At 06:28 AM 10/24/2003 -0400, Roy M. Silvernail wrote:
Someone else must have thought up this idea, but I don't recall seeing it. Please inform me nicely if you have seen it proposed before.
This sounds a lot like the SunnComm DRM system that got so much publicity recently. (the one that relies on Windows' CD Autorun "feature") That system allows the user of a protected CD to make expiring copies of some tracks to share.
The problem with the central premise, of course, is that without some Big (Brother) Central Server, there's just no way to track simultaneous usage, so there's no way to assure that the number of users <= the number of owners.
Why not have each individual's PC which offered to lend do the accounting. This means their PC must be on-line whenever someone who didn't pay wants to listen, limiting the number of copies available, but it could be fully decentralized.
You can be sure that [MP|RI]AA will accept nothing less than perfect accounting. And if the system relies on my destroying my physical CDs to share the MP3 copies, forget it.
This is a possible problem. If the tracks were originally purchased as .mp3 then this might not be a problem. steve