How label-backed P2P was born

Andrew Lack wasn't like the other record label honchos, file-swapping maverick Wayne Rosso thought as he left Lack's swank office in a midtown Manhattan skyscraper.

That Lack, the chief executive of Sony BMG Music Entertainment, was even talking to Rosso showed he was more open-minded than most industry executives. That he was talking up the benefits of working together--even schmoozing with the man who used to run controversial peer-to-peer service Grokster--was downright amazing. "'I'm going to make you a millionaire,'" Rosso remembers Lack telling him. "So I told him, 'I'm all ears.'"

There was no more an unlikely pair in the music and technology business in early 2004. But behind the scenes, their growing camaraderie became one of the most important bridges between the warring recording industry and peer-to-peer companies.

Their relationship led to the creation of Mashboxx, a new kind of peer-to-peer company that's expected to go live in mid-September. Mashboxx is one of several avowedly law-abiding, peer-to-peer companies trying to thrive in the wake of June's landmark Supreme Court decision that found Grokster potentially liable for copyright infringement.

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