DIGITAL RIGHTS AND THE CHINESE GOOGLE
Do we have to look to China to see the future of digital rights - regarding, say, music and movies? A lot of Internet users hope so, but the businessmen who provide these products that users want for free sure hope not.
In the US, EMI, which, among other properties, has in its copyrighted music the Beatles catalog - has signed licensing deals with several P2P (peer-to-peer) music downloading services, including Mashboxx and Qtrax.
Qtrax will be supported by ads and allow at least some free, unrestricted downloads. Both these services are pending, while EMI prepares its electronic catalog for distribution.
Meanwhile, in China, you don't have to wait for either of these services to begin operating. A Chinese site called Baidu has all the commercially released music you could possibly want, from all the major labels, freely available for download - and it's all legal. Of course, you do have to read Chinese.
