The following is an article from the globeandmail.com Web Centre. Monday, March 05, 2001 Napster clone may set up shop offshore By STEVEN CHASE From Monday's Globe and Mail Vancouver — A 21-year-old Canadian Web entrepreneur is planning to circumvent the imminent demise of Napster Inc.'s controversial Internet song-trading system by setting up a clone of the service on a so-called "data haven" platform off the coast of Britain. "I am sad to see Napster bending to the record labels' will," said Matt Goyer, a computer science student at the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ont. "Let's preserve it and we'll move it offshore where the record industry can't touch it." Napster is a wildly popular software program that allows Internet users to swap free music between computers over the Web, much to the chagrin of the recording industry. In about two years, Napster has amassed 64 million users from around the world who are drawn by the allure of free, near-CD-quality music that can be played on digital audio players or on computers. A series of court victories for record labels has all but doomed Napster. On Friday, Napster announced it would take steps during the weekend to block file-sharing of copyrighted music on its service, in an effort to prevent a U.S. federal judge from shutting it down completely. It said it had identified one million unauthorized song files it will block. However, no apparent antipiracy filter was in effect as of early Sunday night. Napster officials offered no explanation, leading company watchers to speculate it may have been having trouble setting up the blocking technology. Napster itself has warned users that blocking the files will be a difficult task. "It is a complex technological solution that is very taxing to the system and will degrade the operation of the service," the company says on its Web site. Many of Napster's users were still freely trading music files via the service with no interference. For instance, on just one of Napster's dozens of computer servers, about 11,000 users were swapping about two million files. Waterloo's Mr. Goyer is eyeing HavenCo Ltd. as a possible site for his cloned Napster computer server. The company rents computing power and Internet data storage space to those seeking to avoid government laws. It operates from an ocean platform called Sealand, which has operated for 30 years as a sovereign territory off the coast of England. He hopes to collect an estimated $15,000 (U.S.) yearly HavenCo rental fee from music fans. If that doesn't work out, he plans to sign up with other renegade services. "There's enough irate people out there I think I can get many to chip in $10 each," Mr. Goyer said. Others have already set up Napster clone servers — computers that help hook up music lovers to swap songs using Napster-like software — in North America. But these are under attack from record labels that are forcing Internet service providers to stop offering Web access to these Napster clones. Mr. Goyer is no newcomer to the Napster debate. Last year, he and partner John Cormie set up Fairtunes.com, a virtual "tip jar" where Internet users swapping free music on Napster could soothe their conscience by sending cash to artists. Fairtunes has collected about $7,000 for artists and Mr. Goyer hopes to use the site to collect donations for the Napster clone service. But Mr. Goyer is only one of many Napster devotees flouting the recording industry's attempt to shut down the service. Some fans began migrating on the weekend to lesser-known and less user-friendly file-swapping alternatives such as Gnutella. Others began renaming song files in an effort to stymie the imminent copyright filter on Napster that is expected to ban music by album and title names. Saturday and Sunday were marathon downloading sessions for millions of Napster users, including Vancouverite Bradley Kalmek, 28, who spent so much time staring at a computer screen that his eyes were strained. "Might as well make hay while the sun shines. It was a bit too good to last forever. So, I'm taking advantage now," he said. ------------------ Nice guys finish last ... and im surely not going to finish last!
If your not wanting to give up on Napster just yet, you may want to check this <a href="http://www.aimster.com/pigencoder.phtml">out</a>. I will be very surprised if Napster can block these files. What this software does is allows you to use regular Napster but encodes(renames) the files using something called Pig Latin. For example, if you were looking for "Enter Sandman" by Metallica, instead of searching by the true name.....you would use Pig Latin and it would be: nterE andmanS You just have to get used to searching/using this Pig Latin first. It basically is just taking the first letter and moving it to the end of each word in the song. I am curious to see if Napster will be able to block these files from their service seeing as how they block by filename and these file names are whack. I don't know if you heard but the latest injunction ruling says the RIAA must provide the names of artists and songs along with an example of one they found on Napster to Napster so they can block it at which time Napster has 72 hours to do so. So, who thinks the Pig Latin Aimster software will allow Napster to endure? Maybe for a while but who knows how long. Surf ------------------
Surf, couldn't Napster use the same software to create a Pig Latin list of filenames to ban? I don't think that will work. I don't think an offshore Napster will work either. Everyone involved in it would be sued so thoroughly that they never be able to set foot in the civilized world again. ------------------ RealGM Gafford Art Artisan Cakes
Also, I was looking at Havenco's and Sealand's websites. The whole thing is bizarre! ------------------ RealGM Gafford Art Artisan Cakes
