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[FYI] Experts Say Napster, Playing Dumb, Resists Possible Tech Cure for Copyright Infringement



http://www.inside.com/story/Story_Cached/0,2770,11683_9_12_1,00.html

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Experts Say Napster, Playing Dumb, Resists Possible Tech Cure for 
Copyright Infringement  

By Charles C. Mann and Roger Parloff  

Wednesday, October 18 04:53 p.m.  

[...]

While it's hard to tell precisely what Beezer and Schroeder meant by 
the tough grilling they gave to RIAA lawyers, their apparent belief 
that Napster can't monitor or control its users echoes the company's 
public stance. ''The underlying principle of the technology and the 
service is that... Napster provides the tools, but has no ability to 
impose limitations or exercise control,'' company co-founder Shawn 
Fanning testified before a Senate Judiciary hearing on Oct. 9.  

But according to programmers who have reverse-engineered Napster's 
peer-to-peer sharing technology in order to develop open-source 
clones, the judges seemed to be discussing a different computer 
program than the one they are so familiar with. While Napster may not 
be able to control which MP3s the ''kid in Hackensack'' chooses to 
make available to the Napster system, programmers argue that the 
company could, with relative ease, screen out the great majority of 
infringing files from its music directory.  

''Having been one of the many people who analyzed Napster's protocol, 
it's pretty clear to me that the judges were misinformed,'' says 
independent programmer David Weekly, a long-time fixture on the MP3 
scene who has posted an analysis of Napster's protocol on the 
Internet. ''Napster knows who is sharing what with whom else, and 
they could stop it.''  

[...]

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