Napster founder basks in funding, label support

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a hit. Snocap will help content owners identify their works among these, and potentially start making money on this side as well, he said.

"This is an important step for the labels and other content owners," said Mike McGuire, an analyst at GartnerG2. "If they realize they can put some basic controls around this and try to replicate the benefits of the original peer-to-peer networks, they could benefit."

Fanning said Snocap's seeds were planted in the last days of Napster, when that song-swapping service was struggling under court order to block trades of copyrighted content through its network.

Under those conditions, marred by suspicion from the record labels and complaints by users, it quickly became clear that some third party needed to maintain the song identification and blocking tools if they were to work, he said. Otherwise, each side--both the record labels and the file-swapping service itself--had too much incentive to skew the databases in their own favor. Snocap was designed to be this third party, sitting as an unbiased data source between file swappers and the labels, he said.

At least one new file-swapping service is already planning to use the technology. Mashboxx, a project founded by former Grokster President Wayne Rosso, has said it plans to use Snocap's tools as the foundation of an authorized file-trading service.

The trick will be to attract people who are already using either a traditional download store like iTunes or one of the free but legally risky services such as Kazaa and eDonkey. Operators of some of the biggest file-swapping services today have been skeptical of the idea, although they say they want the ability to sell authorized content through their networks.

Snocap "seems like a step backwards, technologywise, going back to a central server and a fingerprint filter," said Michael Weiss, chief executive officer of StreamCast Networks, which distributes the Morpheus software. "If the major labels are willing to experiment with things like Snocap, I think they should also start making content available though networks like Morpheus."

The new round of funding, Snocap's first publicly announced venture capital, comes from WaldenVC and Morgenthaler Ventures.