Is Fanning’s Snocap a sno-job?
p2pnet.net News Feature:- Reports on Napster creator Shawn Fanning’s newest p2p application, Snocap, are doing the rounds.
Snocap is a, “a proprietary Content Identification Service (CIS) that uses audio fingerprinting technology licensed from industry leader Philips Royal Labs to identify, register and track music that is available for licensing,” says Fanning.
Is that good or bad?
Is Fanning selling out to the same people who destroyed Napster and who are now on full, unthrottled rampage against the p2p file sharing community, Napster’s former users?
Or is he simply taking the phrase, ‘It’s only business,’ to its logical conclusion?
Jim Griffin runs Cherry Lane Digital and is also a founder of the famous Pho list.
In a recent post, he had this to say >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Phosters:
The word on Snocap is intriguing. “Hey, it’s Shawn Fanning, and how ironic,” eh? The boy genius is back to tame his Frankenstein, and you know “he never intended to hurt the industry in the first place,” right?
I want Shawn and Snocap to sṳceed, really, I do, because so very many of my friends and artists whom I admire draw their sustenance from a business based on friction Рthe product sale of music Рin a world that is increasingly and unceasingly friction-free.
Besides, I like Shawn. Once a Phoster, always a phoster, and it was a gas to watch him stomp his big foot on technology’s gas peddle. Moore’s law is an average, and Shawn’s fringe moved to the center faster than Gordon could’ve imagined when essentially he predicted tech power would double and halve in price every year to year and a half: In 18 months the old Napster drew a crowd of over 80 million people.
The new Napster, well, it’s burning a cash infusion recently earned by selling Roxio, the disc burning business, and now it’s off to the races to see if there’s a business to be built around subscriptions and singles. A shadow of its former self is nonetheless a powerful brand, though it will for a time live in the shadow of Mt. Snocap.
The big question: Does Snocap adoption absolve a peered service of the avalanche of legal trouble that accompanies the undertaking of pairing people looking for digits with people who are offering digits?
In other words, does Wayne Grosso get a free ride if his new Mashboxx uses Snocap? Can there be a deal that using Snocap is a get-out-jail free card for peered sharing, or are they nonetheless liable if/when Snocap is circumvented?
And what about the army of independents not signed on to this deal? Will Barb Sorenson and similar artists let them off the hook simply because the big four agree that using Snocap is enough?
When software is traded instead of music, will a software developer like Scott Matthews be less concerned now that Snocap is deployed? And will Scott now be pressured to implement Snocap in his Andromeda music streaming software as evidence of his technology’s non-infringing intent?
Basically, I don’t buy the control scenario being carved into Mount Snocap. I don’t see how it moves us even a step closer to monetizing the anarchy that is art and its digital delivery, but I can easily see how it might move us several steps back, or to the side, because a sno-job is a snow job no matter how you spell it.
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See:-
newest – Napster’s Fanning unveils Snocap, p2pnet, December 3, 2004
