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Don't Download Those Files! Running Napster on Lab Equipment Violates LBNL Policies

Napster, an on-line service allowing users to seek out mp3 music files on the web, has been in the news of late, drawing fire from the recording industry and musicians over alleged copyright violations. The Lab's Computer Protection Program, which monitors Internet traffic in and out of Berkeley Lab, has also noticed a sharp increase in Napster-related traffic. Computer Protection Program Manager Jim Rothfuss advises that using Lab networking and computing equipment to download music violates Lab policy on using significant amounts of government resources for unauthorized personal use. There are also legal issues as the sharing of many music files through Napster violates copyright laws.

Napster works by having subscribers download the Napster client on their computers. The client then allows users to search the Internet for song titles. Napster does this by checking each subscriber's machine for the title, then retrieving and downloading the first one found. Each subscriber in turn becomes part of this growing community "library" of music files.

From a practical point of view, Napster "uses a horrendous amount of bandwidth in search and downloading," Rothfuss said. In fact, this same concern has led a number of universities to ban students from running Napster over academic networks at the expense of education-related applications.