ISPs To Adopt Legal Sharing Services By End Of Year

via Gizmodo


It seems as though the music industry is finally starting to fold to consumer demand in the digital downloads arena.

Recently we reported that 80% of people would be happy to pay for a legitimate P2P service and following long overdue talks between ISPs and music suppliers, this could well be possible in the UK before the end of the year.

South Korea has already adopted a similar approach and the UK is next in line as music businesses look to address falling sales with a licensed file-sharing service.

The major details are yet to be ironed out, but any such scheme would allow future services to allow and encourage the exchange of music between subscribers, which involves copyright holders suspending the exclusive right to copy recordings.

A license fee will obviously need to be hammered out to make this feasible, but if all parties can agree then it could offer advantages all round.

ISPs will be able to focus on above-ground services and should see a reduction in bandwidth-hungry protocols like Bittorrent, so networks should become faster an cheaper to operate.

The phrase 'it's about bloody time' has never been more apt, so here's hoping a mutually acceptable model is decided upon so we can all enjoy our tunes in peace.