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EMI are the latest major record company said to be in talks with SnoCap, joining rivals such as Universal Music Group and SonyBMG in embracing a legal version of the internet file-swapping technology behind most online piracy. Last week Universal were the first major record company to officially announce a deal with Snocap, while SonyBMG also admitted preliminary talks with former Grokster president Wayne Rosso about his latest venture, tentatively titled ‘Mashboxx’, which is also said to use the new technology being developed by the former Napster developers at SnoCap.

In the Times Online this morning journalist Nic Hopkins revealed that, “Alain Levy, chairman of EMI’s recorded music division, said the company was in advanced negotiations with Snocap, a San Francisco company launched by Shawn Fanning, the Napster founder and former internet music pirate which has created a legal version of peer-to-peer (P2P) file swapping.”

“We are in discussions with Snocap. We are very close to a deal. We think its a very interesting technology. There’s definitely something in it,” Levy said. But he added that while P2P would fill a gap in the market for digital music distribution, it would not replace subscription services and internet stores.

Snocap is a technology embedded in a P2P network to block sharing of unauthorized works, including unlicensed music and pornography and facilitate commercial transactions. Snocap has been working on ways to identify songs, as they are traded through a file-swapping network, including using a technique called audio fingerprinting, which monitors the sonic characteristics of music files.

That fingerprinting tool could be integrated into the file-swapping software itself in several different ways, sources said. When a file is being downloaded, the software could check its fingerprint and then compare it against a database Snocap operates, for example. Once an identification is made, the download could be blocked, unless the computer user pays a fee, as if they were downloading a song from iTunes or another digital song store.

Up to now the major record companies have opposed licensing their content to file-sharing software firms, refusing to offer their artists’ music for sale while unauthorized, CD-quality versions of the songs are being traded for free over the same networks. Still, the recording industry is interested in turning millions of computer users now swapping music online into paying consumers on ready-made online distribution networks.

Related Reading

Record Companies Join Online Domain of Top Pirates [Times Online]
Universal Music Licences Catalog to Snocap [DRMWatch.com]
Fanning Snocap Saga [P2PNet.net]
Shawn Fanning is Back into Digital Music [Slashdot.org]
Music Rebels Seek to Tame P2P [CNet News]
Grokster Sony/BMG to do Legal P2P Service? [the Register]
Sony-BMG, Grokster Deal [P2PNet.net]
Sony Eyes P2P Venture [Digital Lifestyles]
File Sharer Eyes Major Label Coup [Wired.com]
Napster to Use Audio Fingerprinting [Internet.com-2001]