Music swapping leader KaZaA gets legit, sort of, with Euro ISP deal
From today's New York Times story:
Under the deal, KaZaA's owner, Sharman Networks Ltd., will advertise high-speed Internet access provided by Tiscali, an Italian Internet provider, to its tens of millions of European users. In return Tiscali, which serves around seven million customers in 15 countries, will pay Sharman a "bounty" for each KaZaA user who signs up for its high-speed access service.
...The deal also underscores the potential common interests of high-speed Internet access providers and organizations that deliver complex digital media. Internet providers, including Tiscali, have said that one way to convince consumers to pay for more expensive high-speed access is to offer them content, like movies and music, that takes more time — an often excruciating amount of time — to download using slower dial-up connections.
...Jonathan Zittrain, an associate professor at Harvard Law School, said the significance of the deal between Sharman Networks and Tiscali is likely to be more a cultural one than a legal one, noting that "all hands to this conflict recognize we're at a cultural point of inflection."
This deal, he said, implicitly lifts peer-to-peer networks out of the online demimonde of casino sites and tasteless pop-up windows to the better tended world of Internet access providers.