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The Rise and Fall of Napster
Posted by
michael
on Sun Apr 20, 2003 03:43 PM
from the those-who-can't,-write-books dept.
from the those-who-can't,-write-books dept.
Jedi Paramedic writes "Boston.com has an interesting story about the rise and fall of everyone's favorite file-swapping service. Also the subject of a new book by Joseph Menn, the story goes into great detail about the unfortunate-but-heroic Shawn Fanning and his reluctance to admit that his uncle, who in the end masterminded little more than the lining of his own pockets, had taken advantage of him. From getting screwed in the original 70/30 split with his uncle to his uncle's refusal to loosen his iron grip on the company even at the expense of its very being, the article (and the book) go a long way in chronicling the rise and fall of Napster, and crediting Shawn for not airing the family's dirty laundry. An interesting and well-written read."
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Good technolgy, bad media (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Good technolgy, bad media (Score:2)
Go calculate [webcalc.net] something.
Re:Good technolgy, bad media (Score:2)
Repeat after me: fuck MD5.
MD5 is flawed.
Use SHA-1 instead.
Or better yet (some say), TigerTree.
All of which Gnutella uses.
Re:Good technolgy, bad media (Score:3, Insightful)
So really, fuck MD5 only if you're trying to make something secure against attackers.
Re:Good technolgy, bad media (Score:5, Informative)
MD5 is flawed
Given known current flaws in MD5, it is possible to produce bogus data that matches a given MD5, though no constraints can be placed upon the content. A trojan, for instance, cannot be placed in a MD5'd file, but the file can contain random data.
However, one of the fairly obvious ways to use MD5 is with a "tree" of checksums -- one for the whole file, one for each half, one for each quarter, etc, etc, etc. In this case, it is not possible to produce data that will pass validation.
eDonkey uses MD4 hashes -- which is significantly easier to attack than MD5 -- yet I haven't seen problems with forged chunks on eDonkey.
And while SHA-1 is nice -- and it might be just easier if everyone used it -- it is significantly slower. When I tested the md5sum and shasum implementations on my Linux box, I found that shasum ran at about a sixth the speed of md5sum.
Parent
Technology Abused, Good Media, and Misconceptions (Score:4, Insightful)
The only thing I think was good in hindsight, was the centralization. It provided rapid searches, and nearly real time data on logged in/logged out users.
The mentality that has emerged among Gnutella and other P2P networks is one of flagrant piracy. I have yet to see significant uptake of Gnutella and various other services for legitimate uses.
It's annoying when millions of people suddenly decide that they are going to have their way or no way at all. I have seen a plethora of argumentation about downloading copyrighted music, movies, books, and software for and against. It has yet to convince me. The laws may be flawed but they are laws. Don't circumvent the law, reform it.
I use music here as the mainstay of my argument simply because it's the most prevalent. However, as high speed connections make inroads into the market movies are getting pirated with equal speed.
None of the services has done *anything* to block copyrighted content or illegal content. One of the most disturbing things is the distribution of child pornography on these networks. Rudimentary filtering controls on both server side and client side could get rid of most copyrighted works on these networks.
The amazing thing is when you mention this to anyone is the arguments against it. "You're preventing free speech... You're attacking open source software."
I may not like the tactics RIAA uses. In fact I hate them. They had a controlled problem with Napster, then they sued it and caused the same size problem to be distributed across hundreds of servers and countries. Dumb. However, they are right. The owners of that material have the sole right to say when, where and how that content is distributed.
Parent
Re:Technology Abused, Good Media, and Misconceptio (Score:3, Interesting)
IRC (Score:3, Interesting)
Sure, both were innovative but I doubt either would exist as the did/do now if it wasn't for IRC coming first. To an
Re:Technology Abused, Good Media, and Misconceptio (Score:3, Interesting)
While BitTorrent, eDonkey may be efficient, and Gnutella and others ineffecient, AFAIK the majority of material on those servers is pirated works being distributed illegally.
Re:Good technolgy, bad media (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Of course he credits Shawn... (Score:5, Funny)
I'll skip the article, thanks, in favor of (Score:3, Funny)
Seriously, doesn't this seem a little like 'great expectations' or something (only problem being I'm not sure if GE got made into an musical or if I'm getting it confused with something else.
Magwitch Did It! (Score:3, Funny)
In all seriousness, GE sucked. I'd write a longer review, but this about sums it up.
Amazon Reviews (Score:2, Interesting)
sure... (Score:4, Insightful)
cheers,
Re:sure... (Score:2, Funny)
yes, i am on a 56k modem, thank you BT.....
Re:sure... (Score:3, Interesting)
-- iCEBaLM
Re:sure... (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Excuse my ignorance... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Excuse my ignorance... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Excuse my ignorance... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Excuse my ignorance... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Excuse my ignorance... (Score:5, Interesting)
What if the music industry had purchased napster and released their full catalogs for free but ripped at a low bit rate say 96kb and then offer a pay version for the same data but ripped at a 320kb rate. No one could have competed because they would of had the depth of inventory. Lost opportunities. They went the other way and crushed Napster and they totally lost it by not having something to pick up the slack. Where did they think that the Napster users were going to turn when an option (Kazaa, Bearshare, et al) arrived. Lost opportunities.
Parent
Re:Excuse my ignorance... (Score:3, Insightful)
Because there's a point for many people (not all) where paying a reasonable fee for a 'legit', reliably-good datafile, is much more convenient than spending the time and effort to sift through multiple p2p networks full of unknowns.
Of course, even if the per-track and/or monthly fee was reasonable (not in this life), I'd still have a major problem filtering my money
When you get the book... (Score:5, Funny)
Napster as the internet martyr (Score:5, Funny)
Now, if we could just form a religion based upon the cat-like diety, perhaps we could defeat the DMCA as a form of freedom of Religion
Who is everyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
Audiogalaxy was far superior in every way. It's a damn shame they got shut down. I think AG's model and design is the best starting point for the music industry to get into a paid-for music downloading service.
Unlike Napster, it just worked. I didn't have to sit around to make sure the download started and that I didn't get cut off, and I didn't have to find other sources. I just queued up as many tracks as I wanted, and AG made sure I got them.
Re:Who is everyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Who is everyone? (Score:5, Interesting)
For $10 a month you could use Listen.com. As long as ya pay that, you have access to any song of their library. plus playlists etc. It's like a server-side MP3 locker, only they're all there. Click a song and you're listening to it within moments instead of having to wait for it to download. (then it caches so it's not like you go through that every time...)
Not a bad deal. It's not quite perfect in that you don't get to keep the compressed version and it's Windows only. Oh well, it's not for everybody. Still, $10 is less than one CD per month.
I'm thinking about writing up a review of it for Slashdot, but I'm concerned about whether there'd be any interest in it.
Parent
Re:Who is everyone? (Score:3, Insightful)
giFT, Kazaa, Shareazaa and all the bullshit these days is a test of patience.
Re:My Audiogalaxy story. (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Too big (Score:4, Interesting)
From A Roxio Press Release.... (Score:5, Interesting)
"The opportunity to sell GoBack comes at a great time for Roxio as it provides an opportunity to add to our cash balances and divest an asset that is not core to our digital media strategy," said Chris Gorog, President and Chief Executive Officer of Roxio. "This transaction will enable us to bring an even greater focus to our digital media software business and the development of our new on-line music business with our Napster assets. Symantec is currently one of GoBack's largest marketing partners and it is the logical and best new home for GoBack and its customers."
A quick synopsis of the whole thing- (Score:5, Informative)
Memories of Napster (Score:4, Funny)
- Same with the Wozard of Iz - AFTER I bought it on eBay...
- Getting Camarillo Brillo after finding it ONLY on a box set for $70 (thanks Frank)
- Getting cursed out by dorks for cutting their dls off (which I never did) - then putting them on ignore
and at the end...
- watching as a series of mesaages from emusic came up demanding I remove the following 12 songs or get kicked off.
- Screwing up and removing them all but one.
- Getting kicked off.
The Irony? (Score:4, Insightful)
The myth the media giants want to perpetuate. (Score:3, Interesting)
"...an internet culture that enthusiastically stood centuries-old notions of property rights and demand-and-supply pricing firmly on its head..."
This is farcical. The concept of making obscene amounts of money from artistic expression; indeed, the concept of art as property, is a very recent invention, since 1900 or so. This is what the media conglomerates want you to forget. Napster simply reminded us of how things were a very short while ago.
Re:Shawn Fanning was heroic? (Score:4, Insightful)
yawn. mod parent -1, troll. No one can honestly say that they think that.
Here's a hint, if I shoplift a CD, the store doesn't have it anymore, if I use Napster, no one is deprived of anything. They're so completely different, not only are they in different ballparks, they're playing a different game.
Parent
Re:Shawn Fanning was heroic? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Shawn Fanning was heroic? (Score:5, Insightful)
And that's where you're wrong. You are enjoying the fruits of someone else's labors, namely that of the artist, the producer, the sound mixer, the recording booth operator, the marketing company, and all the secretaries, managers, and janitors that work for the above companies. They all work for a living, and they get paid when people buy the music that you just stole.
That's right, you stole it. You now have something you didn't have before, and you didn't pay for it. Copyright law says you have to pay for it. Intellectual property law says you have to pay for it. Common decency says you ought to pay for it. And if the long arm of the law catches you, you can be damn sure they're going to make you pay for it.
Look, you can hate the RIAA/MPAA all you want. I have no love for them at all. I think CD's are ridiculously overpriced, that the companies are gouging us while providing us with horrid content. I think the MPAA's control over the DVD format vis-a-vis region coding, CSS, and Macrovision is one of the most belligerent things a provider can do to a customer. However, none of that gives me the right to steal from them, and it sure as hell doesn't give you any moral credibility to be justifying your theft.
If you had any morals or principles at all, other than your own self satisfaction at someone else's expense, you'd be content to simply boycott the labels you don't agree with and trade music from bands that allow you to legally do so. Instead, you're just content to be a thief, attempting to moralize your actions because it allows you to steal and feel smug about it.
Face it, information is not free, nor will it ever be free unless the owner of that information chooses to make it so. Information is worth whatever the owner wishes to charge for it, and the rarer it is, the more they can charge. If you don't like it, I'm sure there's some nice socialist country somewhere that'd take you in. North Korea, for example.
Parent
Re:Shawn Fanning was heroic? (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry, but that's a poor example. What if no one liked your music? You'd still be broke, even without piracy. Hence, there is no implied contract here. A more realistic example would be if you put on a fireworks display, and charged people to sit on a grassy field and watch. Then, no one came because they all realized that the fireworks would be just as visible from another park that they could sit in for free.
The point that you're trying to make is that it's immoral to enjoy the fruits of someone's labor without compensating them for it. That's true. However, as Ronald Coase posits in his economic theory of externalities, a victim is rarely a simple innocent bystander. Most victims have put themselves in a situation where they will be victimized (Coase's classic example is that of the person who buys a house by an airport; he is a victim of noise pollution, but this is an issue he should have known about when he bought the house). In this case, the musicians are allowing themselves to be victimized by relying on an oudated economic model: profiting from the sale of pre-recorded music. The solution to this problem is not for people to hysterically shout "Stop pirating music!" The solution is to find a new model for the music industry to follow. Most likely, this will mean depending on live performances and merchandising, rather than recordings, for income. It will also likely mean that musicians of the future will have to accept lower incomes, the field will no longer be dominated by a few superstars, but by a larger number of middle class performers and an even larger number of hobbyists.
Parent
Re:Shawn Fanning was heroic? (Score:5, Insightful)
Theft, fraud (hiring someone then not paying), and copyright infringment are three different things. They require different methods of enforcement, and different levels of punishment. If I copy some of my CDs onto my hard drive so I can play them in any order I want, the RIAA may say this is "theft", but I didn't steal anything. If I play CDs on an anti-skip player and I don't pay the RIAA for "RAM buffer copies", I didn't steal anything.
Here is an example of why this line of thinking for copyrights is absurd:
Lets say some bloke writes a song with the phrase "my dog fell down and he can't get up." Let's call him Dogman. The song becomes a #1 hit. In certain situations, people start using the phrase. After a while, Dogman decides using this phrase is "theft", and everyone who does so should pay him $1 each time. Would you pay Dogman just for the "right" to utter a stupid phrase? What if your dog really did fall down and couldn't get up? Should you have to pay so you could tell people?
Yeah, my examples are more marginal than sending copies to 10,000 of your closest "friends". The point is the RIAA uses the term "theft" as newspeak to increase the range of copyright laws. Mass redistribution of music is "theft". Then any CD to tape (or CD) copying is "theft". Then storing your CD on a hard drive for convenience is "theft". Then any sort of "RAM buffer copy" is "theft". Then, any use of any words in any song is "theft".
I think the "information wants to be free" whackos are...well...whackos. If "information" is talking to you, or you think "information" has desires like a sentient being, then you really need to see a doctor. But it doesn't mean everything they say is wrong.
Parent
Re:Shawn Fanning was heroic? (Score:3, Insightful)
I couldn't agree more. However, the method to combat this business model is to boycott their products. By stealing their product, you are intrinsically admitting that their product has value (at least to you), otherwise you wouldn't do it. You have obtained something of value, yet have given nothing of value in return. This is a one-sided transaction no matter how you look at it.
If the artists don't get the money I would have paid -- boohoo, they can always g
Re:Shawn Fanning was heroic? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Is the name "Napster" racist? (Score:3, Insightful)
It might have been more controversial if Fanning
had played on the nickname in the same style that
was used to market Vanilla Ice (or Eminem to some
regard). But "napster" was not used in any obvious
way other than as a brand for the company/product.
I didn't even know about the nickname connection until
it was mentioned in a 60 minutes interview.
And by then it was the least interesting part of his story.
I don't get insulted when I buy Uncle Bens rice,
Aunt Jemima syrup, or
PDF Version? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Um.... (Score:3, Informative)
Daniel
Re:No file sharing system should be... (Score:5, Interesting)
And I always thought this would be
the land of milk and honey
Oh but I came to find out that it's
all hate and money
And there's a canopy of greed holding me down.
--Blind Melon, Tones of Home
Incidentally, I never would have found out about Blind Melon without P2P file sharing, and now I've bought two of their three albums (with Soup high on my to-get list). File sharing makes people less likely to buy music? The RIAA can eat me!
Parent
Re:unfortunate-but-heroic Shawn Fanning????? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Where is he now? (Score:4, Informative)
Anyway, he's still in the sf bay area, and has moved on to a couple of new projects: a small record label and a new company that's still very quiet.
Parent