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Fwd: Canadian Firm Uses Pig Latin to Fool Napster Block
This is brilliant.
Robbie
----- Forwarded message from glen mccready <[email protected]> -----
From: [email protected] (glen mccready)
To: [email protected]
Subject: Canadian Firm Uses Pig Latin to Fool Napster Block
Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 13:04:14 -0800
Forwarded-by: Nev Dull <[email protected]>
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010312/tc/napster_dc_4.html
Monday March 12 10:10 AM ET
Canadian Firm Uses Pig Latin to Fool Napster Block
TORONTO (Reuters) - A Canadian company has introduced software
intended to help millions of frustrated Napster (news - web sites) users
to continue downloading free music, the National Post reported on
Monday.
PulseNewMedia, a company affiliated with the University of Toronto, is
using pig Latin to disguise Napster file names that are to be blocked this
week.
Once installed, the software alters the names of MP3 files, moving the
first letter to the end of the word. The band Metallica (news - web
sites), for instance, would become ettalicam.
Napster, which has about 60 million users worldwide, has already
begun filtering song titles in order to block access.
Under a court injunction issued on March 5, Napster is required to bar
the transfer of songs specified within three days of notification by the
copyright holders.
PulseNewMedia says they have already had more than 20,000
downloads of their program, the Post reported.
The software mirrors a program released March 4 by U.S. company
Aimster, whose software lets users trade files by piggybacking on instant
message networks.
Aimster Chief Executive Officer Johnny Deep said last week that
changing file names with encryption makes it illegal to systematically
remove the altered files.
Deep said Napster might be able to remove encrypted file names one
by one, but it couldn't "reverse engineer" the Pig Encoder to remove all
songs that had been encrypted -- even though the encryption is so
simple that anyone can deduce the real title of an encrypted file name.
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (news - web sites) outlaws the
reverse engineering of encryption schemes, Deep said. Encryption is
defined as "the scrambling and descrambling of information using
mathematical formulas or algorithms."
----- End forwarded message -----