Diamond Partners With Liquid Audio, Vows To Secure Mp3

Computergram International, Nov 5, 1998

A partnership between MP3 pioneer Diamond Multimedia Systems Inc and format rival Liquid Audio is the latest surprise to come out of the WebNoize Conference in Los Angeles. The two companies have agreed to work together to secure music files are downloadable from the internet. Their work is covered by a non-disclosure agreement, but they can disclose that it will involve supporting Liquid Audio's digital watermark copyright protection mechanism in Diamond's portable MP3 players.

MP3 is a cheap, standard and effective way of compressing and distributing music files over networks, but its lack of a copyright enforcement mechanism has made it an anathema to the music publishing empires. Still reeling from a lawsuit brought by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) that almost prevented the November release of its Rio PMP300 player, Diamond is anxious to be seen to be supporting the legal use of MP3. To that end, the company joined with four others on Monday to form the MP3 Association (CI No 3,529). For Diamond, incorporating Liquid Audio's watermarking technology into the Rio player is another step towards music industry respectability. Ironically enough, one major record label used WebNoize to announce that it is moving in the opposite direction. Even as Diamond seeks to make MP3 more secure and therefore more acceptable to the copyright enforcers, Platinum Entertainment Inc has embraced the technology as it stands. The company announced that it will publish works by Dionne Warwick and Eric Clapton to MP3. Net users can download the songs from http://www.mp3.com and http://www.platinumcd.com. "While other record labels may still regard MP3 as a controversial format," said Platinum Entertainment president and CEO Steve Devick, "we see it as a powerful promotional tool."