User:Fresheneesz/Weed music distribution service

The Weed music distribution service, introduced by Shared Media Licensing in 2003, combined aspects of peer-to-peer filesharing and multi-level marketing in order to maximize the distribution of copyrighted music while at the same time providing income to the music's copyright holders.

Weed files are in the Windows Media Audio (WMA) format and are restricted by digital rights management (DRM). They could be freely shared on the internet. People on a supported operating system could play a Weed file three times for free using any WMA player. After that, they needed to use the Weed software to purchase the file, which would give them the right to play it as often as they want. If they had then shared the original DRM-restricted file with others, they would have earned a percentage of the purchase price paid by 3 generations of their "downstream". 50% of the purchase price goes to the copyright owner, 20% goes to the person that gave the file to the purchaser, 10% to that person's supplier and 5% to the person that supplied the supplier. The Weed service received the remaining 15%.

A new release of Microsoft Windows Media Player, version 11, is no longer compatible with the Weed service, and as of April 2007, the Weed service was terminated after Microsoft purchased their patent for use with the Zune media player.