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Music Media

Napster Going Legit 224

Posted by CmdrTaco from the going-legit-and-becoming-useless dept.
mtstump writes "Wired is running a story stating that Napster has signed deals with three of the five major recording companies in an effort to make Napster legit." It's the perfect model: the users pay you *and* for the bandwidth to share the songs they already bought. Course I still don't see the benefit for us. No doubt we'll see more of these deals as napster becomes less relevant and decentralized networks grow in popularity.
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Napster Going Legit

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  • Re:Yet another little guy goes under (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I don't see how this addresses the issue really, but the rhetoric is truthful whether or not it's revolutionary. Given some of the responses I'm just gonna take this opportunity to post my favorite reply on the subject.
    "I find it both amusing and profoundly irritating that Copyright Cartel Apologists continue to engage in their use of "newspeak" to promote their corporate agendas.

    Copyright violation is not stealing. It is not theft. It is not piracy. It is copyright violation. Even a quick reading of the law, and of court decisions, makes this abundantly obvious to the most casual of observers. There is a reason for this, and I'll say it again (since there seem to be so many thick headed people who can't keep their terminology even remotely straight): copyright violation is not even remotely similiar to theft. Theft and stealing deny the victim the original product (it is "taken away" from the victim). If I steal a car, the owner will find themself walking (or hopping a cab) home after their visit to the local precinct to report the crime. If I replicate the car and drive off in the copy, the owner is denied nothing. Nor is the manufacturer. Yes, the manufacturer will scream that my unauthorized replication of the car has denied them much needed profits, profits based on a business model that predated widespread replicator use, but that is hardly theft. It is nothing more than sour grapes because their business model has become obsolete and they are either going to have to change those business models or look for another line of work.

    Of course they will use their existing capital to buy legislation from congress to protect their business model, just as the existing Copyright Cartels have done now that widespread information replicators (read: computers) are in use. And of course our congress, which routinely sells itself to anyone with cash like cheap whores, will readily oblige.

    That changes nothing. Copyright violation is indeed a crime (and a rather synthetic one at that), with its own definitions, and its own set of punishments (which don't really resemble the definitions or punishments of theft at all, much less piracy on the high seas). I'm sure that once nano technology allows widespread replication of material goods, providing the promise of prosperity for every human being on the planet, these same "intellectual" property laws will be used to keep the masses impoverished and beholden to an oligarchy of outdated corporations, exactly as they are doing to our artistic culture today.

    Even then, by no rational defintion, will unauthorized replication be even remotely akin to theft, just as copyright violation has nothing whatsoever to do with stealing or piracy, except in the minds of those whose limited imaginations and limitless greed compell them to do all they can to keep the (western) world in a state of cultural impoverishment."
    And I wish I could remember who to give credit to.
  • Tie it to your credit card number and personal info. If someone else can access your music, they can access everything else you can as well.
  • I think the poster is referring to the EMI/Roxio deal recently announced (and beaten to death in a /. article [slashdot.org] already).

    It's all moot anyhow - the real show is the DRM technologies built into Windows XP. Think XP will let you burn DRM-locked files with its built-in CD burner? Remember that within a year, almost every consumer PC will be shipping with XP installed.

    -Isaac

  • Want to hurt the record industry, but you're too hooked on their content?

    Screw them the legal way - buy used CDs exclusively!

    In the physical world, the first-sale doctrine still applies (gawd knows the recording combines have tried to eliminate it, but it still stands).

    So, don't give the RIAA any more of your cash (only to have it used against you in the halls of Congress). When you buy a used CD, you support your local retailer (since most stores with used CDs are independent) - the artist has already been paid whatever pittance their contract stipulates for that copy.

    Of course, it's always better to avoid consuming their products entirely (since there's a chance that someone else was looking for the used CD that you bought, but will instead buy a new copy and give the RIAA more money after all), but this is the best way to minimize RIAA revenue and still remain legal.

    Respect copyright law - screw the RIAA - buy used!

    That is all.

    -Isaac

  • > In the days of WinXP, the answer may well be "You can't. DRM's built into the OS. Here's a Linux CD, try this instead."

    Exactly! For better or for worse, media and software companies now have the tools and laws to strictly enforce license compliance. What the public will tolerate is a separate issue (vis. Sony backing away from it's "SMDI-way or the highway" strategy for its (not quite)"MP3" players.

    They've got enough rope to hang themselves now, that's for sure. Free software is bound to get a lot more popular.

    -Isaac
  • Her music really means something to me, and I'd like to give her a six inch cbeck in person.

    Of course I'm joking, but it can be hard to reach specific musicians, and what about all the backup/studio musicians?
  • Hell, I'd pay for Napster the way it was in the glory days. I'd say 50% of the files I downloaded were good rips with correct naming. Another 25% had something nominally wrong with them: something quirky with the RIP or naming. Another 10% had something really annoying, and 15% were just something I pitched because the naming was wrong or the RIP was totally braindamaged.

    I think generally it worked pretty well, and I think the popularity and overall quality attests to this.

    I'd pay even more ($15/mo?) for a service that let me download guaranteed quality MP3s of any artist/any song. That's $180/year and it's way more money than the record industry has ever gotten out of me or ever will for CD purchases.

  • Napster has sold out. Use Bearshare instead.

    And you wouldn't consider BearShare to have sold out? When you install it, it also installs OnFlow, a nice little piece of spyware.


    Cheers,

  • Ahh, that's good. I actually think it's a neat little program, but the sneakiness of adding the spyware was disturbing, so I just have it on a junk computer that's used for untrusted things. Does their site make that workaround clear to any potential downloaders, or is it something you'd only learn after checking out usenet, forums, etc.?

    Anyway, I just thought it was odd that someone would denounce Napster for selling out while promoting something which was using a spyware add-on to make money of their own, all while being more shady about it.


    Cheers,

  • Yes, it's their privilege, as long as the courts continue to interpret copyright law in that way. I'm not arguing that... today.

    My point was just that it's not fair to say "Why didn't Napster just cut a deal with the record labels?" If the labels were willing to make such a deal the Internet music landscape would be very different.

  • why should there be a mandatory charge to use Napster on top of the service you already provide?

    Because running the index servers costs something. Napster has to either receive money from somewhere, or close.

    You can either pay Napster to help you find the MP3 you want, or pay AMD for a CPU so that you can convert your WAV/AIFF into MP3 yourself. Until the musicians start selling the music to you in the format that you prefer, it will always cost something somehow.


    ---
  • No. But you're missing something if you're not listening to the Black Eyed Peas. Most of pop has *always* been bad. Pop has also always had redemption, hidden somewhere. Right now it's in some hip hop and electronica. And other places, debatably.
    --
  • While music is an occasional distraction from my 24+ hour coding binges (I prefer Classical and Perl, thank you very much), I think that P2P has a much more important area to cover, and that the geek who can manage the best system for it will come out with a few million more $$$ for buying some nifty toys at ThinkGeek [thinkgeek.com]. And unlike Music or Movies, there's no four-letter, lawyer-ridden organization to come down hard on us. It's something every geek needs, every geek has, and if we pooled ours together, we (and the rest of the world) would be much better off in the long run. Every geek would be happier, more content, and better equipped to spend a few more days in marathon debugging sessions. All we need to do is share it.

    Share the pr0n, that is.
  • Only because seemingly nobody else has ever been willing to do the work of correlating all that information- and pre-Internet, there _was_ no convenient way to get all that information. The RIAA doesn't even have things like release dates on some of their platinum and MULTI-platinum selling albums. I continually have to go scouring the net for the missing information- I started using CDnow and then (happy thought) went to Google, often getting the info in the results page directly (see a 'released 1979', question answered).

    Anyone can do this. I'm using http://www.riaa.com/Gold-Intro-2.cfm [riaa.com] as my starting point. While they're not charging for THAT I suggest trying to make some sense of the data.

    Specifically, I'm focussing my effort on one particular metric that's convenient. I could have taken down all sorts of information but it would take me far longer and I can't spare the time. What would be great is if someone else went through that data from another angle- for instance, I'm amassing a really _complete_ dataset based on years_out*millions_sold, which is very good at showing historical relevance over time periods greater than ten years. Someone ought to take down all the years of release and the year of the most recent platinum cert! I am convinced there will be strong correlations indicating a brick-wall dropoff for ALL artists post-85 or so, based on the fact that I have seen _all_ the certs while I went through taking down release dates. Even as far back as that, the industry was beginning its pump-and-dump practices: for instance, Shaun Cassidy, and some of the Disco acts illustrated a tendency to go instantly platinum and then never sell another record from back catalog. The thing is, these days EVERYBODY seems to be stuck in that mode, whether it makes sense for them or not.

    The truth is out there. Only reason I stumbled upon it was because I set out to do the work. It's amazing that apparently nobody has ever done this- but then, it's an industry where they don't bother to get accurate or complete information on their own _greatest_ sellers for their _own_ website, so what do you expect?

    Theoretically, this un-asked-for research might be of great benefit to the RIAA, since theoretically it could lead to their producing artists with staying power. However, I've already mentioned elsewhere that the LAST thing they want is artists with staying power- they want neophytes, veterans demand better pay. So it is my hope that the research can be used to help _indie_ artists develop careers with staying power. And of course, I record music myself- I could use the info too.

    And yeah- I'm pretty psyched to have stumbled upon this important something :)

  • No, I think the bit that got 'insightful' was the bit about 'tragedy of the commons' being replaced with 'tragedy of the elite'.

    It's a really good point. There _is_ no commons in modern society. Almost nobody but obscure open source developers even acknowledge the _concept_ of a commons. These days, it's 'who owns it?'. There is no conception of a commons, and so no 'tragedy of the commons' can occur because NOTHING is public.

    I think this had better stop being taken for granted. This loss of public commons (in every sphere) is NOT inevitable, or divinely appointed, or natural law. It is a collective choice, assisted by really extensive lobbying and public relations on the part of entities which repudiate any concept of a commons.

    If we're gonna give it up we should LOOK at what we're giving up, not overlook it. That's why I feel the comment was indeed insightful. It touched upon something that's VERY important. Overwhelmingly so. For crying out loud, public resources have always been a hallmark of society! To abandon that is a BIG CHANGE.

  • This conclusion is true. I am currently in the middle of a project, combing through the RIAA's publically available data on gold and platinum records and looking for information on longterm sales. One thing jumped out at me that I wasn't looking for- since around 1990, the pattern of platinum and multiplatium record sales is that the act sells multiplatinum while the label is pushing it, and then when the label stops, the act entirely stops selling. In previous decades, records had the capacity to sell from back catalog. That doesn't particularly happen anymore. People _are_ losing interest in bands once the label stops pumping them into the stores, by the RIAA's own figures. Real-world data not only supports this, but _hugely_ supports it. It's a very big change taking place in the last ten or fifteen years.
  • Assuming, that is, that new CD writers work with unauthorised burning software, and/or don't contain watermark detection code in their firmware which requires a challenge/response to bypass, or just kills the burn outright.

    Remember when, on December 31, 1999, RPC-1 (multi-region) DVD-ROM drives were phased out of manufacturing, and old drives became an expensive black-market item? The same thing could happen to burners.
  • I don't know if you noticed, but (among other queries) a search for "funk" on Napster returned zero hits. Napster is dead.

    The sad part is that Gnutella's not sufficiently useable to be a replacement, even on a 1.5 megabit line on a fast computer. And yes, I've tried just about every client out there (BearShare, ToadNode, Limewire, etc.) - while you can get some interesting content every once in a while, it just doesn't measure up to what Napster used to be. The scaling issues inherent in peered networks may be a fundamental stumbling block to their popularity and efficiency, and centralized networks are easily sued.

    The kneejerk answer, to take things offshore, seems to currently only be carried out by pretty slimy people (with a few exceptions), with ties to offshore gambling, sketchy offshore banks, etc. (I just helped expose one such venture.) Frankly, I'd trust the RIAA more after looking into some of these things.

    So I'm not sure what the answer is, or where things are going to go, other than small, tight sharing networks of people. The record companies are pretty happy, they seem to have won for now.

    And oh yeah, the record labels are starting to take stakes in CD recording companies to prevent you from burning data you shouldn't be. =/ Ack.

    Welcome to the Future(TM).

    David E. Weekly [weekly.org]

  • Funny how it doesn't actually work this way. I wonder why that could be?

    Because people wouldn't pay $15 for a CD-R copy of the CD, and they don't have the facilities for the silkscreen and printing to make full-fledged duplicate?

    Oh, right, and the IP laws. But what does IP law have to do with loss? It just says you can or can't do, not what the CD store loses if robbed. And, technically, what they lost was a CD worth $15. That $15 is a ridiculous price for that product is a secondary issue.

    And the fact remains, if you steal something from a CD store, they lost _something_ while copying an mp3 causes no loss at all.
  • Let's have a 'Day of Shame' and email all of our criminal mp3's back to the record companies.

    We're sorry you can have them back now. I hope Don Henley didn't lose his house.
  • this is a big problem. if I am going to be paying for it I want it to be encoded in 256+k and I want it to be in prestine condition, no crackles, no pops, no sound distortion... I have a feeling that none of this will happen. In fact, I know this won't happen. Napster will not claim any guarntee, they are too smart for that (scary I know).

    at least when it was free there was no worries about quality.. If it sucked you just downloaded another one..

    I think someone should do something to IRC and make it a Napster like service.. I wish I had the techie knowhow. I am quite able to get DCC's on IRC, but are others?

    I only support the artists that allow the free trade of their music, and I suggest everyone else follow my lead (and push for your favorite artist to do the same). Hippy music has a tendency to be free to the listeners.. Why shouldn't all music?

  • You could atleast make it a link [yahoo.com]!
  • Although both guys often make for good soundbites, I don't expect those two quotes to be making the top ten lists of their fans anytime soon. :)

    Since Linus and Larry have plenty of copyrighted stuff, it's only natural that they want to see it given all due protection. Hard to fault them for that, really.

    I think the average Slashdot reader isn't averse to paying money for music. I certainly have no problem with it. If I could plunk down a reasonable amount of money to get some rare discs I've been looking for, I'd do it in a second rather than rely on lossy mp3s.

    What *does* tend to piss off the Slashdot folk is the RIAA's heavy-handed attempts to try and shove excessive control down our collective throats with the use of SDMI, control schemes and other unpleasantries that try to get in the way of enjoying the music we can simply pay for right now.

  • ...It will actually do us some good, showing that net distribution controlled by the broadcasting/distribution monopolists is not a viable business model.
    --
  • I honest to God wouldn't mind paying a small fee every month for the songs I want to listen. As long as I get good quality complete files, I would be happy. However I think there are quite a few things that are going to prevent this from happening.. in no particular order, they are

    (a) Given the current mindset of the record labels, I am sure that they will not get anywhere near what I (and you) think is a reasonable price.

    (b) I doubt we are going to see a wide variety of songs out there anytime soon... everything from Paul Oakenfold to Mandalay to Ademius to .

    (c) I want to be able to transfer all my songs to portable players. I want to hear it at my convenience and not where the record companies dictate. Everything I read seems like they want their way.

    If these problemscould be overcome, I would be amongst the first to sign up.

  • WWLD? (Score:2)

    by Zico ( 14255 )

    What Would Linus Do?

    There's a pretty big intersect between the usual pro-Linus and pro-Napster segments here. (And by pro-Napster, I don't mean only Napster, I'm talking about the general idea that people should be able to download any music they want at anytime, whether they've ever purchased it or not.) I've never really seen it resolved, though, nor has their been too much friction between the groups.

    Just as an example, here are some quotes from a couple of Slashdot darlings:

    "Piracy is bad," says Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, when asked about the matter. "Of course you should be able to sue over copyrights. The one good lawsuit in the whole Napster case is the one by Metallica: a suit by the actual authors. While it's probably motivated mostly by money, I can still at least hope that there is a strong feeling of morals there, too."

    Larry Wall, developer of the Perl language, has a similar perspective. "Open source should be about giving away things voluntarily," he says. "When you force someone to give you something, it's no longer giving, it's stealing. Persons of leisurely moral growth often confuse giving with taking."

    Although both guys often make for good soundbites, I don't expect those two quotes to be making the top ten lists of their fans anytime soon. :)


    Cheers,

  • I've thought from the start that Napster should have cut a deal with the corps to be thier digital music distribution channel, but it didn't happen that way, instead the RIAA and Napster got nasty with each other and the Napster users are hurt.

    I bet Napster would've loved to cut a deal. The problem is, if you went to the labels and said "Let's distribute music over the Internet" they would hem and haw and demand that you be "secure" and be afraid of letting the distribution channel be controlled by anyone but themselves. Basically they'd stall and ignore you and hope the whole subject went away.

    So the only way Napster could get the labels' attention--and mp3.com before them--was to just make the service and present it as a fait accompli. Then the labels were at least awakened to the fact that digital distribution was going to happen, one way or another. But they still didn't want to give these startups power over a distribution channel, so instead of cutting a deal, they sued. These lawsuits are another stalling tactic, another way to keep things uncertain until the labels can get their own distribution channels in place.
  • If things are reasonably priced and quality is guaranteed.

    I hope they're not going to charge me to download a file just because it has 'Metallica' in the filename, even though it was recorded by some kid off of his AM radio over a microphone plugged into his sound card.
  • I like the angle on yahoo much better:

    http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20010606/tc/naps te r_deal.html
  • You are not paying for bandwidth AND the cd you bought.

    Fallacy 1

    If it weren't for Napster I would not be paying for bandwidth.

    Of course you would. How do yu download all your porn? You pay for gas to go to the store and buy stuff, go to the movies, or pick up your date. Should all the retailers give you a discount because you had to pay to get there? It is a fact of life that you pay for the highway whether you use it or not. If you only use your bw for Napster then yes, go to the store and just buy the CD. Ooopss...I just used gas. Get over the fact that you bought the bw for email, surfing, napster, IRC, AIM, telnet, DDoS, etc. You buy electricity too.

    Fallacy 2

    To share CD's I already bought.

    Come on people. Stop this lie. You do not go on Napster to download a song you already have. It would be faster and more reliable to rip it yourself. You download stuff you don't have. Few people borrow a paperback from the library, read it, and go buy the thing if they like it. What they are actually doing is sharing their own bought files because...well they want to share them so others do not have to pay for them. I am not paying to share my files. I am paying to download other people's files. If I don't share them then I am not paying to stream them. But, if everyone does this then there will be no files on Napster! What am I paying for? The search engine. Solution? Napster needs to host some songs themselves.

    You see, if we are paying we don't want to share. If we are stealing we want to help others do the same. In the end everyone is whining about a cool service that let them get free music going away. The truth is in the juvenille statement "see you on gnutella." Just buy a goddamn CD once in a while. The real proof will be when MP3.com offers mp3's online for purchase and download. If their service does nto take off then the music industry will have been right. We don't really want to pay for it.

    ----------

  • Re:Idea: (Score:2)

    by tbo ( 35008 )
    It is only wrong to make an unauthorized copy of a digital work if you did not intend to purchase the work in the first place.

    i.e., I wouldn't have paid for it, but if I can get it for free, sure.

    I'd say the exact opposite. It's only wrong to make an unauthorized copy if you were going to pay for it. In that case, you're depriving the copyright owner of revenues. Otherwise, there's no loss to them.
  • I think you mean "I grammer don't care about".
  • [Most of you already know what greedy-ol' Jim Ray is going to say, but I have to say it anyway and I don't care if I'm moderated down.]

    I can show artists a system [e-gold.com] that (largely) cuts out any middleman right now, and will lead to (and become the base for) systems that completely do it, like (but not limited-to) ecoin [ecoin.net], digigold, and maybe even PayPal (if they're ever profitable, that is...). The demise of Napster, if it happens, will mean very little if I'm right, but it's going to require some new-thinking on all sides.

    IMO, to get the full benefit of happy consumers, musicians are going to have to do as Courtney Love said [hole.com] and go to a worldwide-tipjar [e-gold.com] model that relies on voluntary payments from honest listeners. There will be enough honest listeners to make this worthwhile, even if everyone's not perfectly-honest. For example, I leave nice tips while traveling, even if I know I'm never returning to a place. Part of this has to do with having once had a job that relied on tips, but I think most folks do the same (dare I say it's "good karma" to tip?).

    People are used to getting something now for free, and that means the days of $15 CDs' profits sending promoters to Scores while only giving the artists a pittance are over. Fans will voluntarily pay (less, but not nothing) only for non-crappy music, so the days of getting away with bundling it with crappy music are also over. Artists are about to see an age of VERY direct feedback from fans, whether they like it or not. For me, it can't happen soon enough. There will be winners and losers, of course, but overall joe sixpack is going to benefit along with joe musician, while joe promoter busily looks for another sinecure-job and the RIAA bites the dust (good riddance!). The variety of music listened-to will probably VASTLY increase over the next few years, as AOLers discover what more technically-proficient users already know.

    Will this all be perfect and utopian and theft-free and wonderful? No. Will it be a better deal than everyone's getting right now from the RIAA quintopoly? Probably so, at least I think it will, but I'm obviously biased-as-hell on this issue, and I'm (as always) speaking only for myself, YMMV, etc.
    JMR

    PS. Once again, any /. reader can obtain a free click of e-gold from me by sending me an account number. It benefits me for programmer-types to play with my favorite currency [e-gold.com] so I don't mind. Thanks.

  • So explain to me how the fact that there is a legal difference between infringement and theft makes any real difference to my argument.

    Infringement is just as illegal as theft last time I looked. The fact that either can result in being put in prison and made to be a bad man's boyfriend is sufficient for me.

    Split hairs as much as you like - my comment is still valid if you replace every instance on 'steal' with 'willfully infringe on copyright'.
  • I agree, however you still find that the digital fingerprints can be removed and probably quite easily once you know what you are looking for. Preventing players from playing tunes without a digital fingerprint is tough because you then limit the players to tunes that have been published by someone with the technology to create a fingerprint, so in the end you end up with consumer backlash because their new player doesn't play existing music.

    The problem is there is no backward and forward compatible solution that is both fair to users (ie lets them play their music in any device they own) and fair to producers (ie makes it difficult for people to redistribute without paying royalties).

    Of course, the software industry has faced this problem for a while and has pretty much come up with the solution of targetting the major offenders and letting minor piracy slip. This is potentially the answer for the record companies - they just have to raise awareness of the fact that redistributing copyrighted material is wrong and get it through to all those college students who think it is their right to get it for free.
  • > [The EMI/Roxio deal doesn't matter when compared to] the real show is the DRM technologies built into Windows XP. Think XP will let you burn DRM-locked files with its built-in CD burner? Remember that within a year, almost every consumer PC will be shipping with XP installed.

    You're absolutely right.

    To which, I say "Bring it on".

    In the days of Win9x, the answer to problems like this was "Go here and download the warezed version."

    In the days of WinXP, the answer may well be "You can't. DRM's built into the OS. Here's a Linux CD, try this instead."

  • thanks for heads-up, slashdot. maybe later you can tell us about a weather report at cnn.com.
  • Before anyone bothers to point it out, yes, I know that I misspelled "effect" as "affect."
  • The artist voluntarily sold the work to the record company, and in return the record company paid for the work to be recorded, distributed, played every 10 minutes on MTV, etc. After those costs have been recouped a small proportion of the profits from selling the work that the record company owns goes to the artist.

    What's so terrible about that deal? Nobody is forced to sign a recording contract - unknown artists are out there trying desperately to attract the attention of record companies because they want to sell the rights to their songs. If other artists want to distribute their songs online or by mail order instead of going through a record company, then good luck to them. But at the moment most artists want a record deal, so it's nonsense to say that the record companies are exploiting them. If the artists don't like the terms of the contract they won't (or shouldn't) sign.
    --

  • the users pay you *and* for the bandwidth to share the songs they already bought

    I can understand that the customer might want to share their bandwidth so that more money can go to their favourite artists, but why should there be a mandatory charge to use Napster on top of the service you already provide?
    Also, why should the customer have to pay the Recording Industry Association of America twice: once to download a file from Napster, and then again to buy recordable audio CDs to burn it on to? Surely if you've paid for one, the other should no longer be required.

    It all looks a bit silly from the viewpoint of a foreigner. Sorry if I've stated the obvious.
  • I had thought that Napster was going to fight this out to the bitter end. Have they even gone to appeals court yet? I had been looking forward to watching someone with the support of the public, and of money standing up to the big media groups. I'm aware that pirating music is wrong and don't argue that, I had just been under the impression that Napster was going to fight things out as a simple music-sharing service, not something that promotes piracy.

  • WHAT YOU SAY!!!

    - j [slashdot.org]

  • well as i'm sure you've heard people say before (slashdot editors included), "I don't care about grammar." and it's true: there is no reason to care about grammar.

    ... except of course if you want people to understand what you're writing.

    - j

  • Hey, don't legions of indie rockers obsess over Radiohead? Go on Napster and do a few searches under Radiohead and you'll see. Didn't caravans of fans follow around Phish (including all the old dead heads after Jerry Garcia died)? Go on Napster and you'll find a shitload of phish bootlegs just like the Dead had. Weren't the beatles initially written off as pop trash and boring guitar music?

    The fact remains that people still like music, some of it is innovative (Radiohead), some of it is obsessive (Phish), and some of it is still pop trash (Destiny's Child) but that doesn't mean that they'll stay pop trash forever. Not that I think Destiny's Child is going to be the next beatles, but the parent is simply ignoring both the musical realities of today and yesterday.

    I don't think you realize how big those old bands actually were because you've been caught in that fun little distortion field that says everyone around listened to Zepplin and the Dead and all those other bands, which isn't any more true than saying everyone listens to the Backstreet boys now.

    "I may not have morals, but I have standards."
  • While I totally agree that artists should own their own music and that they are getting screwed royally by the record companies, I think that people underestimate how much the record companies do.

    The companies don't just package up a recording and ship it off to the store. They have to hire a producer, pay for the cost of recording and producing the album, pay for the promotional materials such as videos on MTV and recordings for radio stations all over the world, pay for advertisements in magazines and such, and pay to scout out new acts.

    That's a pretty hefty list. Now imagine that they do it for a ton of artists, where 1 in 100 is really successful. That's a lot of money that you don't recoup.

    Because of all that, the cost of simply distributing music is not enough to pay the middleman, and companies should charge more than the very slim fee you're talking about. The thing is, they won't even get close to this number because they've already gone way above it and they're not going back now that they've got the cash cow.

    They could use tools like Napster in order to really lower the costs of promotion, but they only see it as a threat to their bottom line so they're going after them full bore.

    The other cause of this is the "big hit" model of record sales, where you rely on a band to put out one huge single to move volumes of records in order to recoup any other losses. Ideally, and this is what they used to do more, is that a company will invest in an artist to grow them a fan base and make them profitable overall. These kinds of artists don't sell in the mainstream, but don't put out the singles either and still sell a respectable amount of records. These kinds of artists aren't the cash cows of the industry who are gone 5 years later, but the bands who have a solid fanbase and sell records slowly over the longterm and wind up producing a solid back catalog. Developing artists like this costs a fair amount to start (although not as much as it does to launch a major hit band) but they wind up being solid profit columns on the balance sheet.

    If the recording industry used Napster et al. in order to grow these kinds of artists for the long term they wouldn't be so worried about people pirating music. But they themselves have developed a very lucrative model based on singles that is now being threatened by mp3 swapping. The fact that they gouge consumers while only trying to give back fluffy one hit wonders is what's going to hurt them, because they didn't help to develop the artists, no one's going to help develop them.

    "I may not have morals, but I have standards."
  • "While the latest release from futureband2050 might be mildly entertaining, nobody is going to worship them the way throngs of indie rockers once went apeshit over Radiohead; nobody is going to follow them from city to city the way caravans followed Phish. Rock n Roll has become a dead religion.

    "This year, I heard that a band called "The Beatles" won a bunch of awards. From the TV blub, they look kind of cute, and seem to be a band that sings shopworn 2-part harmonies over shopworn pop rock melodies. At the time, it occurred to me that I have not heard more than a 20-second blip from any of their songs. So tell me, fellow Slashbots, am I really missing anything by ignoring these teen idols and listening to Bethoven's 7th Symphony during my drive home?"

    "I may not have morals, but I have standards."
  • It is only wrong to make an unauthorized copy of a digital work if you did not intend to purchase the work in the first place.

    i.e., I wouldn't have paid for it, but if I can get it for free, sure.

    (Note that I am not claiming this to be true, it is merely an idea.) Comments?
  • Er, right, that's what I *meant* to write, but as I am unbelievably stupid, I wrote the exact opposite of what I meant.

    It's only wrong if you WERE going to buy it, but copied it instead.

    There we go. Sheesh.

  • "Napster is dead, they killed themselves on the altar of the RIAA, etc., etc., ad nauseam."

    Horseturds. Yes, there are many, many Napster clones out there, and yes, many more spring up as soon as the RIAA clamps down on another one. But the reason Napster was so successful even after its would-be demise is because the NAME was known. Napster became that most coveted of all marketing terms, a "household term" amoung those who have computers.

    If Napster DOES go legit, and does it quickly, they will undoubtedly find subscribers, depending on the model they choose. (I, personally, would prefer a monthly fee type of deal. Saves having to buy CDs for one or two songs.) Why? People know the name Napster. With some judicious advertising, they could come back.

    Don't forget that that silly Napster client is installed on Joe AOL's computer now. Most people wouldn't bother to get rid of it, they'd just delete the shortcut on the desktop and think they'd deleted the program.

    So picture this... Napster goes legit, sets up their model, and advertises through the normal channels (banner ads, bribes to portals to be on the front page, even TV and radio ads). Joe AOL says, "Hey, I've already got that!"

    Boom. Success, even if not on the same level as it was apparent before.

    And CmdrTaco... buying the bandwidth delivers a HELL of a lot more than Napster. Adding the whole cost of Net access to whatever fees are to be imposed by Napster is specious reasoning.


    Zaphod B
  • I create a song
    i now have the right to distribute that song teh way I want, cause I created it
    I have that right
    you copy a song of mine without my permission
    my right to distribute that song the way I want no longer exists because once you made a copy you took controll from me
    I no longer have the right do distribute my song the way I want
    i had something, now I don't
    And it's all your fault.
    =\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\ =\=\=\=\
  • So tell me, fellow Slashbots, am I really missing anything by ignoring these teen divas and listening to Bethoven's 7th Symphony during my drive home?

    Yup.

    --
  • So with this model, you buy the music and then you pay for access to it as well. This is on top of your actual internet access, no? If so, then you're paying for your bandwitdh consumption twice, and your music twice. Nice trick! In fact, almost like...

    CELL PHONES!

    Here's the model for a land line: You pay for phone access (monthly), and pay for any outgoing calls outside of your local area.

    Here's the model for a cell phone: You pay for phone access (monthly), you pay for every call outgoing AND incoming, and then pay EXTRA for outgoing long distance calls.

    This is how technology gets taken over by marketing: Introduce a new technology not just at a high price, but using a cost model that provides more long-term profit when you drop the price to 'mass-market' levels.

    Conversely, this is how net technology is used to increase prices and profits. Your cell phone plan was designed to correct the inefficiencies of land line telephone service. Nobody would be willing to get double charged on a phone that they've been single-charged on for the last 50 years, but they'll accept different charges when the technology appears different.

  • I'm tired of downloading poorly ripped mp3s that have filenames that don't include the album name, track number, or even the artist's name!

    I'm tired of downloading mp3s that have filenames that include the album name or track number! Urk. I suppose all your mp3s are named -ALBUM_NAME-001_of_015_(Artist)_Title_FEAT._Someon e_Else-(3:14:15.93)-rsk2001.mp3.

    For singles:
    Artist - Title.mp3
    Ex: CmdrTaco - Slashdot Baby.mp3

    For albums:
    Artist - Album\Track - Title.mp3
    Ex: CmdrTaco - A Very Slashdot Christmas\07 - Troll's Nuts Roasting on an Open Source Fire.mp3

    Side rant: Prepositions and words like "an" and "the" are not to be capitalized [aitech.ac.jp]! I don't CARE if the album cover says otherwise. Sinead O'Connor's song is called "Nothing Compares to You" even if she and Prince want us to believe otherwise. (Prince wrote the song. And for the record, his name is Prince, and has always been Prince, regardless of what he tells you.)

    --
  • You're the type I really hate to get mp3s from. Good thing we seem to have different music tastes, so it's less likely I'll ever see anything that's gone through your horrid naming scheme. (If you've only got the single, do you care what album it's from or what track it is on that album? If you've got the full album, wouldn't folders be easier to organize and label the songs?)

    Prince has been on a kick for quite some time to initiate English spelling reform so we all write like retarded teenagers chatting on AOL. (Check out his website [npgonlineltd.com].) I won't stand for it, and just because he wrote the song doesn't mean he can co-opt the English language.

    Saying it aloud you say "nothing compares to you", don't you? Why shouldn't you write it that way? Here's the simple fact: names (of songs, corporations, software, television shows, etc.) are defined by the way they are said, not by the way they are written. The way they are written is decided by natural convention to promote clarity and uniformity, not personal whim. Everything else is styling done to the name, no different than a special font, which is to be ignored when you're referencing the name of something.

    --
  • I remember Chumbawumba (the stupid anarchist band that went nowhere with songs about the revolution, but suddenly had a hit with a song about getting drunk) saying that if you stole their album from the store they'd still get paid, so go ahead and steal it. Stores then proceeded to remove their albums from the shelves. Gee, too bad they only had one hit.

    --
  • I wish they would allow me to buy electronic versions of music that are not copy restricted.

    Buy CDs. I do. Hell, check out the songs by listening to the ultra-low-fidelity streaming music on Amazon first if you want to avoid bad albums. Scour the Net for MP3s of a few songs from the new album before buying. But, if you want electronic versions of music that are not copy protected, buy CDs and don't even think of buying SACDs or DVD Audio discs.


    Refrag
  • Can you name any of the ties the recording industry has made with CD recording companies? Like what are the two companies names? That is, other than Sony & Sony.


    Refrag
  • A portion of revenue from each Audio CD-R disc goes to royalty payments. This does not include normal computer use CD-R discs.


    Refrag
  • Your comment looks a bit silly to me.


    If you're burning music to a CD that is sourced from an MP3, you're going to be using a computer to do so. If you're using a computer to do so, you're not paying any royalties on the CD-R media.


    However, I still think Napster sold out, and I say fuck them. Napster wasn't doing anything illegal, however now everyone will assume they were sense they settled and got in bed with the record labels.


    The only people that were braking copyright laws were some of the users of Napster.


    Refrag

  • While the original poster may have said "filename," I'm sick of getting MP3s that don't have that information in the ID3 field. That's what it's there for. Use it! All my ripped MP3s filenames follow the format
    [Disk #]-[Track #] - Track name.mp3
    or
    [Track #] - Track name.mp3
    if not a multi-disk set. But the ID3 fields are filled out so the extra information (like artist and album) not in the filename is present.

    --

  • It really isn't about the music anymore....

    Duh, it hasn't been for a long time. Where do you think musicians make thier money (the majority at least)? Album sales? BZZT! Sorry, wrong answer. From live performances and merchandise was the correct answer... Want to support your favorite musicians? Go see them live and buy a T-shirt. :)

    -----

  • And another megacorp gets its way in the crazy world of the USian corporate state.

    Uh, Napster was a corporation.

    In any case, you have it exactly backwards. This proves that a rogue corporation like Napster determined to rip off people can and will be brought to justice, despite their protestations that they don't support piracy.

    I'm not a huge fan of the music industry (I wish they would allow me to buy electronic versions of music that are not copy restricted), but in no way was Napster the good guy. If you facilitate people breaking the law, you are no better than the people breaking it.


    --

  • Come on, let's not pretend here.

    Okay, I won't.. :)

    The reason the what's-his-name invented Napster in the first place was so his l33t buddies could get the songs they want.

    I wasn't there, and I did not know this.. have a link?

    Even if you buy into this ludicrous "hey, all we want is our users to exchange legal songs", you can't deny that 99.9% of all activity was illegal.

    I personally never used it for an illegal purpose.. The only songs I downloaded using Napster were to recreate old cd's that I had had for years and eventually became to scratched to be usable.. Perhaps some activity was illegal... but then again perhaps some wasn't.. why should the tool be baned when it did have legal uses? The illegal users should definately be punished.. but a tool is a tool... treat it as such.. no tool should ever be made illegal because it's uses could possible be illegal.. stop the people from breaking the law.. don't take away legitimate (or even non-legitimate) tools.. i.e. don't intrude on MY freedom because someone else broke the law...

    Not to mention that Napster has been totally abandoned once the heavy duty filtering was in place. If Napster was primarily legigitimate, then that should have made almost no difference in traffic, right?

    Wrong.. this is a prime example of my point above.. the filtering assumed EVERYONE was breaking the law, so the legitimate uses were destroyed because someone could use it for illegal purposes.. the filtering killed the service for the legitimate users because it stoped file sharing without discrimenation of the legality of the downloads.. A prime example of someone destroying my freedoms because someone else broke the law..

  • If you facilitate people breaking the law, you are no better than the people breaking it.

    This is so incorrect that it frightens me.. you are condoning thought police. You are saying that because a tool (one that has a perfectly legitament use) can be used to break the law it should be illegal.

    Last week I robbed a store with a friend of mine.. he put on a stocking cap and walked into the store with a gun.. he held the clerk at gun point and demanded all of the money in the store.. he then walked out of the store and got into my honda civic and we drove off..

    Obviously this didn't really happen.. but if it did by your logic guns can be used to facilitate crime and should be illegal.. however, Stocking Caps and Cars can also be used to facilitate crime, so if Honda doesn't immediately shut their doors and stop producing vehicles they are no better than my fictional robbers. In fact, Napster specifically requires you to agree to the fact that you wont use their software illegally before you are allowed to use it.. when I bought my Honda no one asked if I was going to use it as a get away vehicle for a store robbery.. they didn't in the slightest way even recommend that I not use it illegally..

    I'm sorry but there used to be an old cliche 'innocent until proven guilty'.. that no longer applies.. this case proves that just because a legitament tool CAN be used illegally, that it will be assumed that all uses are illegal and the tool is contra-ban.. think about that next time you drive down the street in your potential law breaking apparatus.. The thought police ARE coming, and they will be here soon.. it all starts with the recovation of innocent until proven guilty, which is clearly the presidence that this case sets..

  • And another megacorp gets its way in the crazy world of the USian corporate state. When will people learn that the rampant abuse of power by massive conglomerates is an inevitable slippery slope leading to a police state ruled by corporate warlords?

    Napster was a bold venture that stood up to the current regime, allowing people to reclaim their rights in the face of adversary from conglomerates answerable only to their bottom line. And the toothless US government has once again shown that it is nothing other than the tool of the capitalist elite, rather than the defender of the rights of the majority.

    I hear a lot about the tragedy of the commons with respect to government. But today we have the exact reverse - the tragedy of the elite. No longer does the majority have its way, instead the chosen few dictate the future of millions through their control over every essential resource.

    And anyone that thinks that art is not essential to the well-being of a society is missing one of the wonders of humanity. Unfortunately, when art is subverted to serve the capitalist rulers, humanity suffers as a result.

  • Bluntly, I've used Napster to download hundreds of albums that I didn't own, and I'm not willing to bother to justify it. Sure, there's an ice cube's chance in hell that if I had legally bought the albums that any of the artists would have seen dime one, but that's not the point - I care more about me than artists or the RIAA.

    That said, I noticed that the other major vendor in this deal is Real. I suspect they're going to kill mp3s and try to shove secured RealAudio streams down Napster's users' throats. Sure, you'll have these RealAudio clips on your desktop that you've paid for via subscription, but am I wrong in thinking that RealAudio sucks compared to mp3, which isn't even that good compared to regular .wav audio? I wonder how that'll fly with Napster's userbase.

    Next, since quitting Napster, I've been ripping CDs from both the local library (in Cincinnati) and my friends to mp3, and have recently started using Bearshare (de-spywared) to grab the occasional track I don't have. If the Record Industry believes non-techie people will shell out bucks for RealAudio via Napster when they can freely use BearShare or AudioGalaxy, I believe they're mistaken.

    Last, as an observation, the desire to download tons of free music from Napster starting in early 2000 has resulted in benefit to the following industries, if not totally the RIAA:

    • Internet Service Provider - $22 extra a month for upgrade from 56K to ADSL, x 17 months as of June (total=$374 to date).
    • Yamaha - $170 for an 8424 CD burner.
    • ~$160 in Music bought from Columbia House and BMG via their clubs because it was a b*tch getting the music from Napster. Feel bad about that because artists get -0- royalties from these RIAA-endorsed "clubs," while the RIAA gets 100% of whatever the clubs don't take.
    • Extra 15gb, 7200rpm hard drive - $110.
    • Rio Volt mp3 player - $170.
    • Money spent on non-RIAA artists after I could hear a few samples of them through Napster/MP3.com on friends' recommendations - ~$300.
    • Tax or shipping on all of the above at a general 6% rate - $70.
    • Total - ~$1354 and counting. Irony - if the RIAA and its member labels didn't treat artists like cow dung and produce shit, I'd have spent 90% of this money on their artists.

      Last, the RIAA has earned my eternal emnity, so voting with my dollars, I will not buy from them ever again unless you count checking out library copies.

      Of course I realize I'm a hypocrite on many counts, but I'll live with that (no one else has to).

      Cheers.

  • Bearshare [bearshare.com] (windows gnutella client) rocks. I can find just about anything I am looking for.
  • I can pay however much ($5.00 US wasn't it? I don't think the article said) to Napster for the privalege of using their once free service, which does nothing more than let me trade MP3's with other users who are doing the same.

    I currently have a $19.95/month service through Newsfeeds (http://www.newsfeeds.com [newsfeeds.com]) that gives me high speed (50-80 k/s) access to about a dozen different NNTP servers, each of which is dedicated to a different topic or service, such as MP3's, Multimedia (All the fansubbed anime you can stomach!), Discussion w/Spamfilter, Anonymous postting, etc...

    Being that MP3's on Usenet are typically ripped and encoded by people who know what they're doing, and the feed from Newsfeeds is usually pretty complete and error free, *and* I get to download several hundred megabytes of anime, movies, and the discussion groups I visit every day, I think I'm getting a better deal.

    Feel free to disagree, however...
  • I think no one expects me to say this: I hate napster. I've downloaded, and shared songs I had no right to, but the problem with Napster is - it made these practice main stream. I didn't go over board, I couldn't - and the main reason I didn't download a lot of crap, and full albums and etc. is because I knew what I was doing was wrong. When people whispered Napster to me - people who don't even own computers that asked if I used it, I said to them: "I have to be against this, it's a service that promotes piracy - point blank." Even though I'm guilty of downloading and sharing MP3's I couldn't support a service, (a huge public service) which is based on downloading or distributing files that you don't have the right to. Anyone who is really kewl, not an elite way, but in a common sense way, should know the service wouldn't last long or you were being set up for the kill. Lets just pay like 3 cents a song and have banner ads or something and make it legit - sure! But who really expects a file sharing service like napster to be legal. I never even used napster except once, and really it pales in comparison to other file sharing services. Lets set up a business model for bands to make cash, sure - but don't screw us, thats all I ask. Don't forget, people have shared files way before Napster started. If I want it I'll find it. But people get over it - there is a million other services popping up. Besides if were really kewl, you'd download songs from USENET or some other ancient service. My two...
  • Does this mean that Napster may start hosting songs on their servers, so that paying users won't have to worry about people signing off in the middle of uploads?
  • by far is the fact that napster will not be distributing mp3's that you can do what you want with. You will not be burning cd's with any music you get from napster. It sounds like a pay per play kind of basis which is no good for anyone but the record companies. Make sure to check out www.emusic.com for real mp3's where the artists get compensated directly. Here is an excerpt from http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/so/20010606/en/napste r_strikes_deal_with_three_major_labels_1.html

    Napster plans to license the music through MusicNet, the joint venture formed by the three labels in April in order to make their music available online (see). When the subscription service launches, users who pay Napster's regular subscription fee -- previously estimated at $4.95 a month -- will not get access to major-label content and will be limited to trading indie-label music, CEO Hank Barry said in a press conference Tuesday evening (June 5). In order to get MusicNet content -- which will apparently be available only from MusicNet's centralized servers, not through Napster's traditional file-sharing methods -- users will have to pay an additional monthly fee. That fee is expected to be around the cost of a single CD, MusicNet CEO Rob Glaser said. MusicNet will provide both streaming and downloadable music, but only in a yet-to-be-specified secure format, not as MP3s.
  • Why will a monthly fee be such a bad thing? Isn't this what everyone's been whining for? A new paradigm for buying music in which you don't pay for stuff you don't like. You don't have to buy that entire Britney album any more, you can just download the one song you like.

    From what I understand, the scheme will be a flat rate of some sort, in which case you can download as much stuff as you'd like for one fee. That seems reasonable, so long as the flat fee isn't exorbitant. Even if it is a pay-per-download fee, it's still a good thing so long as it's fair.

    I mean, kripes, isn't this what everyone's been screaming for? You can download anything, on demand, for a (presumably) reasonable cost. You get only what you want. It may seem like a loss for Napster on the surface, but it really seems like a win to me because the labels are slowly agreeing to the unheard-of model of Internet music sales w/o a "secure" music format. So in a sense Napster has won.

    Assuming the selection of music on Napster is as broad as it once was when this new scheme kicks in, the only users who will stop using it are those who just want free music, or people who don't buy enough music to justify paying a monthly fee. I hope they've thought the business model through well enough to address the latter case.

    Also, rumor has it that they will discount the rate for users who make their MP3 files available for download by other Napster users. Could be a false rumor, but it would address the issue of people giving away their bandwidth to help out Napster.
  • It seems Napster and it's corporate sponsors really think people have some sort of lingering sympathy for them. They think if they use Napster to sell music access they can tap into the huge userbase. Well, surprise, surprise, there will be no more users. I hope they waste a lot of money promoting this.
  • I honestly wouldn't mind paying a little cash to download a song, I think the artists deserve something (I know, I know, not that it goes to the artist anyway, but it's a nice thought, huh?) It's the convinience of going and getting a song and having it on my computer I like, not the fact that it's free, that's nice too but it just doesn't feel right to me still. Now paying for the "privilege" of having a song up for sharing, that's a little weird.

    Any news on when this whole bad napster bit is going to hit the other sites doing similar actions? Audiogalaxy is still alive and well, I can get all kinds of Metallica (or Metallicka, in this case, ha ha) there.
  • Let me put this into the only terms that the suits at Napster can understand... Where's your VALUE ADDED PROPOSITION? No value = cut out of the equation. That's why those billions of transfers are down to 300+ million. Napster is about as relevent as Def Leppard.

    -----------------

  • Who are they kidding? They are going to get people to pay for MP3's that

    1. Are of lower bitrate quality (They might cap bitrate to 96kbps)

    2. Cannot be copied, archived, etc.

    The main selling point of Napster is its ease of use. Once people get a little more savvy, they will discover the alternatives, like Music City and Gnutella.

    By the way, they even closed the Forum down. Very disappointing to a now ex-Forum regular.
  • As previously announced, our content will not be available to Napster as part of the MusicNet service until we are reasonably satisfied that Napster is operating in a legal, non-infringing manner

    This will never happen... Old bands and old music, as well as many new music and new bands are owned by crochity old RIAAsympathizing-onlycareaboutthe$$$-matchbox20lov ing-lovethenewMetallicaalbum-wouldn'tknowgoodmusic ifitbitthemintheass- people who will never release their songs to Napster, especially not now.

    The way I see it, Napster paved the way for a whole new type of music consumption, and new bands and music will be distributed differently, using all these other similar technologies [ijockey.com] that will benefit from what Napster has done... but do it correctly. These Record industry peeps are suckers, but they're smart enough to know when they lose money, they lose their jobs. I look forward to the day when the bandwidth is available for individuals to really cut out the middle-men all together.

  • ...All we need to do is share it.
    Share the pr0n, that is.

    Don't be too sure about that.

    A former colleague used to be one of the sysadmins at one of the -- if not the -- largest sexually explicit server farms in the world (they're in Seattle; wish I could remember the name). These guys can assemble any kind of explicit site you want, filled to the brim with pictures, in under 24 hours. These guys apparently generate over two gigabytes a day just in server logs.

    These guys have a database. A massive database. In this database is every picture on their server farm, with information on who the copyright holder is, who the photographer is, who the subjects are and their ages, when it was taken, how many times it's been viewed and from where, how much money has been charged to view it, etc. etc. etc. etc.

    If an image previously thought to be public domain or otherwise unencumbered turns out to be copyrighted, they have the logs and database records to make sure they receive back-royalties.

    There's a real industry here. Despite it's "unsavory" nature to the general public, any decentralized distribution of their "property" in noticable volumes will get you smacked down. (Due to rapid article expiration and non-existent searching capabilities, USENET does not constitute noticable volumes.)

    BTW, most of the people who stand to lose Real Money(TM) in the sexually explicit image industry have a very different way of doing business. They don't send threatening letters. They don't sue you. They just come 'round in the dead of night and break your knees.

    Schwab

  • Re:Taco... (Score:3)

    by Chris Burke ( 6130 ) on Wednesday June 06, 2001 @01:30PM (#171098) Homepage
    it is wether or not you can walk into the proverbial store, grab a CD, and walk out without paying for it.

    There is no store, and no CD. Not even a proverbial one.

    When you take a CD from a store, that store has one less CD to sell. When you copy an mp3, no one has lost anything. The only thing "lost", and I put that in quotes because you can't lose something you never had, is a potential sale. But even that isn't lost, because as you say:

    Napster "Generates sales" to some extent, many people download songs from artists they would never, ever buy albums from.

    So, if the person downloads a song that they never, ever would have bought, and no store or retail outlet has lost any of their merchandise to sell to others, what exactly is the problem?

    Oh, wait, it's illegal.

    Let me tell you something flat out: When the cops aren't watching, I don't give a shit if something is illegal or not. I base my actions on what is moral. Our laws are so fucked, the two (legality and morality) seem to overlap only by coincidence.

    Do I think copying is moral? Well, okay, I've been trained to think I should pay for my entertainment, so maybe I don't. That's why I've never used Napster. But I don't think it is so bad that I can't greatly sympathize with what is essentially a reaction to the industry stranglehold on creativity, their gouging of consumers and relentless efforts to hold back technological progress in the name of maximizing their own profits.

    And on the scale of morality which I adhere to, causing a corporation to have non-maximal profits means nothing at all to me.

  • Re:Yet another little guy goes under (Score:3)

    by TWR ( 16835 ) on Wednesday June 06, 2001 @01:07PM (#171099)
    This is insightful? Slashdot needs a new moderation category: -1, Adolescent Self-rightousness.

    -jon

  • Re:Do you have Britney Spears home address? (Score:3)

    by timster ( 32400 ) on Wednesday June 06, 2001 @05:36PM (#171100)
    Nah. Betcha you won't even care about any of these teen bands in five years. But Beethoven's music is still wonderful after over a century and a half.

  • Re:Do you have Britney Spears home address? (Score:3)

    by Tackhead ( 54550 ) on Wednesday June 06, 2001 @03:15PM (#171101)
    > One thing jumped out at me that I wasn't looking for- since around 1990, the pattern of platinum and multiplatium record sales is that the act sells multiplatinum while the label is pushing it, and then when the label stops, the act entirely stops selling. In previous decades, records had the capacity to sell from back catalog. That doesn't particularly happen anymore. People _are_ losing interest in bands once the label stops pumping them into the stores, by the RIAA's own figures.

    Interesting.

    I've been wondering about that for a while.

    I've got a wide range of musical tastes. Funk, disco, new wave, house, techno, industrial, EBM, metal, rap, hip-hop, hell, I'll listen to damn near anything except what's on today's Top-40. I've been listening to some of those genres for 20 years.

    Drop by alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.19[5678]0s. You'll see lots of music from each decade.

    Drop by alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.rap-hiphop or .dance and things are different. You'll see almost nothing older than the mid-90s. Most of the stuff is last year or newer.

    That's not to say that I expect to see Public Enemy's "Nation of Millions" posted every week (though Pink Floyd fans seem to have no trouble reposting Dark Side of the Moon with astonishing regularity :), but the lack of history in the genre groups is startling.

    Some of this is due to things like (e.g. dance) the importance of the DJ over the actual tracks and the relative unavailability of the latest mix from DJ $SOME_GUY_IN_IBIZA each week. But it's a little unnerving to see almost a complete absence of "old-school" music in these two sub-genres, as both rap and house/techno variants have histories going back to the early 80s.

    The old geezer in me says "Young punks just want the new stuff, they've got no respect for the classics that defined their genre. Buncha cable kiddies who think anything invented more than a week ago is obsolete and not worth listening to anymore".

    But I don't trust myself when I start thinkin' like a geezer. It usually means I'm missing something important.

    I think the poster to whom I'm replying has stumbled onto the important something I missed.

  • Napster to Start New Service (patent pending) (Score:3)

    by selectspec ( 74651 ) on Wednesday June 06, 2001 @12:09PM (#171102)

    from nytimes:

    Napster in a new agreement with the recording industry is changing direction using an entirely new version of peer-to-peer technology. According to Napster's VP of Marketing Ken Philps, users wont need to download the Napster client for this service. In fact, they won't need a computer at all. Napster is using the recording industry's large distribution network to ship bulk quantities of CDs to buildings around the nation. Napster calls these buildings "Retail Centers." Users get off their asses and drive their cars to the retail center, where they then can purchase a wide variety of their favorite music labels.
    "There's no subscription attached to this service. This gives our user a whole new level of flexibility, and allows us to tap into an entirely new market of non-computer users. We believe this new market will grow in years to come, " said Philps.

  • Sharing *snicker* (Score:3)

    by supabeast! ( 84658 ) on Wednesday June 06, 2001 @12:27PM (#171103)
    "It's the perfect model: the users pay you *and* for the bandwidth to share the songs they already bought"

    Maybe if the users stopped "sharing" the files with people who did NOT buy them, this wouldn't have been such a big deal to begin with.

    "Course I still don't see the benefit for us."

    Taco, you must be blind. How is being able to get music digitally, and legitimatly, without actually buying a cd is not a benefit? Not to mention that Individual artists could work with Napster to sell their own music online in such a manner, giving them an easy way to distribute their work via an incredibly popular online service for little cost, without ever getting involved with record companies to begin with?

    "No doubt we'll see more of these deals as napster becomes less relevant and decentralized networks grow in popularity."

    Not too likely. Given that peer-to-peer networks like GNUtella scale poorly (See the Slashdot story about that here [slashdot.org].), Napster is likely to experience a nice rebirth of sorts. Once users realize that they can just buy a few songs they want from record company whores like Britney Spears and J-Lo, instead of getting the less catching songs used as album filler between hits, money-conscious pop fans will jump right back to Napster.

    This is just another crappy Slashdot post about the big evil record companies versus Napster, hero of the people and savior of artists. The Slashdot crew posts these because even though they hate the record companies (Rightly so, the record companies and their affects on music are disgusting.), they are too lazy to make a concerted effort to help artists survive independantly. Anyone with a brain knows that Napster is just as sleazy as Sony or BMG, and cares even less about the artists. At least the record companies front musicians money to work with. Napster just wants to leech off of the artists and record companies, growing fat on the blood of artists, as well as the pus and bile that fills the veins of record execs.

    If Slashdot really wants to fight the record companies, perhaps they should bring up Prince's successful online music club [npgmusicclub.com], or review the work of independent artist Ani DiFranco [righteousbabe.com], both working outside the world of record companies.

    Stories like this are the product of laziness. If anything is to become less relevant on the net, it will be Slashdot, as a result of this crap, not Napster.

  • Notice what's already happening to Napster... (Score:3)

    by yawhcihw ( 171760 ) on Wednesday June 06, 2001 @11:49AM (#171104)
    If you go to download.com, their most popular download is no longer Napster... It's AudioGalaxy.

    I believe AudioGalaxy is already filtering some stuff, but when they become the target of the RIAA, something else will become the new fad.

    And so the life of the .mp3 trader goes on.
    Yay.

  • Re:Give it a rest (Score:3)

    by duffbeer703 ( 177751 ) on Wednesday June 06, 2001 @02:14PM (#171105)
    Sorry, you are wrong. After reading about Napster on Slashdot, I began downloading all of the music that I already own.

    Believe it or not, I began buying CD's left and right. Right after buying a CD, I would download all of the tracks to support the artist!

    I also discovered alot of new independent bands that I never heard of. I'm not quite sure how I found these new artists, since you have to search for a song to download it, but I did. Right after downloading, I clicked the little CDnow button and supported the artists! Sometimes I even mailed money to the artists for no apparent reason!

  • Re:Yet another little guy goes under (Score:3)

    by pcidevel ( 207951 ) on Wednesday June 06, 2001 @02:25PM (#171106)
    No, because the primary purpose of stocking caps and cars is legitimate. The primary purpose of Napster was to facilitate piracy of copyrighted material.

    First you are wrong on this point.. the primary purpose of Napster is file sharing, which is perfectly legal and legitimate (the legitimacy of FTP and Gopher has never been challeneged yet it has the exact same purpose in a less user friendly manner). Naspter is a tool that CAN be used illegally, but for that matter so is a baseball bat. The primary focus of Napster is a tool to share legal files, unfortunately it was misused; however, the tool shouldn't be punished the users that misuse the tool should.

    Don't like that analogy? How about this one: The mafia owns a pizza parlor. Perfectly legitimate business -- until they start laundering money. Then it is a crime, because the primary purpose is not selling pizza, it's to launder money.

    Using this as an analogy in the Napster case means that ALL pizza palor's must be shut down because one person choose to use a legitimate tool (a pizza parlor) for illegitimate uses (laundering money) so, instead of arresting the person that used the tool incorrectly (the owner of this pizza parlor) you shut down ALL pizza parlor's in the world because they could potentially be used to launder money. So instead of shutting down the individual that is breaking the law (the person downloading music that he doesn't own) the RIAA has decided to kill the tool that makes it possible (Napster, which has a perfectly legitimate use as a tool). A screwdriver can be used to break the lock on a house does that mean that all screwdrivers should be illegal? Instead, wouldn't it make sense to jail people who used screwdrivers to break into houses?

  • Re:Does it matter? (Score:3)

    by skt ( 248449 ) on Wednesday June 06, 2001 @12:42PM (#171107)
    > ... Napster is now only of historical interest

    distributed systems like gnutella and its clones don't scale and are too slow to be of any use on the Internet. FTP has gone down the tubes in the last few years. Even though such sites as oth [oth.net] still exist, getting music is still very difficult on FTP. I don't see how newsgroups / IRC will help much, since they are not automated.

    I think most people that have used napster and FTP and gnuetlla can tell you that napster really was the best method of obtaining mp3s at one point in time. I am hoping that Napigator / opennap takes off though.

  • Is it still going to suck? (Score:3)

    by Johnny5000 ( 451029 ) on Wednesday June 06, 2001 @12:15PM (#171108) Homepage Journal
    There was a time when I may have paid for Napster service. That was before overfiltering and the RIAA suing everyone and their grandmother. If the RIAA is going to get a dime from Napster, they wont get one from me.

    I'd like to see the artists get paid. I'd also like to see the RIAAers get nut-rot.

    I'd like to see the artists own all their own music.

    The way I see it is:

    The record company can make money selling media- they buy the blank CD for whatever it costs them, the CD case, the paper cover, the plastic wrap, etc... they can jack up the price on the piece of plastic and make a profit on it. They shouldnt get any money from the music itself. That is money that the artist, not the record company, earned.

    Therefore, all of the money made from selling just the song itself (an electronic copy from Napster) rightfully belongs to the artist, and NONE of that belongs to the record company, since there is nothing tangible involved in the transactions.

    Maybe they can charge for the electrons.

    Other than that, the music shouldnt belong to them. They didnt create it.. they should get paid for making music distribution possible. When they have no part in doingthe music distribution (a la napster) they have no right to whatever money is involved. THat should be between the artist, the user, and napster.

    -Johnny 5000

  • dear napster... (Score:3)

    by gnurd ( 455798 ) on Wednesday June 06, 2001 @11:34AM (#171109) Homepage
    its too late now. be a nice dot-com and get in the grave with the others ok? see you on gnutella.
    ---

  • Napster. (Score:4)

    by Matt2000 ( 29624 ) on Wednesday June 06, 2001 @11:45AM (#171110) Homepage

    Everyone was claiming that the music industry was doing itself serious long term damage persecuting Napster in the name of saving short term licensing revenue, and now we're seeing that come true.

    If the record companies had kept Napster running at full tilt as a honeypot to keep all the users attracted, then just started charging a couple bucks and improved the service with the income, I'd still be using Napster. But they made it suck, so there was incentive to develop competing services, and now the market is fractured. Sure Napster could become popular again, but will it ever see the 80-90% market share it did before? Already the service is seeing a 47% decrease in logins.

    The sad thing about all this is that the main problem here is how do we pay the artist? When Napster was dominant there were several interesting solutions to that problem, now who knows?

  • Good and Bad (Score:5)

    by Wyatt Earp ( 1029 ) on Wednesday June 06, 2001 @11:44AM (#171111)
    I think this model would work great if it allowed access to *every* song made. A SuperJukebox, or an Jukebox Super Highway if you will.

    Heck, I'd even accept some copy protection on the songs from the JSH, if that means I could get songs from out of print, or pick songs from albums that I don't want.

    But it's not going to be that easy, not at first. What this will do is kill Napster. Fine, Napster is alot like a 1850s abolitionist movement, in that they are doing something quasi-legal while calling it a right. Napster had a flawed model and it got into it with the Recording Industry, now it's draging out it's death. The sharing of files that you don't know any media of isn't legal in most of the Industrialized World at this time. That's the fact of it, and Napster was a conduit for piracy.

    CmdrTaco says "the users pay you *and* for the bandwidth to share the songs they already bought"...That's not completely accurate. How many people that used Napster have downloaded something they don't own on a physical media? I know I have. That's against the rules in the current system, at least in the system that Napster argued about. Personally if I was Napster I would have yelled about that fair home use law, and the fact that monitoring the sharing of files is invasion of privacy, but no they didn't do that.

    I've thought from the start that Napster should have cut a deal with the corps to be thier digital music distribution channel, but it didn't happen that way, instead the RIAA and Napster got nasty with each other and the Napster users are hurt.

    But on the Good side, someone else will know not to make the same mistakes as Napster, and eventually, a stable file exchange system will develop.

  • The problem with Napster and the RIAA (Score:5)

    by throx ( 42621 ) on Wednesday June 06, 2001 @11:52AM (#171112) Homepage
    The problem Napster has is that there is no solution which retains the user's right to copy any music they buy as many times as they like FOR THEIR OWN USE, but prevents them from giving it away to all their friends.

    Basically what the record companies need is a technology that allows them to sell music to a user once and that user can then use that music whenever and wherever they want personally. This is fair use, and pretty much what people have at the moment with music stored on physical media. With electronic copies, it is so easy just to copy the bits the whole things becomes unworkable given the fact that people WILL steal music (ie make a copy to give someone else) because it is a soft crime that doesn't leave you feeling bad.

    What the technology has to prevent is the creation of more instances of that music for other people.

    The only solutions are:

    (i) Make everyone have their own personal key (like a social security number) that is required to access their copy of the music. This doesn't work because someone can just give their key to another person (assuming it too is digital). A physical key - like a dongle - has possibilities here but is too cumbersome at the moment to catch on.

    (ii) Prevent anyone from accessing the "bits" and control the software. This is what the music industry is trying to do at the moment but it is doomed to failure because there are so many places the "bits" are available - right down to the interface at the sound card. The only way to achieve this is having hardware only decoders with a 'secret' key and a secure algorithm. Even then it is only a matter of time before someone extracts the key and the game is over.

    What it comes down to is there is no solution - no matter what the RIAA tries to do they are screwed unless they control 100% of the hardware that can play music. This is simply not a feasible situation for many reasons - most of the commercial and not ethical.

  • Taco... (Score:5)

    by AnalogBoy ( 51094 ) on Wednesday June 06, 2001 @11:54AM (#171113) Journal
    You're assuming that napsteresque trading is always a legal trade. Lets be realistic - 95% of the trading that went on in the free-range napster days was far, far from legal.

    You said it yourself in your title. "Napster going legit". I quote:

    legitimate adj. Being in compliance with the law; lawful: a legitimate business.

    and then your statement, paraphrased:

    "Napster is no longer/becoming less relevant"

    indicates to me that your mindset likely also acknowledges that the majority of trading on napster is or rather was indeed, illegal.

    The core of this discussion is apparently not wether or not you can share files (Obviously you can. If illegal activities werent being executed on a horrendus scale, the gov't wouldn't care.) it is wether or not you can walk into the proverbial store, grab a CD, and walk out without paying for it.

    Napster is the perfect example of a situation where one can get something for free. quite often illegally, and with no accountability. Somewhat like having a descrambler on cable.

    If we have indeed found a way to make napster legitimate, i'm more than willing to pay for my entertainment. the way it tends to be in a capitalist society where most forms of entertainment is considered a product.

    Napster is a tool. Like any it can be used constructively or destructively. The object on which it acts is the Music industries microeconomy. Napster "Generates sales" to some extent, but many people download songs from artists they would never, ever buy albums from. Do they listen once then throw away? no.

    Bands-in-a-box, which are increasingly popular nowadays, tend to operate on the principal of put one or two good singles on a CD. Throw fluff for the rest (to satiate the need to pay songwriters who are contractually obligated to produce sales of $xx.xxx in songs in exchange for pay of $xx.xxx.

    Most people don't want the fluff. Most people arent willing to pay for the fluff. This pisses the recording industry off. This pisses the songwriters off (I happen to know a songwriter or two, living in nashville.) There is a bigger picture.

    LLAP :P

  • Give it a rest (Score:5)

    by dimator ( 71399 ) on Wednesday June 06, 2001 @12:02PM (#171114) Homepage Journal
    It's the perfect model: the users pay you *and* for the bandwidth to share the songs they already bought.

    Can we all stop pretending that we already own the cd's whose tracks we download from napster? That is utter bull shit.

    I use(d) napster for the following: downloading full CD's that I do not own, and never will, so that I could burn them to audio and listen to them in my car. Everyone I know did the same thing. Now that Napster is worthless, we use other means of doing the same damn thing.

    Stealing? Yep. Copyright infringement? Sure, why not. But for everyone (taco) to claim that they only downloaded tracks that they had a legal right to is completely ridiculous, and no one is buying it.
    ---

  • Napster is dead. Long live Napster. (Score:5)

    by zpengo ( 99887 ) on Wednesday June 06, 2001 @11:40AM (#171115) Homepage
    This seems to be the trend these days. Netscape is abandoning its browser, which is about the only thing it is known for, in favor of becoming a portal. They failed to realize that the only reason people used their portal is because they didn't know how to reconfigure their default home page.

    Likewise, Napster is wound-licking after it lost the MP3 wars. It has no chance, because they're failing to realize that the only reason people used Napster was because the common man finally realized that he could get music for free. Now that the comman man knows that, he's not going to go back to paying for it.

  • Re:Do you have Britney Spears home address? (Score:5)

    by Golias ( 176380 ) on Wednesday June 06, 2001 @12:12PM (#171116)
    We hear the argument "pay the musician directly" a lot around here, but there is an obvious problem with that:

    Nobody would buy, copy, or download a single Briney Spears song if the record label did not

    1: Hire studio rats to program the synth-pop music she sings over.
    2: Hire a producer and recording engineer team able to make a child singer sound "sexy"
    3: Produce expensive videos that wave Ms. Spears's two most obvious selling points in front of the camera.
    4: Get it played on the radio (in this case, her records come from Disney, who is a top-5 player in almost every radio market)

    To suggest that Ms. Spears is somehow entitled to 100% (or even more than a small percentage) of the revenue generated by her "art" is to ignore who is doing all the work.

    The answer is obvious: Ignore major label music entirely. Turn off the radio, stop watching MTV, and allow yourself to lose touch with popular culture. (People are supposed to do that when they start growing up, anyway.)

    The truth is, it has already started happening. Concert attendance has been plumetting over the last 10 years, because nobody seriously thinks any band really matters anymore. The biggest draws are leftover bands from the era when people actually cared (like U2). It seems to me that most people no longer consider their favorite music to be an integral part of their identity the way they did in the past. While the latest release from Weezer might be mildly entertaining, nobody is going to worship them the way throngs of stoners once went apeshit over Led Zeppelin; nobody is going to follow them from city to city the way caravans followed the Grateful Dead. Rock n Roll has become a dead religion.

    This year, I heard that a band called "Destiny's Child" won a bunch of awards. From the TV blub, they look kind of cute, and seem to be a band that sings shopworn 3-part harmonies over shopworn hip-hop beats. At the time, it occurred to me that I have not heard more than a 20-second blip from any of their songs. So tell me, fellow Slashbots, am I really missing anything by ignoring these teen divas and listening to Bethoven's 7th Symphony during my drive home?

  • Please parse this sentance for me (Score:5)

    by skoda ( 211470 ) on Wednesday June 06, 2001 @11:42AM (#171117) Homepage
    the users pay you and for the bandwidth to share the songs they already bought

    Maybe I'm just slow today, but I can't make sense of that sentance. Could someone parse it for me? Who or what is the antecedent to "you"? For what are users paying "you" in addition to paying for bandwidth?
    -----
    D. Fischer

  • Perfect model for the industry also (Score:5)

    by wrinkledshirt ( 228541 ) on Wednesday June 06, 2001 @11:35AM (#171118) Homepage
    It's the perfect model: the users pay you *and* for the bandwidth to share the songs they already bought.

    Not to mention a perfect model for the industry. If Napster is (as much of us believe it to be) a great promoter of music in general, and the users are the one footing the bill, the industry is basically having promotion of its commodity done FOR it, all expenses paid.

    This is pretty much like going to the store and forking over 18$ for a Nike T-shirt, paying for a company to brand their logo on you. If they can pull this off, they're geniuses. Evil genuises, but genuises nonetheless...

  • Re:Yet another little guy goes under (Score:5)

    by eXtro ( 258933 ) on Wednesday June 06, 2001 @12:06PM (#171119) Homepage
    Napster didn't stand up to any regime, it tried to make a business model around peoples ability to circumvent copywrite laws. As soon as Napster realized that it couldn't have survived solely on advertising dollars it would've implemented a subscription fee. Shawn Fanning wasn't out to change the world, he was out to line his pockets. There is no legitimate reason for a middle man in peer to peer file sharing unless its to somehow make a profit.

    Real peer to peer filesharing, such as gnutella, is really about making changes. There's no entity in the middle trying to make money off of each copyright violation.

    I'm not against file sharing, but I think its bullshit that some corporation thinks they should be able to serve as a middle man and make money off of negating another companies property rights.

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