Microsoft Introducing Kazaa to Polite Society?

Windows Media 9, with "electronic locks" on songs and videos, being distributed via P2P network:

In early September, Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates staged a Hollywood gala to impress the recording and movie industries with his company's latest software for digital music and video, Windows Media 9.

A few weeks later, Microsoft started showing off Windows Media 9 to an audience reviled by the entertainment industry: the Kazaa file-sharing network, where users routinely copy digital songs, films and software free.

Microsoft has picked up the tab to distribute at least two companies' promotional videos on Kazaa in the Windows Media 9 format, representatives of those companies say. The videos not only show off the improved picture quality of Microsoft's latest technology; they also help distribute it. When Kazaa users download and play either video, their Microsoft media player software is automatically upgraded to Windows Media 9.

The dalliance with Kazaa seems risky, given the network's reputation for promoting piracy. But to Microsoft, the projects serve a legitimate purpose: to show the entertainment industry how the anti-piracy features of Windows Media 9 might tame the file-sharing beast.

....Microsoft has paid Altnet an undisclosed sum to distribute promotional videos for Tony Hawk's Boom Boom HuckJam — a touring extravaganza of skateboarding, cycling and punk rock — and "The Rules of Attraction," a film by Lions Gate Entertainment, an independent studio in Marina del Rey. In addition to an upfront fee to start the distribution, Altnet charges Microsoft every time one of the videos is downloaded — a fee that it splits with the company behind Kazaa, Sharman Networks Ltd. of Vanuatu, a tax haven in the South Pacific.

The major film and music companies are suing Sharman and other companies involved with the Kazaa software, accusing them of aiding copyright infringement on a massive scale. Sharman contends that its software has legitimate uses, adding that the company is not liable for what consumers do on the network.

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