EMI sign agreement for software to monitor P2P networks

Altough the record industry currently seems to see the importance of their web presence and are building their own website to distribute the music, they also don't seem to forget about tracing music pirates. EMI Music has signed an agreement with Audible Magic to be their partner is content-based identification (CBID) technology services.

This technology is based on fingerprints of songs, that can be identified by using special software. Uses for this can be identifiying songs, if you only know a few seconds of them, but also tracing pirates on P2P networks:

EMI will supply Audible Magic with music from its existing catalog, as well as all of the company's new releases, for addition to the Audible Magic song database, which is one of the largest in the world. EMI Recorded Music will also recommend use of Audible Magic's information services to its affiliates and licensees of EMI content. Some of these services include auditing and tracking of EMI content usage by licensees, real-time playlist monitoring for traditional and Internet broadcasters, audio content identification services for consumer entertainment software and devices, and monitoring of peer-to-peer traffic on networks.Fortunatelt, the article only states monitoring and this is different from monitoring, tracking down and sue users of peer to peer networks. However this could be possible, but it could also be used to estimate numbers of pirated songs and to see what songs are the most populair traded ones

News source: CD Freaks - EMI sign agreement for software to monitor P2P networks