Word: napstering
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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That may not be enough. Looking at file names alone is a glitchy method of recognizing a song. If Napster's system pulls down every file named La Vida Loca but leaves ones that users labeled, say, La Vida Loco containing the same song, the labels may well go back to court and demand more. "The question isn't what's going to be sufficient in the eyes of Napster," says Vance Ikezoye, CEO of Audible Magic, which makes software that identifies music files based on the actual music. "The question is going to be what kind of technology...
Getting those content owners--particularly the major music labels--to play ball at all will be another challenge for Napster, which has fought the labels aggressively in court. Now it needs to make nice, and get the companies to agree to license their songs. "The content partners are everything--they're the dealmakers or the deal breakers," says Ric Dube, an analyst with Webnoize. "Without them, all the technology in the world won't make a difference...
...Napster has been meeting with the big labels steadily, but except for the deal with Bertelsmann, it has not yet got to yes. Richard Parsons, co-chief operating officer of AOL Time Warner, a major music distributor (and parent company of TIME), told reporters earlier this month that he had yet to see an acceptable business model from Napster...
...embattled Barry's biggest headache is still Napster's legal woes. The appeals court sent the case back to Federal District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel to issue a new order telling Napster exactly what it needs to do to clean up its act--and by when. If Patel's order forces Napster to start policing its site immediately, Barry says, it is possible that "we'll have no choice but to shut the system down...
This may explain the timing of last week's announcement of new architecture, which probably won't be ready for months. There is a long tradition in the software industry of releasing "vaporware"--illusory software announced just to throw off the competition. Napster's architecture may be a variation on the theme. Call it litigationware, real software designed to convince a court you're sincere about going legit. We should know any day now whether it worked...