A2B Founders Join Start-Up

Demonstrating the difficulty of a mega-corporation’s fostering an entrepreneurial venture, more than a dozen members of AT&T; Corp.’s A2B music have left to join Internet start-up firm Reciprocal Inc. They include co-founders Larry Miller and Howie Singer, Reciprocal said. The defectors, citing AT&T;’s unwillingness to spin off the unit, which developed technology to distribute music securely over the Internet, will lead Reciprocal’s division to provide systems for music publishers and artists to control the terms and conditions surrounding content consumption by consumers. The move also hurts AT&T;’s efforts to play a dominant role in downloaded music just as it acquires cable companies and technologies that would allow it to build the high-speed network infrastructure necessary to deliver such content.