The company also announced that it has signed a landmark agreement with Universal Music Group to provide technology and database services for the online distribution of the company's entire catalogue. Universal has already begun to register its catalogue with SNOCAP, the first step in greatly expanding its digital offerings. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

....SNOCAP gives rights holders the comfort level they need to make their content available on P2P networks, enabling them to sell more music through more channels. After registering their music and copyright information in SNOCAP's database, labels and artists can manage the online distribution of all their content through SNOCAP's copyright management interface, which enables them to set business rules for each track, on a global basis. This one-stop ability to manage rights and distribution across multiple online retail locations decreases costs and increases revenue.

....With SNOCAP, consumers will finally have authorized options with comparable selection to today's file sharing services, removing the threat of litigation, spoofed downloads, and the risk of spyware and other unwanted advertising. SNOCAP will eliminate degraded and poorly recorded files thus insuring higher quality and a better overall consumer experience. Did someone say deja vu?

"Any kind of central server for a filter is a problem," Michael Weiss — head of StreamCast Networks, the company behind Morpheus — told the BBC.

"It looks and feels like Napster circa April 2001."

Kind of ironic, isn't it? Luke appears to have gone over to the Dark Side.

So, by returning to the centralized server days of the original Napster to check the "acoustic fingerprint" of files, Fanning has not found "the solution," but it is perhaps another interim step that is closer to the ultimate goal of a blanket license giving consumers legal access to the great cosmic jukebox in the sky, I mean on the Internet, that is the only clean, efficient way to make this whole thing work for everyone.