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Come November, a new Internet company hopes to go boldly where not many have dared.
Srivats Sampath's company, www.mercora.com, is poised for launch, and will join a limited but growing number of online sites for buying and sharing digital music files.
Sampath, who cofounded McAfee and quit as its CEO when the network security and antivirus firm merged with Network Associates, decided to put his own money into what is seen by many as a still murky area of e-commerce.
"After the merger, I started to spend my time researching, among other things, copyright law, electronic marketplaces, social networking and the intricacies of the music business, and that's really what got me started," says Sampath, who read over 20 books on related issues.
He finally decided to go head to head with the likes of iTunes by Apple, which has taken the lead in sales of online music files, and Napster. "Our vision for Mercora is to create an alternate, highly efficient, Internet-centric marketplace that fundamentally rearchitects the existing recorded music business model," Sampath says of his baby. "Mercora will bring sellers and buyers of music together in a secure, trusted marketplace."
What Sampath has in mind is a peer-to-peer file-swapping service, but at a price. Additionally, he hopes to create unique online societies that will hang out together virtually based on their choice of music.
Sampath has the 99 cents-a-song model in mind. Additionally, he will use Windows copy-protection but insists they are "agnostic to the DRM (we) useĀ but at some point, we will also support the Real Networks Helix DRM."