Gnab, delivering DRM’ed content through P2P
Bertelsmann is to launch Gnab later this year, a platform that will allow the distribution of music and movies. If I’m reading the article correctly, there will be two parts in Gnab—whose ridiculous name comes by reversing ‘bang’, by the way—: a centralized server that will handle all the evil DRM’ing of the available content, and a P2P network through which the DRM’ed content will be distributed, to lessen the burden on the content providers’ bandwidth.
As noted in the article, this brings to mind Shawn Fanning’s Snocap. Both companies want to use P2P for the distribution of DRM’ed content. I was going to say that getting to the market first and striking the most deals will decide who wins, but there’s probably plenty of space for both to co-exist harmonically. As much as I hate DRM, I don’t see it going away any time soon, and with P2P being an excellent bandwith-saving solution (for distributors) this is a promising concept.
(Meanwhile, I’ll stick to nice ol’ torrents.)
Before leaving the site, have a look at our most popular entries:
- Review: FixTunes (September 14, 2006)
- Apple Lossless offerings from the iTMS not likely—for now (June 28, 2006)
- Review: Datasafe oomi (June 7, 2006)
- HOWTO: Move your iTunes music while preserving library data (May 11, 2006)
- Batteries 101 (May 8, 2006)
- Presentation: iPod Hi-Fi, plus a few thoughts (March 2, 2006)
- Presentation/Review: Creative Zen Vision:M (December 9, 2005)
- Review: Alegria Audio Ling bookshelf speaker system (November 9, 2005)
- HOWTO: Put together a $3K audiophile CD player for $555 (October 20, 2005)
- HOWTO: Build the CMoy pocket amplifier (October 16, 2005)