Re: Napster, Gnutella: URN lookup services?

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From: Adam L. Beberg (beberg@mithral.com)
Date: Wed Jun 28 2000 - 17:20:27 PDT

So...

You want to locate user created variants (different encoders) with
arbitrary user entered labels (name, artist, ...)

Good luck.

You fix this by assigning unique ID's to bands, albums, songs, etc.
Oddly enough they've already done this. There's a little bar code on
every CD ever stamped out. Song have strait ASCII names (which _should_
be unicode) right on the CD, and the filler has info on every other
tidbit.

So the problem was solved ages ago. The error is that noone uses that
solution, but users type in whatever they want instead. But then, it is
a system designed for theft, so dont expect much public coordination.
It's like asking all the burglars to use the window in the southeast
corner and always at 3:27AM.

The larger fix is cryptographic hashes of the song of course. But you
need a legal and centralized database for that, so only the MPAA can
pull that one off very well, and then the questions is why they would
do such a thing.

I doubt napster and friends will easily expand beyond MP3's, other types
of digital content have more years of experience combatting online
piracy, like the SPA and friends. Not to mention legal things are
already well served with established protocols.

*sigh* Of course the whole thing just needs a good DFS :)

- Adam L. Beberg
  Mithral Communications & Design, Inc.
  The Cosm Project - http://cosm.mithral.com/
  beberg@mithral.com - http://www.iit.edu/~beberg/

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