Liquid Audio Security Initiative - Real or Virtual?

Jan 25 1999

The jockeying for position among secure-digital-music tech companies is hot and heavy, and Liquid Audio is mounting a big press campaign around an initiative this morning - a cooperative industry group called the Genuine Music Coalition.

The campaign is really more PR than it is a business or technology breakthrough. In fact, Rick Fleischmann, senior marketing director at Liquid Audio, admitted as much to Ziff-Davis this morning, telling Robert Lemos, "This is not a security system - it's a system for authentication." The idea is that every official music download would come with a "Genuine Music Mark" logo in every piece of legitimately-encoded content sold or freely distributed on the Internet. "The idea is to build consumer awareness of the idea of what is genuine and what is pirated," said Fleischmann.

Okay, it's a mildly interesting story. But it must've been an extremely slow news day for the august Wall Street Journal to play such a PR-driven initiative so near the top of it's tech package . Toward the bottom of the WSJ piece, reporter Nick Wingfield does get to the crux of the matter - the Recording Industry of America Association just announced plans to create its own secure music system with the cooperation of the major record labels. So who's going to line up behind Liquid Audio's pre-emptive strike?

Tech, Recording-Industry Firms to Back 'Watermarks' for MP3s
Wall Street Journal

Group Forms to Fight Digital Music Piracy
ZDNet