Napster Not At Home With Cable

Submitted by: Gamefreak_cd_copy

Source: Unkown



Napster Not At Home With Cable



Music delivered online may just be too much data for the Net to handle -- even in the much-ballyhooed broadband future.


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Just ask cable modem users in San Diego.


High-speed cable service provider Cox@Home San Diego this week told several hundred of its customers to stop running the music-exchange software Napster or lose their cable modem accounts.


"You are running Napster and may be running other server software," Cox's network management team wrote to 350 customers. "This email serves as a 72-hour notice to reduce account activity to compliant usage levels and to remove any servers." The email was sent April 4.


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Napster is a popular service that allows Internet users to exchange personal MP3 music files via software installed on their computers. The Recording Industry Association of America has sued Napster because the software makes it so easy for one person to get access to another person's digital music files. The suit accuses Napster of allowing users to make unauthorized copies of music belonging to RIAA artists.

Another controversy around the software, however, has centered on the way it dramatically escalates network use. Taking up end-user bandwidth like few Internet applications before it, the service has provided something of a litmus test for broadband networks to handle popular new media applications of the future.

The Cox move extends for the first time an ongoing battle on campuses over Napster use to the consumer ISP realm. University network administrators have blocked student access to the service, blaming Napster users for soaking up 40 to as much as 60 percent of campus bandwidth.

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Napster representatives could not be reached for comment Friday. The company has responded to the campus network problem by trying to work to allow administrators to put automated limits on Napster's bandwidth usage.

As part of its user agreement, Cox@Home limits the total volume of upstream (outgoing) network traffic from any single account to 500MB in any one 24-hour period. Customers also cannot use their account to run Web, email, chat, and other server applications.

"Many users are unaware that Napster is a server," said Cox Cable representative Art Reynolds in an email. "It enables users to share files between computers directly which is in direct violation of the @Home acceptable use policy."

Still some customers were caught by surprise.


Vista, California-based customer Joe Stewart was among those in the dark that his son's use of Napster got his account targeted. He was appalled by the sudden notice, and didn't like the fact that his ISP knew what software he was running. By mid-Friday he said he was able to get Cox@Home to agree that he was not in fact exceeding the 500MB upload cap.

"I find it very disturbing that they knew exactly what program I was using," he said.

Cox's Reynolds emphatically denied any invasive activity on the part of the company.


"We do not monitor what customers transmit across the service nor access or control the customer's computer," Reynolds said. "The network management software identifies the presence of an active public server which is a potential entry point into a customer's computer. Customer privacy is of the highest concern."

As for the copyright-violation Napster is charged with facilitating, Reynolds said that is not the company's main concern over Napster, despite clauses in the user agreement forbidding the illegal exchange of copyrighted content.


"Cox bans server usage, and is not the Internet police," he said.

The company is in the process of resolution with the other 349 users, with most already resolved, Reynolds said.


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