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the network enforces that the data matches the hash at all steps.

But what enforces that the hash matches the title, as opposed to a cuckoo egg?

Only creative elements can be copyrighted. I.e. a bunch of random bits can't be.

Given the controversially broad scope of exclusive rights that the court system has recognized in musical works[1], it is likely that even randomly generated music may be substantially similar to a copyrighted work.

That said, I gather sometimes they distribute things like folk music, even porn films rather than junk

You're talking about cuckoo eggs, right? If you write your own folk songs, how can you be sure that you didn't subconsciously copy a copyrighted song into your own work?

under the name of popular albums.

Ooh, an excuse to get sued under trademark law too.

[1] For those playing at home, "musical work" is roughly a work that can be fixed in copies called sheet music. An audio CD is a phonorecord of both a musical work and a sound recording of the work's performance.

The only way to tell if it's a real song file is to listen to it from beginning to end.

But even if one does not copy a sound recording from beginning to end, isn't copying a substantial portion of the recording still infringement? A cuckoo egg may sample 30 seconds of a copyrighted recording and thus be "substantially similar" to the recording.

Once again someone has stolen my original concept. Several companies (Loudeye/Overpeer for one) are selling this type of service to the major labels so now someone has probably sold a BitTorrent version to the major movie studios (major labels = major studios in most cases anyway). Too bad I didn't attempt to patent the concept back in 2000.

also known as a cuckoo's egg.

I probably don't have a leg to stand on, but wouldn't it be nice to make them stop using my idea to turn a profit? My brother and I did the cuckoo eggs mainly as a "proof of concept" as well as a promotional gimmick, but Overpeer is making serious money and wreaking serious harm. Any lawyers out there want to take on the case? :-)

Once the RIAA really caught wind of what was going on they started flooding it with "cuckoo eggs". Before that, most of the files were intact (although they were at 128kbits. Broadband wasn't so common...)

The Definition says:

A cuckoo egg is an MP3 file that typically contains 30 seconds of the original song with the remainder of the song overwritten with cuckoo clock noises, white noise, and/or voice messages such as, "Congratulations, you must've goofed up somewhere." Ideally, a cuckoo egg should have the same playing length as the music it pretends to be. The purpose of cuckoo eggs is to deter the downloading and sharing of MP3 files using Napster and similar approaches.

Typically, a Napster user downloads an MP3 file and sometimes share it with others before listening to it. Recognizing this, a cuckoo egg creator creates the cuckoo egg to look exactly like a real MP3 file. The user then unknowingly shares the cuckoo egg with other unsuspecting users spreading the cuckoo egg like a virus. Unlike a virus, cuckoo eggs do not damage computers, but simply annoy and waste the time of those who download the files.

The Cuckoo Egg Project began with Michael and Stephanie Fix. Stephanie Fix is a musician who is concerned about the illegal availability of copyrighted music through Napster. The concept centers on the idea of how a real cuckoo bird lays its eggs in another bird's nest. To the Fixes, the Napster system is like a huge nest of MP3 files, a perfect environment in which to lay cuckoo eggs

The first cuckoo egg was laid on June 10, 2000. Since then, Napster users have posted hundreds of angry messages at the Cuckoo Egg Project's Web site. Whether it's deterring them from downloading other songs has not been determined.

First spotted in June 10, 2000, so the patent is a false or fradulant one.

That seems to be the Cuckoo's Egg project, which is basically people filling music with noise right after normal sampling time, and it's definitely one of the reasons I love WinMX

Signal-to-noise probably referred to the lack of correct labelling and the unreliable content within the MP3 files. The technical "signal to noise" might have been fine, but files were mislabelled, cut-off 2/3 of the way through, full of pops and clicks, and other noises. Was it "The Beatles" or "The Beetles", "John Lennon" or "John Lenon" (or "John Lenin")? Add that to the frequent disconnects from users and what you get is a dirty "pool" of music rather than a pristine sample of MP3 files. Of course, what do you expect for free?

John

Been there....done that.

http://slashdot.org/articles/00/07/13/1544256.shtm l

http://www.hand-2-mouth.com/cuckooegg

How would it be handled with all of those failed/aborted downloads? If it's 10 cents per track, and I get 65% of the track, do I get charged 6.5 cents??

You raise some interesting points, and I thought of one more: What's to stop someone from doing what the cuckoo's egg group is doing: Offer legit named MP3's, yet when you download them, its just the cry of the cuckoo bird. Sure, it would be annoying to download a song you want, and then get some crap - but it would be a lot worse if you were paying for it. Unless some controls were setup to avoid such things, (assuming the micropayment thing caught on really), there would probably be a few people who tried to stiff others out of some cash. Sure, 20 cents to one guy is nothing, but what if he hits 5,000 people with his garbage tracks?

They're trying to get more people involved by teaching us how to lay eggs. The thing is, if there are a bunch of us laying cuckoo eggs, all which look just like rotten little pirate eggs, you can never be sure that you're getting the egg you want. You'll only be able to take them from friends, and that cuts down on your sample size considerably.

http://www.hand-2-mouth.com/ cuckooegg/howtolayeggs.htm

Step 3 requires a sound editor... I use Cool Edit. Open the song file you are going to use, leave about 20-40 seconds of the real song intact and then replace the remainder with silence, white noise, or other sound files... our Cuckoo Egg sound file works pretty well. Then save the file in MP3 format and copy it into your Napster shared directory.

Metallica, RIAA, and the other large corporate music behemoths are strictly interested in getting a piece of the Napster pie. It's a play for more cash, and just more bad news for smaller, independent musicians. If the big guys were serious about destroying Napster, they could have pulled stunts like Napster Bombs and Cuckoo Eggs on their own using fat T3 pipes and server farms and totally polluted the Napster "pool".