[WEB4LIB] Napster Question (Was Audio Books Being Shared)

[Eric Hellman]

This is an extremely good question.

First of all, I think the vulnerability is low, because it would be 
hard to convince lots of people to spread a blatantly deceptive file. 
You already see "big brother is watching" files, and they don't seem 
to have had much effect. Napster distribution is much less vulnerable 
to spam than e-mail, since it's a pull system.

There are a number of technical ways in which the vulnerability to 
junk can be fixed for an ILLster, but there's really nothing except 
ethics and common sense that prevents the same thing from happening 
in a print-oriented ILL system.

There are many technical ways for producers of digital information to 
retain economic control of their products, even in the context of a 
massively parallel distribution system like Napster. It's absolutely 
true that authentication, validation, filtering and organization will 
increase in relative value as the value of centralized distribution 
disappears.

Eric


At 2:41 PM -0700 6/23/00, Donald A. Barclay wrote:
>One question I haven't heard raised about Napster, Gnutella, et al. is that
>of the authenticity of the files you download. For example, what's to keep
>some person, group, or company from flooding the Napwaves with files that
>appear to be tracks from Ms Spears yet-to-be-released album but turn out to
>be advertisements, political rants, or the songs of some Spears-wannabe in
>search of an audience?
>
>Maybe with music, such trickery wouldn't be a problem. After a few seconds
>of listening, you would figure out the file you've downloaded is not really
>the song you wanted and would simply turn it off. However, imagine if
>journal articles come to be shared the way music is now shared on Napster.
>And imagine  somebody tampers with a journal article they are sharing by,
>perhaps, changing a few numbers here and there or  rewriting the
>conclusion, . It would be difficult to detect subtle tampering, and the
>consequences could be quite serious in such fields as medicine,
>engineering, chemistry, and so on.
>
>I'm not trying to come off as pro- or anti-Napster, but I do see the
>question of authenticity as a serious challenge to the notion that Napster
>et al. is going to transform publishing into an entirely communal activity.
>Perhaps one role of librarians will be to ensure the authenticity of
>information?
>
>Donald A. Barclay

Eric Hellman
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