Napster, Audio Fingerprinting, and the Future of P2P

mjmalone writes "Napster founder Sean Fanning is poised for a comeback, seems the now 22 year old Fanning has developed technology which creates "audio fingerprinting" of individual tracks and compares them against fingerprints in his firm's database to determine legality. A fee may be set and collected on a copyrighted track by its rightful owner. Fanning is actively recruiting industry support as well as pushing the idea to p2p services such as kazaa and grokster. " This isn't exactly new technology, but it's still interesting to see what Fanning is up to these days besides movie cameos.

Comments

He is NOT making p2p legit

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm no.

This is not going to make P2P "legit".

This is going to further destroy legit and non infringing usage of P2P. Now, RIAA will still say "p2p has no purpose other than piracy ban it"! And if people start paying for music from these services, guess what LEGITIMATE users of p2p suffer.

Sean Fanning did not invent P2P. Before napster we used to have IRC/DCC bots etc. and web search pages. Sean Fanning made downloading mp3's easier for the masses because of his windows client that automagically shared files you had downloaded. He's great but he's no God.

Re:well..

[grumpygrodyguy]

You have to give him credit. At least someone out there is actually trying to make p2p legit

P2P is, has, was, and always will be legit. It doesn't need support, approval, or acknoledgment.

If we insist on clinging to greed, laziness, and possession as a way of life....there's no reason to question building tools which vastly fascilitate theivery.

The RIAA has been stealing millions a year while defending a fascade of legitimate service. In fact, this is what capitalism has become in this country. When companies like Microsoft are hailed as success stories, there's no reason to claim otherwise.

So screw all of you because whether you like it or not, all your base are belong to P2P. Time to fucking grow up.