Yack Forming Coalition to Stop “Stream-Tapping”

In a strongly worded response supporting a federal judge's decision to shut down Napster, Yack.com president and CEO Jeff Morris has announced plans to form a coalition to protect the rights of content producers and help them stop what he considers the next big threat: stream-tapping.

Stream-tapping refers to third parties linking users directly into streamed content, without the express consent of the content provider. "There is a new and disturbing increase in other forms of online piracy, including the lesser-known, but no less serious threat of 'stream-tapping'," Morris said.

According to Morris, stream-tappers effectively usurp the rights of the artists by denying them credit, branding or traffic to their sites.

"From a consumer perspective, services such as Napster and Scour are popular and user-friendly. They represent state-of-the-art software technology," he said. "Obviously popular with consumers, they open up a Pandora's box by making consumers complicitous in behavior that is clearly unethical, if not illegal."

Yack is now in the process of forming a coalition of Internet producers, in conjunction with its Event Producer Network, which currently includes 250 Web producers. The intent is to "provide a forum of open dialog between Internet producers and distributors and work toward reaching viable solutions to timely concerns including, but not limited to, copyright infringement, intellectual property protection, and monetization of online content," Morris said.

"Yack feels very strongly that the rights of content producers must beprotected in order to validate the Internet as a legitimate distribution channel," he said.