Peer-to-peer file-sharing generally involves free software, and much of the technology is certainly still legal in the United States (for now). However, once you start trading copyrighted material like music and movies, that's where legal problems arise. If you're trafficking (uploading or downloading) copyrighted digital material without consent of the owner, you are infringing, and you're risking the possibility of massive penalties, more if the work in question has not yet been released.
This weekend, a company called Qtrax made a big splash by announcing "the world's first free and legal peer-to-peer digital music site." It turns out that line of marketing nonsense was only the beginning of the company's misdirections.
After announcing deals to provide music from Warner Bros., Universal, Sony, and EMI at the MIDEM music conference in Cannes, France, Qtrax CEO Allan Klepfisz admitted to CNET News.com on Sunday that there may not be agreements "written in stone." With such shenanigans involved, it's unlikely those agreements may ever be signed.
What's most unfortunate about the whole affair is that the name of a fine open-source project gets dragged through the mud. Songbird is a Firefox analog that adds media playback and library-management features to the popular browser. It's very cool, with tons of potential, but it's still unstable and in need of much development......
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