[FYI] Beating Napster at its own game?

["Axel H Horns" <horns@ipjur.com>]

http://www.zdnet.com/filters/printerfriendly/0,6061,2652781-2,00.html

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Beating Napster at its own game?

By Almar Latour, WSJ Interactive Edition

November 13, 2000 5:00 AM PT

URL: 
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2652781,00.html?chkpt=hu
d0004200

Can the entertainment industry sue its way to a world free of 
Internet piracy?  

Not according to software development company MediaDefender Inc. The 
Los Angeles-based startup thinks new music-swapping technologies and 
so-called peer-to-peer music and entertainment networks will always 
be one step ahead of the law. Instead of taking hackers to court, the 
company argues, the entertainment industry should beat them with 
their own weapon: technology.  

How? MediaDefender claims the answer lies in "spoofing," a method in 
which a peer-to-peer entertainment network is flooded with fake files 
of a certain title. If an end user tries to download that title, he 
receives a "spoof" that has the same title as the requested song or 
video, but actually contains a message warning the user that he has 
attempted to break copyright law.  

"Legislation changes slowly, but technology changes at warp speed, " 
says former law student Randy Saaf, the founder and chief executive 
of MediaDefender, which has a staff of 10 at a tiny office near 
Venice Beach. "Unauthorized duplication of copyrighted media is 
impossible to avoid. If you can hear it, you can copy it. That means 
you can only prevent piracy by attacking distribution channels."  

[...]

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