Napster filter cuts downloads by half
PrintFar fewer tracks shared, copied, says researcher
Posted in Music and Media, 16th March 2001 15:19 GMT
Free whitepaper – Dell PowerEdge server benchmarks
Napster's court-enforced attempt to prevent up to 135,000 songs from being shared using its software has dramatically cut the number of downloads from the service.
Since the company added filtering software to its servers, there have been 50 per cent fewer downloads from the network. The average number of files offered by each user has fallen from 172 to 71, according to Net research company Webnoize.
No one expected Napster's usage figures to remain unchanged after the filtering software was put in place - a significant dip was always on the cards. What's surprising, perhaps, is that it's not as deep as you might think, given how little material you'd expect to come from non-RIAA members.
So either Napster has always been used for more legitimately than the music industry would have us believe - or the various anti-filter utilities, like Aimster's now-zapped Pig Encoder, are hiding a good few copyright files which continue to be downloaded. ®
Related Stories
Catnap fills Aimster's anti-Napster filter shoes
Napster gags Aimster anti-filter app
Canadians target filtered Napster fans for profit
Aimster tells Napster file filter to 'pig off'
Enabling The Agile Data Center
What Exchange can't do - and Dell can
Analyst Keynote: The Register Agile Data Center Summit
Analyst Keynote: The Register Agile Data Center Summit
Google Spanner — instamatic redundancy for 10 million servers?
Early adopters bloodied by Ubuntu's Karmic Koala
Fedora 12 polishes Linux for netbooks
Sign up, sign up for The Register IT security newsletter