As Broadband access becomes available to more people and as the problems of file sharing become more dangerous from a legal standpoint for students there is an interesting alternative. The alternative is a small program called Mercora, a client which you download to windows 2000 and windows xp.
It works as a peer to peer (P2P) radio station where several radio stations are listed. This program searches your computer for music files and indexes them. Once this is done you begin webcasting your music from your computer to whoever wants to listen to what you're playing.
The reason for which this particular webcasting method is legal is because you have no control over what order the music will play and you are unauthorised to tell people when certain songs will be playing. In so doing you will not come head to head with the RIAA, at least for the moment.
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