James Delahunty
13 Jun 2005 21:50
Many of you are familiar with Shawn Fanning's Snocap by now. The service for rights holders has finally been launched and now we will see if it can live up to what Fanning has promised it can. Snocap acts as a sort of content management system, identifying digital files distributed on P2P networks and determining what restrictions (if any) that has been assigned to it by the owners. According to Fanning, this will allow artists and labels to offer their music on P2P networks safely.
"The idea is to make the system available for everyone -- independent artists, garage bands and others who are out there and whose music is probably already on P2P," said Snocap chief operating officer Ali Aydar. "One of the goals Snocap has is to help get as much content into the digital marketplace as possible." Copyright holders much register their songs to the system for it to work. "A traditional P2P network looks at your music folder and just blindly shares it all," Aydar said. "In a Snocap environment, the client asks Snocap what are the business rules that are associated with this work, if any."
It also allows copyright holders to completely the trading of their music. "Snocap's core mission is to enable a world where fans have a nearly infinite pool of digital music and a variety of services to choose from," Aydar said. "In the long term, the digital registry is critical to bringing the deep, diverse and often obscure music selection that consumers demand into an authorized environment." Snocap also monitors which unregistered songs people attempt to share and has a system for alerting likely owners.
Source:
Reuters