James Delahunty
5 May 2005 9:18
Shawn Fanning’s Snocap has once again gotten a major boost by striking a deal with EMI, the world's third-largest music company. Snocap identifies songs on networks by their fingerprints and then determines how the copyright holder wants this file to be played/protected. For example it could set a limit to three times the music could be played before a payment was required to play it as much as you want. UMG and Sony BMG also have already signed deals with Snocap.
"This sends a signal to music industry critics who claim we are technophobic. If anything, we are embracing technologies like Snocap, which allow the P2P (peer-to-peer) community to share music legally," said David Munns, chairman and chief executive of EMI Music North America. The music industry was taken by surprise by Shawn Fanning's Napster which allowed its users to share millions of copyrighted music with each other for free.
Legal music download services are increasing in popularity which fuels hope that the record labels have of creating a viable online business model. However they also tackle illegal filesharing by suing people who upload music to other users. That tactic however is proving to be unsuccessful as P2P has never been so popular.
Source:
Reuters