Media Protection and other stuff

What are folk doing for media protection?  I'm using the "media proxy" 
built into netjuke (simple URL obfuscation), but it isn't enough to make me 
feel safe.  It's still possible, should someone guess the name of any 
subdirectory in my /var/music folder and get at the files.

Making the /var/music folder non world-readable or aliasing it back to 
/netjuke breaks netjuke's playback.

Anyone know how the media proxy works in netjuke?  I'm wondering if it can 
be hacked to, say, open mp3s with readfile(); or something, from a 
directory that the web user has access to, but that isn't a valid path to 
the http server.

Or maybe something using .htaccess?  I dunno.  The goal is to leave netjuke 
on a public enough box that I can get to my music from anywhere, while not 
leaving it open for strangers to pilfer my collection and suck up valuable 
bandwidth.

Next issue...

I encode my collection at 320kbps.  I like it that high, because I listen 
to the same files at home where bandwidth isn't an issue, and while 128kbps 
is certainly listenable, 320 is actually somewhat pleasant.  Ideally, I'd 
have the disk space to keep everything .ape or even .wav/.aiff.

This puts a serious cramp in listening through netjuke away from 
home.  What I wind up doing is using VNC to connect to a windows box at 
home, open a web browser to netjuke there, pick the day's random batch of 
songs, and play them in winamp, which streams to shoutcast on a unix box 
(equalizing every track to a more manageable 128kbps bitrate), that I 
listen to at work/fiancee's/friends' houses/etc.

Short of maintaining two separate collections (320kbps or uncompressed, and 
128kbps for net playback), what else is there?  Netjuke seems to be 
configurable to send its playlists to an app on the server, but that's a 
global setting.  This leads me to believe any user in my household who 
plays a track will interrupt any existing playlist that someone else may be 
listening to.

Next...

Anyone else do any hacking of the PHP/html in netjuke for customization?  I 
didn't like the three-column genre browsing list, I made it two.  In 
"Random," picking a 500-track playlist freaks the server out, and 10 was 
too small a default for me, so I changed things a bit there too.  A 
250-track playlist seems to not freak the server out, and that's now the 
default.  Also added defaults to filter out songs less than 61 seconds or 
more than 900.  Beats typing it in every day.  I also stuck nowrap 
attributes in various <td> tags throughout netjuke, out of personal 
preference.  Simple changes.

I'd be interested to hear what other folk have done, maybe some deeper 
stuff.  Like I think it'd be neat to have a "browse-only" user class, that 
would allow browsing of the collection without download/playback 
ability.  It would let folk put their netjukes more in the public eye 
(allowing others to toy with it and see if they like it) without making 
"criminals" out of them in the eyes of the RIAA.

-- josh escobedo, computer support
    office of international services
    university of illinois at chicago
    -------------------------------------
    Any opinions expressed in the content of this e-mail
    are the sole responsibility of the author, and do not
    reflect the opinions, policies or intentions of the
    University of Illinois at Chicago, the Office of the Vice
    Chancellor for Student Affairs, the Office of International
    Services, or their assigns. 



-------------------------------------------------------
This SF.Net email sponsored by Black Hat Briefings & Training.
Attend Black Hat Briefings & Training, Las Vegas July 24-29 - 
digital self defense, top technical experts, no vendor pitches, 
unmatched networking opportunities. Visit www.blackhat.com