The service, provisionally called Mashboxxx, has yet to launch.  But reports suggest that under the deal, Sony BMG will use the Grokster network to make new music tracks that it wants to promote freely available, and use the Snocap technology to sell other tracks.  Fingerprint filtering is a technology that examines a content file and determines the identity of the content by looking up a mathematical "fingerprint" in a database.  A network can either forbid the use of a file with an identified fingerprint, or allow it under specified conditions.  Roughly half a dozen vendors of fingerprinting technology exist besides Snocap.

This news, together with the secrecy surrounding both the announcement and some of the players in it, underscores the highly controversial nature of fingerprint filtering technology both as an alternative to encryption-based DRM and as a way to bring P2P file-sharing networks into the legal realm without alienating their vast customer bases. 

If the service launches with any degree of success, it could be the most important development in the online content industry since the launch of iTunes -- a game-changer.  Most importantly, it will likely force other file-sharing network providers to make the stark choice of adopting filtering technology or going (as with Kazaa) deeply underground.  Proof that fingerprint filtering works on top of a P2P file-sharing network -- which has been hotly debated  -- would make more likely media industry litigation against other P2P software providers on the basis of vicarious copyright infringement: assertions that these networks have the ability to adopt a control mechanism but are choosing not to for financial gain. 

The mere existence of this service would likely also give the Distributed Computing Industry Association (DCIA) -- the trade association representing various different companies in the P2P orbit -- a lot of help in boosting its P2P Revenue Engine (P2PRE), an agglomeration of technologies that purportedly bring respect for copyright and content owner remuneration to P2P.  DCIA has been struggling to get a major-label trial for P2PRE going.  Another immediate beneficiary would be UK-based Wippit, which has been offering a file-sharing network based on Gracenote's fingerprint filtering solution for some time but has thus far been forced to use encryption-based DRM for the meager amount of major-label content that it offers.

On the other end of the technology vendor scene, there are many small players that have been nipping around the edges of the notion of "copyright respecting P2P" over the last several months.  The launch of a service that uses fingerprint filtering -- instead of DRM (like WeedShare), watermarking (like Bitmunk), or no protection at all -- would cause that technology architecture to leap ahead of the pack as a means of legitimizing P2P... at least for the time being.  The success of a service that partners a major music company with a name-brand P2P network and a notorious figure like Shawn Fanning would immediately trump the streams of innovation and ideology that have come before.

Get DRM Watch Newsletter

Click here to subscribe to DRM Watch