iMesh's music filters skipping a bit

The new iMesh, launched last week as the first record label-approved file-swapping service, has a Led Zeppelin problem.

Like its peers in the digital music business, from Napster to Apple Computer’s iTunes, iMesh does not have the legal rights to distribute recordings from the popular 1970s rockers. But using the company’s new service, it requires only a quick point and click of the mouse to download several of Led Zeppelin’s biggest hits.

In a sample of searches performed by CNET News.com, the same was true of songs from Green Day’s latest album, a handful of tunes from The Black Eyed Peas, and other copyrighted works–precisely what the company’s new filtered file-swapping model was created to avoid.

It is far too early to say whether this is a serious flaw, or bugs that will be cleaned up in just a few days of frantic code-tweaking. But the continued availability of copyrighted tunes on the iMesh network shows just how high the hurdles remain for this ambitious experiment with legal file swapping.

“We don’t see this as a long-term challenge,” said iMesh Executive Chairman Bob Summer. “Given that we’re in an early beta phase technology, issues are to be expected. These are isolated problems which we are diligently working on fixing.”

Full story: News.com