Slashdot Mirror

See Stopnapster.com for a site started by artists who have something similar in mind. Hey, they need to eat too.

There website www.stopnapster.com is trying to convice artist and user of napster to post "Napster bombs" and "Trojan Horse MP3s" to protect artists copyrights. The authours themself say they cannot do this, as there website is done on a Mac.

Apparently they think that enough people will do this to stop mp3 swaping on napster.

I dont think it will work very well. Look at the site. Rather poorly done website in my opinion.

This guy is doing the same thing that the Tabloids are doing over at stopnapster.com. Nothing new or original about it. I'm not sure if this guy is in a band, or just a disgruntled musician trying to get a record deal by siding with the RIAA. I guess if you give people something cool, and free - the backlash is inevitable. Jeesh what's the problem? If you don't like free music - don't download it! Some people just aren't content unless they are screwing things up for everyone else. The old "if I can't have it .. noone can" mentality.

It is only a matter of time before "MP3 clubs" start to spring up. Some sort of members-only club where all the people who are sharing are trusted members who have agreed not to 'spam' the MP3s with garbage or advertisements. Similar to the Usenet 'alt.binary' groups that have banned together to create the 'alt.binary.no-spam.groups' where the members actively enforce the rules and ban, or flame members who submit spam. (Not that I hang out there or anything! ;)

No matter what happens, or what laws get passed, or what you put inside of an MP3.. trading WILL continue. And, it will most likely grow. I will continue to rip and trade my music with other people who are as passionate about this as me. Sure, there's always going to be the occasional idiot, or spammer but I don't think that they are going to be able to sabotage the whole MP3 trading Net with a few "bombs" or ads.

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".

To be sure, Napster makes it a condition of use that you won't modify the browser to invade someone's privacy, find their computer's unique IP address, modify, erase or damage any information contained on the computer of any user connected to the Napster service.

Media inforcer finds the IP address of the users on Napster, based on the name of the files they are sharing. I don't know if NetPD does that or just reports the Napster username.

--

What if someone set up a system that let each user distribute digital signatures for given combinations of filenames and data? Then each user could distribute a list to help people find real copies of songs, and then sign the entire list. A single malicious user (someone trying to break the trading system) might report that his/her copy of a file matched the correct signature for the file, but the bogus file wouldn't get very far. dissemination of poor-quality copies of songs would also decrease.

Something similar to Advogato.org's "trust metrics" might be useful for deciding whose list of signatures to trust.

Discl: Just thought I'd toss this idea out. I'm not actually knowledgable about digital signatures, and I only skimmed advogato's page and don't know that much about graph theory.

They are fighting back, and it's crude.

I would like to point out that it is not a store's fault if shoplifting occurs. Same goes for Napster. If we want to pirate music, no problem. But if we break the law, we should be prepared to pay the penalties. Focus on changing laws if we deem them unsuitable.

Article on MSNBC