A legal peer-to-peer download website is about to be launched in Germany by the company which owned the original Napster.

The new and legal peer-to-peer download website for music and movies will be called GNAB. Bertelsmann AG is the company that plans to launch this website which will make it’s debut in Germany first and then will get worldwide somewhere in 2006.

The service is almost complete, as a company representative declared Friday. Arvato (Bertelsmann’s subsidiary) is building the service and its primary concern is to develop it in a manner that will prevent overloading of the servers. If a user wants to download a song, first he must pay for the rights and after that can get the content.

Recently the P2P networks confronted many legal problems as they are used only for illegal downloads.

The legal market is being dominated by iTunes with 80% and the rest is left for other strong competitors with major label contracts. So, GNAB has a pretty rough start…

The German company got into the P2P business after Napster’s acquisition. After several attempts to save the service it has sold the brand to Roxio.