CenterSpan To Revive Scour Exchange

CenterSpan Communications (www.centerspan.com), the company that won the bid to acquire the assets of Scour.com, has announced that it has released a beta of the new secure and legal Peer-to-Peer software.

According to the company, a controlled beta group has begun testing the system, which they hope to offer up to the public and to the 300,000 new and former Scour Exchange customers that have pre-registered to participate.

While all downloads during the beta test will be free, the company hopes to launch a fee-based service in the second half of 2001. To secure the content, CenterSpan is working with Microsoft Windows Media DRM. CenterSpan also states that the new Scour Exchange will allow P2P files to appear on standard search engines for the first time.

"The beta test enables us to demonstrate that Scour Exchange is a secure and legal channel and a compelling market opportunity for content owners to augment their current distribution channels and generate incremental revenue," said Frank G. Hausmann, CenterSpan's chairman and CEO in a statement.

The content available for the beta test isn't exactly a showstopper — featuring content from EMusic, Moonshine Music, Crush Media, FIlMSPEED, and TVParty.com. Mark Conan, CFO of CenterSpan, does add that the company is "pressing its connections" to acquire more compelling content before the commercial rollout.

Conan believes that the reasons behind the P2P for profit movement include bandwidth cost-savings and the heightened sense of community.