ONDON (Reuters) - The world's third-largest music company,
EMI Group Plc (EMI.L), has signed a deal with Snocap, a technology firm that is working to create a legal peer-to-peer music-sharing network.
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Snocap, headed by
Napster founder Shawn Fanning, identifies songs by their digital "fingerprints" and determines how copyright holders want them to be used. For example, a music label could authorize an up-and-coming single to be freely distributed, or to play three times before requiring payment.
Universal Music Group and Sony BMG Bertelsmann (6758.T), the largest and second-largest music companies respectively, already have deals in place to register their content with Snocap. Terms of Thursday's Snocap-EMI deal were not disclosed.
"This sends a signal to music industry critics who claim we are technophobic. If anything, we are embracing technologies like Snocap, which allow the P2P (peer-to-peer) community to share music legally," said David Munns, chairman and chief executive of EMI Music North America.
The music industry reacted slowly to the threat of peer-to-peer file-trading networks, beginning with Napster, and suffered one of the worst downturns in its history as millions of songs were illicitly shared online.
In the past year, legal online music services such as Apple's (Nasdaq:AAPL - news) iTunes, RealNetworks's (Nasdaq:RNWK - news) Rhapsody and the reformed Napster have grown increasingly popular, bolstering hopes that music companies can create a viable online business model.
At the same time, music companies have launched an aggressive legal battle against users who illicitly share large amounts of copyrighted music, filing hundreds of lawsuits.
A new breed of authorized P2P services such as Mashboxx -- in contrast to unauthorized services like Kazaa -- rely on Snocap to identify which songs are controlled by copyright owners. Matchboxx is set to launch a test version this month and is in active negotiations with the four major labels, according to its chief executive, Wayne Rosso.
Rosso, like Fanning, is a former antagonist of the music industry who is now seeking partnerships with the labels. The
U.S. Supreme Court is considering a landmark copyright lawsuit by the entertainment industry against Grokster, his old peer-to-peer company.
EMI shares were up 1.3 percent to 242 pence by 1517 GMT.
Source:
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...a_music_emi_dc
EMI signs up for 'authorized' online music sharing via P2P
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