“You are a nice guy and you want to share Britney Spears,” Viralg spokesman Martti Vakkala told XBiz. “You have the [music] files on your computer, as does another person in another country. When a third party attempts to download the files from your shared folder, that is when the files become corrupted.”
The third party might receive between two and twenty files of corrupted material, Vakkala said. The files will be impossible to play, but they will not affect other files on the computer unless those files, too, are illegally downloaded files.
Viralg’s product, called Viralg DRP (for Digital Rights Protection) is already in use locally in Finland among music and game producers, including the Finnish subsidiary of BMG, a major music publisher. Last year the company landed its first international contract, which Vakkala requested not be named. Viralg DRP works with the existing P2P networks, he said, but stressed that the program only corrupts the file and does not harm the network, the ISP or the end-user’s computer.
“If you have the best DRM system in the world, you can find someone in a big city to crack it,” Vakkala said. “[He] can create a ripper code and the file will be on P2P networks that evening.”
Viralg DRP does come with standard DRM coding. Ideally the coding would be in place on a file prior to its release date. What makes Viralg’s product different, Vakkala said, is that its protections can start before and continue after a music, game or movie file has hit the market.
“Even the best DRM system cannot stop a person standing with a microphone to the speakers,” Vakkala told XBiz. “[Viralg DRP] affects the file at the P2P networks.”
