[WEB4LIB] Re: Napster Question (Was Audio Books Being

[Matt Wilcox]

At 02:30 PM 6/26/00 -0700, Mark Stover wrote:
>Napster may very well be an important prototype for future library 
>cooperation.  Certainly there are issues of copyright, authenticity, and 
>cataloging.  But much of this is a moot point for many of us in the 
>academic world who work at universities that have blocked Napster.  My 
>campus said that it was the high flow of traffic that led to the Napster 
>ban.  Other universities cite copyright issues and concerns about being 
>sued.  But whatever the impetus, the fact is that a number of campuses have 
>gone this route, thus depriving (?) librarians of experimenting with this 
>cutting edge technology.
 
<----snip---->
 
There has been a little discussion about this on the OSS4LIB listserv (
http://www.oss4lib.org ).  The blocking of Napster by universities is only
a problem in that it shows the propensity to block access rather than face
a lawsuit and seeing what a judge decides is actually legal/illegal--but
considering the deeeeeeeep pockets of the recording industry, it might not
be a bad policy.  Part of the Docster ideas (
http://www.oss4lib.org/readings/docster.php ) is to try the new networking
ideas like Napster or Gnutella and developing something similar, or
developing a way to use the networks for our benefit.  The result could be,
as Dan Chudnov puts it in his article, "a new bibliographic management tool
that combined file storage with a Napster-like communications protocol."
Also, he does mention that the system should have in place a level of
tracking so that the proper copyright compliance fees can be paid.

My university has blocked Napster access, but not Gnutella access so I have
had a chance to play with some of this stuff and it really makes me think
about how the Docster idea has merit.  At least it is a chance to create a
system with a level of useful order, rather than just taking whatever
system develops or whatever the publishers want to give us that works
better for them than us (like crossref).  There are also other groups
looking at this kind of networking software:  the April 13 issue of Nature
has an article on genome researchers wanting to share info on genome
annotations using something like Napster.

--matt


(disclaimer:  as you can see by my email address, I work at the same
university as Dan Chudnov, but my thoughts are my own and not an attempt to
pump up Dan for selfish gain--although I might seem like a shill.
Although, now that I think about it, maybe if he gave me beer, I would do
it more often.  Note to Dan:  Beer!  :)




-------------------------------------------------------------
matthew.wilcox at yale.edu    203-785-5680
"They say no man is an island, but I'll bet if you got a whole bunch of men
and duct taped them all together, you could call that an island.  If they
didn't sink, that is."     (James Key)