Yeah, you are talking about something more along the lines of a checksum or a hash. Basically the mp3 would have to be suplied by IASCA and the empeg would run an algorithm against it and display the checksum which could be verified by the judges as accurate. But you have to get IASCA to accept this and empeg to implement it and then you have to train the judges on how to deal with it.

You end up with kind of a funky trust relationship where IASCA has to trust empeg to properly calculate and display the hash (and keep the user from tampering with it) and has to trust the user not to have modified the empeg software to display the hash for one song and then play another. I don't see this happening until IASCA is forced to deal with the reality of mp3 players which probably won't happen until all the common stereos by all the big manufactures play digital audio files.

-Mike

Edited by mcomb on 01/12/00 08:19 AM.