-file to a server where the real, copy-protected media resides. Then it can be acquired or purchased, subject to the download privileges of the individual consumer.
…..

http://www.fool.com/News/mft/2003/mft03121207.htm

Similar digital nibblets have been available for a good while, known as Ed2K links and Torrents. These handy little nibblets also assist the home user to reach servers that contain the actual media files, and what’s best, these media files come typically in freely usable formats with the mere price of bandwidth.

- tg