AfterDawn: Tech news

Napster's impossible task

Written by Petteri Pyyny @ 13 Jul 2001 1:34

Just as an afterthought for court's this week's decision to keep Napster shut down until they can prove their filterin technology is 100% flawless.. According to RIAA, so far they've found 174 songs that have slipped through Napster's filters. Just think about that figure a moment -- that's only 0.02% of their song-blocking database. And now court is saying that this effectiveness is not enough for Napster.
There are absolutely no way to provide 100% bullet-proof system, whatever the system is -- web server, operating system, car or even P2P song-filtering technology. Even if Napster would trim their technology so it allows only one song through filters every other day, it would bring their percentage below 100%. Heck, even condoms have way much smaller success percent of preventing accidents (less than 90% actually :-).

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