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Shawn Fanning Is Back Into Digital Music
prostoalex writes "News.com has a lengthy 3-page article on Shawn Fanning's new venture, Snocap. After years of development the company is coming out of the stealth mode and has apparently already secured a distribution deal with Universal Music, promising to turn file-sharers into loyal paying customers overnight. Both News.com and Associated Press are skimpy on the details, but apparently Snocap will market the technology that will (a) sniff out the files shared illegally and (b) fill the peer-to-peer networks with licensed content and serve as a clearing house for the ventures who want to license digital music, but don't want to deal with gazillion of music labels." (We mentioned Snocap last in January.)
Is it in WMA format? I read the article quickly and didn't see anything stating the format. But anyway, I refuse to pay for a WMA... or an MP3, even. Especially when there's DRM involved. There's no way I'm going to pay for a lossy Microsoft format.
Happy New Year, it's 1984!
I think it's aiming to fill the P2P networks with licensed music. This is the kind of music that you get from iTunes or Napster that can't be played without proper authorization. They don't care if you spread those files around, because they are useless.
And, they are probably actually a good promotion. You can look at all these files that you aren't able to listen to, and you might be more likely to subscribe to a all-you-can-eat service like Napster to unlock all of these files...
We did something like this under contract from teh record labels. We placed drm on windows media files and distributed them on p2p networks. At first, silently delivering licenses to the media player to encourage seeding, then flipping the switch to require a payment before play.
It was easily defeated by the fact that people don't download Windows Media Player files for audio tracks. Almost always they get mp3s w no drm. No mp4, that may be a different story. Of course, you can "wrap" an mp3 file with drm as well, but it should suffer the same fate as those files on the networks that are loops/screeching audio that only have a small inpact on the network. Just mho.
fyi, it turned my stomach to implement such a system and we have abandoned drm completely since then.
He means lira. Italy's previous currency.
Wasn't (in alchemy) the mythical philsopher's stone (not the sorcerer's stone....I have no idea that is.) that could aid in tranmutating objects without requiring the laws of equality (ie- alchemy works like an algeberic equation- for it to work both sides need to be equal. you cannot create something new out of nothing, just alter what already exists).
click me
Most people seem to be missing the central point of the article.
The idea seems to be to scan P2P networks for tracks. If the tracks on your PC have been downloaded "illegally", then the RIAA will send you a bill for the tracks, and a little extra for costs. Effectivly they will say:
"You've got our tracks. Pay us money"
Now you can say,
"Tsk,Tsk. Not a shread of proof do you have private company boy, except for your(possibly falsified) records. I might have borrowed the tracks from my friends, direct exchange etc. And besides, I had to format my disk yesterday anyway."
To which they will say(in the initial letter they sent you):
"You can pay us the $100 you owe us now, or we will sue you under the DMCA, PATRIOT, HR2391, and just about any other bullshit law we got past the braindead zombies on capitol hill. You don't like it? We can sue you for that too. Pay us the danm money of face a lifetime of bankruptcy. P.S. Any attempts to start a protest group will also lead to instant litigation. Have a merry fucking christmas. Buy a CD for $30! Now piss off!"
To which you will say:
NO CARRIER
May the Maths Be with you!