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* Look out kids, your songs are going to be 'fingerprinted'. Napster has licensed acoustic fingerprinting technology from Relatable that identifies songs using the wavelength patterns produced by their sounds. It's not known how the RIAA feels about this move.

TRM identifies each song uniquely by comparing acoustic patterns. Each song should have a different pattern. This move comes after the text-based filtering system that Napster currently uses has attracted criticism due to its ineffective nature. Once Napster started filtering, people simply started changing the names of songs in their collections.

* iMesh follows Napsters lead. iMesh users have been informed that they will have access to less music in the future. iMesh is currently in the process of preventing access to files protected by copyright law. This move comes after the RIAA Vs Napster decision which caused Napster to start policing it's file-trading service.

* Napster use falls in March 2001. No doubt due, in part, to Napster's filtering of copyright material, unique visitors dropped from 16.9 million in February to 15.7 in March. Use of Napster fell from 15.2 million users to 12.1 million users in March. While US-usage has dropped, Napster was the seventh largest property with 29.4 million unique visitors among 14 leading wired countries during March.

 

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