Fri, 2 Mar 2001 found Peter Conheim writing:
>Hi. For those of you that haven't heard this afternoon's news, it's
>official: Napster will begin "blocking copyrighted works" this
>weekend. The record industry fed Napster a list of "6800 hundred
>songs it wants blocked" (whatever that means), and I just heard an
>NPR commentary place the number of files to be blocked "in the
>millions". (Of course, all these poorly-informed journalist STILL
>think Napster is its own illegal database, and manages to
>misunderstand/ignore the entire "handshake"/file-sharing truth of
>Napster.)
thanx peter, i hadnt heard the news that tommorrow was the
end... a few thoughts:
Napster actually IS a database, the misunderstanding you
allude to might be that the database contains only the names
of files, not their contents. but i rarely see journalism
that makes an argument where this distinction really
matters. fact is, the system depends on the central
directory service, and that's why it's going away, because
there was a central authority for the lawyers to attack...
unlike gnutella, freenet, etc etc.
>There is, of course, an inherent absurdity in the idea of Napster
>doing a block on content via song title or artist, even though that
>is precisely what they are going to do (and apparently have already
>BEEN doing, to some extent). They can't search the file data itself
actually they COULD, theoretically, with technology like
Songprint.
>for whatever offending info they are looking to block, but it
>certainly means that if you go searching for "Metallica", you won't
>find it until you and all your trading friends have developed a code
>name, or entirely new language, for Metallica and their ilk.
>
>Thus, I encourage us all to concoct entirely new neo-neanderthal
>language to alert one another to the latest "Christina Aguilera
>curses backstage" tape. I propose "Chrissy Agnetha" for her.
>Howabout "More Metallurgy" for Metallica??
Perhaps we'll also have to open the files we want to share
in an editor and snip off a few samples, or perhaps add a
slight bit of reverb, to confuse Songprint or similar
mechanisms...
>Will Negativland's often-thousands of titles available suddenly be
>considered "copyrighted" and blocked?
That's another misunderstanding - I think only the
properties specifically delineated by the Big 5 will be
blocked. Originally the plaintiffs demand was that the
burden would be on Napster to determine what was infringing
material and what is not. But Judge Patel ruled that it
would be up to the copyright holders to deliver to Napster a
big list. Napster is only required to block the titles on
that list.
What I'm wondering is if "beatles.mp3" by John Oswald will
be blocked....... ;-)
smh
Steev Hise, Automagickal Adept
steevATdetritus.net http://detritus.net/steev
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