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Is Napster Too Invasive?
Kyle Thomson asks: "I just left a Q&A with Hank Barry, C.E.O. of Napster (at University of Michigan). At the end, in a personal Q&A, he said that the banning of people was up to the artists, and that Napster fully complied with all requests. I then questioned him on the quick and easy ability to rejoin Napster. He said that 'the new version of Napster sprinkles bits around the hard drive. The only way to get back on is to buy a new computer.' So that leads me to the question of how invasive is Napster if it is leaving information everywhere on a hard drive?" What exactly does "sprinkling bits around the hard drive" really entail. I can see how this could mean "sprinkling random keys in your registry" but I admit to being a bit concerned by the actual description. Can anyone shed some light on this mechanism? Is it really as invasive as it sounds?
There are tons of windows shareware programs that do the 'sprinkle bits around' thing. How do you think they keep track of that 30 day trial period and not allow you to just reinstall to get another 30 days? I've seen bits end up stuffed in the registry, WIN.INI, SYSTEM.INI and in random text files. I wouldn't be too worried. When Napster's new client has this ability, use NT and do a system snapshot, install Napster, then do a compare to the snapshot and see what was changed that shouldn't have been. You could even install and then uninstall between snapshots to see just what is left behind.
Portable versions of Firefox, GIMP, LibreOffice, etc
I really wish napster would stop this "no clones" non-sense, it would make it easier for everyone.
So do I. But you have to look at it from the business perspective. After all, all Napster's legal counsel, server farm and staff are paid for by investors that one day expect to reap some money out of this thing.
I was on Napster in August of 1999, with a V1.0 beta client. It had a little banner at the top, "Would you like to advertise here?"
This still strikes me as a good model to support their service. But even if Napster becomes a subscription-based service, the same thing applies:
Do you want clone clients available that maybe give the advertising you've sold a lesser prominance than the advertisers are expecting?
Do you want clone clients that might not be able to me managed from a subscription basis?
It's a pain in the ass, but I can fully understand their position on this matter.
What I *don't* understand is why the later clients (V2.0 Beta 6 and 7) weed out Wrapster files. Admittedly, they facilitate piracy of things other than music, but the Wrapster user is just exchanging MP3s, after all...
Can't you just see CD-burner manufacturers chasing after each other just to be able to advertise on Napster? <grin> The RIAA would pop them faster than a frog on a hotplate.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Using a program like InCtrl, you can easily track any changes made to your system by the installation program. Since you can track what changes are made to your system, you can COMPLETELY uninstall it when you need to.
PaintShop Pro does the same "sprinking" that Napster does. You can use InCtrl for all these types of programs.
InCtrl is made by Ziff Davis, and it's free. Get it from ZDNet.