Re: things to break..

[shok () MOKIMAKI ETHEREAL NET (Matt Conover)]

Well, I have no affiliation with Napster Inc., but I do know what they
were trying to do.  The idea was to allow people to use napster behind a
firewall.  This isn't really an issue; the RealPlayer (RealAudio from
RealNetworks) does the same thing.

The source wasn't available because they were worried about
competition.  I disagreed with this and I told him they should relesae
it.  Nevertheless, a free client for Linux is available
(gnome-napster) which includes source.  There are also mailing lists that
are working on developing a free napster server (independent of Napster
Inc.).

On Mon, 24 Jan 2000, Jeff Bachtel wrote:

> Napster has a "feature" where it will decide the proper port on which
> to operate, especially if you are behind a firewall.
>
> Therefore, their server scans you, and ports that you are reachable on
> (but which are not actually running a service on your machine) are
> pegged as useable by napster for serving mp3's.
>
> This is obviously a problem, Napster found out that my NT workstation
> could be reached on port 80 through a campus firewall, and proceeded
> to set itself up in that configuration, however that is definately
> against our firewall policy (no, I don't expect napster to read minds,
> just to be more explicit about what its doing and why).
>
> I haven't looked at the code for the linux napster client yet (is it
> even freely available?), but if they don't submit their code and
> protocol for peer review, I at least won't be using their product
> (being more than aware what has happened due to Mirabilis' approach to
> security through obscurity)
>
> jeff
>
> On Sun, Jan 23, 2000 at 10:55:09PM -0600, Matthew S. Hallacy wrote:
> > speaking of napster, it seems that it portscans you upon connection to
> > their server, the firewall where i work kept setting off my pager and I
> > found that it was someone loading napster. I've since banned the use of
> > it, but it's still quite curious..
> >
> > On Sun, 23 Jan 2000 Inedag () AOL COM wrote:
> >
> > > since we're on the topic, how about napster?  that's in use by a bazillion
> > > people .. although i don't know how fair that'd be to the napster people, as
> > > i think they're still in beta.  just a suggestion.
> > >
> > > -i