Superdistribution
Definition
From the Wikipedia:
"Superdistribution is an approach to distributing digital products such as software, videos, and recorded music in which the products are entirely free of copy protection and are made publicly available and distributed in encrypted form instead of being sold in retail outlets or online shops. Such products can be passed freely among users on physical media, over the Internet or other networks, or using mobile technologies such as Bluetooth, IrDA or MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service). Superdistribution allows and indeed encourages digital products to be distributed freely in encrypted form, even as the product's owner retains control over the ability to use and modify the product. Superdistribution is a highly efficient means of distribution because distribution is not impeded by any barriers and anyone can become a distributor. A product made available through superdistribution may be free, in which case the user can use it immediately and without restriction, or restricted by means of Digital Rights Management (DRM). Restricted products generally require a license that the user must purchase either immediately or after a trial period (in the case of so-called demoware)." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdistribution)
Description
From Brad Cox in Wired [1]:
" superdistribution treats each personal computer as a broadcasting station whose "audience" consists of a single "listener." First pioneered in 1987 by Ryoichi Mori, head of the Japan Electronics Industry Development Association, superdistribution is based on the observation that electronic objects are fundamentally unable to monitor their own copying but trivially able to monitor their use. For example, making software - whether it's Microsoft's Word or Mike's string-compare subroutine - count how many times it has been invoked is easy, but making it count how many times it has been copied is much more difficult. So why not build an information-age market economy around this difference? If revenue collection were based on monitoring the use of software inside a computer, vendors could dispense with copy protection altogether. They could distribute electronic objects for free in expectation of a usage-based revenue stream. (This, of course, raises the same hairy privacy issues that we trade off when we choose to use credit cards instead of cash or talk by telephone rather than face to face. The real risk to privacy here does not arise when usage information is used only for billing, but from any possibility that it might be used for other purposes.)
Treating ease-of-replication as an asset rather than a liability, superdistribution actively encourages free distribution of information-age goods via any distribution mechanism imaginable. It invites users to download superdistribution software from networks, to give it away to their friends, or to send it as junk mail to people they've never met.
Why this generosity? Because the software is actually "meterware." It has strings attached, whose effect is to decouple revenue collection from the way the software was distributed. Superdistribution software contains embedded instructions that make it useless except on machines that are equipped for this new kind of revenue collection. " (http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.09/superdis.html)