Written by Robert X. Cringely
I have a different idea I"m calling Snapster 2.0. This Snapster is still roughly organized the way I described last week as a mutual fund, and it still spends $1.4 million buying one copy of every CD. Here is where the lawyers tend to say that Snapster"s millions of shareholders could copy or play that CD, but only one shareholder per song could be active at a time. Bummer. Snapster 2.0 separates the concept of ownership from that of playing music or copying it. While those 100,000 CDs are still owned by all the shareholders, they really exist only as a central repository to simplify the sharing system from both a logistical and a legal standpoint. We are no longer claiming that fair use rights can be transferred in parallel to millions of users. Instead, Snapster 2.0 shareholders gain the right to download music -- not only by buying a share of stock, but because they also have to contribute to the mutual fund usage rights for the CDs they already hold at home.