Wednesday 14 June 2000

Pic of the day: I'm not likely to leave Napster running while I take a nap.

Is Napster kidding?

Firstly, I was off work today again. My digestion conveniently ran amuck till around noon, then settled down. If it follows the same pattern as yesterday, it should start to act up again late this evening, and be pretty bad tomorrow morning. If so, I guess I should speak to a doctor. However, doctors are few and far between. I would prefer to be healthy, even if it means working. It's like five days since I last saw my workplace, so it would be a change. :)

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But staying at home has given me some time to look into other things. And after reading about the lawsuits being brought agains Napster, the music sharing utility, I was curious to see what's actually going on.

Napster's web site makes it very clear that they demand their users to adhere to copyright laws. This is cool. I downloaded the thing and started installation. It soon became obvious that you need to keep your wits about you to not break the conditions of use: The program offers to scan your disks for MP3 files and the default is then to share these with the world. That's not a good idea (or at least not a lawful good idea) if you have used tools that make MP3 files from your CDs. Luckily I have not.

I have however downloaded several files from MP3.com and a couple other places where the artists explicitly allowed download of MP3. While these downloads are free and legal, this does not mean that the artists have put the music in the public domain. Well, some may, but generally the idea is that people download it from MP3.com where it is conveniently placed within the artists' pages, with promotional info and stuff. There is also some kind of kickback system where artists are rewarded for downloads of their music - more traffic means more advertisement power. Sharing your MP3 files mucks up all this.

Now it so happens that I had stashed my music files on a removable disk (the infamous Iomega Zip, which is just cute but not too solid). The program wisely excluded this disk, as it may not be there later. So I ended up with a library of 0 MP3 files to share, which is pretty accurate.

On connecting, the program complained that I lived behind a firewall. Well, duh. I have followed the Gibson way of network bondage, disciplining my ports. (Now this is going to give me some new hits...) So basically programs can't just rush in and grab stuff on my disk. If the program is written in such a way that it requires a wide open PC, that's a bad starting point already. Because there are other less friendly programs looking for those gaping holes too.

Now I went looking for legal downloadable music. How hard can that be? Very. I had expected Napster to keep at least a starting point list of tunes or artists that were "safe". But if there is, I could not find it, and I did spend some time. There is an artist promotion feature which would look like a good place to start, but it requires you to type in the name of the artist/band already. I'd much like to see this reversed: Tell me who your affiliate artists are, and I'll be sure to check them out.

In short, the system is optimized for illegal sharing of music, and in fact requires quite some knowledge to avoid just that if you use it. On the other hand, the web site explicitly forbids such use. As my favorite teacher once said: A house that's fighting itself can't remain standing. I would not buy shares in Napster if such were for sale.

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In other slightly online news, I have written more on my attempted novel (fittingly named "Gwalawala") and now have 13 short chapters up. Or rather drafts - they may be changed, though probably not drastically. As usual, I welcome comments, corrections, spanking (OK, perhaps not) and free graphics. It's just a work of fiction. I am not sensitive about it.