Word: napstering
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Barry's world was until recently a happy place. With its impressively easy-to-use format for sharing free music files, and with more than 50 million enthusiastic users, Napster was clearly one of the most important things to happen on the Internet. When it joined forces with German media giant Bertelsmann last year, Napster seemed to be headed toward respectability--and profits. But there has always been a catch: the music industry, and many performers, insist that what Napster calls music "sharing" is in fact nothing more than music stealing...
...major setback to Napster, last week the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco sided with the industry on just that point. It ruled that Napster must stop helping its users exchange unauthorized, copyrighted material. The court did throw Napster a bone: it put the burden for identifying particular copyrighted material on the music labels and other aggrieved copyright owners...
...ruling undermines the Napster way of life. As much as 87% of the music being shared on the site today may be unauthorized. And it presents the company with a stark practical problem. Napster, which was cobbled together just two years ago by college student Shawn Fanning, then 18, has never included a mechanism for identifying unauthorized files...
...Napster hopes to survive, it is going to have to develop some new screening technology fast. Late last week the company and Bertelsmann announced that they have begun to do just that. They have devised a new form of digital-rights management architecture that will, for the first time, let Napster keep track of--and impose restrictions on--music shared over its system...
...architecture is the key to an ongoing transformation. The two companies have been working for several months to develop a new Napster--some are calling it Napster II--that will operate as a pay-subscription service. The idea is to take the company legit by charging subscription fees of, say, $15 a month, part of which will then be passed on to performers and record labels. The new technology could give Napster the control over its system that it needs to make Napster II a reality. Andreas Schmidt, president and CEO of Bertelsmann's eCommerce Group, calls it "the most...