Tuesday, February 15, 2005

How To Own Napster Songs


The new subscription service Napster To Go is so cheap that you must be crazy to use iTunes instead. On its site Napster "Does the Math" for you, but leaves out some essential figures. Not that you're locked-in to a Windows platform to play your songs, but that you essentially rent the songs from Napster. You don't own them like you do with iTunes, though that kind of DRMed "ownership" may be questioned in itself. You subscribe to Napster, and when you decide to get out of their service, your songs are lost. Not so cheap in the long run.

Now, as could be expected, some people have discovered the hole in the Napster model, or better the Windows DRM. With three computer, some blanck CDs, a plugin and time on your hands you may actually own the Napster songs, and lots of it. Here's the math:
14 day trial = 336 hours = 20,160 minutes of potential music = 252 80 minute CDs

Computer 1: Dedicated to downloading new music off of Napster
Computer 2: Dedicated to building WAV files for each CD
Computer 3: Dedicated to burning CDs

This is likely to violate Napster's terms of use. It has to be seen how soon Napster/Windows will fill this hole, which is now widely know due to the fast dissemination of this info on the internet. That's another DRM vulnerability: if the info gets out there it will be heard and it will be practiced.
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Thru Darknet

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