Is it déjà vu all over again? Not necessarily, but a kind of hack has led to a round or three of free Napster music downloads. Winamp software is turning Napster-purchased copy-protected downloads into burnable, unprotected files by the hundreds or even the thousands, according to several reports.
This news arrived almost three weeks after Napster unveiled Napster To Go, a rental service allowing you to have and play unlimited music for $15 a month. Napster found itself compelled to put a message on its Website saying the tracks they offer are no more prone to antipiracy evasion than those of other similar services.
The blogosphere was said to be bristling February 15 and 16 with stories and comments about the apparent Napster hack, which is also said to be a problem facing digital media services as a whole in recent years. "It's not a new thing," said Napster spokeswoman Dana Harris to reporters. "We do all we can to make our system as secure as possible for people who want to pay for music."
But because Napster was originally the granddaddy of peer-to-peer free music downloading, and because subscription services offer unlimited access to millions of songs, this kind of hack producing those kinds of results might be seen as casting a wider eye upon the resurrected Napster.
Apple has found itself having to update its iTunes software several times in the past two years to obstruct hackers who find ways of breaking the copy protection applied to what’s offered in the iTunes Music Store.
Microsoft has found itself doing likewise to Windows Media Player after hackers found ways of tweaking the program to elude copy protection on DVD discs. And RealMedia took Streambox to court and won, after Streambox made a program for recording online streaming media in Real’s format.
