This technology is an outgrowth of work that a company called AltNet with ties to Kazaa did several years ago to establish simple hash values as a means of blocking unauthorized copyrighted works from P2P networks.  This technique -- which was later adopted by LimeWire -- was widely ridiculed as trivially easy to hack and thus ineffective.  We presume that Bermeister and Speck are now using more sophisticated and hack-proof acoustic fingerprinting technology a la Audible Magic or Gracenote (now Sony).

The novelty in this technology is thus its ability to pre-empt P2P traffic so that when a user searches for content, she finds only legitimate offers for it.  This requires not only that ISPs implement technologies to detect content fingerprints at the network router level but also that they impose client software on users that handles user interface duties.  For example, the ISP may require that users use "special editions" of web browsers with the functionality installed (e.g., as ActiveX or Java code) and will refuse to serve web pages to unauthorized browsers.  This seems like a scheme that will be unpopular, hacked, or both.

A technologically cleaner way to use fingerprinting technology to accomplish much the same thing is the scheme that PlayLouder announced back in August, in which the ISP will monitor traffic in music files and just pay rights holders accordingly.  In this case, ISPs will presumably need to pass their royalty costs along to consumers and will do so by building fees into their subscription prices.  One of the criticisms of this type of scheme -- as with the similar "music tax" schemes that some have suggested -- is that it results in users who consume little or no music footing the bill for those who consume lots of music.  If Bermeister and Speck's new technology can be made to work without either alienating uses or inviting easy hacks, it will be a more equitable solution that lets users pay for the music they actually consume.