Noank Media Inc. is a US corporation which provides access to audio, video, still image, and document files under a flat-rate licensing scheme.
The owners of copyrights grant to Noank Media licenses to reproduce and distribute the files and they upload a good copy of each one to its server. The customers of Noank Media are Internet service providers which pay a monthly content fee for each of their end-users (subscribers, students, staff). Some service providers may pass the cost to their users while others may absorb the cost. Some may charge their users more than they pay to Noank Media.
Each user of a participating service provider obtains a software file from Noank Media. This software integrates a web-type browser and search function, recommendations, file-sharing distribution, a media player, a counting system, and social networking, such as playlists and chat. After that users can download unlimited numbers of files in Noank's catalog using a player of their choice, including iTunes or Windows Media Player. A component of the Noank software counts the number of times that a file in the Noank catalog is played and periodically sends this information to the company, so that the collected fees can be fairly distributed to all owners of copyrights.
Harvard Law Faculty members William W. Fisher and Paul Hoffert founded Noank Media as a spin-off of Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society in 2006.