January 28, 2004
Because Fingerprinting Worked So Well The First Time
Shawn Fanning’s at it again. I highly doubt that the system would work such that, once songs are identified, downloads are blocked. It’s more likely that until a song is identified by its fingerprint, it wil not be available on the system. Otherwise, you’re still allowing the infringing downloads of unlicensed content, and, under Napster, you’d be responsible for blocking it. Of course, this is assuming that this system will ever come to fruition.
BTW, note this quote at the end of the story: “We had a very similar idea run past us,” said LimeWire Chief Technology Officer Greg Bildson. “We basically ended up not following up on it. It is interesting, but we’re not interested in building filtering and any centralization into our client.
One way to look at that statement is that they didn’t want to run the legal risk of centralization. But Limewire has promoted decentralization for technical, business, and philosophical reasons. By being open source, they allow for a decentralized development effort, and they have rewarded volunteer programmers. I dig it.
Filed by Derek Slater at 10:31 am under General news
2 Comments
Fingerprinting obviously has to be beneficial to creator and user alike, otherwise the content will be ripped and the fingerprint ‘filed off’. Fingerprinting is central to an ACS, it’s a way to find the desired content, it’s a way to get the artist compensated. All the best to those that wish to create a fingerprint/watermark, but they should remember all parties need sufficient incentive to leave it intact.
Fingerprinting obviously has to be beneficial to creator and user alike, otherwise the content will be ripped and the fingerprint ‘filed off’. Fingerprinting is central to an ACS, it’s a way to find the desired content, it’s a way to get the artist compensated. All the best to those that wish to create a fingerprint/watermark, but they should remember all parties need sufficient incentive to leave it intact.