Eye On CameraWare -- technology hardware

Written by Staff

I was thinking the other day about being fairly young and listening to music on old vinyl records, and gradually expanding with technology to the 8 track, which lead to cassettes and then to CDs. I also recall very vividly reproducing friends' records and tapes for my own listening pleasure, swapping music, and recording for each other those songs or albums which we did not own.

What wonderful progress technology made over a relatively short period of time! In fact, during this progress, along came computers; and with them, ever-changing, expanding, technologies.

In 1987, the mpeg was born in Germany when a research company -- Fraunhofer Institut Integrierte Schaltungen, with the help of University of Erlangen Professor Dieter Seitzer --wanted to create a high-quality, low-bit compression scheme based on the manipulation of the perceptual inefficiency of certain aspects of human hearing. In 1997, as the technology of this patent expanded, the mp3 player was born. MP3 files became widely known on the Internet, leading to the birth of Napster in May of 1999. It was the latest craze. A simple download of their software, and there you were on a server trading mp3s. Life couldn’t get any more simplified for the music lovers of the net... until the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) took legal action to shut Napster down by taking them to court in October 2000. They claimed that Napster contributed to massive levels of copyright infringement with its service. The outcome was that Napster was ordered to do whatever possible, including the use of filters, to prevent songs the RIAA deems a copyright infringement from being distributed, traded and accessible their service. Napster is complying, and those who have become addicted to it must now search out other avenues to continue trading their mp3s online.

There are many other services that mp3 users have begun to explore. One such approach is peer-to-peer file sharing, which is basically a use-at-your-own-risk solution: a direct connection to another computer. Gnutella, Freenet, and OpenNap are three more popular ways to achieve this mp3 fix.

Gnutella:
The network functions by connecting each individual computer to others, which are in turn connected to several others, and so on. By connecting to the shared network, it is a simple task to find the Net address of a computer providing songs online.

Freenet:
A high-profile alternative with a radically different technology than Napster. Freenet is completely decentralized and has privacy and anonymity built into the network. Content is distributed around the network of participating computers and encrypted so that people don't know exactly what their computers are sharing or where a file originated.

OpenNap:
Privately operated networks running on the Napster protocol without affiliation with the company--appears to offer a viable alternative. But they have some of the same problems as FTP servers: They may be relatively hard to find, but they are centralized so the RIAA can shut down operators that gain a high profile.

The other solution to a Napster fix is Napcameback. Napcameback is a product of pulsenewmedia.com. Napcameback is software that renames your mp3 files through encryption, which privatizes your files and allows uploads and downloads without interference through monitors and filters. And let's not forget the sites that post weekly the billboard top 100 mp3s of each music category to appease the public’s finicky tastes.

So there are many different variables in getting around the Napster shutdown and, in my personal opinion, all that this controversy will succeed in doing is creating more sites, more software, and better technology to keep this process of file sharing safe and easily accessible. The simple fact is, mp3 sharing has not died…. it has just become quieter.

Interesting links:
http://www.x-mp3.com/mp3history.shtml
The history of mp3

http://www.oneoffcd.com/info/historycd.cfm
The history of cd technology

http://www.eff.org/IP/P2P/Napster/20010309_p2p_exec_sum.html
Copyright law and peer-to-peer file sharing after napster

http://www.napcameback.com/
Napcameback