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Napster Usage Quadruples 196

Posted by CmdrTaco from the proving-a-point dept.
tewl noted a CNN story that says that Napster's usage has quadrupled... it stands among the fastest growing software apps ever. And since the record industry sold more CDs then ever last year, that of course proves what all these lawsuits are about *cough*.
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Napster Usage Quadruples More

Napster Usage Quadruples

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  • I don't like the lawsuits much, but I am not yet convinced that Napster hasn't reduced record sales. The initial post claims: "Napster's usage has quadrupled...[ ] And since the record industry sold more CDs then ever last year, that of course proves what all these lawsuits are about *cough*." The time when Napster usage supposedly quadrupled was during this year (in the last 5 months). So to determine Napster's effect on record sales we need to look for a change in sales during the same time frame... Maybe in the end it will still prove *cough*?
  • Use hasn't quadrupled, the number of individual accounts has. Thats a totaly different thing with all this Metallica garbage. I know ive recreated about 20 accounts in the last year alone.

    If you want to count use, show me some numbers on how many MBs of mp3s are in the system.
  • >Because this is digital copying, those files are >*perfect* copies of the original

    Actually they are perfect copies of a LOSSY COMPRESSED copy of the ORIGINAL. Now, mind you, my ears are too shot to really notice or care...

    Of course it is no where as bad a degradation as if you had copied to cassette tape (and then to another tape, ad infinitum) but to listen to Lars and others generalize about "perfect digital copies" is b.s. IMHO

    One thing NOT considered is the amount of mp3's that are incomplete available, the MP3's that have that digital hiccup because it was ripped too fast and the error correction couldn't compensate for a scratch on the CD, and other file defects... In other words a lot of the stuff on Napster is NOT PERFECT at all.

    No further comment on the other less mundane parts of the argument...(ethical/logical/etc)

    YMMV

    Enrico
  • I think I need a free proof reader.

    Sorry.

  • Most MP3 files on Napster are tape quality. (Score:4)

    by yerricde ( 125198 ) on Tuesday September 12, 2000 @04:48AM (#786289) Homepage Journal

    As I understand it, the main reason Napster is considered different is the fact that MP3s are (for all intents and purposes) lossless, CD-quality recordings of digital music.

    MP3 begins to approach CD quality only at 192 Kbps VBR with LAME or Fraunhofer (the best encoders AFAIK). But most of the files on Napster are 128 Kbit, which screams "tape" to my ears.

    If you tape a CD, then the tape is invariably lower quality, acoustically, than the original.

    If you encode a CD at 128 Kbit (especially with a bad encoder like Xing but there are lots of bad tape decks too), then the MP3 is invariably lower quality, acoustically, than the original.


    <O
    ( \
    XGNOME vs. KDE: the game! [8m.com]
  • Ok, then the "question" was answered: No, the recording industry should not be able to push congress to impose these arbitrary taxes.
  • Free speech.
    Free bear.
    Free Advertising?

    So far, this law suit has been the best thing to happen to Napster.

  • So? That's not the point. The point is that just because your first, knee-jerk reaction to something is to try to destroy it before it destroys you, doesn't mean it's the right reaction. Back then, people having the ability to record what is played on their telivision was a huge leap in their ability to watch what they want, when they want. Having that ability with digital media is, at best, a modest leap from where we were. Had the movie industry succeeded in destroying the VCR market, they would have lost the enormous revenue source that videos have become. Did they realize this then? Did they even have an inkling of it back then? Nope. This could just be a rerun of that episode.

  • This is the "Politicians don't read Slashdot" argument. It's true in some way but misses the point in some other way. Here is why:

    No politician is going to legalise MP3-trading of copyrighted music, no matter how much lobbying you/we do. He would have to essentially give up copyright for that and it's obvious that in a time also known as the dawning age of information society there is no way to screw copyright.

    Fair use is a concept which was devised in times when copying music wasn't possible without loss of quality. A third generation copy just didn't sound like it was worth the work. Instead you bought the record/tape. So maybe a record got copied a few times but that was ok, because it didn't get copied a zillion times and after all, music is a cultural thing and, what the heck, we can't control it anyway.

    Then came cd-burners and things started to get ugly. With these a copy of a copy was as good as the original. But still distribution was limited somehow by the necessity to move physical media around and lending your cd to total strangers doesn't sound like too good an idea.

    Then came Napster. A copy of a copy is still as good as the original but now distribution is limited only by network bandwith, which is increasing every day. There are still reasons for a fair use concept: Music is still a cultural thing and there is still no way to control individual copying. But copying will get out of hand with ever growing network availability and bandwith, so it can't be allowed from a copyright owner's perspective. Fair use as a selfregulated loophole has lost its regulating factors which were loss of quality and need for physical and thus limited distribution.

    What is a politician to do in a situation like this? Programmers and technicians tell you that copying can't be stopped technologically. RIAA et al tell you that there are millions of people earning their income in the music industry who are in danger of losing their jobs because of all these freeloaders. The anser is: delegate. Let others handle the problem. For now we make sure the industry is staying healthy and the people don't lose their jobs. In order to do that, the fair use loophole obviously has to be closed. This is were we got the DMCA from. Next the industry makes sure that the technology which enables mass copying for the average consumer goes away. Napster, bye bye. They are legally and morally in the position to shut down Napster. Napster is a company which hopes to make money by providing a system which even in good-will terms is a means for mass copyright infringement.

    Can you do something about that through lobbying? I doubt it. There are few reasons why copying music should be allowed and most of them revolve about the music industry being a big bad monster and artists not getting their fair amount of money anyway. That is, pardon my french, bullshit. The music industry is the direct result of a free market situation and if artists don't get paid enough, well, that's their problem.

    But there are still those damn programmers who insist that copying can't be stopped technologically. What can we do about them? Nothing, they are right. With fast networks available to everyone, the copying will continue. Programs are just waiting for Napster to die so they can take its place. With laws becoming stricter, technology will adapt to provide what people want anyway. Geeks are not into lobbying because they know that technology wins in the long run. The time of the music industry as we know it is fading. Copyright laws are prolonging its life but eventually it will die (or transform into something different, as some people might put it).

    There is still a long road to walk before you can legally copy all the music you want. You'll see the town of restricted internet access on the way. The city of forbidden encryption can be seen on the horizon, but we still don't know if we have to go through it. Privacy invaders have their huts ligned up near the road all the way. But we will get past these obstacles with our without lobbying, sooner or later. Right now, lobbying will only make people laugh at us for demanding the right to pirate. Give people fascinating technology and they'll walk with you.

  • When you type a ridiculous and unfounded assertion right in your first sentence, how can you expect reasonable people to want to read on? There is such a thing as Intellectual Property.

    Then I would ask you to point out the law or the case where it is defined. I'm getting more and more curiuous over this point.
  • This seems like a reasonable argument (on the surface anyways)...

    The conspiracist in me thinks they are not protecting their profits so much, as protecting their raccateering (spelling, ugh!) enterprise.

    Instead of using Bobby the Stick to beat an unwilling contractor to use Mob friendly Union labor, RIAA is sending lawyers out to make sure we buy music in THEIR format only...

    I hope all this results in a reasonable online music distribution model.

    I like free *alot*.. but I really appreciate value. And if I could preview songs then purchase individual songs that I'd like using some sort of micro payment scenario. I'd go for that... Maybe a Rent-to-own scenario =)

    I'd like that much better than buying an album on the merits of one song on the radio and paying for tons of filler tunes and B-sides ...

    E.
  • Superstars will have to create themselves based on talent and real appeal (not just sex)

    Dunno - based on the popularity of music videos with attractive stars in really skimpy clothing, if Napster ever got around to distributing music videos via its service, I'd still imagine "sex" would be a pretty popular product :)

  • Another possible measure, if what the Napster execs would like everyone to believe, is to look at the variety of CDs sold, not neccessary just total sales.

    For example, assume 1 million CDs were sold, up from 900,000 last year, adjusted for a GNP-like indicator. That might indicate that Napster helped, but then one needs to look at the breakdown of the average number of sales per album. An audience that is buying a wider variety of music would cost the average numbers of sales per album to drop, as there are more albums being bought across the board. On the other hand, if one or two albums dominate the market and artificially increase the market, then the average number goes up. So if last year, there was an average of 50,000 sales per CD title, and that number didn't change even though album sales were up, it would tend to indicate that nothing has really changes. If it went up to 75,000/CD, then the market saturation problem is in effect and nullifies Napster's arguement. If it dropped to 25,000/CD, then there's good evidence that people are buying a wider range of music, and thus there's a bit more evidence for Napster here.

    Of course, probably the only people with the ability to analyze such numbers is RIAA. In addition, these numbers would probably poorly reflect on the non-RIAA independent music distributors' contribution to the CD market -- most good alternative titles come from here, but doubtful that RIAA would track their sales too.

  • Yeah, but this attitude about sharing land is a lot easier if you're living in a hunter-gatherer society, where your survival is predicated more on your hunting/gathering skill. Once you start farming, you're probably more likely to be touchy about people wandering off w/your crops if they didn't help you grow them, just because "everyone must share the bounty of the land".
  • Oh, and you forgot to mention the stunningly simple and infomative infographics in Newsweek and Time. You know the ones that can turn rocket booster technology into an easy three-step design, or tell you how to install a replacement hip in 4 steps...

    Now if only they would print a "How Napster is going to win the lawsuit" graphic...



  • I think he hit upon a solution to the whole napster situation without realizing it.

    Why not require all napster programs to keep logs of what songs are downloaded, and at the same time display banner ads? Then, connect to a server (anon) and tell it what was downloaded. The money gained from the banner ads is divided amongst the artists, thus napsterites don't have to pay for their precious music, and the artists get money.

    This is incredibly easy - I'm surprised it hasn't been instigated yet. And a very marginal percentage - .1 percent? - goest to the napster people. That still would ammount to a very large amount.

    On another note, I'm sick of napster. It's sucking all the bandwidth on my campus college, and I'm quite looking forward for it to be banned. We've got 2 T1's with about 1300 students. At times, I get -bytes- of data. Not even kilobytes... Even at 5AM on Sunday night, I don't get too terribly much 50k/s - because the fools leave napster running. While napster shoudln't be banned, it's being WAY over used and abused. You better believe these same people would start to complain if a group of people started to routinely download multiple distro ISO's at a time, repeatedly.

    -------
    CAIMLAS

  • Face it: Napster is the only interesting thing going on in the pus filled trough called the music industry. The only interesting thing in years...

    Oh boy. It looks like someone hasn't listened to Pierre Boulez's new one yet.
  • An argument that many people like to use in this dispute is that more CDs were sold last year than any other year. I began to think about this, and...

    If, for demonstrational purposes, 100 million CDs were sold in 1998, and 125 million were sold in 1999, that would be a 25% increase over 1 year, and a new high in sales. Now, Napster, or a company like it, comes on the scene, and in the next year, 2000, 130 million CDs sold. Technically, more CDs were sold in 2000 than any other year, yes, but the rate at which sales increased dropped drammatically... only a 4% increase. If you took the Napster-like company out of the picture, you might be looking at closer to 150 million in CD sales...

    Applying this concept to reality is not difficult. Record sales are up right now, yes, but the rate of increase has dropped, possibly due to Napster, but perhaps not.

    At any rate, that's just my take on that particular point, I still side with Napster, and I still share over 8GB of music on it :)

    -DB

  • Our economic system is based on the ability of people to be compensated for their work.

    Then why aren't recording artists being compensated?

    In the case of the music industry, we protect the artist's copyright so that they can be compensated for their work.

    But the labels generally don't compensate the artists enough to make a living.

    We buy the CD's, the record companies skim off the bulk of the money and pay some remaining portion to the artist.

    According to Courtney Love [salon.com], our "remaining portion" isn't even enough to buy promotion for the record, let alone pay the bills.


    <O
    ( \
    XGNOME vs. KDE: the game! [8m.com]
  • The lawsuit is about a belief system, alsmost a religion in the case of the RIAA.

    Copyright is only effective if enough people follow it.

    If everybody copied stuff freely, how effective would copyright be?

    We all know that civil disobedience is the best way to get ineffective laws challenged. If enough people challenge authority on a given issue, a democratic system has no choice but to alter the rules or become fascist or dictatorial in nature.

    In the case of the RIAA the religion is money. Money is after all it's life. Rather than change from an existing paradigm, i.e. a closed market, controllable source for supply. It is faced with a radical shift in its revenue and thus its maneer of existence.

    Given the current preponderance of mp3s and other digital media, there is no closed market ans the media of distribution is the internet, and the controllable supply is non-existant: you aren't limited by raw materials when creating copies of mp3s.

    therefore the RIAA is being forced to fight for its own existence, not realising that by embracing the paradigm shift that it is facing it can metamorphasise into a powerful organisation for good.

  • There is no such thing as intellectual property. (Patents may count as that in some sense, but they too are a limited monopoly) Copyright is not about ownership, its about just that. Copy rights. The idea that copyright is ownership has been recently publicized very loudly by various big publication industries, with the obvious effect. But I don't think they've managed to push any legislation through yet that changes that.... At least, I hope not.

    However, you are right about the loss of profit thing. But that doesn't stop the music industry from screaming about it. And, IIRC, they're also claiming a loss of profit growth. As in, we would have sold MORE CDs without Napster.


    -RickHunter
  • I know ive recreated about 20 accounts in the last year alone

    Agreed, I did as well as my firewall configuration was incorrect, every time I used Napster, I created a new account...

  • Re:*cough* (Score:3)

    by RickHunter ( 103108 ) on Tuesday September 12, 2000 @01:59AM (#786307)

    Its a tool not a torture device for RIAA goons.

    Awww.... Then why have I been supporting it? ;-)

    Seriously, the point that Napster is just a tool needs to be brought up repeatedly in this court case. After all, that's all the service is. If some Napster execs were encouraging people to illegally copy music, charge them. If some Napster users were illegally copying music outside of the bounds of fair use trading, charge them. (Although I'm sure the record industry will conveniently forget about the fair use aspect and just charge everyone)

    Napster can be used to legally or illegally exchange music. It can be used to promote individual artists or torture RIAA goons. Oh, wait. Those last two are synonomous. Oh, well. :-P


    -RickHunter
  • I think that just about everyone is missing what the *cough* means. It is really pretty simple. The RIAA is claiming that Napster is causing people to steal thier music and that they are losing all this money from stolen and pirated music. If what the RIAA says is true they should be showing a certian drop in sales for every 100 times that Napster is downloaded. In fact Napster has consistently gotten more and more popular and CD and other music sales are at an all time high. Therefore the RIAA (and MPAA as a correlary) lawsuits are not about music piracy or "making sure the artists get thier just dues." It's about mega-corperations monopoly on the music that we are allowed to hear. The RIAA wants to keep thier monopoly. The popularity of Napster proves that they are not keeping up with the times of thier own bussiness and therefore should loose that self same monopoly.

    I'd like to throw in that I am a Napster user (a heavy one). I do not use a college network to get my music (have DSL.) Also I do not consider what I download to be music piracy. CD's that I particularly enjoy I go out and buy. Most of what I get from Napster falls into one of a few categories.

    Live music that cannot be found on CD
    "B" Sides that cannot be bought any more in the stores
    Artists that I have not listened to before and want to try out before I plunk 13-20$ on a CD.
    Artists who are not on major labels that I have not been able to find thier CD's yet

    If you want to say that I am stealing go ahead.

    Sorry for the rambling. It is still early where I am ;)

  • As a Napster user, I admit to some mixed feelings about the ethics of using Napster but I do think its important to consider the point of view of the artists and others that create content.

    Our economic system is based on the ability of people to be compensated for their work. In the case of the music industry, we protect the artist's copyright so that they can be compensated for their work. We buy the CD's, the record companies skim off the bulk of the money and pay some remaining portion to the artist. Its not perfect, CD's cost too much, but the artist (at least in theory) gets compensated.

    I've travelled around eastern Europe and was pretty amazed to see the rampant piracy of both music and software. Here's the problem, the system doesn't reinforce the value of creative work. All you need is a big CD burning operation and you get the money instead of the original artist or content creator. How different is Napster from what I just described except you don't have anyone profitting monetarily from the process (except maybe Napster.com sometime in the future)

    I like the ability to preview music before buying it using Napster and I will admit that I have purchased music that I never would have bought without the access that Napster provided. Unfortunately, I wonder how often that really happens. Ok everyone, when's the last time you went to the record store and purchased a CD even though you had downloaded the same material on Napster? Right.
  • Exactly. There are a few reasons why CD sales have been taking off.

    1) Its the economy stupid. People have more money. Parents have more money, but less time at home. Buy childrens love with more cds.

    2) Demographics. There is a larger population increase for teens and such. (Generation Y, don't ya love being labeled?) This generation has lots of money and loves music.

    3)Marketing. We are seeing more and more of it for music. Apparently, it is working.

    4) Did I mention the economy and all the extra money people can spend on luxury items?

  • If the RIAA hadn't made such a big fuss about Napster, do you really think it would be one-tenth as popular as it is now? muhahahahahaha
    ---
  • No, I'm not. You're assuming that the only system which can be used to make money from music is the current pay-for-distribution system. This system actually serves to enrich the middlemen, not the artist. With our current system, artists make very little money from record sales. There seems to be no scarcity of people making music now. Why then do you assume that switching to a different system where artists make very little money from record sales will result in a shortage of people making music?
  • Well, as I said the societies were communal. I'm sure they didn't like other societies stealing from them, but the concept of "ownership" of land and nature was still very foreign. The Iroquios, composed of six sub-nations, had a gigantic farming economy based on corn. But they still didn't think of property as Europeans did. As far as I understand, the treaties they made were more along the lines of "we will allow you to live beside us" instead of "we are splitting ownership of this land at this exact line with you".

    Of course I'm not Native American so anything a real Native American has to say on this topic obviously overrides any opinion of mine.
  • The amount of CD's they have sold proves nothing. The only way to determine whether or not napster had an adverse efect would be to have an alternate universe in which Napster did not exist, measure CD sales there, and then compare it to our world. In absence of that, there is no rational reason to believe that Napster has caused CD sales to rise (by the same token, there is no reason to believe in the converse of that statement either).

    While it may not be easy to show that Napster has directly impacted CD sales either positively or negatively, one thing is easy to show; Napster has caused more discussion of music and musicians than any other event in decades. There's not a newspaper, news magazine or TV news program that hasn't done multiple stories on the Napster phenomena.

    The demographics for Napster are far wider than what the RIAA has been claiming, 50% of the users are over 40 according to some reports. This is a group that did not, in general, consider music a vital part of their lives anymore. Napster has re-awakened their interest in music.

    A completely unscientific observation: I was in a stereo store explaining Napster and MP3 to one of the salesguys I know. Also at the counter was a 60-something black preacher, in buying microphones for his church. The preacher's wife overheard our discussion of Napster and voluntered that she loved Napster, that she used it all the time to music.

    This was not the 18 year old anarchist "typical Napster user" the RIAA is tring to sell us. Respectable older people are doing it as well. Bucko, when you can't convince 60 year old, churchgoing black ladies that something is immoral - give it up. It's over.

  • According to this article in Salon [salon.com] you cannot definitively make that claim.

    Don't look to retailers for a definitive answer. In an informal survey of independent music chain operators, who, together, own nearly 50 stores that cater to mostly college-aged crowds, owners appear to be split over the crucial cause-and-effect question. (Salon, August 8, 2000)

    The Recipricol study didn't take into account the number of cd's students are purchasing online. And even in this 'perfect' scenario:

    According to Singmaster, his Clemson outlet (which caters almost exclusively to college students) is experiencing its second consecutive year of declining sales. "That's the first timein 15 years that that's happened to one of my stores, and we've weathered a few price wars." Singmaster initially blamed his staff; now he blames Napster. "Considering my other stores continue to grow, you have to start to look at other factors," he says. "Napster seems to be the culprit, which is why I tend to believe the RIAA study."(Salon, Aug 8, 2000)

    the case study didn't look at whether or not students were buying their cd's online. And in fact since his store's decline began two years ago, when Napster was just rolling out, it would be doubtful Napster could be the sole cause of it. A more judicious study would have examined bandwidth useage in comparison to lost sales.

    As one record store owner said, "Sales are actually up because Napster has brought music to the forefront. Everybody's talking about music."

  • It gets worse.

    The law refers to it as a "royalty", not a tax. Unlike "digital audio recording device", and "digital audio recording medium", there is no special definition for "royalty" in 1001 of the law. One would assume that the word "royalty" has the ordinary meaning -- the same meaning that it has throughout the rest of Title 17 (copyright law) -- a payment to a copyright holder in exchange for the rights to reproduce a work. When a radio station pays the royalty on a song, they receive the right to broadcast that song. If I'm a record company, and I want to put out a compilation album, I agree to pay royalties to all the copyright owners of the songs on that album, and in return I receive in return the right to use those songs to make legal copies of my compilation album. Etc. etc. That's the entire point of a royalty.

    However, according to the White House, unlike any other royalty in copyright law, one receives no rights whatsoever from paying this "royalty"! According to the Administration brief, all that consumers get, having paid a "royalty" directly to the recording industry, is immunization from lawsuits. The administration claims that home taping is still illegal -- even though you've paid real money to the RIAA -- it's just that the AHRA says that you can't be sued for it.

    So it isn't actually a royalty then. What is it?

    A tax? Taxes are supposed to be for the support of government. If this is a tax, then what is going on is conversion -- this law steals public funds from the treasury and gives it directly to private companies.

    What sorts of common words describe payments that insulate illegal activity?

    Protection money? Graft? The true nature of the AHRA comes to light.
  • Actually, it's not just selection of media from the store which is a problem with CDs. It's selection of media for lissening. I wrote a little program called Smartplay [gtf.org] which "tries" to do two things: (1) learn your moods to more effectivly chose songs to play for you and (2) minimize the ammount of time you spend chosing the music you want to lissen to (ala no long periods chosing playlists and no distractions from crappy songs comming up under random play).

    It's buggy as hell, but it proves my point that a software mp3 player on a computer can be MUCH better then CD players and current hardware mp3 player.
  • Isn't all those lawsuits a good thing in a way, because in the case periods and if there's a lot of press coverage - people will go to the sites and see whats so wrong with it. It isnt a wonder i believe, because Napster has been mentioned all over in the press. Publicitity is always good wether its bad or good. People do seek after illegal things honestly. Many don't care about copyright laws really :P
  • From the article: Napster Inc. said last week that 28 million people had downloaded its program. It does not reveal its own figures for how many people actually use the software.

    I download hundreds of bits of software over the course of the average month, most of them get deleted pretty swiftly. Sounds like napster are trying to boost their image by putting out vaguely suggestive press releases like this.

    Edric.

  • "Additionally, in this case, if there is no loss of profit for the artists or record labels, then the claim that Napster represents "fair use" is strengthened a bit"

    To say that because the recording industry didn't LOSE money last year, Napster is automatically fair use is stretching it a bit, don't you think? I mean, then all other forms of profit-free piracy would be fair use too, no?
    Just because they profited SOME doesn't mean they didn't LOSE profit because of Napster. It's pretty hard for either side to prove how Napster affected profits, although I'm (sadly) sure that the record folks have "projected statististics" and whatnot that they could reference...
  • I wonder how they'd have done if they hadn't been in the news every day from getting sued by everyone in the world ever...

  • The RIAA needs to be disband, and get rid of all the barriers to true competition! Force the member companies to compete with each other for cd prices. CD prices would then drop because each company would want to get customers to buy their CDs. Currently, they don't compete. The CDs all sell for about the same price.

    That's a start, but music isn't a commodity, and each label will still have a monopoly on their artists' music. An additional measure should be for artists to retain copyrights on all their work, and they should be free to license distribution to any label willing to publish their work. This may or may not be a panacea for low prices. Book authors and publishers have this relationship now, and books are still expensive.

    And of course, don't hold your breathe waiting for this to happen. The only way this will ever happen is if the major labels are faced with their imminent extinction.

  • that of course proves what all these lawsuits are about *cough*.

    So copyright infringement/piracy is ok, provided they make up the difference finacially?



    Being with you, it's just one epiphany after another
  • > At times, I get -bytes- of data. Not even kilobytes...

    I've experienced the same thing. The problem around my area was games, though- you get an entire dorm playing (insert your favorite/least favorite game) and it sucks the bandwidth real quick.

    Of course, YMMV.


    What do I do, when it seems I relate to Judas more than You?

  • Not really... (Score:4)

    by Floyd Tante ( 210193 ) on Tuesday September 12, 2000 @01:18AM (#786325)
    And since the record industry sold more CDs
    then ever last year, that of course proves what all these lawsuits are about *cough*.

    The amount of CD's they have sold proves nothing. The only way to determine whether or not napster had an adverse efect would be to have an alternate universe in which Napster did not exist, measure CD sales there, and then compare it to our world. In absence of that, there is no rational reason to believe that Napster has caused CD sales to rise (by the same token, there is no reason to believe in the converse of that statement either).

    While I think that Napster presents a great leap in freedom for computer users, akin to the signifigance of Open Source, it is far too early to declare any sort of victory.


    -- Floyd
  • "evil" comes to mind...
  • I think Taco is suggesting that not all Napster use is illegal, otherwise it would be having some effect on the sales figures.
  • And what if you listen to, say, Celtic folk music, and the radio stations around you play Top 40?

    Then you subscribe to folk music magazines, and read the reviews, and buy what sounds interesting.

    What if you listen to techno, and the only radio stations you get in your car are country & western?

    Then you bury your head in shame. What does techno have to do with music?

    How many times have you been in a record store and picked up a CD because you thought the name of the artist was neat/you liked the cover art/your best friend knew someone who knew someone who once listened to the band?

    About 75% of the 1,000+ CD I own were bought without listening to a single note first, and at least in half of the cases, not having read a review first. Getting a recommendation means it's no risk at all.

    If your record store is like most, there aren't any listening stations. Are you willing to pay $22 for a CD you might hate?

    No. But I'll risk $15 on what might be my next favorite CD. You can stop the lying right now: if you have trouble finding places that charge less than US$22 for new domestic CD's, then you are really clueless.

    Or would you simply download three tracks from Napster, listen to them, and buy the CD if you liked those 3 tracks?

    Few serious music lovers like to listen to samples first because it dilutes the experience of the album, and gives a potentially faulty impression. Moreover, you need to listen to an album in its entirety 30-40 times before you make a decision on it. The most significant investment in purchasing a new album is not the rather paltry $15 spent on it, but the 30-40 hours needed to understand it.

    Though I question how it's 'stealing', as there's no actual deprivation of property going on, and a lot of times, the people doing the download are the people who wouldn't buy the album after all.

    Please buy a book on copyright law. This will help to answer your questions.

  • And of course increases in CD sales has nothing to do with the fact that the US has just about it's most bouyant economy for a very long time and items like cd's are always one of the biggest items to gain from this increased consumer confidence and excess amounds of spare cash.

    Although sometimes even I get swayed by the spinola.

  • proof that there is no such thing as bad publicity. Napster is probably poised to make more in way of revinue from this lawsuite that they may have to pay in fines....unless of course they are forced to close their doors.
  • Who is lobbying for change? If everyone thinks that Napster is such a good thing what are we doing about it. Can't we the people(sorry I quoted that from somewhere and didn't give them credit) lobby for changes in some of these laws to allow for things like Napster(I think I need a copyright thing here). If this should be legal why don't we make it so. After all we did elect them we should have some sort of control over what happens. Since Napster's usage has grown 4 fold don't they make money some how. Can't we pay some freaking lobbyist to do some work for the geeks, maybe start a web sit for people to add there names to for change in the copy right laws. After all, these things are broadcast over the air through my body, doesn't that make it at least a little bit mine.
  • that the small print at the bottom of the page: The Rest © 1997-2000 OSDN. is purely decorative, and that so long as slashdot's page impressions continue to rise, we can pirate all of Rob's content, Katz' essays and whatever the fuck else is inhabiting the "Open Source Development Network". I'm also assuming that the words "Copyright ©1999-2000 VA Linux Systems, Inc. All rights reserved." are purely there for their rhythm and rhyme, and that VA Linux Systems does not really reserve any of its rights against anyone who might want to "share" their content. Right?

    Because of this, I'm planning to launch "freeslashdot.net", which is basically the entire slashdot site, but without any of those irritating banner ads. We'll just have a script that regularly sucks all the content off slashdot onto our site. A bit rough on Malda, who won't get paid, but who gives a fuck about that, huh, Npaster-fans? Of course, if we end up getting sued by VA Linux, we'll just move to a Gnutella-like distribution system and get the EFF to defend us. Long Live Free (as in loader) dom!

  • I can't speak for anybody else, but I have bought around 5 cds in the last month or so based on what downloaded from Napster. Then I deleted the cruddy 128 bitrate files and made 160's of the same songs and some others as well, for personal (and yes, public) use.
  • Imagine a universe in which every joe shmoe could sell MP3s on his website and keep the lot. One of us is imagining a real possibility here, one of us is fantasising.

    Isn't this what the RIAA does with CDs?

  • And you will be the replacing our capitalist system with... What? Communism?
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • What lawsuits has Slashdot used against its competitors?

    Lawsuits aren't the slashdot style. Instead yu get a lot of people to email them. dDoS by proxy. I do recall randomly looking through the archives and seeing a story bitching about someone hijacking the look of /. though.
  • In an economy that grows at 3-5 percent of course record sales go up. But are they growing faster than ever before. Is there growth tracking with the rest of the economy. I haven't seen these figures so I can't say. But that is the question that needs asking. In My mind they probably have. Because I believe in the argument that napster promotes music and helps the industry. But like the say opinions are like...
  • The last few weeks, I've been unable to log into any of the official napter servers, it always times out in the "finding best server" phase. However, I can log into just about any of the unofficial networks.

    `Course, I can't seem to log into the gnutella network either. *grumble*

  • My logic stated nothing about alternative piracy. My logic is based on Napster cannot be solely blamed. I still believe a more valid study would be to compare bandwidth useage in local colleges compared to cd purchases coupled with polls of college students. Why do some retailers report great sales in their college area stores and others report losses? Inventory, selection, and price are usually the causes.
  • Slashdot doesn't take a huge slug of money from its readers to pay for monopoly profits and heavy image advertising, thus its not vulnerable to this kind of attack.

    Really? Slashdot is in the business of selling comments. This comment I am writing right now becomes Slashdot's property and they make money by selling it. I have never received a paycheck for any of the hundreds of comments I have written. Slashdot keeps all of the money for the comments with the posters write to themselves.

    With the record industry, the music exec's sell the work which the musicians make, but they also give it to the people who produced and wrote the music. Slashdot, on the other hand, just robs its users blind because it makes money from them without any compensation at all.

  • http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/20000912/263219 2s.htm
  • If I was a huge, monolithic, corporation pulling all the strings, living in the dark ages, and refusing to change --- and yet making billions of dollars, I wouldn't change a damn thing either!

    I would never allow innovations to occur. Why? because someone might do it better than me, and eventually put me out of business.

    Look at how fast the computer industry changes today. IBM is kicking themselves in the ass for letting the PC get out of their control. Hot companies come and go in the computer industry (just look at Apple, Novell, WordPerfect, oh.. the list is so so long).

    So you and I might agree that we'd love to see a new distribution method. We even say that it'll make the Big-5 more money! But the Big-5 see it differently: Research, development, and then competition.

    The Big-5 even own the artists. They have everything under control, and every dollar spent in the music industry practically goes to them. Why would they want to change, and maybe lose all that?

    I think that if they did adopt MP3-CD's, and rolled with the whole paradigm shift, that it would of course be profitable, but then all of a sudden the artists might figure out that they could do the same thing on their own. It all boils down to that carrot they dangle in front of all the artists... that they too can be rich and famous like [fill in famous artist name here]. -- But only if you sign up 7 years with them.

    On a final note... yes, maybe Napster won't get slapped with copyright violations exactly like Mp3.com did, but you can be guaranteed that if they lose, they will owe the Big-5 some big bucks... either in the form of the court costs, and/or "damages" done. If the Big-5 prove that they could have increased sale by 8% last year instead of 6%, maybe Napster will owe that 2%. (what is 2% of a bazillion dollars??)

    On top of that, Napster has no other form of interest to users... if next time you log in, and you see only my girlfriend's sister's boyfriend's band available for download... just how long will you stick around?

    Have a nice day,
    The Big-5 is....

    Rader

  • It seems that people are filling in lines that MAY not be there at all. We have two facts:
    • Napster usage is up.
    • Music sales are up.

    Just because both have a common variable (music) does not mean that Music sales are up just because people are using Napster. It could be a swell in the number of good artists (I doubt it) but we Don't know, so we can't just assume that it is Napster that's driving record sales through the roof. We're jumping to conclusions that can't be made yet.

  • The demographics for Napster are far wider than what the RIAA has been claiming, 50% of the users are over 40 according to some reports. This is a group that did not, in general, consider music a vital part of their lives anymore. Napster has re-awakened their interest in music.

    I'm 41 and my interest in music is still a vital part of my life, so I take exception to that. The problem here is that us older folk just don't have anytime to discover new music, so we listen to boring-ass classic rock stations playing the same ole shit from the Doors and the Rolling Stones over and over...

    So how does one get to listen to new stuff, say "Hey, that rocks", and go buy it? I don't have time to watch MTV (although when I try to watch, they never are playing music videos anyway). The radio anymore is either classic rock or hip hop. I don't get to clubs anymore. All that us old folk do is work, go home, fall asleep. The only radio I can receive where I work is WJBR, easy listening crap.

    While I've also never had the patience to use Napster, I've certainly had friends and co-workers ICQ me mp3s of Rage Against the Machine, Kitie, and Dream Theater. I load them into Sonique on loop, listen a few times while doing other work in the office, say "Wow, this shit is great" and I go out and have purchased the CDs. In the case of Dream Theater, I've even went to see their concerts. (RIAA better sue AOL/ICQ I guess for allowing files to be transfered thru it...)

    I can honestly say, ALL of my CD purchases in the past few years were the direct result of listening to ripped mp3s.

    Does it make it right? Probably not. But the music industry still has their heads up their ass and if they were smart, they'd figure out someway to adapt and profit from this new era. This is not going to go away. They better adapt or they can die.

  • I'm 41 and my interest in music is still a vital part of my life, so I take exception to that.

    No offence intended...I'm eight days away from the big four-oh myself. Any recomendations for what I should do for my mid-life crisis?

    Music remains a vital part of my life as well. I have Napster and Scour Exchange running on my system at the moment, and have been using them to find stuff...especially by musicians who do not fall into the limited range of what the major record companies are willing to sell anymore. If an artist doesn't have a million-seller hit with their first album, they're out on their ass. Music sharing programs allow so-called "marginal" artists to continue having careers.

  • /. sells eyeballs to advertisers, not comments. The comments are there to attract eyeballs. You get the satisfaction of seeing your drivel on the screen and knowing thousands of others will see it too. /. get the ad money. The advertisers get eyeballs. Everyone is happy.

    Mr Streettroll's "attack" on /.'s business model fails because the ads don't really impinge on the pleasure readers and commenters get from the sure. Your argument fails because clearly you are continuing to comment, so you must be happy with the system. And actually submitters retain a copyright on their messages.
  • I've been trying to find a good way to hear new (to me) music. Downloading random mp3s from Napster or IRC just doesn't seem that productive. I found a new site Echo.com [echo.com] that lets you customize streaming music to your computer. As each song plays you get to rate the song, the artist, and the album. You can also rate them on the web site The web site then uses these rankings plus the types of music you select when you set up your station to send you a custom stream.

    Your steam includes songs you've ranked highly and new music that is similar to what you've ranked highly (you get to select how much new music you hear compared to ranked songs). It has an incredible selection of music. Rock (old and new), Jazz, Rap, Country, Religious, and other types. There are well known artists (to me at least) like The Black Crowes, Eminem, Pink Floyd, Dr. Dre, Fleetwood Mac, and Limp Bizkit mixed in with people I've never heard of. Exactly what I want.

    You can set up different "stations" with different music types and invite other people to listen. You can also chat with the other people listening to the same station as you. It requires Real Player 8, Flash, and a recent version of Netscape or Internet Explorer and it works great on my Win 2000 box. They also give you points for listening (based on how long you listen), and you can redeem your points for stuff.

    This seems like it would be a great way for new artists to get noticed. The player has a BUY button on it that takes you to amazon to let you buy the artists CD, and if people were rating them highly, they would be played more often as an Echo suggestion.
  • I would have to agree with this comment. Napster was probably the best thing to happen to the RIAA. If they want to control mp3 trading, Napster is there best bet. If mp3 trading goes back to IRC(well, that is where I used to do it at least) and ftp sites(another familiar favorite) the RIAA is going to have to try even harder to control mp3 trading, and in my opinion, they are going to fail miserably. I have yet to try Gnutella, but, I think that I am going to give it a try tonite and see what is it all about.... Chris
  • Hate to break it to you, but most people don't have the broadband access necessary to make Napster really worthwhile. Even though they could get it for free, it would not be nearly as worth their while at 4k/sec (modem speed) as it would be at 60k/sec (lowspeed DSL) or at 200k/sec (T1). So I don't think people are using Napster as much as you think they are.

  • You really need to study up on both economics and logic. The market determines the value of an object. That determination is greatly affected by the scarcity of an object. Diamonds are more valuable than quartz primarily because diamonds are rare and quartz isn't. There is no scarcity of a copy of digital information. Therefore, it has no real, intrinsic value. Thus, the system tries to create an artificial scarcity by restricting distribution. This artificial scarcity creates an artificial value. IOW, info is valuable because it is restricted. You can't then argue that it's distribution should be restricted because it's valuable. That's circular reasoning - begging the question. It's logically invalid.

    Your second fallacy is the assumption that information can be "owned." Only one entity (either an individual or a group acting as a unit) can own a piece of physical property. If I take that property from you, you're deprived of it's possesion and use. That's exactly why there is a legitimate basis for ownership of physical goods. There is no similar reasoning for digital information. The "right of ownership" is as artifically created as it's value. And you can't use the fact that ownership of intellectual property does (legally) exist to justify its continued existence.

  • ...note to self... (Score:4)

    by Tony Shepps ( 333 ) on Tuesday September 12, 2000 @02:51AM (#786397)
    (...note to self... invest in stock of hard drive manufacturers.)
    --

  • Re:Not really... (Score:5)

    by hey! ( 33014 ) on Tuesday September 12, 2000 @03:04AM (#786400) Homepage Journal
    I was one of the people who was motiviated by the law suit to try out Napster. Being a middle aged fogey not plugged into the campus scene, I'd never heard of it until it started making legal headlines.

    I was completely floored by how easy to use and convenient it was.

    I suppose there's no way to know scientifically how Napster affects CD sales, but common sense suggests that it will help them at first but eventually hinder them as home networking and audio technology advances. Right now, I don't want to be bothered lugging my laptop to my stereo and plugging it in, and the limited storage of portable MP3 players makes the CD medium more convenient. BUT -- if I had an MP3 player on my stereo that was connected by wireless network to my computer I'd gladly never buy another CD again.

    The process of playback right now is inconvenient right now, but the process of selection is way more convenient with Napster than going to the record store, whose selection in my tastes is usually limited. It's silly these days for selection to be limited by the physical carrier of the information. I think it would be cool if I could go to a record store and have them custom burn CDs for me! That could be a interesting business plan for Napster -- provide distributed MP3 sharing for record stores, with royalties goint to the distributors of course.

    Right now, I haven't decided on the morality of the Napster service, so I haven't used it that much. When I was trying it out I used it to download stuff by long dead artists who were screwed by their labels to begin with, and things which were just not available through the normal distribution mechanism. It seems like the copyright system really protects the distributors of music rather than the artists, which tends to make me think, "screw 'em". However, I would be happier if I knew the artists were copacetic with my using their music that way.
  • Seriously, the point that Napster is just a tool needs to be brought up repeatedly in this court case. After all, that's all the service is. If some Napster execs were encouraging people to illegally copy music, charge them. If some Napster users were illegally copying music outside of the bounds of fair use trading, charge them. (Although I'm sure the record industry will conveniently forget about the fair use aspect and just charge everyone)


    You know, escort services are just tools too. They just provide people with a date for the night, it's just that some people use it as an excuse for prostitution (no I'm not against prostitution, but it provides a good example). If these services are found to be providing prostitutes, they are either fined HUGELY or more likely shut down. There may be one or tow guys who use them to really get a date for a party and not have sex, but in general that isn't happening. Sounds kinda like Napster. NApster can't control what it's users do, just like an escort service can't control what it's employees do. They both can be used for legitimate purpose, but aren't be the overwhelming majority. So why should Napster get off scot free when it was designed for illegal activity, encourages people to engage in illegal activity, and turns a blind eye to that illegal activity?

  • I think you are perfectly free to do this. I just won't visit your site.

    I like what's here. I want Rob to continue producing it. I actually opted not to kill banner ads for this site for that very reason. I'd even pay a small monthly fee for a no-banner subscription.

    I still think you ought to be free to copy it. I wouldn't visit your site, and I don't think most of the people here would either.

  • scientists prove that consumption of icecream dramatically increases your odds of drowning.
  • ..Napster's usage has quadrupled... it stands among the fastest growing software apps ever.

    You know why? All the publicity it's been getting has sparked the curiosity of millions of people, and millions of these millions are saying "Woah! Free Music!"

    And since the record industry sold more CDs then ever last year, that of course proves what all these lawsuits are about *cough*.

    That proves nothing. Ground Beef sales are up, because more people are buying skillets. Sure, they're related but not necessarily proportional.

    "The notion of copyright was not invented by artists to protect themselves from honest individuals sharing their enthusiasm about their work," he writes. "It was invented by artists to protect themselves from dishonest and hypocritical individuals and companies exploiting their work without their consent." - Prince (The artist formerly known as 'The Artist', now known as 'Prince'), from this ABCNews Article [go.com]

    While I don't view Napster in the same light that Prince does, he makes an excellent point about copyright.

    Unfortunately, Napster is raping that copyright from the artists. Don't tell me that all Napster users preview their music before they buy it. That excuse was invented by the company's founder, and people trying to justify stealing. No matter how much you argue to the contrary, you know DAMN well that most Napster users are using it to get free music. (I will admit, there are some users on there who DO sample music before buying. Don't label me one, though. I don't use Napster, and I've only SEEN it used once. If I like a song on the radio, I'll buy the CD - Single, or Album.)

    -- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?

  • tewl noted a CNN story that says that Napster's usage has quadrupled...

    That's not a very useful blurb... I daresay Napster's usage has quadrupled many times since its inception. Now I'm going to have to follow the link, and actually read the article. What's the world coming to?

    Ah, okay... since February. Sheesh... doing my own research... thought this was a news site... ;-)

  • Wouldn't work. You'd have to pay for the bandwidth, which if you get anything like the hits of the original slashdot would take a fair whack out of your pocket, and of course you'd have no banner ads and no customer loyalty to support you. Even if /. charged you'd have a hard time.

    The economics of the situation are different. Slashdot doesn't take a huge slug of money from its readers to pay for monopoly profits and heavy image advertising, thus its not vulnerable to this kind of attack.

    Of course, acknowledging the actual situation would make maintaining your trollish moral outrage a little harder, huh ?

  • Re:Prove What? (Score:5)

    by ZanshinWedge ( 193324 ) on Tuesday September 12, 2000 @01:21AM (#786413)
    Almost all of the core of Intellectual Property law concerns profit (and not some concept of "infringement" of rights), if there is no financial damage to the copyright owner and no financial gain to the "copyright violater", then it becomes something very much different (and something much harder to stop through legal action). Additionally, in this case, if there is no loss of profit for the artists or record labels, then the claim that Napster represents "fair use" is strengthened a bit.

  • *cough* (Score:2)

    by CLorox ( 7 )
    money,power,greed,FLEETING MONOPOLY*sneeze*

    Oh excuse me. No, but seriously it proves the point that I have always seend with things like napster. Many people dont just use it in place of cds, they use it in addition to cds. Whether as a decision factor in making a purchase (which is understandable with high cd prices) or as an easy alternative for home listening for cd owners, most folks do not know how to rip a cd to mp3s, (enter napster). The freedom of not having to keep popping in cds and archaicley (sp) searching through your 100+1 or 5 disk cd changer can be a real pain in the ass and it will hopefully be presented in napster's case. Things have to change.

    Its a tool not a torture device for RIAA goons.

  • It would be interesting if the napster server logs were ever opened up, to see what people actually downloaded. I wonder what percentage would be Top 40 material?
  • and control. Which RIAA will eventually lose if they allow other ways of distributing songs. Imagine a universe where every joe shmoe could sell MP3s legally on his website and give a portion to the artist. RIAA wouldn't like that very much...
    ...but they wouldn't be around to bitch about it.
  • Just because they profited SOME doesn't mean they didn't LOSE profit because of Napster. It's pretty hard for either side to prove how Napster affected profits, although I'm (sadly) sure that the record folks have "projected statististics" and whatnot that they could reference...

    Er, whats so sad about it? If they get their projected statistics from a firm which has a track record for acurate projections +/- X% and have the paper trail to show that those were the projections, it will be viable evidence.

    What they will probably have is way more than that, though. They will likely show up with past and projected ratios that will blow all this sophmoric "they made more money *cough*cough*" stuff out of the water.

    I can just see it: RIAA witness "I work for an independant accounting firm that was hired to examine the effect of napster on music sales overall and within various subgroups. The overall sales rates were within or slightly below projections and trends from previous years. However, while all previous years showed a consistancy of increase or decrease between demographic groups, this year there was a huge change in certain youth subgroups, which were either statisitically below the increase posted by other groups or were actually decreased from previous years. This sort of disconnect in trends between groups is largly unprecedented, and I can only note that the polling company we hired found that the decreased demographics were those with the highest Napster and file sharing usage. If these subgroups had been within even the lowest range of projected buying given the other groups numbers, the companies I represent would have made millions of dollars more this year."

    Slashdotter "Hey, your sales went up, you must be full of it! Lars sucks! When is Natalie Portman coming out with a record?"

    Wonder which argument will matter to a judge expereinced with copyright cases?

    -Kahuna Burger

  • Um, I didn't mean it was shared *between* tribes, but I would venture *most* Native American societies were pretty communal, and believed that no one person could claim ownership to land, any more than they could to air; that people were peers with the rest of nature and were not their to dominate it, but to share in it. "Controlled" is also a different thing than "owned". Even people who "controlled" the land had a different view of it than Europeans.

  • Conspiracy theory no. 787b (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Seems like the record companies' efforts to stop Napster are suspiciously effective at marketing Napster's service. I wonder if Napster actually *paid* to get sued... ...or maybe I've read one too many spy novels lately :-)
  • Yes, innocent people have to pay for the actions of a minority of people who behave badly. Just like when I rent a video I have to pay a 50 cent surcharge regardless of whether I do any damage, because it is their insurance against that one person who will screw up the $18 cassette.

    This is not abnormal in itself. The question is, does the recording industry get to dictate that innocent consumers have to pay for the actions of badly behaved ones. The gov could easily say, hey, you're selling a product which is infinately copyable...we'll keep our nose out until you present us with specific cases to bring to court, but until then it's your problem to deal with the market you choose to operate in. I don't see a tax on paper because it is potentially a medium for copyright infringement (I don't know, maybe there *is* a tax on this, although at that point it becomes pretty stupid
  • The RIAA is not lashing out against Napster over lost revenue in CD sales. Its about much more than that. Its about control. If Napster continues to bring the world examples of music from around the world, pretty soon people will be making up their own minds about what artists they enjoy. Superstars will have to create themselves based on talent and real appeal (not just sex) not just be created by the recording industry's tested advertising formulae. If the masses stop flocking like sheep, the era of the quadrouple platinum album (not a single song created by the artist) will become a memory. The manipulation of the crowds (drink geeky cola, wear goofy jeans) will fade to a memory.

    What the RIAA is fighting for here is the right to maintain the monopoly they have created and the right to advertise in it.

    Its like shootin fishin a barrel.

    I used to be upset 'cause I had no sig
    then I met a man who had no feet,
    so I stole his sig
    he wasn't goin' anywhere with it anyway
  • Sorry to tell you BUT sales went down near colleges where napster is used most... while annual sales are 120% of what they were in 1997, near colleges it's 98% meaning that around colleges it's 22% LESS than everywhere else, AND it's going down. Reciprocal(TM), Inc. did the study on this.
  • That one gets my nomination for worst analogy of the year award. An escort service is not a tool, it's an escort service! A screwdriver is a tool. If you stab someone with it instead of using it to screw things in, you are the one who is using it incorrectly. Napster is the exact same thing. If people are using it to break the law, the record companies should go after those people.


    The escort service is a tool for finding a date. You canuse it improperly (to find a prostitute), but that's not what it there for (ask them, they'll tell you this). Just like Napster isn't there to find copy-righted MP3...oh wait, they even said that's what they are there for. Maybe it is a bad analogy, at least an escort service pretends to be a legitimate business.

  • Funny thing is, the RIAA isn't going after people burning bit-for-bit CDs or copying to tape, etc. They have already convinced congress to tax those media to "compensate" for the potential piracy. So when you buy a writable CD, you are already helping defraying the cost of potential piracy. The thing is, hard drives are not under this taxed category which gives the RIAA room to cry bloody murder about all the atrocities being committed by storing stuff on hard drives, while keeping shut up about CD burning, tape copying, and other forms of storage. Not to say that taxing the media was a great thing in the first place, but I wonder if we just had a small tax on hard drives, like the other media, would that essentially moot the RIAA's argument? We'd ALREADY be paying to defray piracy, just as we do with tapes and CDs, and they'd have no argument.

    IMHO, the consumer comes first, so if some company makes some thing they can't control, guess what - that's tough! Find a new business! Nobody is guaranteeing that you can make profit!
  • "There's no such thing as bad publicity".

    Yea, that's the saying. But it's only true until you lose in court and have to shut down. And then pay for each copyright infringement, and all the VC's lose their money. I think Napster was rocking and rolling well before the law suit started, and could have implimented their business plan and been successful (Whatever their business plan might be of course)

    Rader

  • Let me add to this a bit. Jefferson makes his position that what we call intellectual property now, is inherently different in nature than physical property and cannot and should not be bound by the same rules. Ideas are infinately reproduceable and don't deprive the owner of their use. I can almost imagine "ideas" as an atmosphere a society breathes, each breathing in and out and recycling, etc. Now some people over here think you shouldn't be allowed to breath their air, and they will enlist the government to attempt to dilineate whose air is whose and under which circumstances you can inhale and exhale. This gets us into the ridiculous patent situation we are in and generally stifles and suffocates the atmosphere of ideas. Sure this is a very abstract analogy, but I imagine it is something like what the Native Americans felt when the white man came to their universally shared resource, the land, the air, the water, and started talking about who "owned" what land and who "owned" what water and who "owned" what air. It was completely foreign and uncomprehensible.
  • Imagine a universe where every joe shmoe could sell MP3s legally on his website and give a portion to the artist.

    Imagine a universe in which every joe shmoe could sell MP3s on his website and keep the lot. One of us is imagining a real possibility here, one of us is fantasising.

    Imagine all the people, sharing all the world .....

  • Fantastic Advertising (Score:3)

    by grahamsz ( 150076 ) on Tuesday September 12, 2000 @01:29AM (#786450) Homepage Journal
    It just proves that the RIAA have dont a phenomenal amount for napsters business.

    Just like gnutella would have probably quietly disappeared into the woodwork, when AOL pulled it off the site they catapulted it into the limelight.

    How many other software packages besides napster and windows 95 have actually made it into the mainstream press. There aren't many.

    Sadly what the RIAA dont realise is whilst they may well stop napster the product, they will almost certainly never stop the thinking behind it and the desire to trade in mp3s.

    Sadly for them, napster was probably their best chance at controlling it.
  • Welcome to the USA....land of IP, and home of the grave. Void where prohibited by law. This offer not valid in Maine or Iowa. Some restrictions may apply, see store for details. The USA is not solely responsible for any damages incurred by use of the country. See Disclaimer below. Including but not limited to. We own everything. Don't use our stuff. We cover our butts for everything.

    I think our forefathers died for marketing.

  • Re:Not really... (Score:3)

    by Lonesmurf ( 88531 ) on Tuesday September 12, 2000 @01:29AM (#786452) Homepage
    Or perhaps, when Napster gets pulled, and within that month or so in which all the clueless internet users fumble about trying to find a suitable replacement, the RIAA finds that CD and music sales dramatically plummet. I would say that this would be pretty conclusive evidence that the use of Napster is directly tied to the amount of CDs that are bought. That or millions of users go on a 'CD strike' and refuse to buy CDs based on the fact that the RIAA is a bullying monster.. but that will happen about the same time that pigs fly. The general populace doesn't seem to be smart enough to employ a boycott on it's own.

    Too bad, that.

    Rami
    --
  • >On another note, I'm sick of napster. It's
    >sucking all the bandwidth on my campus college,
    >and I'm quite looking forward for it to be
    >banned. We've got 2 T1's with about 1300
    >students.

    Well, your problem is not Napster. Your problem is that (2*T1)/1300students == totally fscking INSUFFICENT bandwidth!!!

    Drag your IT dept into the street and have them shot, drawn and quartered, and their heads impaled on stakes in front of the CompSci building as a warning to the next ten generations NOT to be a totally incompetent MORON!

    Then have your new IT staff get a reasonable amount of bandwidth.

    But don't blame Napster because some cretinous beancounter got the stupid idea that 3Mbps was a sufficent amount of bandwidth to divvy up between 1300 people.

    Hell, I have a 640/640Kbps DSL at home, and I BY MYSELF am able to saturate that line far too often! I'd get more, but I'm too far from the phoneCo's office. That's just over a THIRD of a T1. I can't imagine the torture of shareing it with 216 other ppl! Hell, you'd be better off w/ a 56K dialup!

    john
    Resistance is NOT futile!!!

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

  • > If I like a song on the radio, I'll buy the CD - Single, or Album.

    And what if you listen to, say, Celtic folk music, and the radio stations around you play Top 40?

    What if you listen to techno, and the only radio stations you get in your car are country & western?

    Part of the point of Napster (more so with MP3.com, but yes, still with Napster) is that there are all these artists out there that we have never heard of, that you can "sample" before going out and blowing all that money on a CD that you might hate.

    How many times have you been in a record store and picked up a CD because you thought the name of the artist was neat/you liked the cover art/your best friend knew someone who knew someone who once listened to the band? If your record store is like most, there aren't any listening stations. Are you willing to pay $22 for a CD you might hate? Or would you simply download three tracks from Napster, listen to them, and buy the CD if you liked those 3 tracks?

    I'm not claiming that's all that Napster is used for, but it's certainly a use. It's still copyright infringement, yes, but it's copyright infringement that leads to sales. Which means that any intelligent artist should support it. Sure, there are people who are using it to 'steal' music. (Though I question how it's 'stealing', as there's no actual deprivation of property going on, and a lot of times, the people doing the download are the people who wouldn't buy the album after all.) But there are more people who are using it as a stepping stone to buy more music.

    --K.
  • The more you attack something, the more you become connected to it.

    Well... Maybe that's not quite appropriate, but it seems to me that the RIAA's done Napster a tremendous favor by suing the crap out of them. Maybe Napster should move their legal expenses into "Advertising Budget" and take a tax credit...

    And see, now that all those people have got it in their heads how easy it is to find and trade music on the net, they won't stop once Napster goes away. The big intellectual hump is not finding a method to trade them -- they'll go on IRC or gnutilla or the net news groups. The big intellectual hump is investing the effort to investigate the technology. Installing the MP3 player, making sure the hardware is up to snuff, maybe getting some CD ripping software, etc.

  • Yes, innocent people have to pay for the actions of a minority of people who behave badly.

    This mischaracterizes the "DAT tax"

    In 1992, when the AHRA was passed, there was about as much copying of CDs onto DATs as there is copying of DVDs onto blank writable DVDs. None. The only people using DAT were:

    o musicians who wanted to make high quality digital recordings without having to give away their copyrights to the recording industry to do so.

    o Tape traders (The Grateful Dead sold special tickets that allowed fans to bring in taping equipment.) Tapers and tape traders saw DAT as the end of the "9th generation cassette that sounds like shit" phenomenon.

    o A few audiophiles who were using it as a toy.

    Blank DAT tapes cost more than CDs. DAT tapes are fragile, wear out quickly, and have all of the inconveniences associated with VHS. It's a tape. You have to rewind it. It can easily jam. There was no reason, and to this day there is no reason to copy a CD onto a DAT.

    DAT's functional benefits arise from two features that have nothing to do with copying commercial recordings -- a two hour recording time with no tape flip, and rugged portableness.

    There were no signs of consumer abuse of DAT in 1992, and none to this day. The DAT tax was the direct result of the RIAA holding the player manufacturers hostage -- there was a standing threat to sue the first player manufacturer who brought a consumer-oriented deck to market. This was the "problem" addressed by the AHRA, not any actual consumer use of the technology.

    The wording of the AHRA reflects this. The "threat" being addressed by the AHRA was the threat of the RIAA suing player and media manufacturers, and consumers. Not consumer misbehavior.
  • There's a truism in the marketing business There's no such thing as bad publicity.

    Now I doubt that it's true for Firestone [tires], but it certainly is true for Napster. Now maybe the politicians will stop negative advertising.

    You can debate what quadruples means, especially from such a low base. But it's clear the growth rate is unusually high, and the real question is what would it have been in the absence of the suit.

    The Napster application is very compelling, but the suit got word out through many channels very quickly, and I suspect attracted more users than it repelled.

  • More URLs to related stories (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Here [zdnet.com] is a better link to the story. It also mentions that:
    '35 percent of all Napster users are between the ages of 35 and 54. Just 15 percent of all Napster users are between the ages of 18 and 24.

    And, the RIAA have a market report [riaa.org] on their site which covers US Recorded Music Shipments for the first half of this year, which roughly covers the period mentioned by the Media Metrix survey.

    In the RIAA's own words 'The number of full-length CDs manufacturers shipped to the U.S. market is at an all-time high, growing 6.0% from this time last year'

  • When VCRs were introduced, "they" said that people would stop going to the movie theatre... Nope, people want to "go out" sometimes - a foreign concept to some geeks though.

    When e-commerce started up, "they" said that it would take a bite out of "bricks and mortar" commerce... apparently not - at least not yet.

    So, now there is napster - and "they" say that it will decrease music sales - apparently not.

    Never believe what "they" say - but always listen - you never know, "they" might be right someday.

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