Napster Shut Down Until Trial 674
tealover noted thatMSNBC has headline saying that Napster has been shut down by the judge. As of this writing, its still up, and the Napster MOTD is telling us to expect an announcement in a couple of hours. More when we got it.
here is a zdnet story. I've attached the MOTD below.
Update: 07/27 12:40 AM by CT : this washington post story reports that the injunction will go in effect PM friday. Boycotts against the RIAA are being discussed.
This is the motd you get when you connect to napster as of 8:02 eastern:
You have probably heard in the news about the recording industry's lawsuit against Napster. The RIAA has asked a federal judge to shut Napster down, and an important hearing will be held at 2:00 p.m. PDT Wednesday, July 26 at the U.S. District Court in San Francisco.
Wednesday at 7:00 p.m. PDT we will give the Napster community a brief update of what happened in the courtroom via a live webcast that you can view at www.napster.com.
Analogies (Score:2)
Sheesh, everyone chill. (Score:2)
Here's The facts:
1.Napvigator/openNap, etc. has the same content or more than the standard Napster servers.
2. Napster and Napster's service is LEGAL. i.e. technically, they are completely legitamite. What is trying to be proved by the RIAA is that the current legalese that protects Napster(i.e. no illegal links on the Napster server) is killing the music industry.
Napster may be shut down. Grr...
3.Most people, if offered something they want for free, will take it. If you're morally against this, go join the FBI to do internet crackdowns, but sorry, you can't get in because a. YOU DIDN'T GO TO LAW SCHOOL b. YOU THINK YOU KNOW SOMETHING ABOUT THE LAW CUZ YOU READ NEWSWEEK c. YOU'RE JUST A COMMUNITY COLLEGE REJECT/LIBERAL ARTS (that failed to do well on the LSAT) MAJOR!
4. Coders will always react faster than lawyers and old senators like Orin Hatch who thought IP address meant Intellectual Property Address (in which the the president of Napster politely corrected him)
5. There are smart people that happen to be fast coders that love free music that will share music via encryption, if it comes down to it, and they don't care about your AOL-this-is-wrong-go-to-Church opinion.
6. People's demands for free music cannot be stopped, once they've tasted Napster, do you think they're just going to give up? hell no.
For now, there are alt-Napsters.
If necessary, there will be encrypt-Napsters.
There will be enhanced Gnutellas.
Information or media of any kind can NEVER be contained. Information WANTS to be free. It lives on without us, because it is the power of ideas, content, or music (that inspires ideas, feelings, etc.) that pushes each new generation to latch on without anyone pushing them.
To all the moral preachers: Shut-up, no one really cares about your opinion, you DONT count, sorry.
To all the complainers: There's nothing to worry about. They can't control the net.
To all the uber-coders (im not talking about your city college breed..): Code on and shut everyone up...
The one who coded Napster made everyone stop for a while, then everyone talks about it... Dont just talk about it, code it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
.... go. code!
Re:Simple Solution: VOTE (Score:2)
Not in this day and age. Vote with you're dollar. It's a little more affective. Don't like the RIAA? Don't buy their shit.
Yeah, I know.. "Oh, but what about the artists.." Boo hoo. Let's say there are 1000 popular RIAA musicians and 1,000,000 non-RIAA musicians out there. Who decides which artist gets rewarded for their blood sweat and tears -- you don't really think *you* do, huh? It's certainly not talent. The record company's job is to make their bands popular, regardless of artistic talent. Radio play, TV and movie product placement, MTV.. it's all there to make you want the band. When you buy a major label piece of music, you're not rewarding the artist, you're rewarding the record company!
If you really care about supporting an artist, give some money to a non-RIAA musician.
Or in other words, let's make Metallica and all the others actually work for a living, instead of riding on record-company hype induced popularity.
Re:Now the real interesting part begins (Score:2)
Well, I can think of a few extra reasons why people is so interested in Napster. For instance, think for a moment about the Latin American market (or European, whatever). The other day I went to MixUp, which is like the largest record store in Mexico City, to get myself the Prodigy's DirtChamber Ssessions. They wanted me to pay more than $30 US dollars for the CD. WTF? I downloaded it entirely using Napster. So, it's not that I don't WANT to pay for the music but that I CAN'T even if I wanted to, and when I can the price is just absurd. There was just one copy of Moby's Play, and the latest by Lo-Fidelity All Stars, William Orbit or Fatboy Slim just wasn't there. And this store is supposed to be the most avant-garde, we-have-it-all-we're-better-than-Tower-Records record store. Come on! Using Napster the last six months, I've known so many artists that you wouldn't even imagine. So, I've read a lot of complaints like Where are micropayments? Why can't I buy just the songs I like? etc etc. But in the rest of the world outside the US, the problem is different and bigger: where are the fabulous distribution mechanism that the record industry puts in place in exchange for the money we pay for CDs? It's a joke, it doesn't exist! Oh, and before you say, dude, stop moaning you can get that on Amazon (or whatever) and have them send it to your home, try explaining that to the guys at customs that charged me almost 45% of the cost of 4 CDs I ordered the other day.
Well, that was just my extra reason for using Napster.
The recording industry has lost ... (Score:3)
Firstly
Whether or not the recording industry shuts down Napster, it has already lost - Gnutella, OpenNAP and a lot of other software is already out there; and is unstoppable. If they are closed down, someone will write something new. If that's closed down, then cryptography will come into play. It'll continue to be an arms race for both sides - what a waste of time and energy when that time and energy could be concentrated in the real issue: the music!
Shouldn't it be assumed from now on that the technologies exist to allow just about any material to be made available and unremovable on the net - music, software, etc ? Just look at Gnutella, Freedom and other technologies. In previous 'undergrounds', there were always problems of anonymity, being connected and other issues that the internet has 'solved' - the small, fragmented free information trade in the real world has now become a major force of activity in the connected digital world.
As for SDMI initiatives ? Who is going to buy SDMI players when they can buy MP3/open players ? And surely the market is open enough so that it is impossible to neutralise MP3/open players ?
Secondly
This seems like a repeat of the past. Remember microcomputer software ? You could always buy games and other titles off the shelves - but there was always an underground trade. No matter what technical protection the industry could come up with, the underground could remove it; and there was always an underground network to distribute cracked wares. Now with music, the underground network is actually a mass global pool of connected individuals across the net. The internet has made the fragmented underground into a mass movement. And I don't mean underground in a negative sense.
There will always be the technologically illiterate or those disconnected from the underground that cannot access underground distribution; and perhaps they may have to buy off the shelf. So is the music industry going to try and prop itself up on the small minority ? How do the artists feel knowing that they are being supported by sucking off a minority of their fans ?
The music and software industries have always had to factor in piracy as an everpresent activity - their choice is whether to reject it, or to try and accept it and turn it to their benefit by altering their business models and means of distribution.
Perhaps they should embrace some sort of model for free distribution of music, but -- as John Perry Barlow writes -- make their money off the live performances and events. In global world where travel is cheap and easy, the popular acts could easy command performances around the world.
Free distribution would be like an open market - it would just 'be there', and communities would form, and acts would become popular, and then the popular acts can move into live performances, or they mercandise, or whatever else is the standard norm in this age of 'leverage your core'.
Like we already know: the internet destroys the middle man, and the music industry is the middle man. The new middle man is the internet, and is increasingy the technologies and communities around which the producers and consumers rotate. The middle man is technology, not people.
Re:If you feel strongly about this... (Score:2)
I suspect that Thoreau would agree that individuals are a totally diffrent story. Individuals should be able to do what they damn well please under "fair use."
Actually, I would carry this individual vs. company distinction so far as to prevent artists which use a lot of samples from incorperating or selling their work to a label, i.e. the label of their company could be sued, but the artist could not be sued.
This may sound like a strange interpretation of the law, but it's the interpretation which will protect atists and fan, i.e. the importent people.
Anywho, the current laws a very bad, so we should break them without directly doing physical harm to another person (i.e. copying their shit is fine).. I think it's pretty safe to say Thoreau would agree with that statment.
BTW> Americans realy do not put enough force behind their breaking of the laws. Thoreau really accomplished things during his day by breaking the law. It would be nice to see more Thoreau type activism today, i.e. a million people giving away pot in D.C. once a year to protest the War on Drugs, people writing easy to use crypto to fuck up the NSA, people writing manefestos about how it's immoral to not pirate all your music, etc.
Re:Simple Solution: VOTE (Score:2)
In this election the clueless, idiot, voters of Montana will once again re-elect the same bunch of incompetent know nothing ranchers, farmers and real estate salesmen to the legislature.
This represents for me a real chance to vote my conciense and go for Ralph Nader (the only candidate even aware of the implications of the IP stuggle).
Re:Boycotts: suuuuuuuuuuuuuuure (Score:2)
Slashdot: Liberals, Conservatives, Libertarians, Socialists, Atheists, Christians, etc. We are diverse - don't pigeonhole people into holes they don't fit in.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
Text of the Napster announcement (Score:2)
The transcript follows. The only thing that I've edited out is a couple of uhms and ahs.
Sean:
Hank Berry: Sean: Thanks.we need solutions... (Score:2)
The recording industry is destroying itself ... (Score:2)
Napster is based on a flawed centralised model, whereas Gnutella is based on a more advanced distributed model. Napster contains more of the old world ideal than the new world ideal, compared to Gnutella.
This means that by shutting down Napster, the industry helping to destroy the old world and forcing users to move to something like Gnutella which is more aligned with the new world. If everyone stayed with Napster, then they would stay with a kind of flawed implementation of the future.
Am I right or wrong ?
Re:The river will continue to flow... (Score:2)
By dragging napster to the court the music industry can only loose, even if they win their case and shut down napster they will have won over a (then) worthless business, a business they will want to enter themselves in the near future but are not ready to (the 'association' in RIAA says it all, after they shut down napster they'll need at least two years to reinvent it on their own terms so nobody feels shortchanged).
The music industry could have had some good PR (hey look, we're giving away [rights for] music for free) and would have got into control to the point where they could choose which music is swappable and which isn't and begin to install themselves as the major partner for fileswapping slowly changing the bazaar into a shopfront with some leased space for free goodies in front of it to attract more customers and apart from that they'd had a new tool to promote new music.
What they're doing at the moment is in stark contrast to their own longterm interests: they're blocking napster, thereby making the people switch to more and different services, especially decentralized services which will be much harder to track down. If i have a problem i prefer it in plain view in one place rather than hidden and scattered literally all over the globe. To stress the aforementined bazaar-analogy a little more, they did a police raid on it and made the people carry the trade to their own homes.
What i don't understand is, why the music industry, that occupies so many PR people and marketdroids to create their own spin of trends, didn't ask some of them how to handle this best. Maybe they would have had to accept a new player on the market, but now they're just setting back their prospects of ever getting a grip on the situation, meanwhile making bad PR for themselves.
Re:Blast from the past! (Score:2)
"Mr. Valenti, aren't you the person who compared owning a VCR with being the Boston Strangler?"
If they just did that, what would happen to public perception of the MP3 issue?
My mantra for life these days is "don't reward stupidity". It's getting to the point where I believe that the best response to some of the more idiotic things being said should be met with a couple seconds of silence, then an outburst of hearty laughter, as if the person were making a joke. Part of the reason that these things get as far as they do is that we've become so worried about offending idiots that we permit the outflow to seep in.
I'm not saying that Valenti can't make a point, or that there can't be any merit in what the RIAA has claimed (although personally, I side with Napster - let the RIAA go after the *individuals* misusing the service), but if they want people to take them seriously, they should find a better mouthpiece and they should think about what they want to say before they say it.
Then again, if you look how the media is relating the sequence of events, I think it proves my point entirely... :-)
Maybe the MP3 river will flow for you. (Score:2)
Re:The Entitlement Generation (Score:2)
SO making music is only worth doing if you're young? If you're old and can't tour don't bother, because you don't deserve to get paid, because you're old???
The Beatles can't tour any more since Lennon is dead, but surely the other three deserve money for the recordings? How will these be funded?
you DO realize that the beatles are some of the richest men in the UK don't you. Your argument here is moot because you assume that the remaining Beatles deserve money for work they did 30 years ago. I do not.
Okay, what about a band like the Monks? They made one album in the 60s that sold basically no copies. Then, just recently they have been rediscovered and their music is being bought and used in commercials. Do they deserve any money? Or because the music didn't sell immediately, they're just screwed?
Maybe i write a really good shell script for my company. Maybe i code a bit of C that is still being used by my company. 20 years from now does my company owe me a royalty if they're still using that script?
If you retain copyrights on the script, then yes. If you retain copyright on it, you can sell it to a different company and make more money off of it. If the company retains copyright on the script, then they can still sell it and make money from it. OR they can use it for free, because they own it. When you give away or sell your rights to something, then no, you don't get anything else for it. The person who owns it gets to make money from it. I don't really see how this has anything to do with anything, but hey, I answered it anyway.
Re:The Entitlement Generation (Score:2)
"Musicians, who are professionally competent in composing music, performing music, and producing music, should ditch their real skills, and go into the t-shirt business?"
It's rather disingenuous of you to quote the original poster out of context so you can build a straw man out of him. You missed the two most important words of his sentence -- "or something".
These are creative individuals, are they not? And by building a following, they are cultivating a lucrative resource -- an audience. Or, put another way, a market. Suggesting that the only way they can exploit that market is to deal through middle men who take 90% of their profits is absurd. Suggesting that the only way to profit from that market is by selling their music per-unit is as absurd as suggesting they are only allowed to sell t-shirts.
One example: a musician named Momus didn't have enough money to produce a CD, so he offered to write a song about anyone who sent him $1000. 35 people took him up on it, enough for him to publish his CD.
Now take the CD out of the equation -- suppose he just asked $1000 a song, and distributed the music online at virtually no cost to him. He's just made $35,000; not the kind of money Metallica is used to, apparently, but enough to live on, and that's with just one revenue stream.
What if he toured, and was constantly putting live recordings on his website for download at micropayment prices? It's more convenient to get them there, because there's always new stuff that collectors don't have yet, and an insignificant price-tag -- say, .25 -- is unnoticeable. But if 100 people download the song, he's made $25 personally, just for rolling tape at a concert. (For which he was paid to perform, BTW.)
Oh, yeah, and if he wanted, he could sell t-shirts, too.
Classical musicians don't have this option; then again, with a minute handful of exceptions, they aren't living directly off recording revenue anyway; they're getting paid for live performances, and indirectly through recording revenue. (The symphonies and such are, however, analogous to artists from a branding standpoint, and can be treated similarly. Perhaps the Boston Symphony needs to release its next Mahler symphony performance direct to the public, online, for five dollars. Perhaps live audio of performances can be had for two bucks a stream.)
I hope this whets your imagination -- the 20th-century masters of marketing (the RIAA among them) have shown us that if you have the attention of a lot of people, you can make money off it. The artists don't need the record companies to exploit that market anymore, and it is in the best interests of all but the very richest -- the carrot-bands that the labels dangle in front of others' eyes to keep them in line -- to cultivate that audience/market directly, and make a decent living off it.
phil
Re:darn (Score:2)
However, each radio can only receive a limited number of channels, depending on what is broadcast in your area. Each of these channels has a format, and limited amount of time it can broadcast, and with the same song being broadcast multiple times, it's a very competative market for songs to find broadcast time.
Contrast this to the internet, where there is no competition for making songs available. If you have created a mp3, then you can get an account on mp3.com and upload it. No-one will say "that's no good", no-one will say "We don't play punk", no-one, except the potential listener, will play the latest Britany Spears song instead of yours.
Video rental stores succeed because they give the customer the choice. Radio does not, the Internet does.
Re:If you feel strongly about this... (Score:2)
There are many old books which are out of print. The publisher has no intention of reprinting them, but they will be in copyright for decades to come. If a second company thought that it could make money by scanning these books and created e-books, they could not do this under copyright law, even if the original company had no intention of doing it. I think it's obvious that it would be good if the second company would be allowd to write to the publisher, and the publisher would have to either have to do the same thing that the e-publisher was intending to do, or grant a royalty free license for the intended use.
Let's give them what they want -- With a vengance (Score:2)
I'm going on a couple of presumptions here:
- Most artists don't make much money off of records. With the exception of a few really lucky bands, they make most of their money off of touring -- which is supported by record sales (more accurately -- by having their music distributed)
- I'm going to accept Napster's claim that people who download music are ultimately going to buy more than those who don't. If true, then this means that disallowing RIAA music on Napster will ultimately hurt the RIAA companies in the long run.
- If bands can become well known without the confines of RIAA contracts they will probably be happy to do so.
- Note of history: about 10 years ago some big label(s) (Polygram comes to mind) attempted to force radio stations to pay them for every play of their music. (I know that this occurred in Canada, I'm not sure if the US was involved as well). Campus radio stations balked, and responded by simply refusing to play anything from the offending labels,
Technical boycott: Get a list from RIAA of all of their music titles and artists. Build filters that deny users the ability to share RIAA music listed in the database. Make sure to get both famous and non-famous RIAA artists. Be agressive about it.The labels first tried to say that they'd allow free play of small (up and coming) bands, and then finally buckled. Despite their attempts to suck radio stations dry, they needed the airplay that they were asking to get paid for.
It would be best if the list were PD.
This will leave small artists with two choices: RIAA distribution or Napster distribution. My expectation is that this will start to bleed the RIAA companies of their 'farm' bands. If things go well, these companies will see the writing on the wall and start some serious negotiations on this matter.
The hard part in this is that the list would need to be controlled by Napster and should also cut off small RIAA bands. It'll be bad. It'll hurt for a while, but I think that -- in the end -- it would do us all some good.
Re: Legal Advice (Score:2)
Dude, I seriously love this one, it cracks me up. Legal advice straight from the offices of the prestigious (bubble-pipe smoking) lawyer Nelson Muntz, Esq. It's as if, what, there's some sort of Heisenberg uncertainty principle embodied in copyright law? I wonder what maroon on what BBS originally came up with this.
"Five second rule. That cookie just touched the ground. That cookie is still good!"
Breaking News: (Score:2)
Re:The Entitlement Generation (Score:2)
that's bullshit. Do you think my sister got a degree in vocal performance because that's where the money is? Hell no. She did it for the same reasons that, when i go home, i pick up my guitar and play. Sometimes they're songs i wrote, sometimes they're not, it doesn't matter. My sister and i both play/sing because it's in our hearts. Musical creation is a part of us, without it, we are incomplete. I don't have the illusion that i will ever become famous, or make a single dollar off of anything that i have written. And if you ask any REAL musician whether or not they'd still be playing if all music were free...and they'd give you a resounding "hell yeah!"
The good ones don't play to make money, they play to play. Music is not a means to an end. It is an end unto itself.
So what your saying is that if you want to make a living doing what you love (ie music) then your not a "REAL" msuician? Ask your sister if she would have gotten a degree in vocal performance if it was guaranteed that she would not be able to make money doing it. Chances are she would have gotten a degree in something and did music as a hobby. People wouldn't stop creating music completely if they couldn't make money doing it, but they wouldn't be able to put as much time and effort into it, because they need money to live. People can make a decent amounf of their living performing and recording right now (even if they are a small band who barely gets by). But if music is free, they can't spend as music time performing and recording, because that is time that they make no money at all. Music will never go away completely, but it insane tot hink it will stay the same no matter what happens.
Re:A Call To Arms (Score:2)
How do you propose a program tells if a file is legal or illegal?
Someone can program anything you can write an algorythm for, but until you have that algorythm, it's not going to be written.
Explanation for your non-geek relatives (Score:2)
Re:Opennap (Score:2)
Many (all?) of these servers run OpenNap, and some of them have opennap in the name like opennap.cx and opennap.squidcafe.com
bitchx.dimension6.com seems to be one of the bigger ones
If you run Helix Gnome [helixcode.com] like me, you already have gnapster installed, and can choose from a number of OpenNap servers.
Some of these servers are just as large as the official napster servers.
If I'm not mistaken, Napster is not like an IRC network: the servers are not interlinked.
If you are on one you don't see mp3s from those connected to a different server. There are many official napster servers that the client connects to.
What does all this mean you say?
It means that if you have a program that will let you access other servers, you should be able to get as diverse a collection of music as before, as well as the ability to try another server when you don't see what you are looking for.
Re:Opennap (Score:2)
Re:but no one knows the name of your unknown band. (Score:2)
Which is a better way for Chris Johnson to share his music: post his songs to a lonely Napster directory or post about his songs on some community web site for like-minded techno fans and musicians? Geeks read Slashdot as fanatically as music fans read their community sites!
Mandatory mention of Freenet (Score:2)
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Re:but no one knows the name of your unknown band. (Score:2)
Even if they did, they wouldn't find them. I just did a search for his name, several of his song titles and a couple of the album titles. Found nothing of his.
However, search for 'Chris Johnson' on Google and his stuff is the fifth thing in the list. What do you suppose is a better marketing tool?
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Re:You people are idiots. (Score:2)
- AC
Re:Analogies (Score:2)
Re:Been to Best Buy Recently? (Score:2)
Count me out! (Score:2)
Google == search engine
Napster == pirate MP3s
With Napster gone, there will not be as much of an organized "enemy" to fight. It will just be a giant game of Whack-A-Mole for the RIAA. Gnutella et. al. are far more frightening to them, and there is nothing they can do to stop them.
It's only this arrogant geek-centric view of the world that makes us think that "getting the technology" is so important. You can explain the relevant points of information in five minutes, and even that isn't the fundamental issue.
One side believes that if you buy a Britney Spears CD, you should be able to make copies of it and put it up on Napster. The other side does not. That is the issue, quit obscuring it with whining about "you don't understand the technology."
-cwk.
Re:Simple Solution: VOTE (Score:2)
Don't vote for him in the next election.
Write him a letter and express these concerns.
Next election, write the candidates and express your distaste for these tactics. Ask them directly what their thoughts are on these same issues.
Additionally, just because a representative indicates he is for or against something does not mean that's the stance he will continue to take throughout his term. If his constituents voted him into office, that doesn't mean that the constituents, as a whole, agree with 100% of what the representative supports. A good congressmen also listens to what his constituents want. Sometimes that may mean he has to go against his own desires.
Re:but no one knows the name of your unknown band. (Score:2)
1. No one knows the name of your unknown garage band. Therefore, no one will search for your songs on Napster.
That's odd. I found Chris's music by accident while searching for random artists that I'd not heard of on Napster. Did a search for "fire techno" and found one of his songs. I have since paid for a good number of songs on MP3.com by Chris (I highly recommend that you check out his tunes). Think about how a search works for god's sake.
2. The lawsuit against Napster does not prevent you from publishing your band's songs on your own web site. Your band's web site is arguably a better way to publish your mp3s than Napster.
A very arguable point. The best way to get people interested in your music is by getting them to listen to the music. This is one thing Napster was great at. No jerking around with ugly web pages or FTP sites, odd formats, pay for play schemes, etc. You find a song, you know you can listen to it (frequently minus the first and last 10 seconds, but close enough).
A web page is great after a person knows of your band, but not a way to gain new fans, unless you want the easily impressed superficial "KEWL T-SHIRT" people. No, Napster will be a great loss to those of us musicians who used it to disseminate our music.
Re:what happened to innocent until.. ? (Score:2)
Now as for IRC channels, there's little the RIAA could do. They could get an injunction to stop #mp3z on IRC network X, but there's nothing to stop the displaced traders from moving to #!!!!!!!riaasucks-downloadmp3z on network X or #mp3z on network Y.
Re:but no one knows the name of your unknown band. (Score:2)
I know the name of his unknown garage band. It's called CHRIS JOHNSON. He's a one-man band. I went to his web page, and I liked it so much I bought his album. It was really easy.
By the way, thanks for dismissing him the same way the music industry does. You helped get his point across.
P.S. if you actually use Napster's client to browse the napster network, then sure, you can't browse, only search. But who actually does that? Not me...
Boycott the RIAA (Score:2)
Here is the URL: Boycott the RIAA [proboards.com]
Please show your support. Thanks!
Re:The Entitlement Generation (Score:2)
Because music was meant to be performed live, and i am willing to support bands that i enjoy listening to in that fashion.
Do you realize how incredibly arrogant that statement is? It's not up to you decide how music should be enjoyed by everyone else. Music is intended to be listened to.
Recorded music allows me to listen to the Venice Philharmonic Orchestra without travelling to Venice. Maybe you enjoy listen to any third rate musicians live, but I would far rather listen to good recorded music than bad live music.
And if you ask any REAL musician whether or not they'd still be playing if all music were free...and they'd give you a resounding "hell yeah!"
Again, it's not about what you think anyone should be doing. It's about artists having control of their creations, and allowing them to choose how they want to distribute their music.
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Re:Simple Solution: VOTE (Score:2)
Napster not first (Score:2)
Now obviously, there were ftp and irc and web searches and the like, before those. But my point is, napster could not be the "motivation" for all other programs/services to exist. But I will agree however, that where others failed, napster brought mp3 piracy to attention of the general public, and the mass "market."
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Re:Blast from the past! (Score:2)
The MP3 format itself is not illegal. The RIAA is not going after companies like RealNetworks, MusicMatch, and Xing that create software to encode MP3's. The fact that MP3's exist is not the issue here. The fact that Napster exists to facilitate the trade of MP3's is the issue.
Let's try this: I set up a little flea market where everyone sits at a table with piles of videotapes, an infinite supply of blank tapes, and a tape copier. I sit in the center, with no tapes or copier of my own. When you arrive, you don't have to pay anything, but you just give me a list of the tapes that you're bringing. Then, when I open it up to the public, someone comes up to me and asks who has a copy of, say, "Terminator 2." I give that person a list of several tables where they can get a copy of "Terminator 2," he goes to one of them, and he gets his copy of the movie.
Well, then the MPAA steps in once my flea market gets to be the size of Giants Stadium, and 99.99% of the copies made are of copyrighted films. "But wait!" I say. "I'm not encouraging the people to break the law, in fact some people here are copying independent films that the directors WANT to be copied!" The MPAA will not care about that statistically insignificant amount of people, and will dutifully shut me down.
In fact, we have a few places where this analogy works out for computer software. They're called MarketPro computer shows.
Re:Simple Solution: VOTE (Score:2)
Balkanization of Napster (Score:2)
One of the great advantages of Napster (and Gnutella) is that you're accessing a single, common community. With dozens of alternate napster networks cropping up, that community is going to be splintered into many different ones. And people will have to search, possibly, many of the different servers before they find one that's got what they're loking for.
Wouldn't a better approach be some kind of client that combines the best of Napster and Gnutella? Connects to a list of servers, downloads a list of alternative server-list-servers (in case the current server list gets shut down), and talks to one of those servers? Then that one server could farm the request out to the other servers it knows about. Sort of like gnutella at the core, napster at the leaves.
Is there any effort in place now that will bring all these alternatives into a seamless whole, either like I suggest above or in some other way? Or a Napigator-like interface that will search multiple servers at once for me?
Re:The Entitlement Generation (Score:2)
Why do I say the word "average" so much? Because it seems to me that your comments go towards the fortunate few
No, not all people have the "entitlement" attitude. But look at some of the posts on this thread, particularly the one from the guy who thought the industry owed him something because of his big $$ educational investment. My point is that the industry owes him nothing. It's up to him to prove that he's useful to someone.
I'm not saying that someone coming out of college shouldn't have the goal of getting the big salary -- through excellence. My beef is with thinking they deserve a big salary for no legitimate reason.
And then you know the rest of the story, since I bet you are on your 60's or 70's.
Actually, I'm 35. I dropped out of college mid-term to get the big software engineering salary. I've owned several companies and have made a lot of money. You seem to think I'm some old fogey who is jealous of "those young whipper-snappers who've got it so durn easy, not like in my day when we had move 2 ton computers and we we're glad to have the work!"
Believe me, I am the last person to begrudge someone money if they can get it. I don't even begrudge them money if they're incompetent and don't deserve it. It's the attitude that they are not willing to earn what they get in life; that they are expecting to have everything handed to them by people who work and are talented (such as, say, musicians).
We are not looking forward to 3% yearly increases. Just because you had no choice, does not mean we don't have either.
If you can get stock options, then more power to you. But there are a lot of college students right now who are in for a rude awakening in the next few years when the start-up boom dries up, and only people that are truly hard working and smart are going to get them. Again, it's about the attitude that someone is entitled to be an IPO millionaire.
If there are stations on cable TV that have no comercials, why shouldn't we have the same with our internet connections?
Because part of the price of your cable goes to the station, rather than charging for commercials. Web sites do not get a subsidy from your ISP bill.
Something, someone, has to pay the bills. When you demand that a web site be free and without advertising, you are basically saying: "Thank you for this cool web site. However, I demand that you pay for it out of your own pocket, rather than my being slightly inconvenienced by having to download an extra few seconds of data." It's an unbelievably selfish, self-centered attitude.
You are a lost case of senility. Go play checkers or something.
I'll try and find my Alzheimer's medication.
--
Re:Simple Solution: VOTE (Score:2)
RIAA and Napster advantages (Score:3)
Well, actually neither. I dislike RIAA because they want waaay too much control over my life -- specifically, where and how I listen to music. I don't like it.
I have no special feelings for Napster as a company. They did provide a valuable service: they opened the floodgates. RIAA in blind rage is trying to crucify Napster for that, but that's pure revenge -- they cannot turn back the clock. Too many people now know that Internet is where you get your music and trying to tell them otherwise is not going to work. If anything, this will force migration to lawyer-resistant Gnutella-type networks, which is a Good Thing.
There are two main reasons why Napster was so successful (besides providing free music):
(1) Napster is immediate (for broadband people, at least). If my buddy tells me about some great piece of music, I can check it out right away. This is important and a large part of Napster appeal.
(2) Napster is pick-and-choose. People's been bitching about having to buy the whole CD for a single worthwhile song for a loooong time and the recording industry did nothing -- why should they? Napster allows me to assemble collections of exactly what I want and nothing more.
If the recording industry is able to match these two advantages, it might survive. If it insists on blindly lashing out anything that threatens its dominance, it will die. It ain't gonna be pretty and the collateral damage might be significant, but die it will.
Kaa
Re: Haha, yeah right (Score:2)
Who wants to use an operating system nobody else uses, ill just go with windows because everyone else uses it, sure there are alternatives, but who wants to use them if nobody else does? BAAAAAAAAAAA! a wise man once said: "Dont blame me, I voted for Kodos"
CuteMX is chickening out! (Score:2)
A big, intellectually dead Mall is what they want (Score:2)
Which is precisely what Corporate America and its underpaid lackey, the U.S. Government, want.
Re:Opennap (Score:4)
Mark Duell
RTFA (Score:5)
The RIAA said it would post a $5 million bond requested by the judge against any financial losses Napster could suffer from being shut down pending the trial.
http://www.zdne t.com/zdnn/stories/newsbursts/0,7407,2608120,00.h
Pablo Nevares, "the freshmaker".
CNN has a more complete story. (Score:3)
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
Screw the sheep :) (Score:4)
The best thing about Napster's alternatives is that they are neither strong nor unified. There is nothing to attack.
Not having the sheep around for a while might not hurt either. I'm a little tired of the whole OSS = Intellectual Piracy spin that we've been catching in the media lately.
-cwk.
Lost marketshare or mindshare. (Score:5)
That's what I call some DAMN signifigant harm to Napster.. I thought that an injuction was only granted to prevent signifigant harm to one party when it would not signifigantly harm the other party.. Oh well, I guess the law runs different if you're the record industry.. Unless it's settled in a month, Napster is the walking dead.
I give it $100 if they don't settle within a week. They'll have to implement something where any song with a particular word in the title is rejected. And the RIAA gets to choose which words. And if you have a song that has those words in the title well, sorry.
Judge Patel? (Score:3)
Interestingly, Judge Marilyn Patel, who issued this injunction, is the same judge that ruled that source code is speech when Bernstein challenged the encryption export restrictions a few years back. See this EFF press release [eff.org].
Re:The Entitlement Generation (Score:4)
$20 says your a republican. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer. That's a bullshit way to do things, and i won't give up my mp3's because of the recording gentry. It seems to me that this has been a long time coming. Music should be free. Yes, of course the artists have a right to make a living off their music, that's what they do. So go to their concerts, buy a fscking t-shirt. Do whatever it is that you do to support them. But let's not hear some bullshit schpiel about how Napster is killing the music industry. (fuck, are people still making music now days?) The artists get something on the order of 12 cents for every album that's sold, the rest goes to the label, the A&R guys, and the promoters. Personally, i'd be willing to pay 12 cents a download if the oh so wise author of the fucking thong song decided that's the way he wanted to play it. (Thank you Sisqo you brainless twit)
The point is that napster isn't going to destroy the record industry. If anything, it's making the RIAA and their cohorts richer. (Read: %80 of all napster users go out and BUY CD's of the bands they download).
what sickens me are the people who justify their actions by rationalizations like "music should be about the art, not about money." Well, to those people I say that it's nice of you to make the decision for the artist.
sorry, but that's society's decision in the first place. Maybe i like to dance around in my underwear singing show tunes in the middle of downtown Denver. You think it's up to me to decide if i should be paid for that? I'm sorry bud, but art is art. If people like it, they'll pay for it one way or another. If people want it for free, i've got two choices. Continue to do it because i love doing it, or get a new line of work. I say the same to the bands out there who are so poor and misunderstood by the rest of the general public. Why? Because if a band is just in it for the money anymore, that makes them SELLOUTS - and personally, i'd like to see them broke and homeless.
Now go listen to some Pavement before your brain explodes!
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
interesting responses (Score:5)
The second wave was a lot more intelligent, people recognizing that Napster isn't really the best example of a responsible musical revolution. I wonder what that says about slashdot readers.
Frankly, I think this decision is a lousy excuse to start protesting the RIAA. Clueful people should have been protesting them beforehand. Even though the RIAA doesn't have the artist's interests at heart, at least their actions against Napster are in line with most artists. Ask yourself why you are protesting the RIAA? For artists rights? Or because you irresponsibly want your free music? jeez.
Napster is a hypocritical company whose actions aren't in line with the rhetoric it spews. I couldn't believe their "Sharing" argument. They'd expect people to believe that a million people swapping cds is the same "in essence" as three friends swapping cds. Please.
This is good for musicians that are trying to protect their investments. Napster has never been a cause, they don't stand for artists' rights, consumers' rights, or anything like that. They has never looked out for any other interests other than accumulating eyeballs, traffic, and bucks.
tune
Napster Shutdown Not the Worst Fallout (Score:5)
In reality, the Napster shutdown is not the worst fallout that could result from this case. Napster is essentially a business that has as its strategy using the trading of copyrighted works as a means to make money for itself. In this sense, Napster is not significantly better than the RIAA in terms of exploitation of other people, though the RIAA companies certainly have exploited more artists and customers in their actions.
The worst of the outcome in this case lies in how digital copyright violators are perceived by the mainstream media (and especially the representatives in DC) after this case is over. The business aspect of Napster has unfortunately been associated with the users of Napster, but in reality (as shown by the earlier articles on the insides of Napster, Inc.) the reasoning and purposes of the two groups of people differs widely.
Napster users could very well being using Gnutella, Freenet, or any other service (including OpenNAP servers) that allows the "piracy" of copyrighted works. The justification of those users would still have the same validity, though, regardless of the service being used. The Napster business group, though, as described above, is essentially planning to exploit the copyrighted works of others to make money. Due to the fact that Napster, Inc. is being sued, though, the users will likely be branded "pirates" and "thieves" along with the company due to the inevitable adoption by the mainstream media of the RIAA's lexicon.
So, in conclusion, I would say that losing Napster is not the bad part of this case. It is the possiblity that users of those services, people who violate digital copyrights but feel that such action is justified in some way, will result from this case with a bad reputaion, unable to be taken seriously since they are perceived simply as criminals, just like those once-famous Napster executives.
SB
www.DigitalRenegades.org [digitalrenegades.org] -- Are your opinions being unfortunately buried in discussion boards? Submit essays, short bytes, or article responses to be posted concerning why digital copyright violations are widespread and continue to occur.Legal shame! (Score:3)
What about music on non-major labels? (Score:5)
Great. Once again the major labels fuck things up for everyone. There's a lot of music available via Napster that isn't on the major labels. Don't they have a say in this? Where the fuck are the independent labels in all of this? Why shut down Napster instead of having Napster block the music by the major labels?
Everyone loses now. The people promoting their music from major labels. The music that I won't be able to try out otherwise. Who fucking cares if people are downloading Britney Spears songs. They hear that shit on the radio anyway. What about all the music that doesn't make it to the radio? I enjoy searching for songs, then adding people to my hotlist to see what other kind of music they listen to. It's like the Amazon "people that bought this also got this CD" situation but better. I see songs by people I have never even heard of all the time. The best part is that I can hear the whole song and learn about someone new. That's really important to me before I try to hunt down a CD that might not even be carried by Amazon or any other major retailer. Not to mention the amount of money that I am going to have to plunk down before I even get to listen to the whole CD.
What a shame. For both the major labels dominating the whole situation and the smaller labels failing to stand up and be counted.
</rant>
A battle of wits - with an unarmed opponent. (Score:3)
OK, Napster is being lead to the headsman's block - and others will follow if we're not careful. If DeCSS is any indication, they'll go after the people WRITING OpenNap, GNUTELLA et. al. under the same shoddy banner. OK, then these people go underground too. How will the man strike back?
If the RIAA and other such don't-kill-our-golden-goose organisations had thier way, you'd only be able to get a one way connection to the Net. That is, you only get back what you request - no serving files, IRC uploads banned and other such restrictions to control the channel and make sure they make money. Don't forget, fellow geeks, that the bandwidth-blood of the Internet is controlled ultimately by the telephone and communications companies - a single point of failure in my book.
I say we come up with a way of usurping any way that the man can try to wrest control back. Anyone figured how to get a respectable data stream across a HAM link? Soup up an AirPort, and distrubute them throughout the world to people willing to help?
OK, so I'm paranoid. I just know that these short sighted business men are trying to find a way to reign in the Net, to make it spout cash and nothing else - no new ideas except for them. The net is our best hope for bringing people of all stripes together, and by doing so make the world a better and safer place for our progeny.
Ech. I'm sounding like Katz - time to shut up.
Did you read the other story? (Score:3)
Although, I will agree that the RIAA was a little stupid. Napster, because of the aforementioned team of middle-managers was trying to figure out how to safetly join the RIAA fold. How to satisfy the industry while still being able to do their own thing. Now they've lost one way or another. They'll either castrate their service, or go dead. Either way they'll lose their mindshare/marketshare.
And get replaced by services that ARE being run by idealistic young students, and who won't try to be concilatory.
The Entitlement Generation (Score:5)
I for one applaud the judge having the guts to drop the hammer on The Entitlement Generation. This proves that the justice system does get it, and is not intimidated by crap like "it's a new world, and you better get on board before you get left behind."
The Entitlement Generation is an attitude that began with the hippies of the 60s, but is going full-force among the GenX crowd. They feel they are entitled to the big salary coming out of college. They feel entitled to free health care. They feel entitled to stock options. They feel entitled to free web sites without any advertising.
And yes -- they feel entitled to the work of recording artists.
I would bet that most of the people outraged by this decision have never created anything of value in their lives, and most likely never will. They will never watch the fruits of their labor ripped off. They are the people who suckle at the teat of society.
What sickens me are the people who justify their actions by rationalizations like "music should be about the art, not about money." Well, to those people I say that it's nice of you to make the decision for the artist.
When I see people with their pseudo-socialistic attitude that they deserve everything for free, it makes me think that the old days of requiring property ownership before you can vote weren't such a bad idea.
--
Re: Legal Advice (Score:4)
I'm not just being obnoxious. It's important to realize that (shocker) money isn't everything, and there are valid non-economic reasons for doing things. The rights and the harm here only tangentially depend on money... although the vigor with which this is pursued has everything to do with money.
It's annoying to call them "sheep," because... (Score:5)
Then came Napster, and Napster was good. Type in a song title and artist, and the odds were that it was there. The key was sheer volume of users whose entire collections were available at any given time. Being a faithful
Try getting something terribly specific like "When I Fall" and the other tracks from *Martinis & Bikinis* by Sam Phillips on USENET or Gnutella; not very likely, whereas I pieced it together from Napster after a little nightly diligence. I repeat: those "sheep" you condescendingly talk about are the reason for that, since sheer number provides greater chance for finding the files you want. Please, stop being such elitists, some of you. Most people on
Napster is now belittled by some around here for bringing this sort of file sharing to the masses. Nothing personal, but those few who dislike anything made for the masses ought to stop actingng like such l337 hax0r chillun. There's a difference between the mind-numbing stupidity fostered by AOL, and stuff that's just easy to use as opposed to stuff which actively promotes stupidity. Not everyone is or wants to be a guru, try to understand that and don't belittle something merely because of its ease-of-use or shininess. What is actually bad about what Napster has done (aside from the debate over morality of mp3 trading)?
Re:is there a lawyer in the house? (Score:4)
from new.com: [cnet.com]
"She also ordered the RIAA to post a $5 million bond to compensate Napster for lost business should Napster eventually prevail in the case. "
[cnet.com]
IANAL; hell even if I was a lawyer, I wouldn't tell anybody.
Re:WTF? (Score:3)
Should the water company charge me more if I run the water through a filter so that it tastes better to me? It is a riduclous analogy.
Instead, a more 'correct' analogy would be: I pay John to play a song for me, and he allows me to record it. Should he charge me more depending on the quality of microphone I use?
Or how about: I buy a painting from Jill. Should she change the amount she charges based on the quality of the glasses I view it through?
If I want to upgrade the quality of the recording I am listening to, and can do it without expending any resources on the part of the original seller, why shouldn't I? I already paid for 'it' (the right to listen to the music), I am just improving the experience.
Opennap (Score:5)
Re:Good Riddance to a Bad Penny (Score:3)
How is this.. feel free to use it if you find it useful.
Dear Congressperson,
I'm not voting for you anymore becuase the court system is making it harder for me to steal music. How dare they! I thought as an tax paying American I had the right to steal as much music as I wanted to. I'm sorry to find out I was wrong. Please do something about this travesty of justice.
AAAAAA! (Score:5)
- I am a musician (see URL link above- please visit it if you haven't already?). A NON-RIAA musician. The RIAA labels are my competition, and crushing, stifling competition they are too, and I have to work really hard to get production values comparable to the majors (or better).
- I had songs on Napster BY REQUEST. I publically asked people to put my songs off mp3.com in their Napster directories, if they could, if they didn't mind taking the trouble to do so. I own my songs AND the mechanical recordings of 'em and I have an absolute right to permit such distribution. It's _my_ say-so, not the RIAAs, not mp3.com's.
- Napster is being shut down anyhow- the RIAA lawyers successfully convinced the judge that _I_ don't exist, just like the RIAA continually tries to convince the listening public that I don't exist, that nobody like me exists.
- So- the judge is taking away a _major_ distribution channel from me, at the request of... my competition.
Who thought _this_ one up? Wait, don't tell me, it might just possibly be the the same trade organisation that taxes the blank tapes I record MY MUSIC on, said taxes again going to my competition. Yes, the same people who arranged that I have to pay money to help the Backstreet Boys out-PR me have now arranged to sabotage a _key_ internet distribution mechanism that could work in my favor- and of course are also suing the 'label' (mp3.com) that I signed with (ever hear Roger McGuinn's take on the mp3.com contract? This is the leader of The Byrds. He loves the mp3.com contract- it's actually _fair_. Quick, kill it before more people realise how brutal standard major label contracts are! Competition must die!)I don't remember agreeing to steadily pay off my biggest, most implacable competition to bury me. Please, Judge Ma'am, stop the music industry, I'd like to get off? Seems that owning my own music, owning my own equipment, recording only my own songs, attempting no samples and expecting no industry PR is not enough for me to be allowed things like non-RIAA distribution channels and the ability to buy tapes at the store to put MY MUSIC on and not pay taxes to my biggest competitors. So please, Judge Ma'am, if you hear of a free market out there somewhere won't you let me know? Apparently me buying all my own gear and recording all my own stuff and trying to put it out there through services like Napster is not permissible. Tell me, is this for my own good? Should I learn to behave? :P
(this is turning into a song- now if only my lungs will hold out to put out a quick single- fighting off chest-cold from hell)
is there a lawyer in the house? (Score:3)
---
Blast from the past! (Score:5)
How can you negotiate with people like this? How can you even have sympathy for them?
--
A Napster critic changes his mind (Score:4)
Spotty Catalog - Lots of stuff I went looking for just wasn't there, and I wasn't looking for rare delta blues, just rock tunes from about 1970 on.
Dubious Sound Quality - About half of the 28 songs I downloaded are lower quality than the cassette copies of LPs we made when I was in college, and I downloaded mostly 160 kbps tracks.
Pokey Slow Downloads - It took me 8 hours to download the 28 songs I did get, and I'm on 768k DSL.
To counter the RIAA's claims, I doubt I'd ever have bought any of the "albums" these songs came from. They're NOT losing money from me, because its money they'd never get from me. They only money they're losing is the money I would have paid if they'd sell me the tracks I want for $.50 each or something. What struck me was that the music industry _used_ to sell loads of 45 RPM records. If you liked a song, you could buy JUST that song and be done with it. I think lots of people wouldn't mind that, but nowadays you can't do that. It's a limited selection of CD singles or buy the whole album, which they prefer because there's so much more margin.
Re:The river will continue to flow... (Score:3)
I do not know how long they will be down, but unfortunatly people would not really notice if they are only down for a short period of time and Napster wil come back with just as many users.
We need to maximize the harm done to Napster during this period. College students need to start campus orginiations to help people set up IRC, OpenNAP, napigator, Gnutella, FreeNet, etc. This is an opertunity to move free music distributin out from Napster's shadow that we should not miss.
Fall symester will be starting soon (September here at Rutgers). It would be good to have people posting banners arround campus between now and the end of the first month of school which instructed people in setting up napster alternatives. If we can divert the returning college students then we stand a real chance of preventing Napster from killing free music distribution by selling out to the RIAA.
Ever think about joining the fight? (Score:3)
It's bleak for them. Look at it from an uninformed person's perspective. The basis of it is that this is a utility for trading music for free. The uninformed no nothing about unsigned artists, they only think about mainstream, and that's what the RIAA is trying to prove.
The Napster cause could use a lot more people like yourself. Hell, mp3.com should get all of their unsigned artists to join the fight as well. I'm sure there are loads of people with the mp3.com "label" that would be more than willing to fight against the RIAA.
I really wish the RIAA would just die. They will eventually, they can't live forever.
"I would kill everyone in this room for a drop of sweet, tasty beer."
An Alternative (Score:3)
yours,
john
Good Riddance to a Bad Penny (Score:4)
First, it means that Gnutella and other Open Source alternatives will gain mindshare and users. This is good.
Secondly, it means someone won't be driving their fancy car around SF and weaving in and out of traffic. This is also good, although I suppose one could argue against it.
Thirdly, it means all the people downloading MP3 songs can get really pissed off. And then they can send emails to their members of Congress and Senators. And harass the music labels. And look into any unethical business practices that RIAA might be getting involved in.
This is really good
Re:AAAAAA! (Score:3)
LOL at bootlegs... (Score:3)
You wonder about these bootlegs because they contain CD quality cuts on them from material that isn't available commercially ANYWHERE! I should know this becuase I work in a music store. Go into New York city for bootleg versions of all the new radio songs that aren't available as single, go get yourself Jay-Z & Mya, DMX, Creed, Britney Spears, N-sync, whatever, but many of them you can find nowhere in a legal format.
I'm reminded of one very noteworthy song that came out on one of these bootlegs last year fully TWO MONTHS before it was available to the public in any form; radio, video... no one had heard this song or even this artist before. It came out on a dance compilation called KTU radio cuts Volume 3 in early May of '99. The song was called "Genie in a Bottle" and as everyone now knows, it was done by Christina Aguilera. Anyone who follows that stuff knows that her first (and still only) album didn't hit shelves until late July.
You have to wonder, how did this bootlegging company get ahold of an artist's work MONTHS before it came out? Who had the work? Hmmmm... I do believe the record companies had the song, no?
Who else has access to ALL these brand new cuts available elsewhere? This is in all genre's mind you. I'm sure Oklahoma has country bootlegs somewhere. Kind of makes you wonder how the bootlegger's get them if someone VERY high up in the music industry (RIAA?) is the one bootlegging them and selling them blatantly illegaly (as opposed to people D/L'ing one track at a time to hear artists).
Re:The Entitlement Generation (Score:3)
I have probably seen more concerts thant the vast majority of slashdot readers. Why? Because music was meant to be performed live, and i am willing to support bands that i enjoy listening to in that fashion. I will pay for a service, just as i would to see a play. The problem is that artists think they can get buy with writing music alone. Back before recorded music, minstrels or orchestras, or any other PROFESSIONAL MUSICIANS would get paid to play for an audience. That was how they made their money. And honestly, that's the way it should be.
but if there is no real incentive for artists to create, they won't.
that's bullshit. Do you think my sister got a degree in vocal performance because that's where the money is? Hell no. She did it for the same reasons that, when i go home, i pick up my guitar and play. Sometimes they're songs i wrote, sometimes they're not, it doesn't matter. My sister and i both play/sing because it's in our hearts. Musical creation is a part of us, without it, we are incomplete. I don't have the illusion that i will ever become famous, or make a single dollar off of anything that i have written. And if you ask any REAL musician whether or not they'd still be playing if all music were free...and they'd give you a resounding "hell yeah!"
The good ones don't play to make money, they play to play. Music is not a means to an end. It is an end unto itself.
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
Napster briefing ONLINE (Score:4)
Note that the contents of the mp3 are technically copyright 2000 napster inc., but I don't think they want to open that can of worms. ;>
Now the real interesting part begins (Score:5)
Re:Good Riddance to a Bad Penny (Score:3)
---
Fight the power! (Score:3)
darn (Score:3)
An interesting take on this whole Napster dilemna on NPR's Marketplace [marketplace.org] yesterday (July 25th). The
TGL
Re:Opennap (Score:3)
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
oh, god. now what do i do? (Score:4)
this is like when we had that problem with everybody drinking alcohol. the government stepped in and made drinking illegal, and it solved all our problems. nobody drank, nobody beat their kids and nobody unwound after work. let's hope shutting down napster is equally as successful!
Re:Whatever happened to ... (Score:5)
If you win, you could sue to make him pay you for the water during the time you had to give it to him.
All the court is saying is that use of Napster represents a probable violation of RIAA and their artists rights, and that it's continued use is causing immediate harm to RIAA and their artists.
Oh, and Napster isn't being shutdown, they're just being asked to not allow the sharing of commercial music... Simple greps will take care of that...
but no one knows the name of your unknown band.. (Score:4)
2. The lawsuit against Napster does not prevent you from publishing your band's songs on your own web site. Your band's web site is arguably a better way to publish your mp3s than Napster. You can post band info, tour info, sell t-shirts, link to other bands you like, get fan feedback, and get other music sites to point to YOU! Napster does not allow you to do ANY of these community building functions.
Don't just vote. Get organized. Power in #'s!! (Score:3)
Do you really want to make a difference? Don't just go and vote once. Get all of your friends together and organize. Then you might get a couple hundred votes. A couple hundred votes by a couple hundred cities is a LOT of votes. It's called a "lobby group", and people use them all the time. If you don't have money - the RIAA are a bunch of RAT ASS BASTARDS, so they use money - you can use VOTES.
You get a dozen dedicated guys to haul in a dozen other not-so-dedicated guys who might haul in 3 or 4 guys. Mainly people who wouldn't bother to vote. My mom did this last time because our MP was a bastard (We're in Canada). It worked.
The trick is to take that power and make the weasels you elect dance. You do that by getting each person in your organization to write, the old fashioned way, a letter and mail it, or hand-deliver it. If you mail it registered so they have to sign for it, all the better. BELIEVE ME, your reps will at least give you the time of day. I did this when that CDR tax was being passed; I at least got listened too and a two page letter (not a form letter, either) back.
Laws like this are going to fuck up the economy and technological developments of tomorrow. This ruling will set a precdent that could shut down IRC, shut down USENET, shut down a LOT of things. Think about it and get mobilized.
Re:The Entitlement Generation (Score:3)
Music should be free. Yes, of course the artists have a right to make a living off their music, that's what they do. So go to their concerts, buy a fscking t-shirt.
Musicians, who are professionally competent in composing music, performing music, and producing music, should ditch their real skills, and go into the t-shirt business? That just doesn't make sense. Please explain your logic behind this one. You want a musician turned into brand with his logo splattered across your chest? You want music even more commodified and commercialized? Most fans of John Eliot Gardiner or Sir Colin Davis do not wear t-shirts, how should they be funded? Should they go into the neck-tie business?
Concerts? Glenn Gould did not perform live for the last several years of his career, because he understood that the record was a much more powerful mode of communication and had the ability to reach a wider audience. The Beatles did the same thing. African pop music has a loyal following in the US, but seeing the musicians live is not an option. How do I support them? Should I fly to Africa every time one of my favorite musicians is performing in the local pub? Or should I buy the t-shirt? Do Africans even wear t-shirts?
How are older musicians supposed to make money? Rudolf Serkin is in his 80's, probably doesn't have the energy to tour, but still puts out great records. Dead musicians? Enrico Caruso died in 1920, but his complete works are available on a 12 CD set - painstakingly remastered from 78 RPM acetates. Who would have funded this project if they wouldn't be paid? The Beatles can't tour any more since Lennon is dead, but surely the other three deserve money for the recordings? How will these be funded?
Name an artistically significant concert which has happened in the last fifty years (hint: Woodstock wasn't). Records have completely replaced concerts as the medium for artistic expression. No longer do we have events such as the premiere's of Le Sacre du Printemps or Pierrot Lunaire, but ritualistic, predictable, ultra-produced, arena rock.
The artists get something on the order of 12 cents for every album that's sold, the rest goes to the label, the A&R guys, and the promoters.
Proof please?
Where does the cost of making the record figure into that? You did know that the average classical record costs $500,000 to record, didn't you? Where does that fit into your little scheme? I do not see any of the following on your little price schedule: studio time, professional musicians salaries, production, royalties. All of these are extremely significant portions of the cost, and aren't figured into your cost. Who's going to pay this? My closet will get too full if a buy a t-shirt for every recorded symphony I like. Maybe the musicians should branch into socks also?
%80 of all napster users go out and BUY CD's of the bands they download
Proof please?
Where there are no more CD's to buy (as you assert that music should be free), how do I support the artist if I want to? Remember, my closet is too full of t-shirts, and almost all of the musicians I like do not tour, or live overseas, or at least on the east coast.
RIAA Backfire? (Score:3)
Well, the RIAA did lose, and had to pay $2 million for postponing the Rio's release by three weeks.
Does anyone know if a similar arrangement is in place here? I'd be curious to know what Napster makes in a month...
Kevin Fox
The river will continue to flow... (Score:5)
Napster really just opened the floodgates. MP3s have been huge for a very long time, and Napster merely made it very easy to distribute and obtain MP3's, increasing everyone's collections. Now that the music trading is so prevelant, do they think that this flow of it will stop? There are amazing numbers of MP3s out there, and people are all too happy to let people dip into their stash for access to someone else's.
Pulling Napster out of the picture this late in the game is not going to have the effect they want. The river will merely find a new path, and this time the path won't be a single set of servers, or one company that people are dependant upon for MP3s. This time the water will flow in many directions, over many very distributed and varying forms of trading that we've been building all this time.
It will be so distributed that they will have no hope of stemming the flow. They may have done much better by riding Napster--- leaving it functioning until they can work a way to encourage Napster to work in their favor. And instead they shoot themselves in the foot. By removing our need to depend on Napster, they're giving up all chance of controlling where and how we get our MP3s.
And now, suppose the Napster CEO comes on the webcast and delivers his rallying cry? Stand up against the monster RIAA that wants to take away your music. Why should we? The RIAA is doing nothing but forcing us to make the next step... leave behind the central, haltable, stoppable location in favor of many other means which are harder to trace and much harder to prevent.
Napster was just a step. By shutting down Napster now, the RIAA is just ensuring that we take the next one.
If the public has its way, that last step will be on the heads of the once immortal recording industry.
Well, so much for piracy! (Score:3)
Hello?
The real point is: (Score:3)
Second, right now I feel very frustrated because I'm not an American citizen (not that I wanted to be one, no offense). This not some judge from my government who is doing this, I don't have a congressmen to write to make him understand what's wrong with DMCA. What can we all, non-US citizens living around the world, do?? I'm not trying to start a flame war US vs. Rest of the world, BUT you US citizens have now a greater responsibility because this is happening in your country (and the same goes to many other issues, like what's been happening with Network Solutions, an American company, misbehaving). Sure, we outside the US could start our own Napster service, maybe we will, but right now the problem is on your side of the court, we can only help with our opinions.
Third and last, I believe the RIAA has such a big problem with Napster because it's now a commercial venture. That's what Lars Ulrich said, they are being the middlemen and they, of course, want a piece of it, that's not fair from their point of view. Now, this is just a vague idea, but don't we all need a Napster-like public service?; what if Shawn Fanning decided to ask for volunteer contributions to support Napster servers instead of basically selling all his share of the company to some greedy investors? Would that have made any difference? I think it would, what happened today it would be more like closing a public library, which is not like closing a bookstore at all.
Anyway, I should probably stop ranting. Sorry, can't help it.
Simple Solution: VOTE (Score:5)
Politicians pay attention to demographics. If a lot of college kids vote in this year's election, they'll care more about your causes. It doesn't even matter who you vote for (except to you), so VOTE!
Re:RIAA Backfire? (Score:4)
To be rigorously accurate (Score:3)
What I object to is the bit about 'no substantial legitimate use'. Now, I asked for my stuff to be put on Napster by anyone who used it, but I know that I and other indie guys don't add up to 'substantial' use. However, I don't think 'substantial' is the point here! The point is that the judge, in caving to a large and rich faction, has taken action that _injures_ my access to media and cuts off my options. I have a problem with that. I might grudgingly tolerate it from private companies, for instance if Napster went "Hey, let's ONLY do RIAA acts just to piss them off!", but I have a real problem with my access to distribution channels being choked of by the judicial system of MY government just to benefit MY competition (who do not need help! sheesh! They have a freaking stranglehold)
I don't think I need to argue that I represent a zillion indie musicians to illustrate that there's a problem there. It's not that I am simply not being represented- I am being _injured_ specifically to prop up my deeply entrenched competition.
Jupiter research says Napster is good (Score:3)
My personal position on Napster is that they are trying to make big bucks with little value added, so while the music industry is (as usual) being closed-minded and ignorant, Napster are not the big heroes in my book.