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Music Media

Two-Faced Napster? 212

Posted by Hemos from the fun-thought-experiments dept.
A number of folks have written in about the article on MSNBC regarding the two faces of Napster. On one hand, they espouse the virtues of "sharing," but seemingly, when it comes to their own material, they are very insular. Good discussion piece. [Updated by timothy, 26 July 2000 at 6:25GMT: Lee Gomes, the author of the piece referred to here, wrote to point out that though MSNBC carried this story, it's originally from the Wall Street Journal, and that it's available from this link, no registration required. Thanks for the note, Lee.
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Two-Faced Napster? More

Two-Faced Napster?

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  • Napster is the software equivalent of Big Tobacco. Think about it.
  • I use napster on occasion to get some songs from a band which I haven't heard, or which people recomend. Many of these bands I have bought CDs of. But I'm more interested in what people feel they are entitled to as a cd owner. I have bought 2 cds of Steely Dan's, Two Against Nature, and A Decade of Steely Dan. I have also went to see them perform in concert. After the concert I fired up napster to get some of their live tracks, all of which I had on the CDs I owned and paid for, and which there was no cds available (AFAIK). Now I think of this as an ok thing to do. Although I probably broke some copyright law in the process. Also, I for a time had my mp3 collection hosted on my website (it still is sometimes) which was then indexed by google. Its amazing how many people still try to get their mp3s over http. Let's just say that I learned how to use mod_rewrite *very* quickly once I realized that I was the number one match for some band's mp3s. As far as napster goes, like anything it can be used for good or evil, and as far as sampling music goes, I believe it to be an approprite use, getting entire albums to burn to cd-rs and sell, is an inaproprite use. Personally, I wish the RIAA would pull this sticks out of their rear ends and just let the consumers choose.

  • > Overall, Mr. Barry says there is nothing
    > hypocritical or contradictory in Napster's
    > handling of these matters. "We respect
    > copyrights, but differ with the music industry
    > about their scope," he says. "And we will
    > enforce our copyrights wherever we think we
    > should. It's a perfectly consistent approach."

    There's nothing consistent with usurping another's copyrights ("Oh, go ahead and trade that music against the artist's permission!") and then freaking when someone does the same to do.

    Whatever the fate of copyright / copyleft / fair use, it won't be a double standard--be it software or music or Stephen King's new novel, any "copyrightable" material should be treated by the same law.
  • No, they legally could not have let it go. If they had, they would have lost legal control of their trademark. If you don't defend your trademarks, you lose them. This is one way in which trademark law differs from patent law.
  • Except for the fact that in one, "Metallica" will (should) be in the Artist field, and in the other in the Title field. Which should make it much more discernible.

    The issue of those annoying twats who put everything in the Title field of the ID3 is another matter.That really annoys me.

  • Tricky. But there will always be a market among the artists for publicity, of the sort that comes from tours and advertising; given the scope of the 'net and the pull model (many users often search for specific genres/artists/works rather than randomly wandering and sampling unknown artists; the hit-count distribution might even be Zipf)...

    An underlying question is -- does it take the equivalent of a Stephen King or Limp Bizkit to get published online? Or will the RIAA morph to the degree where it still has its traditional promotional role, but embraces electronic distribution? And, given that (non-spam, *shudder*) promotional services most likely aren't free, will they be able to actually make money?
  • Ummm.. pardon my ignorance, but what the hell do people who buy lots of hamsters/gerbils do with them aside from feed them to their pets? That is, what is the seemingly obvious unethical usage of said animals that everyone is making innuendos to?
  • And did Office Depot actually check on their own whether you had permission or not? Or did they just take your word for it?
  • Ever heard of Medicare/Medicaid?
  • Uhm, I like how you think. I think you're right on. ButI'd like to point out as someone who has worked in and spent a lot of time in pet stores, a good 75% of the mice, rats, gerbils, guinea pigs, and even bunny rabbits bought are snake food.

    Any pet store owner knows this. When I was a kid, I used to raise mice to sell to the pet store. They'd buy them from me for something like $.10 a peice. The only reason they were always willing to buy more is because they sell so many for snake food.

    So it's a good point you're making, but a bad analogy. The pet store owner won't stop selling you mice, no matter how many you buy. Most pet stores even stock pre-killed (frozen) mice for snake food for snakes that don't like to eat live stuff.

  • Um, let's see. Napster position one - Other people create music, we profit from it.

    Correct me if I am wrong here, but aren't they trying to make money off of the advertising income for the site and not the music files that are being traded? They don't really have control over what files will be uploaded and traded, so how can they, at this point, develop any sort of income model from it, especially when they give the damn thing away?

    "The Force. It surrounds us; It enfolds us; It gets us dates."
  • This reminds me of how people were during my Apple ][ days. Piracy was rampant and you could copy and programs from someone as long as _they_ didn't buy it.

    Once they spent their hard earned cash on a piece of software they took a protective stance.

    ps. I made up for my years of sin during university buying a lot of unneeded games :-)
  • A lot of the tech VC's out there are gamblers.

    When they see huge upside (i.e., a chance to sell out to a bigger company, a chance to get unique position in a huge market), they are willing to play long-shots like Napster.

    Amazon.com is a good example. I would be willing to bet that the vast majority of their stock sales have been to high-stakes speculators who were hoping to score big, not careful investors who thought it was a solid bet.

  • ...and, somehow, stop the folks from obtaining another account.

    That's the odd bit if you take this route. I know of spammers who've gone through multiple accounts at the *same* ISP and *same* web hoster within a month, and they'll probably still come back under different names. Given that Napster doesn't charge it's users, what can they come up with? A credit card check (which probably costs Napster) including billing address?

    Or if they mailed a unique identifier to a non-PO box... hrm. Gut feeling is that the search engine is the important aspect to control here, since simply making it harder to search for contraband would cut down transfers drastically.
  • So I can start a warez server distributing Photoshop and CodeWarrior, and as long as I remove the copyrighted material if Adobe or Metrowerks asks me to, I'm legally in the clear?
  • Now tell me why would Napster say they forbid copyrighted material on their servers, yet play mickey-mouse games when it actually comes to banning people?

    Because it's not their responsibility to enforce other people's copyrights?

    When you go into a Kinko's no one watches over you to make sure you're not copying anything you shouldn't be. If you look on the wall, you'll also see a notice about copying copyrighted materials, but that doesn't mean that Kinko's enforces it.

  • If a service exists, regardless of the purpose it was created for, and that service is used almost entirely to facilitate criminal activities, then that service should be put down.

    The comment at the top of the thread that said that "people don't seem to get this" is wrong, people get the fact that Napster isn't selling copyrighted stuff.

    Napster is building a business model on the back of a service that would never have taken off if it were not used for the piracy of copyrighted material. In other words, deliberately or not, they are gathering economic benefits from the facilitation of criminal activities.

    I don't care if they are telling their users to do this or not, the only thing that worries me about this case is where the line is drawn and whether or not this could spill over into linking to other websites, because in terms of the internet in general, a line has to be very carefully drawn to minimise litigation and to allow people to link to almost anything because that's what the internet is about.

    This sounds contradictory, so let me recall the point at the top - Napster's entire business model would fall over if, for some reason, it was impossible to pirate copyrighted work over their network. Their entire strategy depends on the attraction of their content, and their content, be it hosted by them or merely facilitated by them, is to a huge extent illegal. They are unable to create or attract legal content of sufficient quality to get traffic - so they rely, whether they facilitate it deliberately or not, on the transfer of copyrighted work. Regardless of whether it hits their servers or not - their business model depends on it.

    You want to see an honest business model, go look at Peoplesound [peoplesound.co.uk].

  • These are some important points. If someone else starts using my trademark, and uses it extensively, and I do nothing to protect my trademark, it is possible that they would ultimately be able to sue ME for my use of the trademark, claiming that my use infringes on their trademark.

    On the other hand, if I have a copyrighted work, you could sell billions of unauthorized copies of my work over a period of decades without altering my fundamental right to control my work. you could build up a multi-billion dollar business based on selling my work for fifty years, and I could still sue you, take it all away, and have you thrown in jail forever.

    So don't ever buy that corporate-lawyer line of kaka that says "Oh, we HAVE to sue copyright violators, or we could lose our rights!" If you ever hear lawyer-types saying this, they are either liars or morons (or both).
  • Oh, they're just knowingly pointing the way. Prithee tell, what IS the unambiguously legal use of allowing ANYBODY to download your .mp3 files, including copyrighted ones?

    It's more like a chap on the street pointing you to the dealers who provide cocaine, which legally can NOT be sold in the US. They may not be providing the merchandise themselves, but they're very consciously an integral part of the transaction -- and even more necessary than in the example I provide.
  • Hey, how about the two faces of Slashdot, since this story seems to have been posted twice?
  • Considering the article's source, I'm somewhat dubious about their definition of fact. Their research into the Offspring/trademark situation stopped at exactly the point at which the story would have detracted from the intended thrust of the article. They make the claim that napster is actively opposing independent clients and servers, but have provided no examples of napster's supposed hypocrisy in this matter.

    This is a transparent attempt to smear napster, and a clumsy one at that. Remember, MSNBC is the same unbiased news corporation that once claimed that the 2.4 kernel was 15 months late, a date that, at the time, would have put the 2.4 release only two months after the 2.2 release!

  • On the odd chance anyone is still reading this, check out this Washington Post article on just how lousy a business Napster is:

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A425 31-2000Jul25.html [washingtonpost.com]

    How do you make a company without a business model? And how do you dupe investors into giving you venture capital? My favorite line being

    "...Berry is awed by the sheer size of Napster's fan base and figures there has to be some way to reap money from the site"

  • Yeah, didn't M$FT try to develop a little fucked format that was unfucked within a week? They are proponents of SDMI and watermarked music.

    Then again, I cannot see how napster is going to make money.. perhaps Banner ads?

    buahahahahahhaha

    *snort* sorry.. anyhoo, the whole offspring/Napster logo thing is a trademark, not a copyright, but that must've been obvious to everyone but the author.

    Also, Napster will not connect a new user from anything but its own client. I had to DL Napster (2.some megs opposed to 150k for gnapster blech) and fill in some new Demographics fields. I wonder if this is how they make money: by selling your demographics? Perhaps that is the plan. Get demographics, and match them to song titles. Sell them to record companies.

    If so, they are going to be surprised by the results, I'd wager, what with everyone grabbing remixes and parodies, that the numbers won't reflect EmptyVee.

    good.

  • Napster is trying to make money off the works of others without compensating the producers of the works.

    What I am about to say has been said again and again, in this discussion, in earlier discussions, on newsgroups and in chatrooms and in every real-world discussion between people who disagree about Napster, but apparently you didn't catch it any of those times, so I'll say it again.

    first read this quote: Unauthorized copying, distribution, modification, public display, or public performance of copyrighted works is an infringement of the copyright holders' rights. You should be aware that some MP3 files may have been created or distributed without copyright owner authorization. As a condition to your account with Napster, you agree that you will not use the Napster service to infringe the intellectual property rights of others in any way. Napster will terminate the accounts of users who are repeat infringers of the copyrights, or other intellectual property rights, of others.

    You know what that's from? the Napster Copyright Policy. You can read it here. [napster.com]

    It is not up to Napster to make sure people don't rip off recording artists. Since the much-cited copy-shop metaphor (already used several times in this thread) doesn't appear to be working for you, here's a fresh one: Would you hold TDK responsible if one of the tapes they made and sold (and profitted from) was used to record a movie, say one on HBO, and therefore cut back on video sales?

    If you would, well then, I don't know what to tell you.

    But most people wouldn't, and I bet you wouldn't either. In fact, in almost any other situation, be it movies, books, tv, or even music taped from the radio, it seems ludicrous to attempt to hold the seller of the medium responsible. Yet for some reason, people like you want to hold Napster responsible for the uses of their product in copyright infringement.

    And in response to the hypocrisy charge, Napster is not acting hypocritical by protecting its own copyrights and trademarks, because its lack of direct action against copyright-infringers is not meant to tell artists that they shouldn't try to protect their copyrights, but to tell artists that it is their job, not Napster's.

  • The idea was good, it filled a niche, but is in no way technically advanced. It was *easy*.

    any modern business strategy course will teach you the now golden lesson of Microsoft: 1st to Market = High Barrier to Entry.

    bugs? who cares. see the rule.

    technologically advanced? who cares. see the rule.

    now, sheep? that's simply some self-righteous label you'll use to make yourself feel better.

    everyone is sheep, unless you live in some utopia where opinion doesn't matter.

    my guess - you follow opinion same as everyone else. maybe just /. opinion, but it's still opinion.

    i could be wrong. maybe you're Diogenes. [utm.edu]
  • I don't think the point of calling Napster "two-faced" is the surprise that they're in it for the money. It's the fact that they're in the business of "sharing" pirated music, and seem to hold the belief that music copyrights aren't important and can be ignored, but their own copyrights (their software) are still protected. in the article, Mr. Barry basically said the same thing, which to me is an obvious hypocrisy.
  • Sharing files is not copyright abuse...

    Before MP3s many music artists produced original works vea Amiga MOD file format and the format survives today on Linux, Windows, Dos and Mac.

    There are also music artists who record music on a tape recorder and give it away to friends.

    Public domain music is not unlike public domain software. The commertal counterparts would like to pretend they don't exist.

    Napster seems designed for trading MP3s containning free works such as recordings made in the bathroom or produced and posted on the internet (Usenet, web, FTP, Napster, RealMedia etc).

    If Napster is advocating copyright infrengment (as quite a few clame) they are in the wrong.

    However over my lifespan I have seen far to much demonising of opponents to believe this outside of seeing/hearing it for myself. (Never say they didn't say it becouse they might have I just havn't seen it for myself).

    Examples of demonising....
    RMS: Often quoted as advocating piracy has never done so.
    Free Software community: Often reguarded as communist in nature is more accurately "Altruist" thow quite frankly most free software people are harden capitalists with caveotemptor addatudes an in the truest capistalist style knows price != quality and free is good.

    Microsoft: In it's own effort to educate the public about piracy has a tendency to say "Copying software is illegal". This is a matter of lazyness not of intent but it's easy how many people believe otherwise.

    Anyone wealthy: There are those who have not gained wealth who tell themselfs the only path to wealth is by lying and cheating.
    In this logic then everyone who is wealthy is a lyer and a cheater with wealth as the only proof.

    Napster is about sharing not about theft.
    In what I have seen from Napster they are pro-sharing but against piracy. However piracy is an issue of going after the pirates not trying to shutdown mediums that could be abused.

    Napster is like a lockpick. A very basic tool that can be used for theft. To those who are it's victoms or jump to conclusion they could mistakenly believe the tools have one function.
    To anyone who has been locked out of a car or a home and had to call a locksmith you know such tools are a lifesaver...

    It was the music industry who premoted Napster as a tool of theft.

    If Napster premotes piracy they are in the wrong. But I havn't seen that...
    What I have seen was the music industry turnning Napster into a tool for piracy...
    Why would they do that?
    Simple... Sharing public domain music isn't illegal.............

  • Re:Confusing Two Issues (Score:3)

    by Accipiter ( 8228 ) on Wednesday July 26, 2000 @07:11AM (#903682)
    Consequently, I do not see the hypocrisy.

    Ok, let's drop trademark laws, and copyright laws for a moment.

    Napster is facilitating the exchange of material owned by others. They don't seem to have a problem with this.

    But when someone starts facilitating the exchange of material owned by Napster, they get pissed off, and throw a fit.

    In a sense, a trademark (read: logo) is simply copyrighted material that projects the recognizable image associated with a company. Now, the laws don't come out and say this, but what do you think would happen if AMD started an "AMD Inside" campaign?

    -- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?

  • Yahoo started with no visable source of income.
    They worked on some ideas and eventually went with banner ads.
    This method of building a busness is a very BAD idea.

    My guess is Napster wants to get into the busness of premoting music. Hence the no bots rule.
    If you want your music hoasted on Napster for the long term where anyone can get to it.. PAY OUT!!!

    Otherwise your music is only around while your on-line
  • Actually, his uncle is right; 6% is a lot for the company founder to retain. More typical is 3-4%. Nesheim's "High Tech Startup" says this has been true for the last 20 years of startups. And after all, the people who put money into it are risking quite a bit; all of that money could be lost in the lawsuits; much will be used just to pay for the lawyers. So don't feel too sorry for Shawn; it's not like he could have done this on his own (well, maybe he could have with a lot more time, but he decided not too).

    mahlen

    We are born naked; all the rest is drag.
    --Tede Mitchell
  • A timely article; Napster seems to have prevented Napigator from even displaying its servers at some point this evening! Look at their server list page [napigator.com]! You can still use Napigator to pick a Napster server, but now you need the exact address and you need to enter it manually.

    Though I'm a fan of peer-to-peer file distribution, I'm getting pretty fed up with Napster. I think the WSJ article is right on. They're acting like a bunch of corporate bastards. I think the best thing that can happen for the file sharing community is the downfall of Napster. Users that once used the Napster servers would just jump ship to OpenNap or Gnutella, where there wouldn't be any stupid restrictions placed on them (like only trading MP3 files). Napster is now the AOL of file sharing, with hordes of idiot users sitting there isolated on one of those servers. Napster will try hard to lead them around by the nose and control them. So, paradoxically, right now I think Napster is the worst thing for open file sharing. And since if you read this far down you're down on a Slashdot forum you're probably no AOLer, here is where you should go if you are now a Napster user:

    http://www.mynapster.com/ [mynapster.com]

    http://www.beam.to/suxxx [www.beam.to]

    Both websites have programs that (still!) search multiple sites simultaneously, both support resuming broken downloads (and it works, unlike Napster!), neither will ban you for downloading a no-no band, and they won't jerk you around.

    I especially like MyNapster; if you need addresses for Napster servers, here they are:

    208.184.216.177 to 208.184.216.220

    At each address there are two servers; one on port 8888 and the other on port 7777.

    The great thing about MyNapster is that you can be logged in on several servers simultaneously, and the users from all those servers can d/l from you (and you from them, of course). This might be a burden if you have a slow connection and a bunch of Brittney songs, but if you have cool rare shit that's hard to find, it gives you a warm fuzzy feeling when a bunch of people have access to it. Oh, and by the way, unlike the unenlightened Napster servers, OpenNap servers communicate with each other, so searching one means searching them all--so if you use MyNapster, only log yourself in on one OpenNap server. If you do more you might get errors, because the system will wonder why you're logged in twice.

  • How do they plan to enforce that ?

  • I'd like to point out that I mixed up and got my previous response attached to the wrong post. I'm a terrible human being and deserve to die a thousand horrible deaths.

  • Here is an idea for the napster folks...have all the major record labels send lists of there artists to napster as artists not to be on napster. Doing a search of all users trading those files and ban them...Lets see how well napsters business does then, as I think they would find that they have no users.

    I understand that Napster claims to be providing a file sharing service, but lets be realistic here, there is music piracy going on, they know it, we know it, and they of course are scared shitless to do a damn thing about it. Why? They make money on it. Take away all of the artists on the major lables from Napster and you'll have what left?
    Maybe a few thousand mp3s of unsigned artists or artists who allow their music to be traded in this fashion.

    If more artists and record labels got a clue and realized that this didn't hurt sales, but help them. Then maybe this would work.

    Here is a way to put the whole thing in perspective for the slashdot community.

    Lets say you write some program that you spent weeks working on and you license it under the GPL. Would you really want MS taking your software, violating the GPL and shipping your code out with the latest version of Windows? I think not...

  • Xerox runs a business based almost entirely on the copying of copyrighted materials. Fortunately a lot of the copying is done by the copyright holders, or their agents. But this hasn't stopped other copyright holders from being pissed off about the whole thing.

    Everything else strikes me as just details. Searching a database is not a copyright violation AFAIK. Isn't the database compiled by Napster? Is the database creative, and deserving of protection? Probably not. It's little more than a phone book when you get down to it.

    So the database is a dead issue.

    Napster's business model is also irrelevant, unless they're the ones actually doing the copying. But they're not. And using their database (sounds like a service at first glance) isn't a copyright infringement. If it were though, it would be infringing on Napster, not on the RIAA et al.

    Even copying files isn't necessarily a copyright infringement, but it's got little to do with Napster. Files are copied straight from another user, and never touch Napster at all.

    So while there is obviously a lot of copyright infringement going on, I still don't see how Napster can be singled out when our history indicates that all sorts of 'contributory infringers' aren't.

    ------

    As for the four points:
    1)Doesn't matter. It is not Napster's job to take positive action to ensure that no infringement is taking place, AFAIK. If they are made aware, then they do, yes. But there's no legal requirement that makes them check beforehand.

    2 and 3) Doesn't matter if there's not a lot. Again, go after the people actually infringing. If you claim that Napster is infringing, show me the proof of that or shut up. The atmosphere they have created is equally conductive to legal and illegal distribution, which begins to raise common carrier issues to me. Maybe Napster can qualify as an ISP....

    4) So if I sneak into a classroom with hundreds of legitimate students and swipe a copy of a handout, the prof. is responsible for not checking everyone's credentials? While there are other methods available, I doubt that fair users are legally mandated to use on service and not another. It's a legal use either way. If you misrepresent yourself, that's hardly the fault of the fair use distributor. They had no intent of giving it to you, had you not misled them.
  • Napster could have just let it go.

    No, they couldn't have. The way trademark law is written, it must be actively defended to be preserved.

    With copyright the exact opposite is true, even if you never defend your copyright once, the copyright remains valid.

    Napster is being hypocritical, but not because of their little encounter with Offspring (which was resolved cordially). They are hypocritical for the other reason you mention:

    or open source programmers, tried to use anything Napster owned. Yet at the same time, Napster has no problem helping to distribute material that other people own.

    They are hypocrits because they shout "share!" with one breath and then refuse to share technical info with those who wish to write compatible software (and even worse, do all they can to discourage independent efforts at supporting napster). This is counter to the "share and share alike" philosophy of information, be it software (free software/open source), news, or music.

    It is OK not to buy into the "information wants to be free" paradigm if one doesn't want to. It is not OK to say "I believe in information being free, as long as it isn't mine!"

    As I said in another post, do not count on a corporation to defend your freedom. Napster is as interested in making you captive as the RIAA is (they want to force you to use their product, and their product only). If you really want to insure your freedom, support the gnutella or freenet efforts instead, and trade your material there (and please respect copyrights when doing so).

  • If you can think of a better way they would have resolved that situation, please respond

    Napster could have just let it go.

    The point is that Napster threw a fit whenever anyone, be it the Offspring or open source programmers, tried to use anything Napster owned. Yet at the same time, Napster has no problem helping to distribute material that other people own.

    You say Napster was just protecting what they owned, which is true, but is not Metallica, Dr. Dre, etc., just doing the exact same thing? Are not they protecting what they own? Why is it OK for Napster to hand out cease-and-desist orders but not OK for the artists to do that?

  • The author of the article sounds like a politcian running for office: he thumps his fist and makes impressive sounding attacks, but they fall apart when you look at the details.

    Last month, when the punk-rock band the Offspring started selling T-shirts featuring the Napster logo, for example, Napster promptly sent the group a cease-and-desist order, backing off only after some Web sites commented on the apparent hypocrisy of the move.

    As some one else pointed out [slashdot.org], there is a big difference between trademark (Offspring using Napster logo) and copyright law (sharing music). If the offspring t-shirts were about general mp3 sharing with links to www.napster.com, www.cutemx.com etc, Napster the company would be thrilled, but by using a trademark logo Offspring left the company no choice but to issue a cease and desist.

    More significantly, the company repeatedly has tried to stymie independent software developers working on Napster-compatible software and Web sites. While these programs could benefit the millions of music fans that Napster claims are its only constituency, they might also diminish the commercial potential of Napster itself.

    First time I've heard about this....it was my understanding that the company was quietly supportive of the Linux console client and even had a link to a Mac client on its front page (still have the link on the downloads page).

    The company has refused to share technical information about its software code

    And its perfectly okay for them to do so. To hell with Stallman, nobody has a "right" to software code. You DO have every right to ask for open code, and the developer has every right to laugh in your face and tell you off. If you only want to use open source software, more power to you, but don't think its an affront to your personal liberty if some software you want to use is closed.

    Besides, isn't this a non-issue since the protocol was reverse engeneered about a year go?

    and has blocked computers from outside music sites from accessing Napster's database of hundreds of thousands of songs.

    But there is one new Internet sharing technology that Mr. Barry didn't mention to the senators, and of which Napster will have no part. These are "bots," or "agents,"

    Blocking the use of 3d party clients and restricting how their servers are used are two entierly seperate issues. Napster has every right to decide how people access their own servers; if search companies like AngryCoffe want to make indexes of mp3's, they can knock themselves out on gnutella.

    And Napster blocks bots and Napigator so the servers aren't overloaded. Under their current load ballancing setup, users first connect to server.napster.com, which in turn connects them to a sub server which handles all the indexing and sharing, and isn't connected to any other sub servers. If everybody used Napigator, people would tend to connect to the most populated servers, overwhelming them while leaving others virtually empty.

    Napster has said they are working on indexing all the servers, making Napigator only usefull for connecting to Opennap servers.

    And as for all the frumping about Shawn Fanning having a "mere" six percent in the company, he's lucky to have that much, and its probably due to his uncle having the largest stake. If he was a well known programmer like Alan Cox or Larry Wall in a startup, I'm sure he could have gotten a MUCH larger stake in the company. But a typical no name college drop out would probably paid a few thousand dollars for his idea and be forgotten.

  • Oh man, that's funny... (Score:5)

    by pb ( 1020 ) on Wednesday July 26, 2000 @06:50AM (#903693)
    Someone should write an article about the two sides of MS-NBC...
    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].
  • Assuming that the guy running the show is a smart guy, Napster won't be going on being a 'free music trading' service for much longer. What Napster is is a name, and Napster gained a hell of a lot of name brand recognition with all this legal trouble.. The kind of brand recognition that you can't buy. Napster is a household name, and they didn't have to pay a red cent in advertising to get that name. Napster very well could be shut down and re-started as a totally legitimate, corporate system for distributing music. Lame yes, but it could happen.

    Remember ICQ. Those guys sold it for like 200 million dollars to aol. What were they selling? A name. That's all. Name recoginition right now is hardest and most sought after commodity on the interent. Get it and you have it made for life.
  • Is anyone really shocked by this? I mean, all they have is their technology and their brand, they aren't going to give either one of those away, or let someone steal, er, share them.
  • Gnutella / Freenet arose from the "ashes" of Napster, but they won't "win" because of some grand decentralization theme--if the RIAA / gov't wanted to, they could shut them down. (Imagine a special, temporary court, JUST to issue orders to stop Gnutella servers and hear appeals...)

    Oooh.. -1, Clueless. Freenet especially cannot be shut down, not only because there are servers in many countries, but because in order to shut the thing down you have to prove that a law was broken. In the realm of copyright, that means proving that a person is using their computer to distribute copyrighted material. With Freenet that's not even possible - not only is it impossible to determine what you actually have stored in your Freenet cache, you can't even tell who's sendin it to you. So no, Freenet is not going down without either the will of the people running it or large-scale military deployment.

    Gnutella has safety in numbers. Do you really think, what with a 5 month (or more) backlog and tremendous legal fees, they are going to haul ten thousand people into court just to shut down their computer. Nonsense. They can fire off all the cease-and-desists they want, but the simple fact is that they don't even have jurisdiction. Not every computer is located in America.

    --
  • Napster is facilitating the exchange of material owned by others. They don't seem to have a problem with this.

    It's not a question of whether they like it or not--it's a question of whether it's up to them to enforce other people's copyrights or not.

    Would you argue that just because a copy shop doesn't check to make sure you're not using their machines to copy someone else's copyrighted material without permission, that they therefore "don't have a problem" with those copies being made?

  • (The one interesting point the article makes is about Napster's corporate structure and equity positions. I was unaware that the investors were able to pry over 90% of the company away from the founder. Fanning is an excellent developer, but he must be a *lousy* businessman.)

    He's lucky the Vulture Capitalists let him keep that much. US Venture Capital is highly interventionist, at least compared to their UK equivalent (who generally swipe about 60 per cent) and generall make damned sure that if the company founder doesn't dance to their business tune they can have him tarred and feathered and ridden on a rail toute de suite.

    What the hell does a VC do to warrant the amount of power they have over a company. They wrote a check. Big fucking deal. All they do is take over companies and throw the founders to the wolves. So really what's the incentive of founding a company then?

    And how do VCs compare to "Angel Investors". Supposably Angels are supposed to be nicer, but why?
  • You've just made my case for me. You are an individual user. Your ISP is not responsible for things that you do without their knowledge.

    If you serve up copyrighted material against the copyright holders wishes, you've broken the law. But it's not your ISP's obligation to check the contents of every computer which gets its internet access through their network.

    The individual USERS of Napster have to worry about whether or nor their hosting legal files. Napster does not.

    LK

  • Link (Score:3)

    by jyuter ( 48936 ) <jyuter@g m a i l .com> on Wednesday July 26, 2000 @06:53AM (#903702) Homepage Journal
    ZDNet covereage is here [zdnet.com]



    Being with you, it's just one epiphany after another
  • They don't actively participate in the transfer of the materials now do they?

    Someone could present a good argument that Napster participates actively enough to violate the law.
    Using your bar analogy, if you ran a bar and a guy came up to you and said, "I really wish I could have sex with a tall redhead," and you proceeded to take him by the wrist, walk him up to a tall redheaded prostitute and say, "This is Tina, she'll take care of you," you would be arrested. You could get up in front of a judge and say, "I'm just trying to match up people, what they actually do is their business," and you would still go to jail.
    At least pimps make money off of hooking people up. I don't see Napster ever making a dime.

    -B

  • Re:It is the same issue (Score:4)

    by tread! ( 215457 ) on Wednesday July 26, 2000 @07:11AM (#903706) Homepage
    If you actually remember what happened in the Offspring situation, napster sent a cease and decist letter, essentially staking its claim on the Napster trademark, and followed it up with an offer to work with the Offspring to sell legitimate shirts and donate the profits to charity. Napsters trademark was duly protected and the t-shirts remained available.

    If you can think of a better way they would have resolved that situation, please respond

  • IANAL, but... Water-pipes / bongs, hampsters, and PCs are all products. Provided they have a legal purpose, the merchant shouldn't be liable for their use illegall. But Napster isn't a product, it's a service. They don't just ship software--they maintain a network, and act as a SERVICE. If I run a bar and promote prostitution, I'm liable. If I drive a car and offer to help criminals "getaway", I'm liable. The same principle can apply to Napster, but it seems like a fuzzy area... which is why RIAA vs Napster is one of those cases that SHOULD go to the courts.

  • [snip]...when someone takes the Napster trademark and makes it available when the person has not received permission to do so, Napster Inc. cries foul.

    The law specifies a difference between copyright and trademark in that vast propagation of the former does not diminish its value to the creator while it *does* diminish the value of a trademark.

    Napster freely distributes material...[snip]...Napster is essentially saying, "We can steal your stuff but you can't steal ours."

    *BZZT* Wrong, thanks for playing. Napster ITSELF, the legal entity "Napster Inc." is not "stealing" or "sharing" anything -- they are enabling a more efficient way of sharing mp3 files among their users. If those users decide to make available copyrighted mp3s that are not freely distributable, then the *users* are the ones in trouble, not Napster. (Yes, the judge said no, but the higher courts will overturn this.) They have a legal obligation to protect their own trademarks and respect the copyrights of the record industry -- insofar as they are not responsible for their users' behavior. If Napster finds out that users are trading copyrighted mp3s without satisfactory evidence that the users are entitled to download said mp3s, *then* Napster must shut down the users immediately.

    Sorry for the legalese, but that's the way this situation has to work.

  • I think it's pretty obvious to everyone that something fishy is going on down at the Napster corporation: parasitising the work of musicians and artists for their own corporate gain, defended with a thinly-disguised cry of "information wants to be free," while they're extremely tight-fisted with their own property.

    What's not obvious, though, is what might be the real reason behind this whole mess. Think carefully for a moment. What group was one of the biggest contributors to Bill Clinton's campaign and to the Democrats? Entertainment. (Especially Hollywood.) What group is this hurting most? Big entertainment corporations.

    The current controversy surrounding DeCSS and the MPAA only serves to make things clearer. And whose suspicions wouldn't be raised by the sentence:

    Mr. Amram also helped Napster raise money from the large pool of wealthy "angel" investors that resides in Silicon Valley, especially those with "dot-com" money

    -- when Newt Gingrich is currently politically and financially active in Silicon Valley? (Check the July 24 issue of Newsweek.) This seems to me like a blatantly illegal attempt by the Republican party to punish the entertainment industry for financing Democratic campaigns.

    Let's face it. The users of these services are breaking very clear copyright laws. I can't see any real defense for this, or any reason that the trial's not over already, unless somebody very powerful is defending these criminals behind the scenes. And I can't see any reason that the news media would have cause to defend (yes, defend. what else would you call the NYT linking to 2600?) this ragtag bunch of pirates unless they've got a very good reason to.

    I'm not crying foul over this -- power politics is a rough game, and people are going to play it, and all I have to say to those who don't like it is, "deal with it." This just might be a good thing to keep in mind.
  • Have you READ any of the interviews with Fanning over the last few months?

    He didn't write Napster thinking "I'm going to write this program so that I can start a company, get rich, and be persecuted by the RIAA, dirty metalheads and "gangster" rappers throughout the US of A".

    He wrote Napster thinking "Wow... these MP3s are pretty neat, I can listen to a lot of cool music I wouldn't have heard before, and give others the same opportunity, its a shame that it's so hard to find the things tho... mabye I can write a program to make it a little easier...".

    So he wrote a program, thought it was pretty cool, and shared it with others. Everyone else thought it was pretty cool too, and some people suggested to him: "hey, this software is really cool, you might be able to make some money off of it, like those WinAmp guys did".

    The rest, as they say, is history. The software wasn't written to fit a business plan. A business plan was written (supposedly) to fit the software AFTER THE FACT.

    Kinda hard to do change everything without alienating your users (ask Apple about the complaints they're getting from the Aqua demos). And that's NOT something you want to do, especially considering that other projects like Gnutella are rapidly gaining on Napster in it's core competency: "making an MP3 search *EASY* to do".

    john
    Resistance is NOT futile!!!

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

  • If you really want to insure your freedom, support the gnutella or freenet efforts instead, and trade your material there (and please respect copyrights when doing so).

    This is probably a waste of breath... err.. typing. Copyright is losing a lot of respect. This seems right given that the value that it once held for the public has been missing for quite some time. The public sees no return for their granting of a monopoly on some creation or information. It seems to me that given that the original bargain between the public and the creators has been broken, multiple times, and retroactively, it's no wonder that people often simply ignore copyrights now. I think this is as it should be. Perhaps it will provide the incentive needed for a reevaluation and renegotiation of the terms to something that will once again benefit the public.

  • I know what you're saying. Read my post again. I didn't say that they did sue under trademark law. I'm saying there's no way they could have defended their trademark because there was no infringement taking place. Therefore, saying the Metallica shoud be defending their trademark is incorrect. There was no infringement to defend against.

  • Something to remember... (Score:3)

    by Colin Winters ( 24529 ) on Wednesday July 26, 2000 @09:20AM (#903730)
    I see a lot of posts about how Napster shouldn't have become capitalist, blah blah Gnutella blah. But there's something to consider: how would Napster be able to pay for their bandwith/computers to keep their centralized network going if they didn't become a company? I know they don't actually serve the files, but I'm sure that Napster has to have a ton of bandwith, otherwise the program wouldn't work and no one would use it. So don't go bashing them because Napster's a company. However, I'm not saying that they shouldn't help other people or not-just pointing out something no one else has mentioned.

    Colin Winters
  • I don't know about other states, but 100% of every recent increase in New Jersey cigarette taxes goes right to the healthcare system to pay for all the damage tobacco has done, and/or to anti-smoking advertising campaigns. Why would the government do the latter if the tax were for the sole purpose of making money? Why the heck would they use the tax revenue to try and reduce future tax revenue?

    Those taxes aren't intended to make money - They're intended to discourage use of tobacco and to recoup the healthcare expenditures that the tobacco industry has forced the government to make.
  • That's 100% of the increase. What about all of the previous taxes?? Here in Ohio, the tobacco tax just about pays for everything BUT healthcare. If they tax it so much that tobacco use falls to almost nothing, so will their tax revenue. Do you honestly think that they'll stop collecting the tax? Hell no, they'll just find some other social evil to tax.

    California, years ago, tried to impose a snack tax. However, the tax was so vaguelly worded, that nobody, not even the state, knew what was taxed and what wasn't. The tax was eventually dropped. And they raised taxes on cigarettes to cover the lost revenue.

    If the government gets used to spending at a certain level, and that level drops, they don't lower their spending. They just find new things to tax to bring the level back up, or even higher. PA promised that when the PA Turnpike was paid for, that the turnpike tolls would be dropped and the turnpike would be free. Well, the turnpike was paid for years ago, and they just raised the turnpike rates a few years ago. Sure, I trust the government with my money! Everytime we hear about a tax cut going through Congress, a lot of congressmen can be expected to complain about how we're going to "pay" for the tax cut. Pay for the tax cut?? Why not stop spending so much damn money? Do we really need the National Endowment for the Arts?? And the Energy Department has really proven that they have earned their keep. The government shut down several years ago for a few weeks. Did anybody really notice?? Didn't think so.

    There are other ways to discourage tobacco use. Make it harder to purchase cigarettes. Have state-owned stores be the only ones allowed to sell cigarettes (just like liquor stores in PA). Ban the damn things outright. This pussy-footing around is just convincing me that they don't give a damn about "the children!" They just make a few feeble gestures to convince people that they "care".

    Yeah, I'm a pessimist!

  • Using a trademark to identify work or creations by the trademark holder is not illegal, which is why Metallica was sueing under copyright law and not trademark law.

  • Re:fake posts? (Score:3)

    by Stonehand ( 71085 ) on Wednesday July 26, 2000 @07:16AM (#903740) Homepage
    There are headers you can use (x-no-archive) IIRC which these archives are supposed to respect by NOT archiving your message for posterity...
  • (The one interesting point the article makes is about Napster's corporate structure and equity positions. I was unaware that the investors were able to pry over 90% of the company away from the founder. Fanning is an excellent developer, but he must be a *lousy* businessman.)

    He's lucky the Vulture Capitalists let him keep that much. US Venture Capital is highly interventionist, at least compared to their UK equivalent (who generally swipe about 60 per cent) and generall make damned sure that if the company founder doesn't dance to their business tune they can have him tarred and feathered and ridden on a rail toute de suite.

    There's nothing in it that indicates Fanning was a lousy businessman: he was just getting the same smelly end of the drain-rod that capital hands anyone with something to contribute.

  • But Napster is more actively involved in the exchange than that. If you ran a bar and posted on the wall a list of the whores currently in the bar, and their description, and helped the Johns find the hooker they were looking for, and then put a big sign outside the bar saying "Come here for hookers", than I would say that you're liable in the event of a prostitution bust.

    Napster does not just provide an open forum that might be abused to exchange MP3's. That's more like FTP. It maintains databases with lists of MP3's. It is becoming actively involved in the exchange by indexing the files currently inside the network centrally. If they are taking the clearly active step of collecting file information and processing queries against those files, than it seems that they are responsable for more actively attempting to ensure that copyrighted material stays off the system.

    "Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"

  • Sheep? Crap? Napster is the best mp3 search method, simply because of its ease of use and amazingly huge database. What else matters in such things? I would rather load up Napster, type in a song, and get dozens of results from different servers with different connections than attempt to find an album via ftp or mirc, with no real guarantee that I can get into the server or can be first in a stupid queue. Napster does its job, which is to offer a huge, updated, easily accessible database of music.
  • It's sad to see how Napster (the company) has corrupted this idea, and turned it into nothing more than a hypocritical attempt to steal profits from the recording industry.


    What are you talking about? Napster has always been about stealing from the record industry. Given that Napster has never made a dime, there are no profits to move from the recording industry to Napster.

  • Re:Napster IS NOT STEALING ANYTHING! (Score:4)

    by Lord Kano ( 13027 ) on Wednesday July 26, 2000 @07:19AM (#903762) Homepage Journal
    It's more like a chap on the street pointing you to the dealers who provide cocaine, which legally can NOT be sold in the US.

    More like someone saying "Hey this bar three blocks south and one block east of here is great. You can ALWAYS meet women there." He could mean prostitutes, or he could mean sluts. Prostitution is illegal, being a slut is not.

    When then do the telephone book publishers become accessories to the solicitation of prostitution? We all KNOW what "Massage Parlor" and "Escort Service" mean. Yet you'll find pages and pages of them in your local yellow pages.

    LK
  • This sort of hypocritical attitude is nothing new to the Open Source crowd. For years we have yelled and screamed about the evils of copyrights and intellectual property laws-- but DON'T TOUCH MY GPL! Yes, as someone earlier pointed out, there's a difference between trademark and copyrights. But we all can see that there's no fundamental difference between napster and microsoft... it's just a matter of where to draw the line. For the hardcore freedom seekers... it's time for a new poster child. Surely there's someone out there who really believes in this whole "information should be free" thing. But they're clearly not a corporation, and they clearly won't last long.

  • Missing Two Issues (Score:3)

    by kmcardle ( 24757 ) <ksmcardle&gmail,com> on Wednesday July 26, 2000 @07:34AM (#903765)
    Long time readers will know I'm pro-Metallica, but here goes...

    It amazes me how people can selectively turn on the blinders sometimes. Your first two paragraphs are dead on the the money. You are quite correct. But...

    I do not see the hypocrisy.
    Open your fscking eyes! Um, let's see. Napster position one - Other people create music, we profit from it. Napster position two - We create a protocol, and we won't let other people communicate using it so they can make a profit.
    Or, to put it another way, Napster position one - we can make money off your work. Napster position two - you can't make money off our work. Which part isn't clear?
    --
    then it comes to be that the soothing light at the end of your tunnel is just a freight train coming your way
  • I have never visited their site and I am amazed that so much hoopla has been raised over these guys.

    It seems though, that as artists "grow into" the internet age they will demand their stuff be out on the web. They simply will bypass all the big labels, realizing that they are, in effect, unnecessary. Digital bits are alot easier to distribute than CD's. Perhaps this is the beginning of that phase.

    Just my opinion.

  • Ok, let's drop trademark laws, and copyright laws for a moment.

    This is stupid. You can't take the situation out of the context that the participants are acting in. You're trying to ignore the very thing that compelled them to send the cease and desist letter in the first place.

    But when someone starts facilitating the exchange of material owned by Napster, they get pissed off, and throw a fit.

    How do you know they were pissed off or that anyone threw a fit? Did you just make that up or what? Napster's attornies sent a cease and desist letter, which they are required to send in order to retain control of their trademark. As a corporation, they are obligated to take such measures to protect their shareholders' investments. Judging from the outcome, in which Napster agreed to license their logo to the Offspring for use on tshirts and other merchandise, with the earnings donated to charity, they weren't pissed off at all. They just had to take the measures they did because they were obligated to by law.

  • Napster is a business, not a gift from God to music lovers. Like a drug dealer, it hands out free samples (well, the myth of the drug dealer, anyway) in expectation of returning customers willing to pay. But few will be interested in paying because once you get something free, the expectation is to continue getting it for free. Besides, there are other drug dealers across the street (Scour, CuteMX, etc.) who are still giving away free samples.

    Napster as a business is absurd. It will never make any money, only lose money. It will be litigated out of existence. The only enduring legacy of Napster is that it pushed the envelope on the P2P concept. VCs will lose money. That's why two Napster principals broke off, trying to create a business scheme that will make money.

    I think P2P is inherently anti-business: it's about people sharing files without middlemen, without central servers. Dot-com business people, in general, are losing money on business ventures. I believe this is a good thing. Maybe scads of them will abandon the Internet. Not likely, but maybe.

    Gnutella is the exception - created by developers, it has no pretension toward business and untold riches: it is software for people who want to share things, be those things copyrighted or not. Thankfully, business can't get a handle on this. Nor can the RIAA.

    Good.

  • This is probably a waste of breath... err.. typing. Copyright is losing a lot of respect. This seems right given that the value that it once held for the public has been missing for quite some time.

    You are not wasting your breath.

    I happen to agree with you. I am trying to come up with a GPL-style approach to media copyrights, and am releasing some of my own work [openflick.org] under a GPL-like Free Media License [openflick.org].

    I agree that a more fundamental review (and perhaps repeal) of the proveleged copy restrictions we call copyright is long overdue.
  • thats the fucking point. They don't promote copyright violations last time I checked, now do they? They don't actively participate in the transfer of the materials now do they?

    The real analogy is this: I own a bar. Whores like to frequent it and find johns. If one is reported, I remove them. I need not actively police my bar, that's not my job...ethically maybe...legally no. They are merely my patrons. And as long as I reasonably do not promote illegal activities...I'm fine. Same goes for napster.

    Jesus.
  • However, convince people of that, especially in this age of multi-gazillion dollar lawsuits against tobacco companies, gun manufacturers, and any other company that people feel wronged by.

    Oh, I'm fat. I think I'll sue McDonalds and Taco Bell because it's their burgers and tacos that made me fat!

    Oh, somebody drove a Cadillac through a schoolyard full of disabled children. That Cadillac should have known that it wasn't supposed to smear little Cindy across the asphalt. Let's sue GM!

    Bad things happen, and people need a scapegoat, a company to blame, and to get billions of dollars from. There is no such thing as personnel responsibility anymore. We have been trained to let others think for us for decades. Now that we can't think for ourselves, others are obviously to blame. So, let's sue them!

    If you want to sue an organization that profits the most from the evils of society, SUE THE GOVERNMENT! Over half of the cost of cigarettes is local, state, and federal taxes. The US Government makes more money off of a pack of cigarettes than the cigarette company does. Without any more effort than passing a law. And then the government has the absolute gaul to sue the companies for even more money!

    All the things that are going to hell in this country and we are worrying about whether Lars Ulrich is getting his two bits for the crap albums he's been turning out the past few years! (let's face it, everything since Master has blown chunks!) The Chinese own the president and our nukes, the UN is trying to create a world court that will overrule all of our constitutional rights, and we're pissed about this crap??

    Phillip Morris didn't kill your mom, your mom killed herself! Colt and Ruger didn't shoot up your neighborhood, some punks that have been raised with no sense of responsibility killed your kids! Napster isn't ripping off "starving" musicians, it's the users that choose to download those files!

    Stop trying to blame big "sue-able cause they've got money" companies, and start looking at the real causes. This country is really starting to piss me off!

    Now, don't start with the "well, why don't you just move, you commie!". I love America! This is still the greatest country on Earth. But we can be so much better! What we have now is now what the founding fathers envisioned!

    I'll get off my soapbox now.

  • The more I read about their legal strategy and corporate practices, the more I grow convinced that Napster is doomed.

    "Sharing" is breaking the law. I saw today on CNBC that Napster intended to argue that sharing music via Napster was like "loaning a friend a tape". Baloney. Sending a copy of a song to a thousand people a day in perfect digital form is hardly the same.

    Napster should be standing or falling (and it SHOULD stand) on the idea that it has legitimate purposes (sharing free/uncopyrighted/etc music). The fact that people pirate the hell out of it means nothing. When people put up web pages with songs to download, they don't go demanding that ISPs stop providing a web page service.

    But if Napster has painted themselves into a terrible legal corner -- defending true piracy -- they will lose, and IMHO, rightly so. People DO have the right to their work. I think its great if people don't need or want big record companies (and I'm hoping the RIAA is doomed), but artists should have the right to choose.

    That said, "so what if Napster loses"? There will be another. Do these people REALLY think its that hard to write a directory service and a client? Please. I'm surprised some open source software hasn't already pre-empted Napster entirely. But something will be right along.

    As has been said on /. many a time: you can't put the genie back in the bottle. Have fun, RIAA, because even if Napster loses, you're not in for a fun time.
  • Also, you have to wonder how many people fill that stuff out truthfully. I put down that I was a 65 year old female with a grade school education that made 200k+ a year. All I can hope is that some junior executive makes a presentation one day and says "Senior citizen women appear to downloading quite a bit of Wu-Tang. I think it could be a new market for us."

    -B

  • At work, I occasionally play "OSS zealot" to a friend's "MS zealot". Both of us really just prefer using the technology that best suits whatever we're out to do, but it gives rise to pokes and jabs about the others "position". If I had to pick a site I sent more "haha, look at this" articles to him from, it would be MSNBC. They're surprisingly thorough, early, and knowledgeable, imo, regarding many issues which other news sources ignore. And if there's any testament, its that I get so many "triumph of OSS" articles of them.

    Given who owns MSNBC, they're a pretty good organization.
  • Napter, no matter how much of a white knight they want to be, no matter how noble their cause may seem to be, is a company that is in business to do one thing: MAKE MONEY.

    The original napster software, though interesting, was *CRAP*. The idea was good, it filled a niche, but is in no way technically advanced. It was *easy*. The world already has much better software; napster was just dumbed down enough for the sheep to use. And once you get the sheep involved, the network effect takes over, and it becomes a force in it's own right.

    But the software is still crap; no new technology is coming about; napster tries to fight the good fight, but isn't at all interested in the technological advancements. They are interested in money.

    Napster does not deserve the support it gets.

  • Confusing Two Issues (Score:5)

    by LaNMaN2000 ( 173615 ) on Wednesday July 26, 2000 @06:56AM (#903800) Homepage
    Unfortunately, the article ignores the distinction between copyright law and trademark law. Napster is advocating the sharing of copyrighted works, citing fair-use as justification for its position. Even if what couls be considered copyright infringement does occur, it does not diminish the copyright in the same way that unlicensed use of a trademark diminishes a trademark.

    A trademark holder is required to actively protect its trademark in order to keep it out of the public domain--no such provision exists for copyrights. Therefore Napster is *legally obligated* to prevent unlicensed use of the Napster trademark in shirts/hats/etc. in order to ensure that 100,000 new distributed file-sharing projects do not have the ability to call themselves "Napster."

    Trademarks are never "shared" over Napster, only copyrighted works are. Consequently, I do not see the hypocrisy.

    (The one interesting point the article makes is about Napster's corporate structure and equity positions. I was unaware that the investors were able to pry over 90% of the company away from the founder. Fanning is an excellent developer, but he must be a *lousy* businessman.)

  • The users of these services are breaking very clear copyright laws. I can't see any real defense for this, or any reason that the trial's not over already, unless somebody very powerful is defending these criminals behind the scenes.

    I think you just answered your own question. The people who are breaking the copyright laws are users of the service, but for some reason, they are not the ones on trial.

    It's sort of like complaining about drug dealers who are clearly breaking the law, and then when the phone company (the tool that the drug dealers use to set up their deals) doesn't get convicted, it must be due to a conspiracy.

    Yes, the law is being broken. No, the people who are in court aren't the ones who broke it. The defendants don't need a conspiracy in order to win; they need a conspiracy in order to lose.


    ---
  • My god, this is absurd.

    If you're going to be a conspiracy theorist...

    BE A CONSPIRACY THEORIST

    The Democrats and Republicans are basically one party, anyway.

  • Okay, how is this for a business model?

    1. Raise a ton of VC money.
    2. Provide a service to help script kiddies violate Metallica's copyrights.
    3. Get sued for providing the service.
    4. Raise a bunch more VC money.
    5. Settle out of court with the record companies for a gajillion dollars, most of which you borrow or agree to pay over a few years. Include, as part of the settlement, and agreement by which you pay a fee to be a licensed distributer of MP3 files related to the big record companies.
    6. Become the biggest player in the world in on-line music distribution.
    7. Cash out your options before the business collapses under its own weight, retire and live like fat cats.

    So far, Napster has completed step 4, and are surely working on step 5. I'm no Nostrodamous, but I got a feeling I'm on to something here.

  • the legal entity "Napster Inc." is not "stealing" or "sharing" anything -- they are enabling a more efficient way of sharing mp3 files among their users. If those users decide to make available copyrighted mp3s that are not freely distributable, then the *users* are the ones in trouble, not Napster

    This is exactly the problem. The issue is not about what Napster does or doesn't do, it's about what people do with the Napster software. But, regardless of Napster's ambitions or claims of "It's not me, I'm just being used", an argument exists for making the use of this software illegal, exactly in the same way as an argument exists for making guns illegal (it's not me, it's the guy I sold it to).

    I'm not saying which side of the argument I'm on, but that is the argument - does the tool add more than it takes away? Is the protection / added value worth the cost? And this is something that has to be dealt with.

    So now we have two options :

    (1) Make it illegal, screw the rights of the people using it.

    (2) Protect it, screw the rights of the artists whose work is being stolen.

    This situation is obviously begging for a third option, but people are too busy defending (1) or (2) to give a damn about other alternatives, and the judges will end up having to decide between the two. If the law hobbles them, then I wouldn't put it past the relevant authorities in various countries to change the laws underpinning the courts decisions (unless, of course, we come back to the sacred US constitution).

    Unless someone finds another option or a way of creating a greyscale between the two we have, the courts will be forced to decide between a greater and a lesser evil, and I for one don't think that their decision is at all predictable.

  • Napster's Mistake (Score:5)

    by ryry ( 198300 ) on Wednesday July 26, 2000 @07:32AM (#903825) Homepage

    Fanning's mistake was to try and corporatize Napster. He wasn't satisfied with releasing an easy-to-use tool, he had to try and turn it into a successful business and make some money off it. Now he's got to balance Napster's sort of rebel reputation with the need to fit into corporate America, which isn't an easy thing to accomplish.

    Damned if you do, damned if you dont:

    If they pursue litigation with the Offspring, then their mostly teenage/young adult fanbase will see them as "selling out" and not only messing with a cool band but totally reversing their opinions on copyrighted material. If they leave the Offspring alone, then they're losing a possibly lucrative revenue stream in merchandising (they could make their own "official" gear, but c'mon, they'd sell it for more and it's cool to have the unofficial stuff as well :-)

    I for one hope Napster pulls through - I think it's a great piece of technology and that the RIAA should work with them, not against them, to ensure the future of digital music. But I still think Napster should have been left as a Gnutella-style freebie tool with no intention of profitability underlying the coolness of swapping MP3s online.

    As it is right now, they are cultivating an elitist image reminiscent of how many people view Microsoft - anticompetetive and unwilling to cooperate with others to further the technology empowering its very product. I certainly hope things turn around.


    -ryry
  • Napster is a COMPANY, not a person. Companies do not care about sharing. Companies do not care about the open exchange of ideas. Sometimes companies pretend that they care about that in order to further their business. Sometimes companies happen to do a lot of things that help sharing, but do not ever forget: the main reason for a company to exist is to make money, and to build the company. Not to help sharing.

    Anyone who thinks that Napster isn't as intrinsically impersonal and corporate as Microsoft is naive. Napster is a huge company with funding, and right now they are saying that "sharing" music is okay, because that is what their business model is based on. If they found a foolproof way to make more money by enforcing copyright tomorrow, do you REALLY think they wouldn't do it? Seriously, think about it.

    All this talk about whether what Napster does is moral or immoral misses the point: Hypocrisy and morality are not issues when it comes to a company, because it is an organization, not a person. Anyone who thinks that anyone at Napster will go "mm yeah , that article makes me realize, we are sort of wrong" and do anything at all differently than how they have been is, frankly, just stupid.

    sig:

  • Haiku (Score:3)

    by talonyx ( 125221 ) on Wednesday July 26, 2000 @10:47AM (#903832)
    Hypocrites abound
    Battle laws, but take freedom.
    Will Napster survive?

    This glourious poem
    Will never be read by you
    It was posted late.
  • What the hell does a VC do to warrant the amount of power they have over a company.

    Simple, they make an agreement with whomever owns the compony to buy a part of it for a huge amount of money and some control. Nobody is forced to give control to the VCs, people agree to it. In fact the activly seek it out.

    They wrote a check. Big fucking deal. All they do is take over companies and throw the founders to the wolves.

    This depends a lot on the founder, the bisness, the VC, and the amount of money.

    If a bisness is making very little money, the founder isn't that excited about retaining control, and the VC has someone they think would do a good job, then of corse the founder loses control, for an amount of money they agree on.

    If the bisness is making very little money, the founder demands to keep control of it, and the VC would rather hand controll off so someone they know, then the deal probbably doesn't happen. Unless the VC thinks there is a really good chance of the thing making big money.

    They wrote a check. Big fucking deal. All they do is take over companies and throw the founders to the wolves. So really what's the incentive of founding a company then?

    Well, that check. If you had a bisness you worked hard on, but needed more money to get anywhere (say you have a hardware prototype, but you need to find a way to mass produce it, market it, and have a sales force), you could take out another morgage on your house and literly "bet the farm" on it. If it fails you are pretty screwed. Not dead, bankruptcy isn't what it use to be. If it succedes you win huge, say $50,000,000 huge.

    If someone came to you and offered you $500,000 for the prototype, and rights to it, and a salaryed position, and the chance to make say $1,000,000 more if the bisness succeded, would you take it?

    I don't know if I would or not, but it wouldn't be a bad offer. And that's what VCs do. They give you a deal that makes the worst case way better (you don't lose your house, in fact you can buy a better one even if the bisness folds). The deal also makes the best case not as good (you only get a small percentage of the profits rather then a large percentage). It almost always reduces your control.

    What is the incentave of founding? Well the founder gets a much larger chunk of money then anyone else. They take the initial big risk too (perhaps merely of living off of savings long enough to make a prototype, maybe of morgataging their house).

  • The article mentions people getting C&D letters from napster for creating napster-compatible software for Linux and other operating systems. I must be one of the lucky ones, then, because my shit software [bitey.net] for searching napster servers from the command line hasn't been targeted yet.


    Personally, if napster can dish it out but not take it, they deserve to be sued into oblivion.


    - A.P.
    --


    "One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad

  • That is to say, you can't go to Kmart and get prints made of your wedding photos.
    Wouldn't the work for hire clause make it so you own your wedding photos as you hired the photographer to take those photos for you? I have a suspicion here you may have picked a poor analogy, though I could be wrong as we just got a friend to take the photos using our camera :)

  • Napster IS NOT STEALING ANYTHING! (Score:5)

    by Lord Kano ( 13027 ) on Wednesday July 26, 2000 @07:00AM (#903838) Homepage Journal
    I don't understand why people don't seem to get this. They provide a service that can be used for either legal or illegal purposes. When someone is reported for using the service illegally, they terminate the account. What more do they need to do?

    If you go to your local head shop and you ask to see the bongs you will be told that they don't cary aany drug paraphernalia. If you ask to see one of their water-pipes, you will be shown the best smoking accesories that they have. Once you've got your water-pipe, it's your responsibility to use it in a legal manner.

    Or think of a pet store. If you go in and buy one hamster or gerbil per week, pretty soon they're going to wise up and stop selling them to you. If you ask for a shaved hamster, they're going to throw you out.

    It's up to YOU, the user/client/patron to do the right/legal thing with any product/service. It is not the responsibility of the service/widget provider to insure that you walk the straight and narrow path. I don't care if it's easier to do it that way, it's still not right.

    LK
  • ...that even in our "new" economy, the people who get rewarded most handsomely aren't the people who innovate (i.e., Shawn), but the people who already have the bucks (his uncle).

    Shawn wrote Napster to facilitate free and open sharing of music (and perhaps other forms of information). I suspect that to him, and most Napster users, Napster is (or was, at least) a revolutionary program and an idea, not just a company.

    It's sad to see how Napster (the company) has corrupted this idea, and turned it into nothing more than a hypocritical attempt to steal profits from the recording industry.

    I do plan to do something about this... When I get the chance, I'm going to help port Gnutella to other platforms (already started helping with the Mac port--I may do a Mac OS X port, too).
  • It'd be as if someone came up to you and said "I'm looking to meet a tall redhed." You might assume he's looking for a prostitute, but he my also be looking for his sister...

    Napster can't really tell the legality of certain files, "Metallica - Enter Sandman.mp3" and "Garage Band - Enter Sandman (Metallica cover).mp3" will both show up during an search on "Metallica"...

    The service has a valid use that doesn't depend on piracy. The piracy may overwhelm this valid use, but that's not their problem, as long as they don't specifically get involved in piracy and take minimal steps to stop those users who are identified as pirates.
  • The real question is: can I download some whores on Napster?
  • When I went to Office Depot to photocopy some pages of books for a school project (note educational "fair use" and all that jazz) I was actually required to sign a document affirming that I was permitted to copy the materials. The document was brightly colored, had a lot of legal jargon on it, and was marked "Exhibit A" on the bottom. How nice -- when the publishers want to sue me, they already have one piece of signed, pre-labeled evidence.

    I signed it, of course, because I wanted to pay the 40 cents for my copies and go home.

  • Re:Confusing Two Issues (Score:5)

    by LaNMaN2000 ( 173615 ) on Wednesday July 26, 2000 @07:52AM (#903852) Homepage
    I disagree; Napster could have been wildly profitable if they played their cards right at the beginning:

    1) Make 2 versions of Napster: one with just file-sharing capabilities to be released into the public domain, and one piece of "ad-ware" with premium features like chat, etc. Most users will only download the public-domain version, but judging from the number of people in Napster chat rooms, you would have at least 10,000 regular and 100,000 infrequent users of the premium version (at current rates, generating about $50k/month--not much)

    2) Hardcode all versions of Napster to only connect to Napster.com. Even though competitors would spring up that use reverse-engineered servers with a modified version of the public-domain client, Napster could be sure that the vast majority of users who downloaded their software would use thier network exclusively without prohibiting reverse-engineering. Remember, Gnutella is technically superior but has far fewer users; Napster has a significant first-mover advantage.

    3) Have the search results panel split beteen the matching MP3s with a "buy the single" affiliate link next to it, and affiliate links to buy merchandise and albums from the Bands whose MP3s are listed. Since most of Napster's users are music enthusiasts who already buy music on the Internet, this would be very convenient and incredibly profitable.

    4) Instead of making "sharing" the theme of the service, make it "try before you buy" and "radio on-demand." This would give it a similar role to radio stations, exposing users to interesting music and effectively promoting all of the bands whose music is exchanged. Since purchasing the music is even more encouraged in this service, than it is with traditional radio stations, they would not have as much legal trouble.

    5) Hold weekly promotions and contests that feature unsigned artists. This would be a huge traffic draw to their network that would cost almost nothing to organize (the top prize does not even need to be more than $5000 a week). These promotions would be far more effective than the Limp Bizkit tour at getting people to the Napster site and *keeping them there.* In addition, it would draw people who are more obsessed music fans (who are more likely to buy stuff) to the service. Plus, it would be years before it racks up a total cost of $2mil. Also, it would enhance Napster's image as a company that promotes unsigned artists instead of a service that specializes in pirating music.

    Remember, the benefit of Peer-to-peer networks is that they have very low operating costs. Only searches and chats consume Napster's bandwidth; all transfers occur independently of their system and consume none of their bandwidth. All "content" is user-supplied and therefore content-generation costs no more than customer acquisition.

    Considering how inexpensive the operating costs are, Napster could turn a serious profit if their MBAs/investors were not incompetant. I am only 18, with no business experience, and I can come up with this strategy; the investors that have jumped on board and the management staff they hired simply have not added any value to company, so it was foolish to surrender so much equity to them and give them control of the company.

    Just my $.02.

  • Here's some useful info (Score:4)

    by John Jorsett ( 171560 ) on Wednesday July 26, 2000 @07:53AM (#903853)
    I read the article and got pretty disgusted with Napster's attempts to suppress the reverse-engineering of its software. If they get shut down, I think it's important for people to be able to drop back to alternatives. Soooo, for those interested, here's [sourceforge.net] OpenNap's definition of the Napster Protocol. Here's [sourceforge.net] OpenNap's home page, which contains links to non-Napster clients, non-Napster servers, references, etc.
  • More significantly, the company repeatedly has tried to stymie independent software developers working on Napster-compatible software and Web sites.

    You are operating under the assumption that making Napster an open system would benefit its users. If people were allowed to develop their own clients that could interact with Napster's network, you would have the same problem with automated SPAM and virus distribution that you have with Gnutella. While there were rumors that users who accessed Napigator were being locked out of their network, these rumors were never substantiated. In fact, Napster *never* explicitly prevents users from accessing clone networks or reverse engineered utilities. In contrast, users of AOL IM are unable to even communicate with users of AOL's own ICQ service let alone the users of other networks.

    The company has refused to share technical information about its software code, has made changes to its software that have prevented other programs from working with Napster's own and has blocked computers from outside music sites from accessing Napster's database of hundreds of thousands of songs.

    Most companies refuse to share technical information about their software's source code. While Napster could attempt to enforce its ban on reverse-engineering and the use of bots, it has *not.* Napigator is still around and Napster never even filed charges against Metallica's detective firm for using a bot to spy on their network (a mistake, IMHO). Napster has decided *not* to continue using Ebay-like tactics to prevent their site from being meta-searched by Napigator, and its files continue to be visible.

    The "sharing" that Napster advocates does not constitute forcing the bands to allow fans to make derivative works in spite of their copyright. Why is it hypocracy for them not to openly support derivative works of Napster (although they do not even actively enforce a prohibition of derivative works now)? They may not be following the open-source code of ethics, but *they are not open source developers.*

    never send a capatalist to do an activist's job

    This is a very good point.

  • First a corporation must survive by being profitable, second every corporation must be constantly fending off the advances of some other companies or organizations legal department. Unfortunately many news reporters and even slashdotters have little to no experience in this department (IANAL). All this aside, Napster Inc. must preserve it's copyright, trademark, etc due to the legal context and other business arenas that they may be used in. Think about what would happen if a company that was conducting illegal activities happened to be using a Napster trademark? Napster /may/ be implicated during the trial. Even if they are found completely innocent of anything it's bad press and costs money.

    I am a bit stymied about the harsh treatment of people who have made Napster clones, plugins, etc. that have caught wind of the above - most likely the statement mentioned in MSNBC was taken out of context (IMHO) as the media tends to do a lot. Napster should have a developer forum where the protocol would be published etc. The protocol should incorporate a profit model (banner ads, or whatever they may come up with --) that would make it advantageous for Napster Inc. to support such a model, because it is already happening - may as well take advantage of it.

    Sounds familiar doesn't it?

  • Au contrair (Score:5)

    by FreeUser ( 11483 ) on Wednesday July 26, 2000 @07:53AM (#903858)
    You are correct with respect to copyright and trademark law, however, the spat with the Offspring was only a minor aside in the article.


    More significantly, the company repeatedly has tried to stymie independent software developers working on Napster-compatible software and Web sites. While these programs could benefit the millions of music fans that Napster claims are its only constituency, they might also diminish the commercial potential of Napster itself.

    The company has refused to share technical information about its software code, has made changes to its software that have prevented other programs from working with Napster's own and has blocked computers from outside music sites from accessing Napster's database of hundreds of thousands of songs.


    Napster is hypocritical in that it is claiming to be a champion defending the right and freedom to share and then refuses to share its own information, including programing APIs, protocol speficiations, or simple access to the virtual net they've constructed from their users' PCs.

    This is IMHO very hypocritical of napster.


    The fact that Napster seems to sing a different tune when its own property is involved is just one of the ways the reality of Napster is at odds with its public image. The service's management and ownership structure, for example, is quite different than many users suppose, with Napster's highly publicized teenage founder, Shawn Fanning, playing only a minor role.


    Herein may lie the problem. We have a bunch of suits in it for the money, and quite willing to toss a few platitudes our way to garner our short-term support, but in the end they have a vested interest in forcing us to use their product, and their product only.

    If you want true freedom to share, don't rely on napster to provide, or even defend, it. Instead work with the folks at gnutella or freenet. You'll have much better odds of being able to run a client or server on the platform of your choice, and a much better chance of securing your own freedom.

    In short, never send a capatalist to do an activist's job. The results will disappoint you every time.

  • fake posts? (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The MSNBC article references a supposed usenet post from January, wherein a Napster developer tells the community to get bent, b/c:
    "Napster is not some garage organization", and goes on to tell them that they are a 'real company' with a "marketing team, bizdev team", etc. Only problem: the post doesn't exist. Deja doesn't have a record of it, nor the other major usenet archives.

    Is it just me, or does it look like whoever wrote the article invented this message? Is this going to be the norm in the near future? Couldn't these publications reference the Message-ID?
  • Oh, I would *love* to know who's been marking so many *ON-TOPIC* posts as "Off-topic".

    At least there are enough real moderators around to fix that, and whoever does this will get absolutely slaughtered in Meta-Moderation...

    Hey, moderators: before you waste your points marking this post as "Off-topic", say to yourself: could I use these points to mod someone else up instead? Is this post off-topic, or does it relate somehow to the thread or the discussion forum? Did I read his sig like he asked me to?

    And, just to see if you read the whole post... In this Napster article, did that letter to developers sound suspiciously like Bill Gates' "Open Letter to Hobbyists" back in the day? It did to me. Even when they don't mention it, the Microsoft references are still prevalent...
    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].

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