Banned Napster users get second chance

MP3 fans who have been thrown off the Napster digital music sharing website have been offered a backdoor way onto the system.

A group of open-source application developers have released a free software patch that circumvents the ban imposed after complaints from musicians Metallica and Dr Dre that users were breaching their copyright.

More than 500,000 users have so far had their Napster accounts terminated because they have downloaded Dr Dre or Metallica tracks. Many have found it impossible to re-register because Napster has modified their Windows registry files to prevent them using the service.

A patch has been issued by an anonymous group of developers which resets the Windows registry system to the default setting, thus erasing the changes made by Napster.

In response to formal complaints by Metallica that Napster was a tool for widespread copyright infringement, the company banned users identified by the heavy metal band. Rapper Dr Dre filed a similar action under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act which also resulted in the ban of more than 230,000 users.

Prior to the patch, banned Napster users would have had to manually remove the changes because setting up fresh accounts would not alter the telltale registry settings. A number of users emailed vnunet.com expressing frustration at being unable to re-register, even after deleting the offending music files.

"I deleted all the cookies, even the files themselves, still no luck! Each time I re-register even with different email [addresses], I get the same error message," said one reader.

A notice on the patch developers' website states: "In our opinion, Napster committed intentional, malicious acts of vandalism in an effort to block users from their network. We consider this unauthorised modification as hacking, vandalism, and criminal trespassing."

DJ Yoda, one of the anonymous developers, who released the patch, said that none of the affected users had committed a crime nor was there proof of piracy.

Feelings on the other side of the argument are running equally strong, however.

Edgar Bronfman, chief executive of Seagram, which owns the Universal label, said in a speech last week that MP3 sharing systems, such as myMP3.com, Napster and Gnutella, are "the ringleaders, the exemplars of theft, of piracy, of the illegal and wilful appropriation of someone else's property".

Warming to his theme during a keynote speech at a Real Networks conference, Bronfman went on to attack the very idea of anonymity on the internet, which he argued was been used to disguise piracy.

"Anonymity means being able to get away with stealing, or hacking, or disseminating illegal material on the internet, and presuming the right that nobody should know who you are. This is nothing more than the digital equivalent of putting on a ski mask when you rob a bank," he said.

In an interesting twist, together with their legal counsel, the patch developers are exploring the possibility of naming Creeping Death Music and E/M Ventures, the legal business entities behind the band Metallica, as criminal accessories since they are the driving force behind the ban.

The anonymous group has put up a website at http://www.fixnapster.cjb.net to promote and distribute the free software patch.