Liquefying MP3
by Ronald Warren Deutsch
3:00 a.m. 23.Jan.99.PST
Liquid Audio, as expected, has banded with 48 leading record labels, MP3 vendors, and other companies, artists, and producers to form the Genuine Music Coalition.
The group intends to thwart music piracy by watermarking every piece of legitimately encoded content sold or freely distributed on the Internet.
"As one of the first companies to sell music in MP3 format, we believe that initiatives such as the Genuine Music Coalition will help raise awareness among consumers and further expand the growth of downloadable music," said Gene Hoffman, president and CEO of GoodNoise in a joint statement released Monday.
"Liquid Audio is playing a leadership role in helping the industry preserve the quality and authenticity of music distributed on the Internet and creating a market for legitimate content," said Gerry Kearby, CEO of Liquid Audio in the announcement.
The Genuine Music mark will be encoded in the sound file and provided royalty-free to coalition members. The marked Liquid Audio and MP3 files will be open and compatible with all existing MP3 players, as well as portable players such as Diamond's Rio. However, Liquid Audio will not -- as previously reported -- release the watermarking technology as an open source.
"Liquid Audio's proposal to make the tools and technology available at no cost shows an understanding of the importance of standardization and demonstrates a real commitment to the future of digital music," said Michael Robertson, president of MP3.com.
"The Genuine Music mark is certainly a big step in the right direction to provide better copyright protection for the MP3 format," said Karlheinz Brandenburg, department head of multimedia at the Fraunhofer Institut for Integrated Circuits, one of the original developers of the MP3 format. -------(continued....)
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