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Technology Stocks : Napster, Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ron who wrote (27)	2/21/2005 2:04:40 AM
From: zax	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 44

For Users, Napster of Old Is Just a Few Tweaks Away February 21, 2005 By DAVID F. GALLAGHER he old Napster, circa 1999, was a vast jukebox with no controls over the illegal copying of music files. The new Napster, which sells legal downloads, is also a vast jukebox, but it was clear last week that the company still has less-than-perfect controls over illegal copying. Word spread across the Web recently that a few tweaks of WinAmp, a popular music-playing program, and a small plug-in available on the WinAmp Web site would allow users to take a music file protected with Microsoft technology and produce an unprotected copy. This method can convert files from other music services but it is a particular threat to Napster because of its "all you can eat" subscription model: customers pay as little as $9.95 a month for borrowing privileges at Napster's library of a million songs. The ability to create unprotected files would enable users to download as much music as possible, then cancel the subscription and walk away. Glenn Shannon, a programmer in Tucson, first publicized the technique several weeks ago on the Web site CDFreaks.com. From there, the method moved to blogs and news sites. Napster responded on Wednesday by posting a message from its chief technical officer, Bill Pence, that played down the problem, saying the method "can be likened to the way people used to record songs from the radio onto cassette tapes." If so, these were some fancy tape recorders. In online comments, people said they were downloading around the clock and converting dozens of songs at a time by running multiple copies of WinAmp on one computer. "We offer a service for people who believe artists should be paid for their work," said Dana M. Harris, a spokeswoman for Napster. "If people disagree with that, they're going to find ways to get around it." Meanwhile, AOL, which owns the company that makes WinAmp, removed the problematic plug-in from the WinAmp site (copies soon appeared elsewhere) and said it was rushing to fix the glitch in WinAmp. Mr. Shannon said his intention was not to cause trouble for Napster. Indeed, he said he was a satisfied Napster customer who was just frustrated that the protection on the files prevented him from playing them on his older portable music players. "After people see the convenience that the Napster premium services offer, they're not really going to sit there and pirate all this stuff," he said. But on the CDFreaks board, there was talk of new conversion methods that had nothing to do with WinAmp. DAVID F. GALLAGHER