p2pnet.net News:- News of Mashboxx, a major deal involving Grokster, former Grokster and Blubster ceo Wayne Rosso, Sony-BMG and Shawn Fanning’s Snocap, is now doing the rounds.

We wrote recently, “For the past few months, Rosso has been working on a deal which he says will revolutionize the online music world. An announcement is expected imminently”. He was referring to Mashboxx.

p2pnet agreed not to discuss it until the appropriate time, and we’ll honour our committment, but in the meantime, according to the LA Times:

“Breaking from the rest of the entertainment industry, record giant Sony BMG is cooperating with the Grokster file-sharing network on a venture that combines free music sampling with paid downloads.

“Dubbed ‘Mashboxx,’ the venture marks a surprising alliance between a major record label and an online network that the entertainment industry has blamed for rampant piracy.”

The idea behind the venture is to let people continue to use file sharing to discover music at no charge, while encouraging them to pay for the songs they want to keep, says the report.

Snocap’s involvement is interesting. It involves identifying music files traded online via file-swapping networks and then attaching a price tag to them.

Recently, Sony Music Entertainment ceo Andy Lack singled Snocap out at an ‘Entertainment Law Initiative’ luncheon, mentioning Fanning’s “ground-breaking work” in the area of developing systems able to identify and filter copyrighted material, “from P2P systems like Kazaa”.

“It has always been our belief that P2P users, if given a choice, can become the entertainment industry’s greatest customers,” Morpheus’ Mike Weiss told p2pnet.

“However, it will interesting to see if Grokster can be successful in changing consumer’s behavior by filtering P2P results through a central server.

“There are better options to leverage the power of P2P software, such as Morpheus.

“I understand Grokster’s position after having recently being forced into a multi-million dollar settlement to the RIAA regarding Grokster’s tie-in with Pure Tunes and their year-long rapid loss of market share.”

The LA Time story says Rosso and executives at Sony BMG, Grokster Ltd. and Snocap all declined to comment.

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See:-
recently - Puretunes settles: $10.5M, p2pnet, October 26, 2004
Mashboxx - Sony BMG, Grokster Join Forces, October 29, 2004
singled Snocap out - Sony boss lauds Napster’s Fanning, p2pnet, February 16, 2004

This entry was posted on Friday, October 29th, 2004 at 7:52 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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