P2P Piracy? Piffle! 74
jjohn writes: "Boston.com has an op-ed piece on peer-to-peer software like Napster. It concludes, not surprisingly, that
p2p software is in its infancy and isn't likely to credibly challenge
traditional distribution streams of copyrighted material any time soon."
Re:Overpriced CD's (Score:2)
Now there are royalties paid to songwriters (ala BMI) for radio play that Napster users don't pay, but it's easy to see how Napster increases physical CD sales, along the same lines as radio play. If a good portion of Napster users starting sharing entire albums (as was common using ftp and usenet), it might actually cut into CD sales.
If the Napster client had a feature to insert your CD and press "share whole cd", and it'd rip the entire disc (w/out skips), use CDDB [cddb.com] to names the files and include ID3 tags, and encode with good settings using LAME.... well, it'd make for a very different network than the current Napster. Maybe when/if gnutella or some other truely p2p network takes off, this'd be a cool weekend hack on a free/open source client program.
Re:Has anybody found Freenet useful yet? (Score:4)
What I want in a freenet search engine:
1) List of hits.
2) Hits ranked by previous reliability ratings.
3) Size of Key.
4) Speed of node.
I also wouldn't mind ping times to node, current connections to node, etc.
Anyone else out there want to boff up some more suggestions? Perhaps a "Requested items list" could be hammered out and sent to the nice people at http://freenet.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net].
Rami
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Re:Why blame software for piracy? (Score:1)
The only rule which stands is: When Disney makes money, it's legal, when they don't it's illegal.
Re:Napster is not P2P (Score:1)
Re:Has anybody found Freenet useful yet? (Score:1)
Oh? I find napster (and even gnutella, on a good day) extremely useful, thank you.
Pretty crappy article (Score:1)
Using Napster for good... (Score:2)
If there were a "free music movement", similar to the "free software movement" (whatever that is), in which people made music meant to be distributed freely, nobody would wonder what possible legitimate use Napster could have.
Where is the RMS of the music world?
I think the problem might be that creating good music is just *a lot* harder than programming. (well, for *me* it is anyway.)
Two interesting points... (Score:1)
In this case, don't focus on "P2P leads to piracy" but examine "P2P can supplant current distribution methods". In other words, is the technology up to the load? Current answer is no. Is it even theoretically possible?
(ok, here we go, screw this music/movies shit. What would be the capabilities neccessary to stream full sensory input for everybody P2P? eh? (a lot by todays standards))
Re:Has anybody found Freenet useful yet? (Score:2)
We've already seen that with Napster, where you'd download some supposed track, and get either garbage, or an ad, instead of what the track was labeled.
Re: Mojo Nation token server (Score:1)
It also has no idea about what goes on within the system that actually causes tokens to be exchanged, including being completely unable to know who is giving tokens to who.
As the actual workings of the system use a credit/offer system, settling differences with tokens when they're large enough for an autonomous agent to care about, the system can continue to operate for a while even when the token server becomes unavailable.
Ever been to a college record store? (Score:4)
From the stories she's told me, while the recording industry has been doing a fine job of hobbling itself (higher prices, no returns for retailers, clueless/unfriendly/unhelpful store employees, clueless store owners), no small part of the demise is due to students downloading and burning their own CDs. People are ballsy enough to walk up to the counter, ask her for a CD, write down the tracklist, and them mention that they need to get the CD from Napster. Others loudly mention to their friends that there's no need to buy that CD; they'll get get it off the Internet for them.
Last year my girlfriend went to work for the store full-time and it was rare that she'd tell me she had a slow day. Since around March of 2000, that rarity became the norm. A store that on the average went from consistently making a couple of hundred bucks a day went down to $40-$60.
And it's not just her store. There's about 4 independent record stores in the area. The store she worked at is going out of business. The store across the street is not renewing its lease. Another store is going out of business.
Like I said, the recording industry is doing a fine job, largely independent of the Internet, to kill itself. However its practices have been around for awhile. The new variable of Napster and the Internet-at-large is having an impact.
Bad mod - good post. (Score:2)
Perhaps you are right: thinking up new features for a non-existant search software is a waste of both our time, and the software developers time.
Perhaps not. Think about it this way, by my building such a list it helps the engineers in two ways: it shows that I support their software enough that I want to contribute in any way that I can (I can't code for balls), and perhaps I can think of something, as a user, that they may not have thought of. Are either of these things bad?
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Rami
P2P definition (Score:1)
Re:Why blame software for piracy? (Score:1)
Napster, 'coz a) it's actively providing a search service, and thus you can argue that they're negligent in not providing barriers there, b) that they have been, from Day 1, aware that they would have this problem (according to internal memos, IIRC), that it would be *endemic*, and that they chose to pretty much ignore it -- fully aware that mass infringement would raise their profile and customer base.
The users doing the unauthorized uploading, because they're infringing on copyrights.
The users doing the unauthorized downloading (in most cases, knowingly I'd think...), because they're infringing.
Re:Has anybody found Freenet useful yet? (Score:1)
There is no perfect solution to piracy. (Score:1)
The fact is the ease of duplicating music is the very reason why these companies are so profitable in the first place. The record companies want to be able to fully exploit various recording technologies while at the same time preventing consumers from using these very same technologies. Its good when they use it but its evil when we use it?
Before music was recordable, the economics of the music world were very different. Record companies obviously didn't exist then. The bulk of their buisness now is a direct result of cheap and easy duplication technology. The same type of technology that they are now trying to stop others from using. Is this ironic or is it just me?
re: DIY hardcore / punk (Score:1)
a network of musicians exists below the radar of the music business. made up mostly of hardcore / punkrock,, this youth-centric group sets up it's own touring networks, releases records and writes fanzines.
there are downsides:
- the music is aimed at a very small listening population. ( ie : not for everyone )
- lots of people get involved for a very short amount of time. why? they are still in school and have the amount of free time / money required.
; kevin
Re:For a pretty dang good win32 gnutella client (Score:1)
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Re:Napster is not P2P -- kindof (Score:1)
Mojo Nation [mojonation.com] does have a broker system, but those are also distributed. A rather neat idea [mojonation.net] actually. You have a file sharing system, a broker system and an indexer, and they are all distributed.
My personal experiences with MN are rather poor unfortunately, I did run a node for a few weeks, but I felt that it didn't result in anything. And uploading a file didn't work for me. It always got stuck somewhere. And the GUI (web based) isn't the best. A lack of feedback to the user.
Those are all nitpicks however, and I do hope that something like Mojo Nation, Newtella, Freenet what not can be spawned from the smoldering remains of Napster.
Re:Napster is not P2P (Score:2)
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Re:Has anybody found Freenet useful yet? (Score:5)
First, Freenet is _not_ "in beta". While I know the terms are abused completely, AFAIK "beta" generally means something that is close to being finished / feature complete. Freenet is still in the experimental stage, and likely to stay there for some time. As far as the hype goes, it has certainly lived up to everything that I have hyped it as (an interesting idea with a long way to go). In many ways, the amount of interest in the project amongst the press and geek circles has led to a hyping that has happened completely without the assistance of the actual developers - I don't know how many times I have a crinched after reading "Freenet will save the world" posts here on Slashdot. Of course Freenet is not a panacea, nothing ever is.
And no, there is no timeline for "some semblance of production". It is a free software project, and we are going to continue working on it on the rate we are able and can afford, and hopefully/maybe the day will come when it starts being truely useful. If I were to venture an optimistic guess I would say come back in a year, but don't quote me on that.
Is Freenet vaporware? There have certainly been days when I have been depressed enough by amount of work remains to feel that it actually is. Nothing is for sure in life, and nobody can be sure that Freenet will work as well we would like or even at all. So no, I can't give assurance to contrary, only say that we are working as hard as we can on glimmer of hope that we are really on to something. What more should I be doing for you?
Overpriced CD's (Score:5)
From my understanding it cost just pennies to produce a CD, and a few bucks to market it (say, $4-$5 total) Most markup is 50-70% above that so a CD should cost anywhere between $6-$9. Few CD's cost $9, most are in the $15-19 price range. (there are exceptions I know)
I have not seen a significant reduction in the price of CD's, has anyone else?
On to making my point. Until now there has been no counterweight to the high cost of purchasing CD's. Now there is. Just hook up to Napster and get your music for free. Normally you don't download the whole CD, just one or two songs. Napster is the first counterweight to the old business model.
The new economy isn't about technology so much as it's about a companies ability to be dynamic and USE technology to further increse profits. The recording industry, instead of finding new solutions is going back to old tactics (lawyers & courtrooms)
Why blame pirates for piracy? (Score:2)
1. The companies blame the software because it is the easiest target, and also the highest profile [you get a hell of a lot more news coverage suing Napster than suing Joe 1337 h@X0r].
2. I am still somewhat surprised that folks, especially around here, don't see the larger issue... yes, some people will always want to have something for nothing, but I doubt 20 million plus Napster users [as an example] are ALL morally bankrupt hooligans out to rip folks off. From personal observation, I'd say most are just fed up with the music status quo, seeking either music that's actually worth $20 a CD [when CD media is dirt heap, and most musicians come almost as cheaply after the companies finish with them] or a fair price for what is currently available. Think for a moment here, the music companies make BILLIONS of dollars in profit. Taken as a whole, the music industry is larger than many COUNTRIES. This huge sum of extra money has to be coming from somewhere, and simple laws of nature state that for every dollar in profit they make, someone got ripped off a dollar [since by definition profit is a sum of money above and beyond manufacturing and distribution charges, meaning basically that profit is whatever the difference bhetween the price of the product is, and what it is actually worth]. So, in the end, aren't the companies to blame, since if they weren't screwing us all so harshly, most of us would be more content to do things the legit [ and typically easier] way?
-={(Astynax)}=-
Re:Ever been to a college record store? (Score:1)
1: what with the traditional tapes that are out of business nowadays. Before it was all about mp3s and cd-burners, people were buying empty tapes to record music from each other. What was the impact on record stores of that? It were the record stores themselves selling those empty tapes, now they sell empty cd-r's. Now, they also sell mp3-players and cd-recorders....
2: Why would they ask for a tracklist at the desk. If you know how to handle napster, you can search for the tracklist at online record ecommerce stores.
I get it now. (Score:1)
This goes to show you the depths to which the world has fallen to; The dollar is the center of the universe (or pound in Britain, you get the point).
I think they're underestimating things (Score:4)
FSP became the protocol du jour for illicit activity (and some legal activity as well) but things changed a bit. It was no longer easy to find sites and they often involved bartering, give me a good piece of software, a good site or a good picture and I'll give you a link to a good site. The BBS scene had this already of course, they often enforced upload to download ratios.
FSP dried up as well (I don't even know if FSP is still around) due to the same pressures as FTP clients. Other peer-to-peer architectures showed up, Hotline and others. They all were self restricting in that it wasn't automatic that you could access copyrighted materials. You had to click banner adds, submit software and agree that you weren't a Fed (har har, has anybody even researched whether a federal agent has to reply truthfuly, especially to a form letter?)
Napster changed this a bit, it was only meant for one thing, and that was to facilitate the exchange of music. It didn't enforce restrictions on what you downloaded and since it wasn't a true P2P, more of a peer to server to peer, it was easy to find what you wanted. The central server handled the searching and host details for you. It was possible to get what you wanted without worrying about keeping up with the scene. It's a tool that the adepts would enjoy using, but didn't have a bar of entry that will keep out the casual users.
I could easily set up my dad with Napster on his Windows box if he were the type of person who listened to music. He probably wouldn't even realize that there were copyright issues involved. It's easy enough and risk free enough that he probably wouldn't care. Most people won't lift a CD out of a record store, the risk is too high and there's a stigma attached to it.
The agencies such as the RIAA are scared, and they should be. Previously they could rob their customers blind since most people really had no comcept of what the value of their products were. With prevalent sharing of music people will realize that the distribution costs are minimal, there will still be some fuzziness on production costs but not enough fuzziness to justify paying over a buck per song.
The present scenario where a bag of money is handed over to the RIAA companies, who grab most of it, then handed down the corporate chain with each successive person getting a smaller and smaller cut until the artist (the person who actually CREATED the music, who had SKILLS that most people do NOT have) gets only a penny or two will have to end. Maybe not tomorrow, but soon.
Re:Ever been to a college record store? (Score:1)
Yes, it can be banned (Score:1)
If internet weren't a gigantic intelligent system, a global brain of sorts, with its own emergent defense mechanisms and counter-strategies, it would have been muzzled, tamed and turned into a government / big-money / corporate mouthpiece already, just like the regular media.
Although I would put my bet on the 'global brain' against the petty old-style censors/totalitarians, that doesn't mean the result of its victory will necessarily be beneficial for the individuals. The power corrupts, and that holds not only for the network of neurons making up human brain but for any intelligent network (complex system [calresco.org]) thinking ahead and strategizing in pursuit of its own happiness. The early precursors of this corruption are already apparent in the loss of privacy, spam, computer viruses...
For a pretty dang good win32 gnutella client (Score:2)
It alleviates the problems or complaints the articles author had with the Gnutella network (manually finding servers). I've found it to be rather good, but quite a bit slower than Napster. The protocol seems to be coming along, but I believe it will always require more bandwidth than a napster like central server. Regardless, as broadband continues to roll out, these services will only get better, more pervasive, and even more difficult to stop. They will replace or compete with mainstream broadcast media within 10 years. Unless those folks decide to compete seriously in individual digital file delivery.
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copyright protects corporations (Score:1)
Re:Overpriced CD's (Score:1)
almost all "traded" mp3's on the net have really crappy quality either by design or because of apathy.
Re:let down... (Score:1)
I never stood a chance.
Er - have you LOOKED at the website? (Score:2)
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no next page button? (Score:1)
Summary: True P2P is hard to us therefore won't be mainstream.
my take: If somebody wants something bad enough and doesn't have a way to get it they will go to great length to get it. example: I spent days/hours trying to z-modem down "doom" from a bbs on a 14.4 way back in the day rueing that I hadn't built up a time bank... ok so my example doesn't make sense, bugger off then!
Aren't op-eds fun!?
YMMV
E.
Re:Has anybody found Freenet useful yet? (Score:1)
And honestly, I really don't care what clueless reporters are writing, it just strikes me a weird that people like you take it as gospel...
Well, to be honest...
I'm not a developer. I'm an SA.
In other words, I know that 0.3.5 means that it's a pre-release version and that there have probably been quite a few improvements made beforehand.
I also understand the basic concept of what Freenet is trying to do. From what I've read, I definitely want to see more.
But ask me to understand exactly where along the development path you are or to comprehend the minutae of the networking theory that makes it work? Sorry, I just don't have the experience to do that. As I said, I'm neither a developer nor a theoretician.
Which is why I depend on people like you -- or journalists who claim to have spoken with you -- to bridge that gap.
What can I say except that it's human nature.
Those who are writing stuff like this would be wise to remember that not everybody has the experience or the knowledge to fully understand what they're doing. I can't force you to write plain-english documentation about your work and prominently place it on the SourceForge site. It is, after all, your own free time you're putting into this project. All I can do is suggest that you may want to nip the problem of all this wrong hype in the bud.
If all you want to do is code and work on a really cool project, that's fine. It's your choice and your time. Keep in mind, however, that in order for your project to be successful you *will* need non-coders like myself to have a desire to play with your product and hit it as hard as we can and give it a good production QA testing so that we can report bugs, anomalies, and successes. If you feel that you have no need for others to get involved in that way, then Power To You -- you've obviously got a fanstastic and dedicated group of people.
If you *do* in fact want Beta testers, however, you probably want to spend some time updating the SourceForge page to explain exactly what works and what doesn't work at this stage so that a visitor (i.e. journalist or other non-coder) doesn't need to try and divine that info from the CVS source tree. Keep us excited and we'll come back for more.
This should be put on Jack Valenti's desk. (Score:1)
Did you hear that, Jack Valenti? That means less lawsuits for you to undertake, so shut your yapper and be smug with your current revenues!
To play this CD... (Score:3)
Napster is not P2P (Score:5)
See Free Haven [freehaven.net] for resources on real P2P development.
When a Court orders the shutting off of Napster, it shuts off the server(s) and the system is gone. The judge doesn't have to enter your home to shut down the whole system.
On correct implementations of P2P the court would have to shut down at least N-1 nodes of an N-node network (or break links so that no 2 nodes can talk to each other).
Ummm... (Score:1)
Why blame software for piracy? (Score:2)
Is there a good solution yet? (Score:2)
Now that music and software piracy is really taking off, they're starting to actually look into solutions. And from my point of view, I think that there is no solution, and it's all going to come down to the trust/honor thing. The record companies obviously can't prevent digital distribution from taking place, and they're going to actually address the issue soon rather than turning their backs to any possible solution that isn't 100% in their favor.
I think that the only current solution is offering the material online for download with a fee, and just assuming that the majority of users will get it this way legally, rather than resorting to piracy. Granted, there are always going to be some people who will copy the material from others, but the same can be said about people who steal music from record stores. Something's going to have to change, and the ball is in the industry's court.
But then again, we all knew this
Re:Napster is not P2P (Score:1)
Good article, but missing the point (Score:5)
Companies like Bertelsmann and Warner and the rest of the MPAA/RIAA crowd want to turn the internet into yet another passive, advertisement-filled medium. They don't want people - users, consumers, eyeballs - to decide what to send across the net and what is available for viewing or hearing. They want to decide that for you, and make you have to pay for all of it.
And the best way they can do that is to demonize the freedom of the internet, to show that really the consumer is better off if they run everything. So they don't want to believe that Gnutella doesn't work very well, and that Napster isn't hurting sales.
And they don't want you to believe that either.
Tim O'Reilly has written a far better article (Score:2)
The article points out that most of the discussion about peer-to-peer focusses on Napster and Gnutella which pretty well misses the point of P2P entirely.
Well worth the read. (The comparision between the meme-spaces of the Free Software Foundation and the Open Source Initiative are also quite interesting.)
Re:Napster is not P2P (Score:1)
Steps like these could dampen the spread of P2P protocols fairly quickly without breaking into any homes. Of course the impact would be greater for the casual users. The die-hards would constantly modify the port/protocol to stay ahead of any such filters...
Re:Overpriced CD's (Score:2)
1. - most music on napster is crappily ripped
if you can find it at a decent bitrate it's usually ripped by a piece of crap program, or not normalized (really low audio levels,some moron had his EQ plugin running so it is all boomy,etc...) the quality stinks.
2. - most people you find to download from are on cablemodems or lie about what their connection is
cablemodems are fast for download, suck for upload. and how many kiddies tell napster that they have a t3 when they dial in on their 28.8bps modem? (or the other way... You have A T3 but tell napster that you have a 336 modem) download times stink, you have buttwipes that constanly kill your download from them, I.E. the lamer to real user ratio is very bad.... lamers rule it now.
What can be done? start private sharing networks, or use normal trading systems that us old timers used to use before napster.
Re:Napster is not P2P -- kindof (Score:2)
(talking about Mojo exchange) "At that time, the debtor pays up by transferring a digital coin from his account on ***the Mojo Nation token server*** to the creditor account."
For a mojo to have any value as a unit of currency, it has to be a scare resource - you can't just let users create their own. Hence, it must be controlled by an entity, in this case AZI. If AZI vanished off the face of the earth, the value of a mojo goes with it pretty quickly - although your stash amount (if signed by AZI) could be validated without AZI, it couldn't be modified. Hence, my comment that it is very close to Napster in style.
Better than Mojo (IMHO), is karma
Mike.
Re:Has anybody found Freenet useful yet? (Score:1)
Freenet's gotten a lot of ink. Angry file-swappers say that even if the world's biggest record companies can sue Napster into submission, they'll never stop Freenet.
They may be right in a year or two. But for now, Freenet's still beta software, and hellishly complex to use. If you've ever wanted to learn how to set up your own proxy server, this is the software for you. I recently blew a perfectly good evening on it before finally getting it to work.
Even then, I couldn't find much of anything worth downloading. I had to rely on lists of available files published on various Web sites, because Freenet still lacks a network-wide search feature.
Keep in mind that Freenet is still under development and bound to get better. But as long as it remains a pure peer-to-peer system, with no central server to keep tabs on the network, Freenet will probably never be as slick and efficient as Napster. Which is why peer-to-peer data piracy may not be quite such an apocalyptic peril after all.
While the author does realize that Freenet isn't quite finished, he (like many of us who have tried the software) thought that we were using something in Beta -- which you clearly say it is not.
Perhaps it might be useful for one of the developers of Freenet to clarify the status of the project on the Sourceforge web site? You may want to make even clearer that the software is nowhere near ready for use in a production environment (by putting this info in big bold letters on the front page). That way, clueless reporters might stop writing things like what I quoted above.
And as for what more you should be doing? Absolutely nothing, aside from contributing to the realm of ideas and letting us know when our impression of your ideas is so off-base that it results in articles like that one.
Good response, but missing the point (Score:1)
B: e. old buddy, as a token archetype of free-spirited non-conformists I would like to mention to you certain misapprehensions in Phaid's comment which I fear might be common in people of your ilk - enumerated 'cuz I know that that will
piss you off.
(1) The article may have got the facts right - but it's lacking where it counts. The headline was "P2P piracy? Don't get too worked up yet". The conclusion was "Which is why peer-to-peer data piracy may not be quite such an apocalyptic peril after all." Which leads me to question when Mr. Bray thinks businesses should get worked up - when the technology is viable, perhaps? But then, it is too late. Because business plans take time to implement, and forming a business plan when the Barbarians are past the gates and absconding with your women-folk is not a way to run a business. P2P current impracticality is no reason not to worry. And who amongst us believes that there will never be an idiot proof, retail level p2p network? Conclusion: current impracticality is worth precisely nothing. Future viability is what Mr. Bray should be concerned with - and isn't.
(2) Alluding to the wants of companies [they don't want to hear this, they want to turn the internet, they want to put us in glass bulbs and run their computers off our body heat, etc.] is a fool's game. Companies don't have wants. CEO's have wants. They want to have brilliant careers and defend their companies against technological threats which would render their business obselete. That is what they are hired for. Shareholder's also have wants. They want their shares to make them filthy stinking rich. A very stupid CEO might think that demonizing the internet and attempting to make it passive [whatever that means - is he going to confiscate our keyboards?] would enhance his career. A smart CEO will look at a new technology, realize that it is going to destroy his business and, if the technology cannot be subverted [Internet, arpanet, figure it out] try to make his business work in the new environment. This isn't deep. This is f***ing obvious.
(3) Phaid seems to think that reports that file-swapping networks are a threat to music sales are actually propaganda spread by recording companies, the RIAA, and possibly the bastards who sent our boys to fight in 'nam. If you haven't figured out by now that file-swapping is going to cannibalize off of CD sales - perhaps not now but certainly in the near future - then I strongly suggest you give it some deep thought Let me help you on your way...
(A) The relatively low subscriptions has kept file-swapping to singles, however the explosion in broad band technologies which we are experiencing right now will encourage the "napsterization" of entire CD's at a time. The Economist has projected that by 2004 Cable and Dsl subscribers will outline dial up subscribers - the technology is not in issue. And whereas the singles which are commonly traded now may whet the appetite, whole CD trading, once it hits the mainstream will sate it. This is why near campus sales have been hit already by napsters - students use broadband. Conclusion: when whole CD's are traded online by more people, fewer will buy CD's.
(B) Napster is becoming exponentially more popular. Media Metrix reported that the Napster application climbed from 1.1 million unique users at home in February 2000 to 4.9 million unique users in July, a 345 percent increase. You've seen these numbers. If the trend continues, by next Christmas primitive New Guinean tribes-people will be using Napster. And if x million people are using it then n/x are using it to the exclusion of buying CD's where n is rising and x is rising. Do the math.
Point is the reason that Record Companies don't want to believe that Napster isn't hurting sales is because even if it isn't right now, it will be. And if it gets shut down then a viable true P2P or a server/P2P Napster clone running from the Island of Tonga will take it's place. Do you get it?
e. : F*** you, Gates.
Re:Why blame pirates for piracy? (Score:1)
No, this is not accurate. The worth of a product is not a direct function of its production costs. What's wrong with companies making profiut ? I mean, isn't that what companies are supposed to do? (if they are not supposed to make profits, there is no incentive for companies to provide more utility or lower prices to customers) It's called "capitalism". At the very least, in context of a capitalist society, the fact that a company is "making profit" does not mean that it is ripping its customers off -- it means that the company in question is performing well.
And no, companies aren't to blame for the low moral standards of the "pirates". Just as retail stores aren't "responsible" for the fact that shoplifters steal (because the products are "too expensive")
If the CD is not worth $20, well don't buy it. If you really have to own it that badly, it's probably worth $20- to you, unless your honesty can be bought for a twenty dollar bill (meaning you're either very poor, very dishonest, or both)
Re:Is there a good solution yet? (Score:1)
It's not going to get cheaper because it's old, but it will get cheaper once the musician is no longer entitled to royalties (ie: is dead). There are already budget priced CDs from famous jazz musicians that work out at well under $1- per song. I would expect that you would see similar price reductions when downloading online.
Re:Overpriced CD's (Score:2)
Your "cost statistics" are completely fictitious. A CD should cost however much it costs. If someone can set up a record company that can make CDs available at lower prices and offer a better value proposition to the artists, then all the major record companies will obviously lose business. The price fixing in question involved a few major record companies and top 40 records. So it doesn't seem to have increased the prices of CDs overall by orders of magnitude, but rather resulted in moderate price excesses in top 40 CDs (where they could afford to reduce the price but don't)
Few CD's cost $9, most are in the $15-19 price range. (there are exceptions I know)
Most ??? Most of the ones I purchase are in the $8-14 price range.
On to making my point. Until now there has been no counterweight to the high cost of purchasing CD's
Yes there has -- the market. If someone is capable of inventing a business model that offers a better value proposition to the artist, and offers lower prices to the consumers, then they will prevail. All napster does is provide an easy way to cheat.
The new economy isn't about technology so much as it's about a companies ability to be dynamic and USE technology to further increse profits. The recording industry, instead of finding new solutions is going back to old tactics (lawyers & courtrooms)
Common rhetoric. Actually, the record companies are working with napster to establish a legitimate business model for the "new economy". They're not really objecting to the "technology" as much as they are to the blatant piracy commited in the name of "technology".
Re:copyright protects corporations (Score:1)
I see a lot of this kind of thing, and the "record companies" seem to be used as a convenient whipping boy to justify piracy, or the misguided attitude that it's OK to circumvent the artists compensation because they can make money "some other way".
Re:Overpriced CD's (Score:2)
That's because most CDs only have one to three real tracks. You might as well fill the rest of the disc with audio from congressional sessions or the Big Brother house.
I think we can blame this on Led Zeppelin. When they released their 4th album, they refused to release a single of Stairway to Heaven, so people had to buy the whole album. Sure, there are some cd-singles (for something like $5.99) and tape singles, but Zeppelin proved the whole business model.
Napster as commercially viable service (Score:1)
Re:Has anybody found Freenet useful yet? (Score:1)
You point out two problems in Freenet, unreliable key lists and no searching, adding up to an inability to find files. Luckily, these won't be problems for much longer as I am personally working on solutions to just these problems. These are exactly what is next on my list. If you want more reliable key lists on the key index servers then you should write to the maintainer of the Key Index CGI scripts [thalassocracy.org] and bug him to put in dead key culling. The people working on then Freenet implementation don't write the key index code.
If you think of Freenet as another Napster, we are certainly way behind any reasonable schedule. I mean really, how long can it take to write Napster? Luckily, we're not trying to make Napster. Every other P2P project is way behind Freenet in terms of actually implementing a secure, anonymous system. Not to knock the other projects, I wish them the best of luck.
Re:Is there a good solution yet? (Score:2)
But people with money and power like to at least preserve the illusion that they have it. So I expect that there will be a huge effort by the media companies (and their government suckwhores^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H lapdogs) to eliminate piracy through legislation and technological locks. This will be about as successful as it's been so far.
I'm betting the solution will end up being something along the lines of coin-op (more likely credit card operated) music kiosks that will let you download SMDI tracks, and encode them on SMDI disks, and play them on SMDI players. You and I and the other geek/hackers will find other means to get at our music (there are millions of people out there now with computers, and gigs of MP3s - they'll find some way to spread them). But 99% of kids out there are going to take mommy and daddy's charge card, and go download the latest Backstreet Boyz and make a CD - because that will be what's promoed on TV and Radio, by their favorite spokespersons. Because 99% of people out there are stupid tasteless sheep. Make no mistake, that is exactly how we got into this situation in the first place.
The Internet? don't get to worked up yet (Score:5)
The Internet works -- just not all that well. And that's good news for BBS and online services like Compuserv and Prodigy.
Mind you, the concept retains its geeky appeal. It's not just the prospect of communicating with anybody you want, phone companies be damned. There's also the techy coolness of the idea -- direct linkages between millions of computers, without the clumsy mediation of some central BBS service. A slick idea, but devilishly hard to execute.
[...]
Keep in mind that the Internet is still under development and bound to get better. But as long as it remains a pure network system, with no central service or company to keep tabs on the network, the Internet will probably never be as slick and efficient as AOL. Which is why Internet style communication may not be quite such an apocalyptic peril after all.
Re:Napster is not P2P -- kindof (Score:5)
If it's wrong to call Napster p2p, it's equally wrong to call it client-server. Napster is a mix.
Traditional Client-server would be something like FTP - one server, lots of direct connections with clients. Star shaped topology.
Pure p2p is gnutella - god awful topology, connections all over the place, all nodes are "equal".
Napster is a bit of both - client-server for queries and direct communication for transfers. This is an important point, because if Napster was purely client-server, they would be hosting content, and thus clearly would have been shut down a long time ago for holding all those mp3s.
> Free Net and Mojo Nation are P2P.
Doesn't Mojo nation have a central broker for handling Mojo's (ie a bank)? It's just like napster in that sense.
Mike
Has anybody found Freenet useful yet? (Score:4)
Peer-to-peer file downloads are still a long way off from being useful in any way.
I'm really curious whether or not people have actually managed to use Freenet in the way it was intended. My own attempts at using the network found that: (a) There are almost no reliable lists of keys/files available. This is important since the network is not searchable. Without a list of keys, Freenet is a useless exercise in creating encrypted data that can never be decrypted. (b) The network is slow to use and even when I attempt to find published keys, they don't work 80% of the time and another 10% of the time it's too slow to be useful.
Thus I get about a 10% success rate in grabbing files from Freenet. This is hardly a good sign.
I'm aware that the software is "in beta" (as it has been for months already), but would somebody please tell me whether or not the project has lived up to any of its hype since it first came out? Are there any Freenet developers here who might be able to shed some light on what its current status is? Is there a concrete timeline where it will move from Beta into some semblance of production? Is there any attempt at creating a global list of keys or a search function (for those keys whose authors want them to be public)? The idea itself is incredibly interesting, but I'd like some assurance that for all the hype, we're not looking at another example of vaporware.
Keep in mind that the entire model only works if people actually *request* the keys. My understanding of the model is that files only move from place to place if they are requested with some regularity. Otherwise they just sit, taking up disk space on somebody's machine, until their lack of use causes them to be overwritten by more important keys. For the moment, all I've seen is hype about this project with very little substance.
The p2p future? (Score:1)
P2P has big hurdles ahead (Score:4)
The first, as with everything network related is bandwidth, bandwidth, and more bandwidth. Most of the materials being sent around today are large. Correct that VERY large. Most of the connections are small, very small (56k is the upper end, only
The second, is ease of use. The assessment of freenet is accurate. It does have a way to go, but look for it to get there. Dedicated people are working on it and like Gnutella it is growing. Gnutella is much closer, and it is not a stretch for anyone to go to gnutellahosts.com to start the link. Windows update, on-line registration, etc. has gotten people use to this. A little tweak to integration and people would not know it was even happening.
Third and probably the most concerning is the legal issues. ISPs may be protected, but it is only very light gray whether individuals are. It could and will be argued at some point that you allowed your computer to be used for illegal activity.
Will they sue/arrest 9 million Gnutella users? No. Just 10 or 20 really public cases where winning is certain. The worst of the worst which will be used to paint the entire user base as criminal "@ackers", out to steal your files, send you viruses, etc...
why pure p2p? (Score:1)
Re:Why blame alcohol for alcoholism? (Score:1)
Re:This should be put on Jack Valenti's desk. (Score:1)
Re:let down... (Score:1)
Re:Is there a good solution yet? (Score:1)
Amen! I'd gladly pay for downloading tracks from the vendor. Guaranteed quality, no BS rip errors, no added sounds, and so on.
The killer, of course, from my (consumer) perspective is pricing. I think that "old" music (say, greater than 10 years) ought to be downloadable for no more than a dollar, with maybe bulk discounts. I can see "current hits" being considered more valuable, up to maybe 2 or 3 dollars per song. Maybe a price differential for bitrate, too, although I'm skeptical on that one.
The other thing to consider though is that the brick-and-mortar retailers with a significant inventory of physical stock DO NOT want any digital distribution, especially if it will dramatically undercut their prices. Why would *anyone* buy a USD$14.99 CD when they could buy a couple of tracks online for $5?
Re:Napster is not P2P (Score:2)
--
Re:Has anybody found Freenet useful yet? (Score:2)
It doesn't help. The writer of the article probably has absolutely no clue what beta actually means, but simply used it as a term for "unfinished software" (because in the world of non-free software, beta is the first stage that users ever see). The web page does say that Freenet is in development, and I can't find a single mention of the term "beta" on it.
The current release is numbered 0.3.5. Didn't that give you a hint?
And honestly, I really don't care what clueless reporters are writing, it just strikes me a weird that people like you take it as gospel...
Re:Overpriced CD's (Score:1)
peas,
-Kabloona
Shoplifting isn't likely to credibly challenge... (Score:1)
Relative to the total population, shoplifters make up a small percentage- like Napster users.
www.ridiculopathy.com [ridiculopathy.com]
Re:Big Brother (Score:1)
Moz.
let down... (Score:2)
Ka-Ching! (Score:2)
Right?
(This post may reflect my general distaste for corporations, the media, and everything in general. Then again, it may not.)