response 48 of 143:

Apr 20 23:29 UTC 2001

Two more interesting Napster pieces, these both from today:
 
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010420/en/music-napsterudpate1_1.html

"Napster to use fingerprinting technology."

Napster is licensing technology to recognize songs by their "musical
fingerprints" from a company called Relatable.   "There are many technological
challenges," says the CEO of Relatable in a quote.  Yeah, like the issue
of where do you put a filter which examines the contents of the file...
As I've dicussed before, such filtering would seem to be impossible given
current Napster architecture, and the appeals court panel said Napster did 
not have to redesign its system.  I can only assume that Napster got slapped
very hard by the court-appointed technical master overseeing Napster's
compliance, in the closed and so-far secret hearing last week.
 
 
#2: http://www.sonicnet.com/news/archive/story.jhtml?id=1442959

"Indie Music Still Thrives on Napster"
 
Indie labels lack the financial and manpower resources to file the 
notifications required under the injunction to force Napster to attempt to 
filter their songs off.   And many indies, who have to fight for exposure
for their artists, think this might work to their favor as more and more
major-label music is filtered off Napster.
 

response 50 of 143:

Apr 21 04:46 UTC 2001

From a design perspective that works.  Now, stop the millions of users 
from hacking the code resident on their computers.

response 52 of 143:

Apr 21 21:55 UTC 2001

Re #51:  But hardly beyond the capabilities of software people,
as the successful effort to find out why a certain Windows beta
gave a bogus error message when run under DR-DOS proves.

The fingerprinting will not be a killer, just one skirmish in the
arms race.  It will be too easy to work around, either through
hacked fingerprinting code or alteration of the fingerprint
reported to Napster.

It may work for a while.  If the visibility of independent music
labels and their artists rises in the mean time, so much the better.
I would love to see listeners abandon the producers of tripe such as
Britney Spears and learn to like real music.

response 54 of 143:

Apr 23 14:07 UTC 2001

Jeez, russ is such an ass. I might not like Britney Spears either but 
only a loser like russ would go around calling someone else's musical 
taste "tripe" while stating that the music *he* likes is "real"

[dont worry folks, I am not hurting russ's feelings as he filters me 
out] 

response 56 of 143:

Apr 23 20:42 UTC 2001

oh my fault then. Only a loser like russ or raven would say such things 
;)

Seriously though. I dont like Britney Spears so I wont argue that she 
has any great talent but I am sure there are those who think she does. I 
guess my issue is when some people like to get all high and mighty about 
thier tastes while dismissing other people's tastes. It is a button with 
me for some reason, probably because my musical tastes are often put 
down. boo hoo. hold me!

response 58 of 143:

Apr 23 22:08 UTC 2001

It's not that padded.  It *is* quite bouncy.  People enjoy watching them do
20 foot drops onto harder surfaces, though.

response 60 of 143:

Apr 24 05:38 UTC 2001

Both. :)

response 62 of 143:

Apr 26 18:11 UTC 2001

from: http://chronicle.com/free/2001/04/2001042601t.htm

Pressured by Music Industry, a Researcher Is Expected to Scrub Encryption
Speech

By ANDREA L. FOSTER 
A Princeton University computer scientist who had planned to give a speech
this morning about unscrambling encrypted digital music is instead expected
to talk about why the recording industry won't let him discuss his research
publicly. 
The researcher, Edward W. Felten, was scheduled to address an international
conference in Pittsburgh at 10 a.m. and to talk about how he and his
colleagues from Princeton and Rice Universities had succeeded in breaking
codes, known as "watermarks," that were created to protect digital music from
unauthorized copying. His talk was to have been published as part of the
conference proceedings. 
But the Secure Digital Music Initiative, an organization working to prevent
the dissemination of copyrighted music, warned Mr. Felten this month not to
discuss his research. In an April 9 letter, the organization said that if he
did so, he would be "facilitating and encouraging the attack of copyrighted
content" and would be violating an agreement that he and other scientists had
made with the group. (A version of the letter was published on the
Cryptome.org Web site.) 
The organization, known as S.D.M.I., said that he would be flouting the
Digital Millennium Copyright Act and that he and his research team could face
"enforcement actions under the D.M.C.A. and possibly other federal laws." The
recording industry maintains that the copyright act prohibits the distribution
of data designed to circumvent copyright protections. 
The S.D.M.I. letter noted that Mr. Felten and his colleagues had cracked the
digital encryption code because of a challenge offered by the organization.
By accepting that challenge, the researchers agreed not to jeopardize the
integrity of encryption technologies, the letter said. 
But the researchers, in an online document labeled "Frequently Asked
Questions," say they waived all rights to a cash prize so they could later
publish their findings. The also say the Digital Millennium Copyright Act does
not apply to the challenge because S.D.M.I. granted researchers "explicit
permission to study" the encryption technology. 
Mr. Felten was on his way to the conference Wednesday afternoon and could not
be reached for comment. A Princeton spokesman would not say whether Mr. Felten
planned to reveal his research. But a source who asked not to be identified
said that the professor was planning to keep mum on his findings, and would
probably discuss only the reasons for Princeton's decision. 
Researchers and lawyers for Princeton and for the Secure Digital Music
Initiative have been busy negotiating this week over whether and how Mr.
Felten could present his findings. 
The conference, called the 4th International Information Hiding Workshop,
began Wednesday and is set to end Friday. Researchers are discussing
technologies designed to keep digital information hidden. 

response 64 of 143:

Apr 26 20:37 UTC 2001

Obviously the law which prevents the communication of information 
(speech) which could be used to defeat copyright protection is 
unconstitutional on its face.

The logical choice is to proceed with the address, and make the 
prosecution a test case to overturn the DMCA.

The copyright concept protects the creator's right to profit from their 
creative efforts, not the means by which the creations are protected.  If 
the means are insufficient, then they should be adapted. 

response 66 of 143:

Apr 26 20:52 UTC 2001

#64, para 1: the Supreme Court has ruled repeatedly that the "freedom of
speech" clause of the First Amendment does not apply to every single act of
speech. There are many contexts in which other societal factors play as
important a part, and may mitigate freedom of speech. Relevant examples in
this case would be encouraging people to engage in illicit activities,
although to my knowledge, I believe those are generally protected (IANAL).
So, while I agree that the law is unconstitutional, I disagree with its
obviousness.

Copyright protects the creator's right to decide how their work is presented,
as well.

response 68 of 143:

Apr 26 22:40 UTC 2001

  Until/unless they come up with a "rights management" scheme which looks
  nothing like the ones introduced up until now, I agree with Ken.  

  Everything proposed so far has been nightmarishly bad from a user-experience
  standpoint -- inconvenient, confusing, anti-privacy, unreliable, etc..
  None of the current schemes have even a remote chance of succeeding in a
  marketplace where there is any competition at all from unencrypted media
  and, as much as they might want to at this point, the record companies
  can't uninvent the CD, nor can they easily stop selling them.

response 70 of 143:

Apr 27 01:17 UTC 2001

Re #66: Hasn't the Supreme Court ruled that computer programs are not 
"speech"?

I think people will probably reject any "rights management" system that 
makes them pay repeatedly for the same piece of content, or that 
prevents them from using a piece of content on multiple players without 
paying for each one.  People like being able to buy a CD and play it at 
home, in the car, and at work, for example.  It's the sneaky ones that 
will succeed, like that plan to selectively damage CDs to make them 
unusable in CD-ROM drives.  This has a precident in Macrovision, which 
is a violation of the NTSC specification and caused problems for some 
VCRs when it was introduced.