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A patent filed by Microsoft last December shows that Microsoft and Apple are thinking along the same lines when it comes to enabling users to copy music between their wireless devices.Microsoft's patented idea would take the concept further, by allowing users to trade MP3s that may have come from file sharing networks to one another, expiring the song on the recipient's device after three plays, unless the user pays Microsoft a fee in order to continue to listen to the track, with a percentage going to the person who provided the song. As the abstract puts it, "even [the] resale of pirated media content [can] benefit... the copyright holder."This mechanism for timing out traded music without payment is the sort of constraint the RIAA probably wishes had been built into the personal computer.