“Navio Systems, a startup based in Apple’s hometown of Cupertino, Calif., is hoping to… let anyone sell music, videos, games, and other content that stays protected wherever it goes. Hollywood, which has seen Apple rapidly seize control of the paid music-download business, is especially eager for an alternative to iTunes. In fact, they’d like to run their own stores. And that’s what Navio’s software lets them do,” Michael V. Copeland reports for Business 2.0. “Navio has built a system that stores the rights associated with a piece of music, a game or a movie in the file itself. When you buy a song or video from a Navio-powered website, information about your purchase is stored in a ‘digital locker’ that tracks your rights. The key difference from iTunes: Navio doesn’t care where you get the content. And that opens up any number of websites to the possibility of selling digital content.”
“Already, early Navio customers like Fox, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Walt Disney Internet, Cingular and Verizon Wireless have been experimenting with Navio’s software to sell digital content. Disney, for example, will be using Navio to power content sales on its website promoting the Pixar/Disney animated blockbuster Cars,” Copeland reports. “By the end of June, Navio plans to include software that lets its customers offer copy-protected videos that will play on iPods. Michael V. Copeland reports for Business 2.0.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Jamie” for the heads up.]
MacDailyNews Take: Cool, even before release, Cars is already a blockbuster.
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Related article:
Navio threatens to hack Apple iTunes Music Store’s FairPlay DRM à la Real’s ‘Harmony’ – November 22, 2005
Screw DRM…whatever the flavour.
On one side you’re right, copyright violation is generally a civil matter not theft and not usually a felony unless you’re intentionally doing it for profit.
But it’s not borrowing, it’s a strict liability tort for which you can be required to pay damages. All that needs to be shown is that you copied the song, not that you even knew it was copyrighted.
Since you’re publishing on a p2p network, that’s probably pretty easy to establish.
They could get between two hundred dollars and a hundred and fifty thousand dollars per song from you plus attorneys fees and costs.
Since you’re doing it willfully you’ll probably be towards the higher end of the range.