The Washington Post reports that mashboxx, the latest venture of Grokster president Wayne Rosso, intends to “clean up and legitimize” peer-to-peer music file sharing on the Internet, and to give record companies a piece of the pie (in spite of Rosso’s past demonization of said companies). Mashboxx will employ SnoCap – a “copyright management interface” technology developed by Napster creator Shawn Fanning, enabling copyright owners to trace the movement of files containing their content, and to extract fees from the people sharing them. SnoCap essentially “fingerprints” files so that content owners can keep track of them and set the rules and rates of their trading.
I suspect that the rates will be too high, of the dollar-a-song variety, which seems downright exploitative given the ease and inherent cheapness of p2p networks. While I’m cautiously optimistic that the mashboxx move presages an eventual overhaul of the music industry, and may be a small step toward reconciling copyright concerns with networked free culture, this seems more like a hostile move to squeeze music sharers. Given the scale of the p2p phenomenon, a nickel-a-song could amount to sizeable profits. Remember: it’s no longer about a single point of sale, but multiple points of exchange. But the recording industry is a rapacious animal, and is loathe to believe that it can actually make profit without extortion. Remember the long tail…
And this issue doesn’t just pertain to music sharing. As ebooks become a more frequently trafficked commodity on p2p networks, we will see the same struggle arise. Already, questions abound about Google’s library initiative and readers’ access to copyrighted texts. And the New York Public Library seems to think that ebooks are a threat that must be subdued before all hell breaks loose.
Technology News: Technology: Fanning’s Snocap Builds Bridge Between Labels and P2P