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Music Media

Revenge Of The MP3 Quickies! 307

Posted by emmett from the where-the-hell-are-my-umlauts dept.
An Anonymous Coward wrote in about the Salon article of an unedited transcript of Courtney Love's speech to the Digital Hollywood online entertainment conference. Gnutella News wrote in and told us that Inside Music is running a story about the RIAA uncovering very incriminating internal memos and e-mails between Napster executives that the RIAA says is "proof that the service represents a haven for music piracy and should be closed immediately". Also, head on over to Camp Chaos for the latest flash cartoons about Napster, including one featuring the real Motley Crue. There's also a parody over at Everything2 to check out. Also here is a Wall Street article about the copyright office and the age of the Internet.
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Revenge Of The MP3 Quickies! More

Revenge Of The MP3 Quickies!

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  • They left her pants? How can you tell, she never seems to wear any.

    From her recent appearances it would seem that she's been left with nothing but undergarments.

    Good story to hear, though. You gotta wonder why you don't ever read things like this in the mainstream press.... oh, wait, who owns the media outlets?

    Thank GOD for the web.

    Once, back when Jann gave a shit, something like this might have appeared in Rolling Stone. Of course, Jann's been bought and sold so many times that the devil would have to lease his soul at this point...

  • Be that as it may, the points put forth are accurate. The music industry is a racket. There isn't very much good music being produced anymore because of the music industry.
  • Yeah, I loved this article. I knew musicians were being screwed by the Man but it's good to actually hear it from the whores's mouth.

    Hopefully, someday there will be more room for the middle ground between starvin-and-playing-on-the-street-corner and living-in-the-mansion-and-suing-Napster.

    joel
  • I didn't need to read this entire article through to further my rather firm notion that she's a complete hypocrite (and a horrible "artist"). She rants and raves for paragraphs about evil the recording industry is, and how her "art" and other "art" of pop mainstream crap shouldn't treated as products, and so on and so forth. What is she thinking? She signed the contract, she signed to the label, she agreed to the videos, she did this thing and that thing that _made_ her the total product she is today. She's not an "aritst." She puts out a product like Proctor and Gamble put out products, only the latter's is a little easier to take. She signed up day #1 to be DGC's (or whatever label she is on now) whore, and now she still wants to play the aritst card. No thanks, Courtney. Secondly, she details corporate culture for two pages and then asserts that "We don't understand or want to understand corporate culture." God. She needs to get over herself and go ahead and fade away. The MP3 saga does not her undying and unholy hypocricy. Or photos of her nasty likeness, for that matter. And Courtney, 192k MP3s sound fine. And I haven't heard a pleasant guitar tone in any of your "art" yet. Perhaps you ought to stick to killing off your husbands; you seem pretty talented at that.
  • Agreed, I didn't really know much about her before except for the whole Kurt Cobain thing, but she really gets what is happening, most pop / movie stars are quite vacuous, but Courtney is a sharp cookie, wow, I think I'm in love :)
  • He's a hack, and worse, he waters down his liquor.

    (jfb)

  • larsify.pl (Re: It's just not the same...) (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    #!/usr/bin/perl -w
    @mutterings = ("you know... ", "well... ", "umm... ");

    foreach $line (){
    @words = split (/\s/,$line);
    if (defined @words){
    while ($#words > 0){
    # ignore a random number of words
    $ign = 7 * rand;
    for ($i = 0; $i 0; $i ++) {print "$words[0] "; shift @words;}
    # ignore words with punctuations and problematic words
    while ($#words > 0 &&
    (! ($words[0] =~ /\w+/) || $words[0] eq "I" || $words[0] eq ucfirst($words[0]))) {
    print "$words[0] "; shift @words;
    }

    if ($#words > 0) { print "... $mutterings[int(3 * rand)]"; }
    }

    print "$words[0]" if defined $words[0];
    }

    print "\n";
    }

  • [Courtney Love] has a lot of experience under her belt.

    Um... Er... Well... Uh, huh-huh.

    Was that a compliment or are you saying she puts out a lot? Either way, I think she'd take well your words.

    InitZero

  • My #1 biggest fear by far about Napster is the fact that music will be reduced to songs. Albums will no longer be produced because they will be too expensive to download, and because everybody will demand catchy three minute jewels of pop.
    I fear this, too. It's a legitimate risk. Except that really good musicians will continue doing what they always have, which is make a complete work and a complete experience. The folks who've been releasing one song and a bunch of crap (IOW, pretending to be good musicians), are the ones who should worry.
    When casual music fans (e.g. Napster users) begin to dictate the music industry, it will be destroyed.
    Where have you been? The music industry as such has _always_ been "destroyed" in this sense.
    nobody was offering any Lucy Kaplansky or Rebecca Pearcy.
    I'm not sure anyone should. But that's not for me to say; the question is, did you? Because that's all that separates the music lovers (who trade music to _share_ what they enjoy with others) from the leeches (who are just looking for some free crap) in this debate.

    Boss of nothin. Big deal.
    Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.

  • ...network has mirroring capabilities and built-in redundancy. You cannot shut down the network.

    Exactly when did the RIAA state that they wanted to shut down the Internet? I must have missed that story. I thought they were trying to shut down Napster.

    Oh, you mean all that bullshit was meaningless hyperbole, and is totally irrelevent to the point? How Katzian of you.


    --

  • "It goes on to quote Parker's message to Fanning: 'Users will understand that they are improving their experience by providing information about their tastes without linking that information to a name or address or other sensitive data that might endanger them (especially since they are exchanging pirated music)." It's my (possibly mistaken) understanding that the parenthesis indicate a interpretation of the rest of the quote. if that's the case, why don't they quote what the document really said, instead of their interpretation?
  • I was also surprised by the similarity of the beginning of her speech and Albini's article. But coming from Albini, one could suspect an anti-major bias, whereas Courtney Love -- it seems -- fully embraced her major label status. I think what Albini saw happen to friends of his, she saw happen to herself; and the same observation coming from two very different points of views makes it even stronger.

    From this, she goes further and makes some very interesting points. I actually like her attitude when she says that since she did not get any money from her company, she might as well bypass it entirely.
  • > They're not obligated to nail everybody. All
    >they need to do is nail enough in order to create
    >an atmosphere of fear

    Nicely put. Rule through fear. Now where have I heard that before???

    Ah there it is... the Tarkin doctrine...

    "I've just received word that the Emperor has
    dissolved the council permanently...
    Regional governors will now have direct
    control over their systems. Fear will keep
    the local systems in line... fear of this
    battlestation"

    Honestly, the number of slashdotters posting recently who are so willing to supplicate themselves to RIAA and its merry band of metallica/lawyers stormtroopers just baffles me. After all the work and struggle to bring down ONE evil empire, people are now anxious to submit to another?!?!?

    Sad.

    john
    Resistance is NOT futile!!!

    Haiku:
    I am not a drone.
    Remove the collective if

  • Hello? Wake up. Napster, on paper, is NOT illegal. That's why this is such a mess. Napster isn't trading illegal MP3s. Napster does not condone trading illegal MP3s. Napster wants to promote the free exchange of legal, licensed MP3s, and they encourage artists to license their material for distribution on Napster's service. Napster is aware that unlicensed MP3s are traded on their service, but they have no technical means to censor content.

    Just as AltaVista isn't breaking the law if they happen to inadvertently index a Web site that contains kiddie porn, Napster isn't breaking the law if they happen to inadvertently index an MP3 file that isn't licensed for distribution. The courts have upheld this in the past, but now the RIAA is pissed off, so the courts are unsure of how to proceed.

    In both cases, it's the person who is hosting the kiddie porn/unlicensed MP3 file that is breaking the law, not AltaVista/Napster. However, they both have a policy for reporting such things: tell them about it, and they'll take it out of the index! This is what Metallica did, and Napster responded exactly according to their stated policy: they banned the users that were reported.

    --

  • No, this won't do at all. Courtneey Love's speech is articulate and reasoned, whereas, as a loyal slashdot reader, I am used to getting my music piracy analysis from illiterate, inarticulate, long haired greasy halfwits who couldn't fall down a flight of stairs without missing at least half a beat. Could someone please write a "Lars-o-matic" program to insert "you know" and "well" and "um" every third word in order to bring some sort of sanity back to arrangements.

    I must point out that I am not volunteering to do any such thing myself, merely adopting the "open Source" style of development by whinging about it in the hope that somebody else will. I certainly have no intention of learning Perl [python.org] or any similar abortion of a line-noise emulation language (that's link, by the way, motherfuckers, so moderate me informative.

    In conclusion, fuck you all.

    --if only more people were more like streetlawyer.

  • A Great Read (Score:3)

    by CaptainZapp ( 182233 ) on Wednesday June 14, 2000 @04:51AM (#1003059) Homepage
    At first I figured that Ms. Love is serving her self interest which is legitimate of course.
    Diving deeper into the article however, there's an anger and energy which must be admired. She reveals an artsists perspective (and yes, since seeing The people vs Larry flint I definitely consider her to be an artist and not just a blonde, arse swinging bimbo) about what really stinks in the entrtainment business.
    Even if taken with a lot of grains of salt, it's an unbelievable gripping speach she gave and the more I dived into it, the more credibility I gave her.
    Gawd, I really would have loved to be there...

  • Internal Memo Warfare (Score:4)

    by Effugas ( 2378 ) on Wednesday June 14, 2000 @04:52AM (#1003061) Homepage
    Ohhhhh, no.

    RIAA didn't just go there.

    Mucking around with company's internal memos is something of a "below the belt" attack in modern corporate warfare. Yes, it happens in all out warfare and when companies are backed against the wall and are struggling to keep the creditors away. But the problem is that every company has internal memos that would be mission critical, quarter close affecting content if it ever gets out communications that occur precisely because if they don't occur, company's blindfold themselves and crash and burn.

    Thus only the internally honest survive.

    Oh dear God, can you imagine the anticompetitive, anticonsumer, antirecording, pro government manipulation("go bribe that senator with a junket") style messages that fly around the RIAA?

    It's a nuclear attack, and a very, very dumb one. The RIAA's internal memos implicate, likely criminally, very large, very powerful, and very vulnerable(deep pockets) corporations. Meanwhile, Napster just screws itself.

    There's a reason we don't see this happen much. We're all about to see why.

    Yours Truly,

    Dan Kaminsky
    DoxPara Research
    http://www.doxpara.com

  • Re:Read the Courtney Love Article (Score:3)

    by Fishstick ( 150821 ) on Wednesday June 14, 2000 @06:56AM (#1003062) Journal
    Man that was awesome, I've never seen so much guts, integrity and brutal honesty all at the same time. Man that blows me away!

    Sh*t, does she come off articulate. She has figured out that she doesn't really have anything to lose since her record label has basically pimped her art and left he with nothing but 'nice pants'. At last, not only does a major artist 'get it', she also has the balls to voice it, and with an amazing amout of credibility.

    I hope she gets listened to, and that she is successful in starting a new movement in the production and distribution of audio art. More power to her!
  • If the RIAA has copies of those memos/emails, Napster will be shut down before the end of next week. Releasing damning RIAA memos may help those trying to crack the record industry monopoly in the future, but it won't save either one of two stupid teenager's asses...Can you say "DONE"..."FINITO"..."OFFLINE"..."404 EVEN"?

    Serves them right...never hire a businessman to write an app OR a hacker to run a business. Those two never had a business anyway...all they had was a cool app and an idea they could get real rich riding on the backs of musicians (most of them poor) around the world. It should have remained a free file-sharing utility and never become a corporation with VC funding.

  • I was thinking the same thing. I've always been a fan of hers but in this speech she addressed the problems with napster *AND* the RIAA in wonderful form. Finally an artist who had something (or something scripted) that was intelligent to say.
  • GPL was created BECAUSE of copyright law. Non sequitur.
  • >From her recent appearances it would seem that she's been left with nothing but undergarments

    Yeah, read the blurb she has about playing topless at a soda-distributor-funded concert (and then ordering a six-pack of the rival's pop while on-stage... now, was it the 'taste of a new generation' or '___ and a smile'?)
  • The Supreme Court has already considered this question in the Sony Betamax case, and sent the plaintiff's home without their supper.

    In that case, it didn't matter that Sony manufacturered an instrument that COULD be used for piracy, even if they knew such piracy existed, provided that the same instrument could substantially be used for a legitimate purpose: in that case, for time-shifting network television.

    There are myriad non-infringing uses for Napster, and Napster doesn't itself infringe anything.

    So why doesn't the Betamax case resolve these questions once and for all?
  • RIAA does not get it. Looks like Fanning and Parker had terrible aim. But I have some hope that CEO/Lawyer Barry may be able to salvage the gig.

    Napster will not kill the CD market, it will revive it. It's already doing this.

    I've amassed a 400-piece MP3 jazz collection that I share on Napster and other Napigator servers. Most of the collection came from Usenet and Napster. I do not consider myself a pirate, and I'm not in the least ashamed of my collecting. I've learned a whole lot about MP3 sharing that many readers have learned. Napster is very, very cool. I want Napster in my life. It saves me from the industrialized, pasteurized, homogenized pop sterility of the kind of music foisted on the public by the companies fronted by the RIAA.

    Both the RIAA and Fanning & Parker are wrong about the threat to CD music distribution. Napster is a means of sampling low quality copies of selected songs. It enables me to buy only CD's I know I like. This means I'm happier with my CD spending and less reluctant to make purchases. I always spent a fair chunk of change on music, and since I've been collecting with Napster I've continued to spend - probably a little more than before.

    The other neglected fact is that Napster collecting is not free. It takes lots and lots of time and effort. It is not a convenient way to listen to music, nor is it a convenient way to collect music. The choices are limited. Downloading fails as often as it works. On my 56K line it is *slow*... For music I know I will like and listen to, I just by the CD. Napster is for sampling and browsing and expanding your musical horizons.

    The Pew study deserves attention. It's not just college kids. It's me, the 40-something music collector too. It's anyone that is not being served by the current industrial radio, pop music machine. Napster and its offspring will be a means of empowering consumers and liberating individuals to seek their own true musical tastes.

    All of this is disruptive. The RIAA position is no surprise. Nor is it a surprise to see the Napster founders' original intentions in print. But none of this changes the fact that law abiding music consumers from all walks of life are drawn to Napster because if serves a useful purpose. CEO Barry gets it. I sure hope he finds a way to derail the litigation and get on with the negotiating and partnering that must come about sooner or later.

  • There is some irony here: Courtney's rant is totally like previous rants from Steve Albini [negativland.com] (She totally hates Steve and thinks he ruined Nirvana's record). The similarities are all over the place - even down to complaining about how digital recording sucks. Maybe she and Steve should try to make up - haha.

    While you're there you should really check out Negativland's [negativland.com] page on Intellectual Property Issues. [negativland.com]

  • Re:Technology vs. IP (Score:3)

    by Nicolas MONNET ( 4727 ) <nicoaltiva@gm a i l.com> on Wednesday June 14, 2000 @07:10AM (#1003093) Journal

    I'm a BeOS-zealot most of the time, and it has taken a little compromising of views to reach this opinion. I've never been a real big fan of the GPL, but mainly because of the force it carries, given to it by copyright law and IP.

    For the third time in this thread, I have to repeat it as it seems so many idiots keep forgetting the basics of the Free Software Movement and bash Stallman by making false accusations against him ... GPL is the implementation of the concept of COPYLEFT, which is an attack and a joke against COPYRIGHT. You're allowed to do basically anything you want with GPL software. You're just not allowed to restrict other users.

  • Re:No (Score:2)

    by Wah ( 30840 )
    Phish's official policy. From here. [phish.com]

    --
    All taping must be for personal use only, which may include trading (via analog or digital tape, CD, or digital file transfer). Recordings may be traded only for an
    equivalent amount of similar media (cassettes or CDs, pre-recorded or blank). Regardless of any expenses incurred, no money may ever be exchanged as part of
    a trade; however, stamped, self-addressed envelopes may be included with blank media. In addition, the media by which audio trading is publicized may not be
    commercialized. Therefore newsletters, web sites, clubs, or any other communication forum facilitating audio trading cannot accept advertising, offer links for
    compensation, exploit databases compiled from their traffic, or otherwise derive any commercial profit in any form. Stores or businesses may not offer to
    duplicate Phish media for customers or sell or otherwise provide media containing unreleased Phish music for any price.
    --

    In other words: Listen all you want, but please don't sell it.

    IMHO, this is how copyright should be, i.e. the literal translation should be "sellright".
    --

  • I am who the RIAA fears (Score:3)

    by Lumpy ( 12016 ) on Wednesday June 14, 2000 @07:13AM (#1003097) Homepage
    Why? because I dont listen to any label artists. I use mp3's almost exclusively, I buy CD-s from non-label artists, and I will be startingh a LPFM station this summer that will play only non-label music. I bypass the RIAA in every way, legally, and that scares them. It scares them that someone like me will let others listen to this non-label music I have, and that I will point them in the right direction to get it. And finally they are horrified that I will be playing on the public airwaves non-label music. I will be spreading to the public proof that they dont have control, that there are alternatives, and that it really is good!

    I scare them, and I hope that you will too.
  • Actually, she went to a very prestigous school in northern Michigan. I forgot the name of it. She's been schooled, but she's a little wierd.
    I seriously respect that article, though. Very insightful.
  • It's apparent to me that Napster in it's present form is not going to be around much longer. Enjoy it while you can, folks - hoard those songs.

    What I hope is that when the huge-scale Napster operation crumbles, Gnutella or possibly Freenet will step in and fill the void. Sure, they're already here and they work, but what is needed is the SCALE. It's that HUGE community of users that makes it so convenient to find virtually any song you like. So spread the word. If Napster kicks it, I hope like the public will move to a more subversive version of the same distributed filesharing system - and with more than just songs.

    If Gnutella or Freenet becomes widespread, that will only make the present community of Napster users stronger, and make it more evident that nothing can be done - especially if it crosses international boundaries. It might even sway the public's paradigm of intellectual property, showing that now, they old system CANNOT work.

    --
    grappler
  • Yes, but without it there would be no way that the GPL could enforce upon others the REQUIREMENT of redistributing source code to all who asked. I'm not exactly sure what Non sequitur means, but if it's anything like a catch-22, i'd think we're stuck in a chicken and egg type situation.
  • You might want to look into the most recent LPFM stuff. A number of industry lobbyists went full bore against it in the last few months. I believe they cut the availabe freqs in half after some totally contrived (emulated) tests showed that LPFM would degrade regular FM signals. I don't have the C-mens names, but they set up the "Radio Preservation Act" that pretty much slams LPFM.

    Not to rain on your parade, just trying to inform you that many others are trying to keep you from having a parade permit.

    Oh, and I hope they fear me too. [wahcentral.net] :) (it's got links to a number of the things Ms. Love, hehe, mentioned in her speech)
    --
  • Why reinvent the wheel when you don't need to?:80s.com [80s.com]. (Albeit, it's closed source.)
  • Obviously. But some RIAA memo could "turn up" - I imagine they have their share of enemies. Of course that wouldn't swing the direction of the Napster case, because obviously it has no bearing on the Napster case.

    I'm just saying that it would be sweet if internal RIAA memos were leaked. That could do wonders in the long term as far as public perception is concerned.

    --
    grappler
  • I'm sorry

    Don't be.

    So fucking WHAT if she can "sing and dance"?

    So fucking what if you can code in Perl? (Just supposing 'you' as a prototypical Slashdot reader can, for dialog's sake.) Is your 'striving' to learn Perl on your Dad's computer somehow more noble and respectable than Britney's learning to dance and sing?

    Give me a good choreographer and I can do the same thing.

    That I'd LOVE to see!

    Remember Tifanny? Or Debbie Gibson? How about Samantha Fox? And where are they today? How have they recently made your life better?

    Not every successful performer creates a lasting legacy, if that's what you're getting at, and there's no rulebook saying they have to. Part of successful Entertainment is giving the People what they want, when they want it. Silly question.

    She is yet another bubble-gum pop-star that will be forgotten as soon as her tits start to sag.

    That's her problem and her responsibility that she'll have to face it the same way the rest of us do . Ever heard the term 'dead wood' in the corporate realm? Doesn't matter what you do or for whom, sooner or later your tit's will sag too. Worry about your own ass, and she'll worry about hers (while the rest of us admire it from afar;)

    Examples abound of pretty-girls that have two, three hits and are tossed aside by the next new
    thing

    Examples also abound of software developers, heavy-metal guitar-players and vaccuum(sp?) sales-men who are also tossed aside by the next new thing. Are you bitter of these folks too when they're successful? What's your point?

    You've been sold an odorous pile of shit, pal, no matter how fuckable it looks.

    She's a smart kid thriving in a high-pressure, high-profile job, and I respect that. End of story. I haven't 'bought' anything.

    Spears is the music equivalent of America's Funniest Home Videos: occasionally humorous, but ultimately forgettable

    That's an insightful bit of music criticism, but I'm not sure that it's of any consequence.

    Looking forward to seeing your dance number!

  • Are you really THAT dumb? (Score:3)

    by revscat ( 35618 ) on Wednesday June 14, 2000 @12:29PM (#1003127) Journal

    I'm sorry man, but as relativistic as I am your comments are absolutely asinine. So fucking WHAT if she can "sing and dance"? Give me a good choreographer and I can do the same thing. Do you not understand the fact that she is totally superficial? If it weren't for looks, we'd have zip. She is yet another bubble-gum pop-star that will be forgotten as soon as her tits start to sag.

    Let's flash back to the 80's... Remember Tifanny? Or Debbie Gibson? How about Samantha Fox? And where are they today? How have they recently made your life better? Examples abound of pretty-girls that have two, three hits and are tossed aside by the next new thing. Talent requires staying power, imagination, originality, and meaning. Spears' talent is skin deep. You've been sold an odorous pile of shit, pal, no matter how fuckable it looks.

    Spears is the music equivalent of America's Funniest Home Videos: occasionally humorous, but ultimately forgettable.

    - Rev.
  • This is what I find disturbing about music today. It is basically mass produced "fast food" music. It really doesn't take anyone special to
    perform it, just a good set of pipes and some nice T&A.

    ANY art that can be profitable WILL be relegated to the realm of fast food. Simple fact of life.

    Hell, food itself has been relegated to the realm of fast food!

    That's what makes Mom's home-cookin' or Chef Nagato's sushi so worthwhile!

    Or bands like Nirvana or the Smashing Pumpkins.

    Doesn't stop me from choking down a little Burger-Doodle now and then. If you consistently avoid Burger-Doodle, well, you can pat yourself on the back, but they're not going out of business any time soon.

    The same technology that gives us Slashdot has also given us MIDI, cheesy synthesiser sounds, hard-disk recording and Digital Voice Pitch Correction, all of which have been put to blazingly creative as well as cunningly nefarious uses.

    Mope if you must, but some performers don't want your respect, they just want the money. If they can work the system in their favor and get it, I say more power to 'em.

  • Why are you watching 'The Charts' in the first place?

    If you don't like ants, don't stare at ant-hills.

  • Internal memos? (Score:4)

    by Signal 11 ( 7608 ) on Wednesday June 14, 2000 @04:55AM (#1003131)
    Dear RIAA,

    It is obvious you know less than nothing about how the internet works, so here is a quick breakdown for you.

    Fact: the internet is a peer-to-peer network. This means that no centralized control exists. The closest thing we have to controlling the internet at the protocol level is the DNS system (which is making attempts to decentralize) and the loosely-knit agreements between ISPs and backbones to provide connectivity. Beyond that, every packet is routable through *some* means, and every packet is treated the same (it is a "dumb" network).

    Fact: The primary means to search for information on the internet is via a search engine. Most all search engines use a substring glob search, with the more advanced ones allowing for regular expressions. What this means is that there is no definitive way to find any particular page or piece of information on the internet. When you use a search engine, you get "close enough" to the result that you can follow the links to where you want to go. More popular sites are easier to find, obviously.

    Fact: People on the internet like low-cost to no-cost services. Consider pricewatch.com, ebay.com, any local newspaper or TV station - all of these offer up-to-the-minute content that often serves as a replacement for conventional media. This also lowers the cost of distribution dramatically as the cost-per-character is vastly lower than paper.

    Fact: People have no morals. As the RIAA itself has demonstrated, profit and economic gain rule the marketplace. This is not limited to corporations - call it "Trickle down morality" if you will, but people have taken their que from businesses and also seek out the best ways to maximize their profits. This is an excellent example of true capitalism.

    Conclusion: Here's where we put it all together. In a nutshell, you cannot control the medium as it was engineered specifically to resist centralized control - the US military built it to survive a nuclear blast.. I doubt a few lawyers can cause that kind of damage to the network. The network routes around failure automatically - if you kill an ISP another takes over the previous services. The network has mirroring capabilities and built-in redundancy. You cannot shut down the network. Next, due to the way search engines work, you cannot a) locate all of the material you want to remove -OR- b) quickly and efficiently identify that material. This means that if you plot the amount of money put into removing information log-log with the amount of return, it will rapidly drop to zero and infinity, respectively. In short - there will always be a sizeable percentage of "forbidden" material available. Even with no mirroring, napster, or crawlers.

    Guys, you do not need more lawyers, you need more engineers. Evil engineers. Go build an internet that's trademark and copyright-friendly. And good luck getting everyone else to use it. :)

  • Napster will almost certainly lose, eventually (Score:3)

    by robwicks ( 18453 ) on Wednesday June 14, 2000 @04:55AM (#1003134) Homepage
    Come on, they knew they were going to be facilitating trading of music for free. They should have made the service more all-purpose, rather than choose to only distribute a file format which is used almost (but not quite) exclusively to distribute copyrighted material. I think the Napster fiasco will alert others to go with something like gnutella or some other general purpose transfer mechanism. Hotline was my favorite on the Mac. By restricting the type of information being traded, Napster opened themselves up to all sorts of scrutiny that Hotline never did, even though copyright violations were rampant on that service which last I used it (3 years ago).
  • Napster go bye-bye
    because Metallica has
    penis jelousy




    Hahaha...
  • I know what you mean. There are many subjects I grow tired of hearing about, although for me the napster saga is not one of them.

    You're in luck though, theres a nice and convenient solution available. It's called not clicking on the link. Also, some people might judge how popular a given topic on slashdot is by how much discussion it generates. To those people you are just making it look like a "hot topic" A better way to show your disinterest might by not commenting.

    [sorry for being offtopic everyone]
  • Napster's entire business model is based on their users pirating music. Even their executives admit it. If every artist subitted to Napster a list of accounts that traded their music illegally and had those users banned, Napster would quickly run out of users! Banning and then re-subscribing users validates this. If they don't re-subscribe them then they run out of users. They know it. You know it. Suck it down.
  • There is no catch-22. COPYLEFT was created as a protest to abusive COPYRIGHT law (to put it simply), and it uses such copyright laws to subvert them from the inside. If there was no COPYRIGHT abusive laws, there would'nt have been the need for COPYLEFT. Thus it would'nt have existed. Therefore accusing the GPL of hypocrisy as some people did in this thread is not just fallacious, insulting and libellous, it's just plain dumb.
  • Today Be Inc. also announced [yahoo.com] that it would incorporate "MP3 encoding and decoding" into its Internet appliances. Basically they want to turn your house into an MP3-pumping powerhouse.

  • Where have we heard this before, Courtney? (Score:3)

    by carlhirsch ( 87880 ) on Wednesday June 14, 2000 @04:58AM (#1003150) Homepage

    Below is an Article that Steve Albini wrote a few years ago about how working for a major label is a huge sucker bet. It was published in The Baffer and Maximum Rock 'n' Roll under the title "Some of Your Friends are Already this Fucked"

    This is an archived article off of Google [google.com]

  • How is this incriminating? (Score:3)

    by Effugas ( 2378 ) on Wednesday June 14, 2000 @05:00AM (#1003154) Homepage
    Napster brings about death of the CD

    And...? The subscription model doesn't? Hell, the DVD-Audio model doesn't?

    Isn't it ironic that everyone wants the CD dead? Techies want compressed digital audio, industry wants your ossicles to be trade secreted.

    And yet, I can't imagine anything else that could have killed the CD...

    Record industry may be unwilling to support this transition (gut their bottom line)

    And...? An existing oligopoly might be afraid of making less money?

    Record stores (Tower Records) obsoleted.

    This is incriminating? Boy. CD Now is screwed.

    Of all the things to call incriminating, these sure don't qualify. Transitioning an entire industry into a new level of technology which lowers margins for some players and entirely eliminates others...last I checked, we did have some kind of public policy which advocated competition. This is starting to reflect the ugliest aspects of the Microsoft trial.

    Yours Truly,

    Dan Kaminsky
    DoxPara Research
    http://www.doxpara.com
  • She is intelligent, can act pretty well, and has a lot of experience under her belt. Plus it is my opinion that Hole rocks pretty hard.

    Hehe this quote is much funnier if you add elispis and a colon

    She is intelligent, can act pretty well, and has a lot of experience...under her belt. Plus it is my opinion: that hole rocks pretty hard.


    My Home: Apartment6 [apartment6.org]
  • use diagnostics;
    defined(@words) is deprecated.
    if($#words>0) can be replaced with if (@words).
    s/foreach $line (){ /while (<>) {\n\t$line=$_;/
  • Okay, this is obvious flamebait. Moderate it down. BUT:

    I'm browing at +2. About FIFTEEN POSTS in a row say "Wow, I like Courtney Love now, she's gutsy, she's taking on the record companies, people should show her more respect." Then they all get moderated +3 to +5 Insightful, Interesting...

    Isn't this the definition of redundant?? When I browse at +2 and I STILL have to read a discussion that consists of nothing but people accolading a celebrity's character??

    People's personal opinions of Courtney Love do not add a thing to the discussion, and thus should not be moderated At All. And if fifteen people post the same thing, the Redundant tags should come out - NOT the "Interesting/Insightful" tags. There is NO insight in this.
  • In addition, the media by which audio trading is publicized may not be commercialized. Therefore newsletters, web sites, clubs, or any other communication forum facilitating audio trading cannot accept advertising, offer links for compensation, exploit databases compiled from their traffic, or otherwise derive any commercial profit in any form.

    IANAL, but if I read this correctly, MP3-sharing via Gnutella is OK, but MP3-sharing via Napster is out because Napster is making a profit from advertising to its users.

    Anyone else read this the same way?
    -----
    The real meaning of the GNU GPL:

  • Dan, If I keep reading your posts, I am going to get some kind of permanent brain damage from continually slapping my forehead in that frustrated but admiring, "Why didn't I think of that?"

    Seriously, I hope you are right about this. If RIAA memos are released to the public, it will be worth the demise of Napster (I'd rather see Gnutella anyway).

    Oh, man. I salivate just thinking about it. That would be indescribably sweet. Mmmmmmmm......

    --
    grappler

  • Read the Courtney Love Article (Score:5)

    by Uruk ( 4907 ) on Wednesday June 14, 2000 @05:03AM (#1003177)
    That has got to be one of the most harsh and caustic things I've read in the past month. She is absolutely brutal. It was great.

    One of the most revealing quotes: Put simply, the antitrust laws in this country are basically a joke, protecting us just enough to not have to re-name our park service the Phillip Morris National Park Service

  • SAlbini's article is and was great, but it's on the shelf, and has hence lost it's impact. Ms. Love expertly and enthusiastically re-stated much of what SAlbini said with a fresh and updated perspective. She did all that and got it smack in the Public Eye. Piece-o-work, I say.

    It sorely needed doing, and she did it BRILLIANTLY!

    To mean-spiritedly write off her achievement as "ripping-off Steve Albini" is an act of annoying, whining Ignorance.

    I have NO DOUBT that SAlbini was the first to applaud her effort.

    -kent
  • Thus only the internally honest survive.
    Change that: Thus only the internally legal survive. Napster is being honest. They won't survive because they are being honest about being a handy tool for piracy/theft/copyright violations.

    Looks pretty damning. Ouch.

    I wouldn't want to see what the RIAA internal memos contain. I'm pretty sure the my ethical gland would have a seizure. :P

    --
    then it comes to be that the soothing light at the end of your tunnel is just a freight train coming your way
  • you can tell because she makes refence to the need to buy the soda, call a number and do a voicemail thing to access the concert. a beverage company with a red logo did this type of promotion last summer.
  • arivanov wrote:

    Well, besides saying encrypt them!!!

    Encryption is only protection against a casual leak. It is no proof against someone with real access leaking an internal document. It is certainly no proof against a court order or subpoena. Lawsuits often come with many such subpoenas.

    ----
  • Also, check this report [pewinternet.org] by the Pew Center - they did some research on who uses Napster (age, gender) and why (pirating, sampling).

    ---

  • Re:Internal memos? (Score:3)

    by Remus Shepherd ( 32833 ) <remus@panix.com> on Wednesday June 14, 2000 @10:30AM (#1003195) Homepage
    The president of Seagrams, in a story posted a week or so ago on Slashdot, said that he wanted to eliminate anonymity. RIAA's latest legal briefs talk about the dangers of any peer-to-peer data sharing system.

    Sounds like they're declaring war upon the internet to me.
  • It's funny, but understandable that you would would so eagarly write-off Britney Spears as a talentless bimbo, and recieve lots of support (moderation points) from other less-than-very-thoughtfull slashdotters.

    The girl can dance and the girl can sing, both with confidence and style well beyond her years. Is she and her act completely self-made from the ground-up? Hell no, but it takes skill, determination and, yes, Talent to hang on to and thrive amongst the opportunities she has been given. It's easy to look at those opportunities and say that, given the same, anyone could be a Britney Spears. Wrong-o pal! Star-struck upper-middle-class parents around the world funnel millions into little darlings with lot's of potential who end up going to college instead of Hollywood, because they don't have the extra ingredients (and luck of course) to capitalize on the opportunities as they arise.

    I'm not a fan of Britney's music/product, but she totally kicks ass in her own way, and for that I congratulate her.

  • Shut up, Dan. You're way off base.

    If you've got a reason to say so, do. If I'm wrong, I'll admit it.

    You're obviously seeing this in a much different light than I am. I'd be interested in hearing what you have to say.

    Yours Truly,

    Dan Kaminsky
    DoxPara Research
    http://www.doxpara.com

  • Many companies are trying to make a dollar off free software, why not free music. I'm sure considering the math that Courtney presented and the trouble all artists are having fighting record labels and their control of distribution that Free music could work.

    Imagine first a cooperative "record label" that exists to help market and distribute discs in meat-space. They take a cut off the sales (and their risk is associated with those sales, nothing more)and the band gets a good chunk of the royalties.

    Also allow that anyone else could distribute the music as well (kinda like FSF software, you can buy it from them as well and you know where the money goes). Work out MP3 deals so the artists can also get paid on a voluntary basis by the people who like the MP3s.

    It might be a big shift in ideals but if a few artists can afford (or believe enough in the concept of Free Music) to release their albums like this they will probably win in the end. (They can still charge for playing live shows, and other time consuming tasks)

  • I agree - It's the best piece of FUD-clearing I've read in a long time.

    And you know, she's been on the receiving end of a lot of crap over the years: insults, defamation, and even what boils down to accusations of murder. I've always reserved a few doubts about Courtney.

    But not any more.

    After reading this, I am nearly convinced that all the people who have badmouthed Courtney are the ones who she saw through, the ones who tried to screw her and got shut down, the parasites who got flicked off. She's as sharp as a katana and an honest artist as well. The honesty comes from her attitude towards her art, not how you receive her art. (I personally kinda like it, but then I'm partial to female vocalists anyway.)

    From now on, I'm going to color anyone who tries to dis Courtney as either a Record Label flunky or a frustrated parasite.

  • Please set the record straight, someone... (Score:4)

    by lythander ( 21981 ) on Wednesday June 14, 2000 @05:18AM (#1003214)
    I keep hearing MP3 and Napster, et. al., discussed in the popular press, and no one is getting it right. They (including Lars) keep talking about "perfect digital copies (pdc)." But no one is swapping pdc's, and MP3s are no such thing. They're compressed, lower quality copies. They are the PC equivalent to the cassette tape. They may sound the same on your cheap PC speakers, but pump them through a stereo and crank the volume and the difference is very clear, especially at 128 Kb/s, which is the encoding bitrate most used on Napster. (Ars has a review of different MP3 encoders and how their output compares to the original here [ars-technica.com] . If they were pdc's, would there be a need for this?) A pdc is the wave file from the CD, which runs about 50MB for the average cut from a 10-cut CD. That's too large for the average use to pull down over the net with anything but a blazing connection, and even at that, you aren't going to be able to pull many down per day. It can be done, just like you can rip DVDs and post the movies to the net, but only the very persistent and very lucky (others on your LAN?) are going to be able to pull them down illegally. Please call into talk radio/TV/whatever and draw this disticntion, the RIAA has convinced the press that MP3=CD quality. Stop the misinformation!!!
  • That said, though, I can recall hearing nothing but cheers on /. the last time a M$ internal memo got leaked...

    Microsoft is the kind of company that would ship a remotely controllable testicle vice with every Windows CD and make you agree to wear it as a condition of your EULA if they figured they could get away with it.

    Someone else uses your serial number? *Squoosh*

    About all they've been able to get away with thus far is just refusing to ship installation routines with their operating systems anymore. Install Linux? Want to go back? *Squooosh* goes your data, imaged to oblivion.

    Yours Truly,

    Dan Kaminsky
    DoxPara Research
    http://www.doxpara.com
  • Well said. One part I noted:

    There were a billion music downloads last year, but music sales are up. Where's the evidence that downloads hurt business? Downloads are creating more demand.

    Precisely. Ms. Love's right on the money here. What I want to know is why more bands aren't up in arms about the fact that they are expected to swallow the cost of thousands of promo CDs.

    Promo CDs, for those who've been under a rock, are the "For Promotional Use Only" discs that get sent to reviewers, radio stations, and the like. Sounds like a perfectly legitimate use for those discs, right?

    Think again. You know those CDs they sell through record clubs? Think the artist gets a full royalty from those sales? Wrong. Those are considered part of the promotional-copies budget at many companies.

    A fairly standard provision in agreements with American artists is that they receive one-half their usual royalty rate on sales through clubs and that no royalties are payable on bonus or free records distributed by clubs.

    -Syndey Shemel, "This Business of Music". 1990. 61.

    In other words, if you buy CDs from a CD mail order club like Columbia House or BMG, you're shortchanging the artist as well -- and that's a legitimate, legal form of screwing musicians. The argument that "MP3s are taking away profits" is sort of disingenuous, given that the vast majority of the people I know use them the way they're used on the radio and in record store listening booths (IOW, "try-before-you-buy"), not as a replacement for the disc.

    My belief is that Courtney Love is on the right track. Give folks a few songs for free on the band's Web site -- if the music's good, they'll buy the disc. Hell, after reading this, I'm going to buy her next disc. I've liked Hole's stuff in the past, and never found the discs not to be worth the $15 or so I spent on 'em. And just think... if she's that confident about it, I'll bet it doesn't suck like Reload.

    Chance

    http://imc.dyndns.org

  • if I read this correctly, MP3-sharing via Gnutella is OK, but MP3-sharing via Napster is out because Napster is making a profit from advertising to its users.

    No, MP3-sharing via Napster is currently ok, because Napster does not make any money from anything yet. If Napster started advertising to its users, then it would become not-ok. So far the only business model Napster has is attracting VC money...
  • Courtney hit on a novel concept, intentionally or otherwise, when she mentions pop-musicians playing for tips.

    I think in the future we'll be seeing a lot of high-quality free mp3's and virtual "tip jars" for bands where you can click to send some small (but oh so significant) change to the artist(s) whose music you've just snagged.

    It'll be TOTALLY voluntary and EXTREMELY profitable for the bands who please their audience.

    The biggest obstacle is an easy and secure way for listeners to proffer real cash credit in minute amounts without always having to have a credit card number handy. Now that online banking is becoming more common, the only remaining obstacle is a distribution model that helps listeners separate the wheat from the chaff in terms of mounds of online music, much of which is of low grade and inspiration.

    The profitable sites (Mp3) of the future will be the ones that provide filtering via ratings and such in an agreeable and reliable manner, rather than the ones that simply host mounds of mp3 material.

    -kent

  • Re:Internal memos? (Score:3)

    by Jamie Zawinski ( 775 ) <jwz@jwz.org> on Wednesday June 14, 2000 @03:35PM (#1003223) Homepage

    A gedankenexperiment for you. Lets say that I release a machine equivalent to Star Trek's replicator, and replicate it to give to people. Eventually so many copies are replicated that virtually everyone has one.

    Now the candy bar is like the music, it too can be copied without depriving the owner of the original.

    How will modern law cope with such a paradigm shift?

    The same way they do on Star Trek: every week, invent some new plot device that prevents things or people from being replicated or transported, since that technology would solve basically every problem you can imagine, and leave us with a society so far past the Vinge singularity [umich.edu] that from here we can't even imagine what it would be like.

  • Yeah, she can sing and she can dance. So can about 8 million+ other people in the world.

    This is what I find disturbing about music today. It is basically mass produced "fast food" music. It really doesn't take anyone special to perform it, just a good set of pipes and some nice T&A.

    Ever watch that Making the Band crap on ABC? I caught a couple of episodes. It is disgusting. They are basically manufacturing an act. And they call that music?

    They are entertainers, not musicians. They do not write their own music or lyrics. They do not choreograph their own dances.

    I am just so sick of the constant stream of "bands" that consist of a singer(s) with a tape of some music in the background, there is a word for that, karaoke.

    Go learn to write a song, go learn to play an instrument, go learn to live in a garage for a few years so you can create your music. Then I will listen, then I will respect you.
  • Thanks for the info. If I had $1 for every time someone on /. said something like "If you don't like paying a lot for CDs, order through Columbia House, BMG, etc; that way you don't rip off the artist," I'd have... 12 x "a lot" CDs.

    Once again we see that legal != moral. If a reasonable, fairly priced method of paying for high-quality MP3s directly from artists ever arises, I'll use it in a second. Until that time, what I'd like to see more than anything is a list of addresses where I can send personal checks to artists thanking them for the enjoyment I've recieved from songs of theirs I've downloaded.

  • Maybe Courtney will get some freakin respect (Score:5)

    by revscat ( 35618 ) on Wednesday June 14, 2000 @05:25AM (#1003237) Journal

    I have been in the minority for a long time in saying that Courtney Love is a great artist that even the caustic Bill Hicks would respect. She's not just another talentless bimbo a la Britney Spears or Celine Dion. She is intelligent, can act pretty well, and has a lot of experience under her belt. Plus it is my opinion that Hole rocks pretty hard.

    But this speech solidifies the fact that there are brains above that sexy belly-button. Her comments are dead on right, and are anti-establishment enough to warrant deep respect. Maybe this will put the final nail in the coffin of the "riding Kurt Cobain's coattails" meme.

    - Rev.
  • Unlike the BetaMax, which is a recording medium, Napster is a distribution medium, which provides no inherent capacity for recording. Hence, there is a built-in substantial purpose -- distribution of subject matter with the consent of the author.

    Not all MP3's comprise illicit or unauthorized content. Hence there is a substantial noninfringing use -- distribution of noninfringing content in accordance with the wishes of the author.

    How else does a non-name musician compete with the record companies for access to means of distribution? (Perhaps it is the record companies that are trumping up their excuses against Napster, and not vice versa?)

    The only difference between Napster and Sony is that Sony is a big, establishment company, and that the BetaMax technology was MORE likely to be used for infringing purposes than napster, because it can record.

    Indeed, Napster in many respects is an easier case than Sony -- no trumped up rationale need be constructed to justify its existence.
  • Fact: People have no morals.

    Speak for yourself, pal.

    As the RIAA itself has demonstrated, profit and economic gain rule the marketplace.

    You make this sound like a bad thing.

    This is not limited to corporations - call it "Trickle down morality" if you will, but people have taken their que from businesses and also seek out the best ways to maximize their profits. This is an excellent example of true capitalism.

    I think most people would agree that if you are truly seeking to maximize your profits (not that people have profits, but lets assume you meant net worth or something that makes sense), you need to consider your downside risk. IF you consider the penalties for pirating music times the number of pirated napster - related tracks on your hard drive you are looking at a pretty nasty number. Sure, the odds of you being nailed are quite small, but you should consider this.

    Of course, since you already said you have no morals, I'm sure that doesn't bother you...
  • I actually read the article two times through in its entirety and dropped the URL to about a dozen friends.

    Courtney's statements on Napster and the RIAA and artists in general are easily the best I have read throughout this entire fiasco and I have to say she has my complete respect. I always saw her as one of the few true female rock artists left in the world (although I must say I'm not particularly a fan -- though I'll listen to her music and have MP3's of most of her songs at work -- heh), but I can see that she easily has more balls than just about any of the other real rock groups around.

    I'm sure Trent Reznor would have a lot to say on this issue and I'm disapointed that he hasn't uttered anything yet. I'd also like to see people like Aerosmith and Metallica and some other big name groups take the same stand that she's taken here.

    Her dig on Ulrich and his apparent inability to communicate his thoughts well (enough for soundbites) was amusing and I was impressed by her obvious familiarity with the Internet. I don't think Lars or James could find the AnyKey on their fucking keyboard, but I have a feeling you could get Courtney putzing around with a command prompt pretty easily and she probably wouldn't be too shy with the bash prompt.

    Anyway, glad to know that my suspicions of her being one of the brighter bulbs in the music scene are now confirmed. Anyone who digs her music or has any of her MP3's should find out (probably from her website?) how to send a couple bucks along with a note that you appreciated her stance and that you wanted to leave her the "tip" she spoke about for any Hole MP3's you might have laying around. -- I like Metallica, but I wouldn't give those fuckers a dime the way they're headed now. They're attacks on the fans are legitimate, but it's like worrying about a bruise on your arm while your foot is on fire.
    ---
    icq:2057699
    seumas.com

  • And TVT was bought by Interscope (the teen-rebellion label co-founded by marketing supremo Andre "Dr. Dre" young, and co-owned by Seagram, whose CEO recently called for the abolition of anonymity), just to get their hands on Nine Inch Nails. Sucks, doesn't it?
  • Well, besides saying encrypt them!!!
  • Those who register their music can get a CD with special packaging; an artefact that symbolises the relationship one has with the artist and the community of fans. Perhaps the CD can contain bonus fans-only tracks, perhaps not.
  • "A great writer named Neal Stephenson said that America does four things better than any other country in the world: rock music, movies, software and high-speed pizza delivery."

    You know, throw this onto the pile of other things she's said and eluded to -- and she starts to strike me as a bit of a geek. I mean, even a lot of geeks I know aren't familiar with Stephenson.
    ---
    icq:2057699
    seumas.com

  • The RIAA's memos will not be released, as it is not the RIAA that is on trial. There are no grounds to subpoena memos from the RIAA.

  • Re:Internal Memo Warfare (Score:3)

    by Fred Ferrigno ( 122319 ) on Wednesday June 14, 2000 @05:34AM (#1003261)
    Maybe Napster should sue the RIAA for exposing their trade secrets. I mean, if it's a trade secret that Photoshop 6 is coming out, then it must a trade secret that Napster is used for piracy!

  • New free music technology?? (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 14, 2000 @05:37AM (#1003266)
    So I was over at Best Buy the other day, getting a new hard drive 'cause my old one is like totally stuffed full of MP3s, ya-know? An' the aisle with all the drives was blocked by these 2 fat kids tryin' to decide which joystick to buy. So like, I was inna hurry, 'cause my cd burner was just about 10 minutes from spitting out another Metallica disk (screw you, Lars), so I went over to the next aisle to like, go around, ya-know? An' I saw all these boxes that I never noticed before an' they were all playing music, like for free! They were like way cool and totally portable, so I grabbed one an' I got my new drive an' took 'em home. The box didn't come with no good instructions but it gets free music and downloads real quick, like right away when you turn it on. I don't have to logon or wait for a connect or nuttin'. Without the instructions I haven't been able to figure out all the options but there's a lotta music choices even if I can't figure out how to get it to do anything but play right now. It works real good, although after every couple of songs ya gotta listen to a pop-up ad from some luser company that thinks I care.
    Anybody got any info on this box? The guy at the store called it a "ray-dee-oh."
  • here's an interesting little tidbit from the transcript:
    Of the 32,000 new releases each year, only 250 sell more than 10,000 copies. And less than 30 go platinum.
    Now, how many recording contracts do you think have a recoup point of 10,000 or less? By the way - 150k is considered 'about average' for a major label first release artist contract.
    Y'know, I read with interest Lar Ulrich's viewpoints on this phenomenon and the reasons for Metallicas reaction to it and thought he had some good points, but the most resonant one to me was basically "we got caught with our pants (label) down and felt we had to do something about it." The something, of course, was a joke - woopty-doo, you disabled my 'account', so I'll change my login name. Bottom line is that the label's need to find a way to embrace new technology and add value to the consumer (as well as artist!) experience if they are going to continue to focus on mechanical. Even then, screw 'em - they screw us, that's for sure.
  • While I hate Hole, I must admit that Ms. Love's article was a great piece. Only one thing though:

    "At this point the "record collector" geniuses who use Napster don't have the coolest most arcane selection anyway, unless you're into techno. Hardly any pre-1982 REM fans, no '60s punk, even the Alan Parsons Project was underrepresented when I tried to find some Napster buddies"

    I admire her cooler-than-though attitude, but I have found a ton of 60's punk (Stooges, Fugs, MC5, Lothar and the Hand People) on Napster. Especially since the Metalica lawsuit, many non-mainstream people have apparently discovered Napster. I've even been finding obscure experimental Japanese bands (Zeni Geva, Merzbo, Guitar Wolf) lately. As for pre-'82 REM fans... uh, their first album (EP really) was released in August of '82 so any fans before then were probably all Athens locals. I have yet to look for the Alan Parsons Project (wasn't that some sort of hovercraft?) and wouldn't know what to look for anyway, so I can't comment on that.

  • "or she's waaaay smarter than she's let on for the past 8 years."

    Or, given the content of her article, she's way smarter than the record and media companies have allowed to let us on...
  • If Napster doesn't lose in the legal arena, it'll lose pretty quickly in the real world.

    Think about it: they have no money, they have no income, and they pride their entire business on centralising and controlling their users. It's no surprise that Napster is technically inferior to every other mass filesystem out there; quite frankly, 90% of freshman CS students would come up with something better if asked. The only thing Napster provides, again, is the control they have over their users, and this is obviously a benefit for them, not the users.

    I'd like to think that the Napster folks would be immune to the pressure of venture capital, but (judging from their technology), they've always been about business since the beginning, so that seems unlikely. So if they don't get shut down in court, my guess is that they're going to be introducing something in the near future to make money. With all their aforementioned technical savvy, this will undoubtedly make Napster worse than it already is.

    So anyway, I foresee Napster dying within the next two years, either by law or by pissing off their users (or, conversely, not keeping their grass green enough).

  • What would have happened if Metallica had said: "man napster is great, it rocks!"...slashdot would have a whole different attitude.

    IANAH[1], but it is indeed true that had confederates had a bigger army, they might indeed have kicked the yankees' ass.

    [1] I Am Not An Historian

  • I think that the current method of dealing with copyright infringement is the way for Napster to go.

    Identify individual violators and block their accounts. An ISP doesn't have to check to see if all of the files that you upload/download are legal, they just have to deal with you when they get a report that you're dealing in warez.

    I don't see why Napster has to do anything more.

    LK

  • Re:Courtney said this best.... (Score:3)

    by VAXman ( 96870 ) on Wednesday June 14, 2000 @06:13AM (#1003303)
    A slashdot reader who gets it!! Finally!!

    My #1 biggest fear by far about Napster is the fact that music will be reduced to songs. Albums will no longer be produced because they will be too expensive to download, and because everybody will demand catchy three minute jewels of pop.

    Most serious music lovers know that albums are complete works, to be listened to and ejnoyed in full. Today music lovers dictate the music industry; they spend much more money on music than casual fans. When casual music fans (e.g. Napster users) begin to dictate the music industry, it will be destroyed. And we will have nothing but catchy songs - not albums.

    Today musicians are incredibly free; they have 75 minutes to do whatever they want on a CD. When online distribution becomes the norm, the artistsic goal of every musician will be to make a jewel of pop which sounds good and catchy on a $400 Compaq over a 56k modem. Is this where you want your music headed?

    You hear many casual fans say "why pay $18 when there are only 1 or 2 good songs". Obviously, they are listening to radio backed top 40 music, and nothing serious. All of the best music contains no filler on the albums. In fact, most albums end up leave me wanting more.

    I have logged on to Napster, and I found music of _none_ of my favorite artists, who are slightly or very off the beaten path. The only artists available on Napster are the top 40 hitmakers. I had literally hundreds of choices of where to download the latest Ani DiFranco and Dixie Chicks hits, but nobody was offering any Lucy Kaplansky or Rebecca Pearcy.

    My fear that online distribution will homogenize the music industry has already come true; the average Tower records has infinitely more selection than the meager lot available on Napster: the ONLY music available on Naspter in quatity is stuff like top 40 hits, techno, and other related teeny-bop genres.
  • If you had read RMS's writings, explaining *why* he had created the GPL ... and why it's called copyleft for instead. Copyleft is about using copyright to fuck itself. So copyrighters can sue us because we share with friends? Well if you're allowed by law to pull that bullshit on us, then we'll pull the same bullshit on you. You're not insightful, you're just short sighted and ignorant. And you got everything wrong.

  • She really GETS it (Score:3)

    by Hard_Code ( 49548 ) on Wednesday June 14, 2000 @05:49AM (#1003312)
    My god, there is somebody that really _GETS_ it. Perhaps even better than the average Slashdotter. And this person is COURTNEY LOVE! Man, I told you to stop bitching and give Lars et al. a chance to speak. She hit the nail on the head, very hard.

    We are so obsessed with our revolutionary "gift" culture, we forget that music has been working on the same premise: write cool stuff, hope people like and use it, and you will be karmically rewarded. We need to step the fsck off and give artists a chance. They are NOT trying to shut down free music distribution for greedy ulterior motives. They are trying to get these channels to work WITH them instead of with the record companies that are fscking them over. I would be pissed off too if people profited from my work by making deals with those who were exploiting me. It's like the artists don't even exist to these companies. Artists WANT to embrace the internet and the freedom it brings. They don't want to be chained to the record companies. They are trying to make all us IPO-crazed geeks realize that we can do GOOD by artists as well. We have tons of audiophiles among our ranks.

    She even quotes Stephenson! My god...if I only knew that I really *was* on "their" side when I was 15...
  • Stop the misinformation!!!

    Actually, Courtney Love makes the distinction:

    MP3 files sound cruddy, but a well-made album sounds great. And I don't care what anyone says about digital recordings. At this point they are good for dance music, but try listening to a warm guitar tone on them. They suck for what I do.

  • That's sort of the beauty of the whole thing. The RIAA and their cronies of the motion picture industry are heading towards disaster, while being totally clueless about what's going on.
    When Mr. Bronfman insists on the non-anonymous internet I take offense. I say that as a person that never downloaded illegal material from the net and use it since 1992.
    Those greed freaks are really willing to sacrifice one of the most important values (not anonimity per se, but the right to be left alone, it's called privacy) to regain their stranglehold on the distribution channels and to keep control over the artists (hint: that's called slavery).
    Now for the good news: Napster goes ? Maybe, there are half a dozen companies and grass roots organisations that will replace the service instantly or are suplementing it with a decentralized and not easy killable structure.
    The entertainment industry? They lose. They have lost already and they are spending money, resources and energy on a totally lost cause. As soon a viable business model is up the whole distribution channels will change dramatically. Artists will be less and less willing to sell out their soul just for getting published and at the same time they will make more money.
    The even better news is that the more the established industries use they're energies towards one (or two or maybe three companies) the more they are doomed to fail, because time is an incredible critical factor.
    Read the Salon transcript if you haven't yet. It's very informative.
    Bye now, obsolete Dinosaurs, bye RIAA, bye Mr. Bronfman. You may go and bang yer heads now...
    All the power to the artists

  • The real story (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I've seen this said so many times here, but no one else seems to understand that Napster is really just changing the way music is distributed, and not cheating the artists out of the proceeds from their music, as the RIAA would have us believe. The internet has made it possible to eliminate physical music distribution; not now, but soon. Napster is just a bit ahead of it's time. Regardless of what happens with Napster, music will become free, and that's what the RIAA is trying to avoid; free music means the RIAA is useless. But they're really just postponing the inevitable. They're just middlemen, the most loathsome product of capitalism, and they've always been useless.

    That implies that the internet is the conduit we've needed for the past 200 years to make capitalism work for a change, by connecting producers and consumers directly. However it will require a violent removal of those parisites who are so accustomed to making money by doing absolutely nothing that each of us couldn't do for ourselves. It will also require the cessation of our government's inherent support for these dregs, which is exactly what we need to be fighting for here.

    My question is, how do we fight? Do the people who actually make the decisions read Slashdot? While I wish the answer were yes, I doubt that is the case. How can we identify the key decision-makers in this case and communicate our concerns and desires to them, in hopes that their personal motivations (ie retaining their positions of power) will be more driving than the massive amounts of money the RIAA is undoubtedly funnelling in their direction?

    And, since I seem to have gone there, how did American government and society get so far from the golden path our forefathers (according to public schooling) saw it marching down? More importantly, how can we get back there?

  • I am getting quite sick of people smashing Lars for wanting to protect his music. As Love said, "Let's pick on Lars Ulrich instead because he brought up an interesting point!" Even if you don't agree with him, mindless attacks are just that. Better to spend your time reading the entirety of Love's speech, which makes many good points and shows that she has done a huge amount of research. For instance, did you know that TLC's take on their US$175 million in record sales was 2%? That's right, 3.5 million for one of the most successful discs of the year. Even if you take Lars' view that a record label is a bank, it sure seems to be a shitty one.

    Walt
  • Why is it that I can't find any source for that quote other than you?
  • Exactly.

    This is why we need to define these things now.

    Modern law is failing miserably to deal with this paradigm shift.

    And it's not just law that's failing with this shift. What you propose would cause a fundamental change in society. When property is no longer scarce, all our concepts for dealing with it fail. If we are not careful we could quite easily end up with a society where there really is plenty for all, but it is limited by those who control it, for the sole purpose of leveraging a false scarcity for profit. This is the situation we are currently facing with digital media, and is also the reason why I feel so strongly that NOW is the time we need to approach these issues. AND I think they need to be approached from the viewpoint of the people and NOT from that of the corporations. Government does not exist to protect quarterly earnings to the detriment of society as a whole, it is (here) BtP, FtP, OtP. Blah, rant off.

    --
  • As for pre-'82 REM fans... uh, their first album (EP really) was released in August of '82 so any fans before then were probably all Athens locals. I have yet to look for the Alan Parsons Project (wasn't that some sort of hovercraft?) and wouldn't know what to look for anyway, so I can't comment on that.



    Unfortunately I was only 2 years old in 1982, but I have had the privelage of listening to a CD of some of REMs stuff they played on campus in 79 and 80 that was absolutely excellent. I've yet to actually get a copy of it though... It's hard to find. But there are plenty of people in the Athens area (I'm from there) that have old old REM stuff recorded from club and campus shows before their album came out. I'm actually kind of surprised none of it is on napster considering how prevelant it was on at UGA.

    Kintanon
  • I'm not a big fan of her music, but she's either got one hell of a speechwriter or she's waaaay smarter than she's let on for the past 8 years. The Neal Stephenson quote only cemented it.
  • Copyright law and IP laws are REQUIRED to make to GPL work. It mandates how people behave if they distribute the software just as much as any other license in the world.

    If copyright and software licenses didn't exist, people could still choose to distribute their software with or without source code. It's the GPL that MANDATES that if you distribute the software that you need to provide access to the source. There's just no way that that can or could be mandated without relying on the laws we have in place.

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