All The Rave 310
| All the Rave: The Rise and Fall of Shawn Fanning's Napster | |
| author | Joseph Menn |
| pages | 368 |
| publisher | Crown Publishing Group |
| rating | 7 |
| reviewer | Libe Goad |
| ISBN | 0609610937 |
| summary | If you love to read about the dot-com bust -- over and over -- this meticulously researched tome is for you. Keep a drink handy, however, it gets dry in parts. |
One thing's certain: Menn, who covered Silicon Valley for the Los Angeles Times, meticulously researched his subject. The book is loaded with facts and figures, but more impressive is the level of National Enquirer-worthy details Menn milked from mountains of transcripts and one-on-one interviews.
Menn's discoveries can be described as nothing less than shocking, at least for anyone who hasn't followed the story blow-by-blow. We learn about Shawn's money-grubbing uncle, John Fanning, whose shady business practices cost the company numerous investors, but also the respect of his own family. Menn writes that at first Shawn Fanning was pleased when his uncle drew up papers incorporating Napster, Inc. Then the elder Fanning told Shawn he would be getting only 30 percent of the company. John Fanning would keep the rest. Shawn was stunned.
Menn also exposes Napster executives' ignorance of copyright laws, the company's pay-off to rapper Chuck D so he would publicly support file sharing and rockstress Courtney Love's flirtations with Shawn, whom she once introduced at an award show as her future husband.
With a boatload of rock stars and other curious characters, you'd think the spectacle of it all would overshadow the book's business patois. Menn attempts, valiantly, to do so, but it's still evident that All the Rave is a long-handed exercise in business reporting rather than a drama-filled account. There is little surprise in the overarching Napster story because most readers will know how the story ends before cracking open the front cover.
If you're still committed to All the Rave, the best reading takes place in two separate sections: the first on the peer-to-peer program's incubation, and the second on Napster's attempt to take on the well-muscled music industry.
In Chapters 1 and 2, Menn introduces Shawn Fanning, an unassuming high school kid who comes from humble beginnings. Though his life doesn't exactly make for a Horatio Alger story, it's interesting to see how Shawn stops pursuing a sports scholarship for college and instead focuses on computer programming.
After his uncle John gives Shawn his first computer, the aw-shucks kid from Massachusetts comes across a brilliant idea, peer-to-peer file sharing, which he develops with the help of friends in several online communities. The story is touching, and it's fascinating to take a behind-the-scenes look at how the program originated, first through Shawn and then as the product of a tight-knit online community.
Techies of all stripes will be amused as Menn attempts to make computer programming jargon edible to the mainstream reader. Just imagine explaining terms like IRC and warez to your grandma, and you'll have a good idea of the language in these beginning chapters. Despite a few cornball explanations, however, it's still refreshing to see past Napster's media hype and to see Napster for what it started as: a labor of love created by a kid who wanted nothing more than to take advantage of the online universe.
Following chapters barrel through the company's beginnings, dedicating much space to vilifying John Fanning, who seems to deserve every bit of consternation the reading public can muster. After the shock of the elder Fanning's behavior wears off, however, you'll find yourself dragging through painfully detailed accounts of acquiring executive and meetings with skeptical venture capitalists. Anyone who isn't utilizing All the Rave as a handbook on how not to run a business can skip to Chapter 7, in which Menn shifts the book's focus to Napster's delicate dance with the music industry. It's a Davey and Goliath tale for the 21st century. To accent the vastness of the undertaking, Menn dishes out a brief history of the music biz, offering such a compelling analysis of the Napster/music industry camps that it could easily be expanded to fill an entirely different book.
If you don't want to read at all, you can simply look at the pretty pictures midway through the book. Talk about a yearbook: there are pictures of Shawn's hacker pals, a photo of a wilting Lars Ullrich from Metallica, Jack Valenti and other corporate clowns, smiling like there was something to be happy about.
And maybe there was. In the end, Menn shows how Napster was, like other dot-coms, "little more than a publicly supported pyramid scheme, built on the long-true presumption that an even dumber investor was just down the road."
If you want a solid study on copyright law and running a business, Menn's read will not disappoint. If you're looking for a fluffy piece of literature that will keep you awake into the wee hours, try the one with the bespectacled boy on the cover. You probably know the one I'm talking about -- Harry something or other...
You can purchase All the Rave from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
I didn't spend 99-00 downloading from napster (Score:1, Insightful)
Culture maven (Score:3, Insightful)
1) The word maven is very irritating
2) I used Napster only a handful of times because I regard illegal filesharing as theft
3) I don't consider myself a culture "maven" but I am into music
4) Dancing with wolves? What on earth are you talking about?
Diapers? (Score:3, Insightful)
If you weren't spending your spare time in the years 99-00 downloading MP3s like a champ, it's likely you were still in diapers or dancing with wolves.
Or maybe you hadn't yet convinced your old-fashioned parents to buy a computer...
wolves? (Score:5, Insightful)
Or using ftp, irc or usenet. Or not using them at all.
I prefer whole albums myself. Napster never made that easy.
Re:Culture maven (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Culture maven (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not theft, but it is stealing. Theft is removing property, so that every part of the property is removed from it's former position. Steal is to take without right or leave the property of another.
My grassroots campaign to try to get people to acknowledge they are, in fact, stealing when they download music without license to that media. Join my campaign
3) I don't consider myself a culture "maven" but I am into music
I consider myself a culture muppet, and I love music.
4) Dancing with wolves? What on earth are you talking about?
Jon Katz, describing hippies.
Re:Wha??? (Score:2, Insightful)
I for one loved Napster, and continue to love Kazaa and IMesh, though they suck compared to Napster. Napster is the one... true... lust... I must have it back!
Re:Napster? Feh. (Score:5, Insightful)
I consider wandering off with a CD I haven't paid for to be theft. I consider downloading songs I haven't paid for and don't have permission to download copyright infringement, because that's what it is. I don't consider either to be acceptable, but neither to I consider both of them to be identical.
Re:Napster (Score:1, Insightful)
Well... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:wolves? (Score:3, Insightful)
What abuot Scour? Or just burning the CD?
In 99-00 I was in college and Napster was blocked there, but Scour and iMesh weren't. I never did try Napster.
Of course, just coping the CD from someone will a helluva lot easier.
Actually, I never liked Napster. (Score:5, Insightful)
I hated napster.
I spent the entire Napster period downloading mp3s, just as i had for a very very long time before Napster was ever invented-- from search.oth.net and other FTP-search based sources. Yeah, Ratio was a bitch, but at least you KNEW the server was going to stay up for a few hours at least, and you knew nobody was going to put an mp3 in their main collection if it was an incomplete.
Also, there was this convenient thing in that basically, the majority of ftp servers had a 1:5 U/D ratio set; the vast majority of ftp servers had exactly one file that i wanted to download of about 6 or 7 megabytes; and i had an mp3 of cookie monster singing "C is for Cookie, that's good enough for me" that was 1.5 megabytes. So i could zap up cookie monster, grab what i wanted, and get out quick. What was wierd, though, was that i think i started something; once i started doing this, the cookie monster mp3 started spreading quite a bit. I would sign onto mp3 servers i'd never been on before and find my cookie monster mp3 already there-- and not in the upload folder either, in the actual sorted mp3 collection. Hmmmm.. ^_^
Uh, and since i see to be admitting to illegal acts above: i downloaded mp3s solely to sample music which i was considering buying or which was not available in america, i was too young to be legally tried as an adult when the events described above happened, i never downloaded mp3s, this post is fiction posted for humorous purposes, i don't even know what an "mp3" is, and i don't own or know how to use a computer.
Oh, and slashdot claims that this is my 700th post posted with my account, though i notice a lot of my earlier ones aren't in the archive.
Re:Interesting.. (Score:3, Insightful)
And that was a similar situation, interesting comparison. Bonnie & Clyde, Dillinger, etc. were all worshiped as heros, because the banks of the period appeared to have screwed over the common man, both through the events of the dust bowl (evicting people from their homes), and at the start of the depression, with the stock market collapse. Gangsters were viewed as fighting back for the common man.
Maybe people doing the same thing for groups such as Napster implies that a similar sentiment exists towards the RIAA/MPAA etc. Obviously the "crime" of those media industries is far less (abuse of artists, homogenization of radio, high costs), but a similar, though smaller, backlash is present.
Re:you know it's true (Score:3, Insightful)
ALL COPYRIGHT = GREED
Really? So the GPL == GREED too? After all. the power of the GPL comes from Copyright Law, even though it's used to grant freedoms instead of restrict them.
and copying music is NOT stealing in any sense of the word "stealing"
PERIOD
Here nor there - it's still not legal. You're either on a crusade to "stick it to da man" or you yourself are GREEDY.
Kids. Sheesh.
Soko
puh-lease (Score:5, Insightful)
No self respecting geek would use Napster EVER, no one I know ever touched it, and we all downloaded MP3's *like a champ*.
It's called usenet...premium servers please. All of us *in the know* knew that once Napster went under, and it most definitely would, that all the kids hyped up on *free* would be flocking to usenet, flooding the groups with crap posts, begging for instructions and calling everyone *fag*. Sure enough, they did.
Napster single handedly brought piracy to the masses, made it a household word and brought the ire of RIAA etc. upon us all.
I cant believe that this story was intro'd like this. Napster is, was and always will be a blight and a bad bad period in mine and others opinions.
"...in diapers..." man, gimma a freekin break.
Re:you know it's true (Score:2, Insightful)
Copyrights and patents are not inherently evil, but like many things they can be abused and used for ill purposes. For example- by extending them in perpetuity.
Re:A lot of folks are missing the point completely (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, it's the potential income that is stolen.
The problem is that it's very difficult to prove that had a user not been able to download the song, that they would have gone out and bought it.
Re:Decent book review (Score:4, Insightful)
M.D. Inc
Illegal versus unethical (Score:4, Insightful)
Although the law does not technically distinguish between the two cases, I would argue that my use of Napster was not unethical, because if everyone did it, it would not have a significantly negative impact on the production of music, and because the music industry has provided no legitimate alternative. Meanwhile, downloading thousands of songs to avoid paying for music at all is unethical, because the downloader benefits from musicians' work without giving them any possibility of compensation. If everyone did that, the availability of music would likely decrease as fewer people could afford to produce it, and everyone would suffer.
Your argument, that breaking a law is black-and-white regardless of intention or magnitude, is the sort of logic that puts petty thieves away for life under three-strikes laws. It also implies that legality is the same as morality, and sets up the government as the ultimate judge of correct social behaviour.
And I think those who download music should consider that because they can do something, it doesn't necessarily mean that they should.