In a bold step to speed up the copyright issues surrounding online audio, Liquid Audio have penned an agreement with Iomega, to facilitate secure, copyright-protected digital distribution of music via the Internet.

“We’ve been focusing on redefining our business as being built around serving evolving user needs, and I think this agreement will have tremendous user impact,” said Jim Taylor, chief marketing officer for Iomega.

The agreement is expected to take tangible form late in January, when Iomega will begin bundling Liquid Audio’s Liquid Music Player software with some of its removable storage products, including some Zip drives. The software allows users to play back music downloaded from the Internet, while disallowing unauthorized second-generation copying of the sound files. Music industry insiders see the agreement as an important step toward building a digital-distribution system for music that preserves existing copyright laws.

Unlike most digital storage devices, each Zip disk has its own serial number and thus doesn’t require a credit-card- based password, said Rick Fleischman, senior marketing director at Liquid Audio. The unique serial number makes it possible for data to be “bound” to disks in a way that prevents unauthorized copying. Disks can still be transported from one drive to another, however, in the same way that a CD can be played by any CD player. But music copied to another disk will only play a 30-second “preview” of the copied file. “We think serialized media provides the best available basis for protection of copyright,” said Fleischman. “We definitely see serialized media as the future way that music can be protected.”

http://www.liquidaudio.com/