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Beating Napster at its own game?

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

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=hud0004200

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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