News written by Jari Ketola (July, 2001)

MediaDefender, a division of Laguna Beach-based OnSystems Inc., hs developed a software that blocks the access to copyrighted songs and other media shared on peer-to-peer networks.

The software works by scanning various peer-to-peer networks for copyrighted songs and then hammering the people offering the files with numerous requests. Since the peer-to-peer clients are designed for a few simultaneous connections, more than 100 requests will choke up the stream and prevent anyone else from getting the file. MediaDefender doesn't actually transfer the files it requests, so it doesn't consume any extra bandwidth from the client it blocks.

Another method used by MediaDefender is known as 'spoofing'. It offers files that look like the material the user is looking for, but contain no real data.

So far MediaDefender has only a few clients, but they have a firm belief in their service. They see it as a solution to the problem law isn't capable of containing.

There's little doubt that should MediaDefender become the method of choice among the record and movie industry, there will be some sort of counter action by the "hacker community".

The DVD Forum, which controls the licensing of the DVD standard, is playing it tough with the Chinese and Taiwanese player manufacturers. The players, such as the Apex AD600a are infamous for the ease of bypassing the region encoding.

To be allowed the license to manufacture DVD-players, and use the DVD logo, manufacturers must agree to support the region encoding restriction. The Far Eastern manufacturers, however, usually implement a rather haphazard restriction which is often very easy to bypass using the unit's own remote controller.

What DVD Forum is doing now is enforcing a ban on unofficial DVD products. To beat the ban the manufacturers must get a certification for their players before October 1st. After that no player without a certification can be shipped with the DVD logo.

It remains to be seen whether or not the Far Eastern manufacturers will bow to the demands. If they don't, we might see alot of "Digital Video Players" or "DVD-compatible MP3-players" in the future.

Scour.com, the company known from the promising peer-to-peer application Scour Exchange, brought down by numerous lawsuits, has turned its focus to Internet radio.

Scour will launch three Internet radio stations today in association with RadioCentral. The stations will be offering music for hip hop, electronic, and rock music listeners.

Scour shut down it's file-sharing service last November and was acquired by CenterSpan in December. With the Internet radio service Scour tries to recover from the legal troubles it ran into with Scour Exchange, and aims attract more customers.

Under the terms of the deal Scour will pay RadioCentral a monthly fee for the development and operation of its online radio services. The analysts see the deal beneficial for both parties.

The once popular song-swapping service Napster has selected PlayMedia Systems to provide secure digital music player in its upcoming membership service. In addition to that PlayMedia will also be consulting Napster on file security technology.

PlayMedia has developed customized playback, encryption, decryption, and security technologies. Using these technologies Napster will be able to encode, recognize, and playback protected multimedia files on the Napster membership service.

``Napster is at the forefront of using some extremely advanced rights management and security technologies in a file-sharing environment,'' said Napster's interim CEO Hank Barry. ``PlayMedia's technologies and consulting services for playback and advanced file security have been instrumental in helping us build a new Napster service that will give our users a satisfying experience for discovering and listening to new music.''

Napster also renewed its license for PlayMedia's AMP® technology. AMP technology is probably best known from powering the popular Winamp MP3 player.