Digital Download Day - Direct Connect

Digital Download Day Europe 2003

Digital Download Day is an initiative by - amongst others - record companies Sony, Warner and Universal to solve the growing piracy-problem. What's it about?
For only 5 Euro, you'll get access to a database containing about 150,000 songs from 8,500 artists. Each song will cost you 16 Eurocent. All you have to do is register at their site (by filling in your e-mail addy) and select your preferred music download service. You'll receive further instructions a couple of days before Digital Download Day.
For one reason or another, the exact date depends on what country you live in - probably to spread server-hits - UK: April 9th; France: March 21; Germany: April 9th; Spain: March 21; The Netherlands: April 2nd; Italy: April 2nd).

A very nice initiative if you ask me (maybe indeed 'The Future of Music' as they call it themselves)... although their motivation ("to solve the piracy-problem") may be a little naive. If this will be the future of music though (16 cents a song sounds fair to me), I'm all for it.

While we're on the subject of piracy... KaZaA and iMesh are done: here's Direct Connect.
Direct Connect is the brainchild of a couple of open source-adepts. Entering one of their 'hubs' comes with a price though: most hubs check how many data you have to offer. Minima start at 1 Gig, but most of them require you to share 20, 40, 60 or even 100 Gig... The contents: MP3's, DivX, games,... Legal? Of course not.

I did a little test: right now, KaZaA has 4,597,000 users, sharing 6,626 terabyte. Direct Connect right now has 'only' 165,450 users, sharing an astonishing 7,045 terabyte. This means a Direct Connect user shares more than 40 Gig on average...

Immoral? Or just another example of how internet users don't want to be controlled and are always one step ahead?

Digital Download Day

DC++ client - Sourceforge
Neo Modus DC client

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although their motivation ("to solve the piracy-problem") may be a little naive. If this will be the future of music though (16 cents a song sounds fair to me), I'm all for it.

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Hahaha.....I agree that does sound a little (okay...a lot) naive. :) Not a bad idea at all -- sounds fair to me. If that was the only way I could get mp3's I wouldn't complain. One thing I was wondering, though......I looked at the links you supplied and I didn't see any indication of a download list. It seems so often that the one song that I'm just dying to have can't be found anywhere. I think having access to a list of available downloads before signing up might be a good idea.