Universal Music has agreed to set rules for its songs in the SnoCap system, and Aydar said SnoCap is in serious discussions with other major labels. The company's contract with retailers requires that they force their customers to follow the rules set by the rights holders. In cases where copyright owners haven't gotten around to claiming a particular work, retailers can choose either to block unclaimed files or let them through.
Rosso said Mashboxx will take the latter approach. "If somebody comes to me and says, 'Our stuff is up there and blah, blah, blah,' all I have to say is, 'Give SnoCap a call.'"
''I'm about to get everything I've been fighting for and frankly so is the record industry,'' says Mashboxx creator Wayne Rosso.
(Courtesy Wayne Rosso)
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Rosso did not reveal exactly how Mashboxx will deploy the SnoCap technology. But possibilities include allowing users to download radio-quality versions of the songs to sample before buying the clean digital copy and grafting radio-style voiceovers onto the beginnings and ends of sample songs.
"The bottom line is that the user will get the whole file, and get the opportunity to play it and use it and enjoy it, and get the opportunity to pay," he said. He added that because copyright owners can set the wholesale prices for their tracks in the SnoCap system, the per-song price for Mashboxx users will vary, but the majority of songs will probably be priced around $1 each.
Privacy and Safe-Harbor Concerns
If Rosso succeeds, the man who once unfavorably compared Recording Industry Association of America President Cary Sherman to Joseph Stalin could create a fresh new revenue stream for record companies, shoring up sales in an industry that's worried about the Internet's impact on its bottom line since Napster's rise in the late 1990s.
If Sherman finds that ironic, he isn't letting on.
"We have maintained all along that [peer-to-peer services] could filter if they want to and stop the infringement. This basically proves that's true by no less a technology guru than Shawn Fanning,"
Sherman said. "It would be wonderful to find that these really are viable business models."
At a P2P conference put on by the Federal Trade Commission last week, Sherman projected a recent Rosso quote on a giant screen for the audience to read: "The problem is that even though the opportunities are starting to arise now and the record companies are reaching out, many of my colleagues are backing off, afraid that if they play ball, they'll lose their traffic."
Indeed, the biggest obstacles to success for Mashboxx or any other peer-to-peer company looking to "go straight" are the dozens of popular, free networks that have no intention of joining them.
Adam Eisgrau, the head of P2P United -- a trade group that represents eDonkey, BearShare and Rosso's former employer, Grokster -- said his members won't do business with SnoCap. "We will not do this voluntarily," Eisgrau said, adding that he would fight any attempt by Congress to mandate filtering technology.
