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P2P Filing Sharing Sites Switche to Fee-charging Service 2006/03/27 By Jung Jin-young Users visiting Soribada P2P file sharing site will have to pay certain amounts of service fees for downloading music files, according to the Korea Music Producers` Association. "We agreed with Soribada to charge 500 won for users downloading music files labeled with digital right management, 700 won for music files without DRM and 250 won for poor sound-quality music," said Seo Hee-deok, chairman of KMPA. This is the first time that details of the deal between the leading P2P service site and music producers were unveiled, but Soribada refused to comment on the agreement. With the new service in place, `pay-as-you-use` type of fee charging is expected to become mainstream in the online music download service market. Given that other P2P service providers are also in talks with the association for similar arrangements, Internet users will likely have more difficult times finding free music files. "We are talking with 20 P2P sites on terms of contracts," said Seo. While Soribada seeking to avoid a full pay-as-you-use, adoption of flat fees are seen as elusive. "We agreed to pay-as-you-use fee service with KMPA, but we are talking with flat fees with other record labels," said Soribada earlier. Yet, major record labels such as DoReMi Media, Manine Media, Ins Digital and CJ Music are opposing monthly flat fees except outdated songs. "P2P sites including Soribada are poised to launch fee-charging service on April 1, but the launch may be delayed until filtering technology used to block sharing of some music files exclusive owned by record labels will be put in place," said Seo.