Muso is an online anti piracy company, much like the International Federation of Phonographic Industry (IFPI). From what I can tell however, Muso is more of a commercial service. The general idea behind Muso is that an author uploads their songs (or other digital IP) onto their website, and they in turn have a programme which scans the web for illegal copies of the song. The author then in turn has the ability to request a take down.
As one would expect, in order for Muso to to scan for illegal copies on certain websites there must be an agreement. Just by doing a quick scan on Muso’s website its evident that, they do have partnerships with some big websites including Youtube and Soundcloud. In fact, just recently Muso has added another big name to the list: VK. VK (www.vk.com) is, according to it’s website, the biggest social network in Europe with more than a 100 million users. This is probably because of its huge influence in Russia where it is viewed as an alternative.
Despite being a social network, VK in the past has had an issue with pirated content being uploaded by their users. While this partnership with Muso should help dramatically reduce the piracy issue, I am slightly worried about the privacy of the users. Grant it, I don’t really know the details of how Muso’s scanning technology works, so I can’t say for certain that the privacy of the users is at risk. I can just hope that this isn’t another situation where privacy is sacrificed for piracy.
Source:
http://www.ag-ip-news.com/news.aspx?id=30840&lang=en
