P2P: New faulty floodgate

It makes you wonder if anything can really stop the flood of file-sharing - lawsuits from record companies, detection software for parents, or low-cost legal music Web sites? Napster.com, which *was* the original "underground" file-sharing service (before Kazaa, BitTorrent, and all the other 2nd- and 3rd-generation P2P networks) and is now a legal music retailer online, is now widely publicized as the victim of an easy hack that turns it back into a vast global jukebox of free, unrestricted digital tunes. "Word spread across the Web recently that a few tweaks of WinAmp, a popular music-playing program, and a small plug-in available on the WinAmp Web site would allow users to take a music file protected with Microsoft technology and produce an unprotected copy," the New York Times (and many other outlets) reports. It adds that AOL, "which owns the company that makes WinAmp, removed the problematic plug-in from the WinAmp site," but copies popped up elsewhere on the Web, and there undoubtedly will be other work-arounds created. This ongoing battle epitomizes the challenges the Internet represents to so many age-old institutions and behaviors - the law, government, ethics, business, and *parenting*, to name just a few. Here are Wired News, and CNET on this, and Napster's challenge of the rumors at InformationWeek.