Morpheus Site Adds Anti-Piracy Feature

Morpheus MusicCity, a service that allows users to trade copyrighted songs and films, has quietly added an anti-piracy feature to its site, its first move to protect some artists from unlawful downloads of their music.

Beginning in April, StreamCast Networks, the U.S. company that operates the popular site, will add technology to erase a downloaded song from a computer after the user listens to it a certain number of times.

But it will apply the anti-piracy measure to benefit only artists who do business with Morpheus as it seeks to become a major venue to promote lesser-known, unsigned acts. Users would sample songs but ultimately would have to buy them.