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Music Media

Napster Back in Court 238

Posted by Hemos from the so-sick-of-this-story dept.
Wakko Warner writes "According to this article, Napster lawyers (and RIAA lawyers) were grilled today by appellate judges. What's more interesting, though, is that, to appease the RIAA, Napster may institute a subscription-based service. Would you pay $4.95 a month to use Napster? "
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Napster Back in Court More

Napster Back in Court

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  • If they let me pay by the day/week/month/year, then maybe. I can't say that I would want to fork out the 60 some bucks that it would take for an entire year (I didn't spend that much on cd's before napster came along).

    Now, if I could buy a weeks worth of access for $3.00, then I probably would (and saturate my pipe for as long as possible).

    I don't think the subscription thing will fly. If the courts say that they have to pay royalties, then they will have to charge per download, and that can get expensive...
  • They claim they'd make $500m by charging $5/month, but that's assuming that everyone continues using their service. I really doubt I would. Not that $5 is too much really, I just don't want to subscribe. However, I would be much more likely to pay a few cents per download. Even though it would add up quickly and save me no money over the subscription-based service, at least I know what I'm paying for and can decide on a per-song basis. Maybe it's all in my head, but I'd find micropayments much more appealing. What does everyone else think?

  • Only in Canada. In the US, regular CDRs are not taxed, while the music-specific ones are. I don't know what dumbass came up with musicCDRs, but only an idiot would pay for one when the regular CDRs are cheaper by as much as dollars per disc.
  • Well, if the RIAA wants money for it, aren't they then condoning it, meaning you can pay your 4.95 and download all you want without getting in trouble? If they want money, then that obviously would be for copyrighted material, not for the indie stuff which the have no rights to, right? That's how I would take it.
  • ...only if I was getting some kind of guarantee as to the quality/availability of the music I was d/ling. EMusic [emusic.com] gives me that sort of guarantee, so I do pay them, and more than $5 a month, for a subscription. But Napster isn't a content provider (or mostly not), and I'm not going to pay them to take the chance that other people aren't going to dick around with file names, bitrates, etc, etc...

    Any sort of subscription model for Napster will fail, both because of the lack of a quality guarantee, and because, if they aren't kicking some of that subscription back to people sharing their files online, people won't put their music up to trade. You can either sell music or trade music - you can't sell trading music.

    -Cyclopatra-

  • hey now, how do you know that I didn't download my music to my DAT tape?
  • Come on, man, just last week I pulled out my $9.95 Casio and set it to "Rock Beat" and did a rap of "The Real Slim Shady". I forgot most of the lyrics, but it's still pretty good. I wanted to edit out the part where my mom told me to turn it down because she was on the phone, but I accidentally taped eighteen seconds of ABBA in the middle right after she stopped talking instead. Anyway, it's got to be worth at least $5 to someone.
  • Emusic.com does this and I assume they are making money. $10/month download whatever you want, I guess the banner ads are paying decent money or something. Great deal, but I do have my wonders about the profitablity. Until then I'll just keep downloading my music from them legally. Beats the hell out of dealing with napster and partial songs, disconnects, and slow downloads
  • Why would you do this?? When you are downloading files from random users of the service there is no garauntee that you will get a good copy. There have been many instances in which I've pulled down an MP3 only to find that:

    • The playback is distorted.
    • I don't have a complete recording of the song
    • Or the damn thing makes mpg123 or whatever else I'm using throw it up and not play it.

    If I'm going to pay for a service, I'm going to expect quality. (i.e. non of the above should ever happen.)

    In order to assure this, Napster, RIAA, or whoever is going to have to set up servers distributing MP3s. Not gonna happen... And besides that, it defeats the entire purpose of peer-to-peer. I'm not going to pay just so I can share files with random, unsolicited people. Why would anybody else??

    If they can't make any quality garauntees they're just gonna piss some people off...

  • You do realize you already do so. You are paying someone for your internet connection. Even if you think its free, your school is providing it from your tuition.

    With netzero and others, you are selling your soul. So what is so unusual about paying to get on another network? Back in the days of BBS's, you did it to. I think what hurts the most is that it was once free and will be subscription based if this fee comes into play.

    ---
  • It's kind of funny. I've been following the Napster debate on slashdot since it started many months ago. And everytime something about Napster or one of these other file sharing programs was posted a whole bunch of supporters said they would be happy to pay 50 cents or so for a single of a band they wanted. Now that napster has said they are going to charge 4.95 for downloading feature, what happens? A bunch of you say I'd rather go to another sesrvice. Now either you like the Napster service for what it offers, or you just wanted something for nothing. So either swallow your pride and if Napster cuts a deal with the RIAA continue to use it or realize you are hypocrites and jsut say what you truly want and thats anthing you can get for free. Yes I know this is probably flame bait, but I'll deal with that.
  • The other thing that makes the 4.95 a month proposal pointless is that Napster users could just get Napigator and switch to OpenNap.

    I think the RIAA isn't interested in the proposal mainly because they want to extend their control and total ownership of music distribution into the online space... but also because they know that it would be pointless. The cat is already out of the bag.


    Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
  • What is Napster paying for? They do not distribute music, Napster just provides information about who has what.

    What would that mean exactly for users? Does this mean if you are a Napster subscriber, it's legal for you to put any music up for sharing on Napster if you pay the fee? Napster users didn't sign anything and aren't part of the lawsuit, how can it suddenly be OK for them to share?

    If it's not legal under the proposed system for users to distribute all the files they like, then again I ask - what is the $4.95/mo for?
  • If Napster goes subscription, they're not getting any cash from me- with bandwidth backing me I have my collection to the point where it will never get stale... and if Napster goes away, I'll just do what I've always done before it was even a conceptual wet dream- hit the FTP servers. The recording industry might kill Napster, but they can't stop a million guys with broadband and FTP server software from sharing their collections.
  • You can see the arguments for yourself here [c-span.org] (in RealMedia format) on Cspan.org.
  • *Dutch boy is putting his finger in the dyke, and more holes are appearing.. *

    well we can dream :)~~, but hamsap references aside...

    In the story the Dutch boy saved the village, it makes more sense if you reverse it.

    The RIAA are trying to stop the leak into thier territory, but behind the wall there is a whole ocean of file sharing going on, they can't see over the wall, they just stick their fingers in what they can see.

    Umm ok that didn't make much sense after all, made much more sense in my head....

    Ho Hum

  • Make up some incredibly trivial "content protection" scheme designed to keep out RIAA, lawyers, or anyone else who might give them trouble, then if those people get in, sue on the basis that they broke the "content protection" mechanism.

    :)
  • Why bother? Just use one of the many free alternatives.
  • OK, let me get this straight. They want me to pay $5/month for the privilege of sharing files. I sincerely doubt they're giving any license to any music, either. So it's more along the lines of $5/month to share files and have every transaction tagged with with username and personal information.

    On the other hand, if someone would offer me on-demand music, off a centralized server so I can get more than just the currently popular song off of each album, and I was licensed to play the music, I'd probably be willing to spend more on the order of $50/month.
  • yes sir i have. not to mention speaking personally to many professinal musicians and trying to sway their opinion away from the mal-formed opinions spit down at them from their record labels. also, ive been writing numerous posts such as this one on various web sites, calling in to radio shows , and preaching to anybody who'll listen.....

    "sex on tv is bad, you might fall off..."
  • >$1 per file for a high quality mp3 direct from the label/distributor. I will pay for the added value of getting a high quality mp3.

    You do realize that this would cost you more than simply buying the CD, and would leave you without the art, right?

    Of course, it would buy you conveneince. But at such a high price, I don't know if it would be worth it to anyone else.
  • You're comparing apples and oranges when you compare the price of a CD to the potential subscription rate for a Napster service.

    My MP3 collection is huge (~16Gig), but it is not nearly as convenient as my CD collection, nor is the quality the same. Add to that the fact that it takes considerable time and effort to collect from Napster and I'd argue that purchased CD's have a greater intrinsic value than Napster downloads.

    That may change as time goes by and we have more products that make MP3 collections more useful. But for now the value of MP3s is somewhat limited. My MP3s give me exposure to music that I would not generally buy, and allows me to screen my CD purchases so I never buy a CD I don't love. That is valuable to me, but I'm not sure if I would go for monthly flat rates, or what dollar value I would go for. I'd have to ponder that.

  • Re:anyways (Score:3)

    by mgoyer ( 164191 ) on Monday October 02, 2000 @12:01PM (#738093) Homepage
    Everybody is reporting on it, but what are we doing about it? Who is starting the letter writing campaings, who is starting the boycotts. wheres the flyers. Everybody wants to get on their little hind legs and bitch, but whos doing anything about it?

    People are speaking with their wallets at Fairtunes [fairtunes.com] and sending their money directly to the artist and cutting out the record labels. I totally agree that we need more action and less whining.

    Matt.

  • Never foret OpenNap

  • This reminds me of the question... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Would you really pay 60 dollars to use Windows?

    Though these are different things in perspective, they are similar in some ways. One of them being that while a free operating system with similar features, and in many cases, more robust features is available, there will be those that don't "get it from a friend" and purchase it. Likewise there will be those that pay for Napster - me personally? No, I'll find a free alternative and one that spits in the face of communist musician whoring :)

    It's monday and I'm stupid, moderate this appropriately!
  • hmmmm...sounds familiar....oh! Offspring!
  • I'm not going to pay $4.95 so that other people that i don't know can steal my bandwith... if napster intends on charging for their service, their service better become more than just a listing of other peoples files... right now it's based on sharing, i get free mp3's if other people let me get mp3's from them... however if i'm going to have to pay for it, napster had better post the mp3's on their servers, and actually provide more of a service than just listing other peoples archieves.. if 20 million users start paying $4.95 a month, their is going to be a lot of money coming in.. more than enough for the RIAA and napster to split.. that's only every month too, draw it out to a year, and your talking about 1.2 billion, yes with a b, dollars gross profits..
  • There ain't no goddamned way I'll ever pay for music again. Certainly not until the RIAA cartel is broken up. Now, if my money actually went to the artists themselves instead of Sunset Boulevard, then I'd consider opening up my wallet. But I feel that music, like other forms of art and all forms of information, should be free. The RIAA may crush Napster or, if they were smart, cut a deal with them based upon the "if you can't beat em, join em" principle, but they'll never wipe out P2P MP3's. The revolution has begun, and it's not televised, it's on your computer.
  • In my current financial situation, $4.95 is absolutely nothing for what Napster means to me. However, Napster's strength is in the number of its users. A subscription fee would put people off: some wouldn't wanna pay, some wouldn't feel like going through the registration process for something they hadn't tried before (in particularly lazy moods i won't do free registrations with emailed passwords), and some don't have credit cards. Therefore, I wouldn't be paying $4.95 for the current Napster, I'd be paying $4.95 for a severely limited Napster, which WOULDN'T be worth the money. And others would feel the same way, and the chicken, and the egg, etc.
  • Seems to me that if Napster could argue that any type of file could be exchanged over the internet, not just music, then Napster would be no less a target for the RIAA then WorldCom or AT&T for providing bandwidth services.

    Napster should flood their service with copies of DeCSS the dramatic MP3 reading and call it a code exchange system that accidentally let users share music.
  • But an interested in the precedent, in the event I decide to start a service rebroadcasting my video tapes of Alf

    When I want to listen to real music I wind up the Victrola and put on some Enrico Carusoe.


    --
    Chief Frog Inspector
  • as much as we'd like to pretend, napster is _not_ under the GPL, and their fight is _not_ the same as Free Software's fight. while napster raises some interesting IP issues, they still want to make a lot of money with what they're doing, and for those looking to make napster into a shining cause of the New Internet, this was a train wreck waiting to happen.

    Err, Red Hat and all the other distro makers are "under the GPL" but they still "want to make a lot of money with what they're doing". The difference is that while Linux is a great example of the power of the "Old" Internet--distributed programming and developer mailing lists and all that--Napster is indeed the quintessential example of one competing vision for the "New" Internet. (The other, of course, is an Internet in which only the big media companies have enough money to create/buy content, scare off most of their competition with lawsuits and choke off the rest through their control of the pipes into everyone's home.)

    Now, of course, it can be argued that Napster has less of a right than Red Hat et. al. to make money off their insight, because whereas Red Hat provides tech support and reliability checks, and pays several programmers to write GPL'd software for the entire Linux base, Napster just provides an interface, some database servers, and, uh, pays for Limp Bizkit's promotional tour. Indeed, I have no problem paying for a distro but would strongly consider switching to a different peer-to-peer file network if Napster goes for-pay.

    But that doesn't mean Napster's fight isn't worthwhile, and it doesn't make Napster's contribution any less revolutionary.
  • Even if people were willing to pay for the right to use Napster, who would get the money? I'm assuming it'd go straight to the RIAA. Of course, from there, they'd just screw the artists as usual, and keep the money for themselves. It would be interesting if this actually came to pass-then everyone could see the hypocrisy rampant in the RIAA.

    Colin Winters
  • Of course! With the right amout of bandwidth, I could download more music than I could ever buy at retail for that kind of money. I just don't see how it would make financial sense...for the RIAA, not for me.

  • $ 5 (Score:1)

    by Mantorp ( 142371 )
    You can make a lot more than that selling live Metallica cds at shows
  • More like .35 a track. I'm losing the art??? Big f'ing deal. I never once bought a cd only b/c it looked neat.
  • A subscription-based version of napster, ever if all profits go directly to the artists, will not work.

    Why? For simple reasons: would you pay Napster $4.95 to donate YOUR files, YOUR bandwidth, and YOUR system resources? I know that I sure wouldn't, even if I did have the bandwidth.

    The whole success of napster is that anyone can jack in and out at any time, and that people with gigabytes of MP3s and a fat pipe can share their unused bandwidth with lesser users. There is no loss on their part. But, if you introduce a charge, a majority of these generous users would leave for a better, free alternative, for the very reason that if they were to continue with Napster, they would have to pay Napster, Inc. to provide a service for them.

    If Napster acknowledges this and hosts their own files, they would be in even deeper legal trouble; their principal defence has been that they're only the middle-man. it's the users that share illegally-obtained content.

    Consequently, any charge, no matter how small, would destroy Napster and the RIAA will be gloating over another victory.
  • Keep your steenking mits off my steenking buds, bud!!
  • "Would you pay $4.95 a month to use Napster? "

    Mabey this should be made a /. poll?

  • Why shouldn't anyone walk into McDonald's and grab 50 ketchup packets? After all, it's unlikely that anyone will try to stop you, and even if they do, nothing will happen.

    If Napster was the only music-sharing service available, you can bet that lots of people (you included, more than likely) would shell out five bucks for it. In fact, I bet a lot of people would anyway (if this happened to fly, which it almost certainly won't), because right now the alternatives aren't so great.

    If the music is worth $5 to you, then why wouldn't you pay? Perhaps that's what I don't like about Napster etc ... I don't have a problem paying for for something I want. In fact, I see it as a responsibility.
  • It solves the issue of the RIAA not getting any money from napster. That's the only issue they really want resolved.
  • I'm boycotting. I'll never buy another CD from a label as long as the labels exist. Not for any reason. Unfortunatly most people just don't care. I told my gf what the RIAA was trying to do, and what they would really like to do (go down the same path DVDs have), and i asked her, knowing what they are attempting, would you still pay? She said yes...its sad, but i think that is the stance of most people.
  • Here Here! Seems like one of the big reasons that is knocked around for Napster and others of it's ilk is "there isn't any way for me to pay to get the music". Up pops a semi-workable idea for a for charge service and it becomes "no, wait. i really just wanted to get something for free." I don't care about the cost of CD's. If I like an artist, and they've got something I want to hear I'll buy it. However, if there is just one good cut I don't want to have buy the whole album, it would be nice to be able to easily get the one good piece all alone, and $5 a month to do that doesn't seem bad at all to filter through thousands of songs.
  • To everyone stating that they will NOT pay for Napster: "Its $4.95 a month! I'd be more than willing to pay that for Napster services. Have we all become such freeloaders that we can't even shell out five bucks a month to use software someone else wrote, requires servers someone else paid for and maintains to give us access to music someone else wrote, played and produced. I think $4.95 would be quite a bargin considering the time and energy that went into your download of an mp3."

    To everyone who said they would pay $4.95 a month for Napster: "I agree with you as if you couldn't tell from the above rant"

  • No. (Score:2)

    by mindstrm ( 20013 )
    I would not pay. Not unless the service was a *LOT* better.
  • *some of the money makes its way back to the musician.*

    very rarely, think of the label as a loan shark, a very fussy one, even if they do give you a deal you will be very lucky to see anything at all after the advance, maybe if you do well you will get a better advance on the next album, but even so you're better with a credit card...

    Ok they do promote, but what?

    *where we have a tangible good or service to produce. *

    If you're not producing anything tangible what are you doing? except possibly working in management, music is tangible.

    *wealth was even more unevenly distributed*

    There has NEVER been such a time.

    Hope you were trolling...

  • I can see both views dealing with paying for Napster.

    On one hand, there are people who would say "Sure, costs less than CDs, etc, etc..."

    On the other hand there are people who would say "Now that I'm paying for it it's not right. I should do this anymore."

    The problem is with people like me who are in the third category, right between the two. What are your opinions?
  • only if they still let you download all the copyrighted songs :) sure, 5 bucks a month is a lot less than I spend on buying cds every month that I only burn. (especially now that I have an mp3 player in my car)
    --
    Geoff Harrison (http://mandrake.net)
    Senior Software Engineer - VA Linux Labs (http://www.valinux.com)

  • In a word, no. (Score:3)

    by vees ( 10844 ) <rob@vees.net> on Monday October 02, 2000 @11:55AM (#738125) Homepage Journal

    I'm going to either share a couple thousand files to everyone, or pay for the service. Not both.

    I'm sure this opinion is shared by virtually all Napster users on fat pipes and broadband. Subscription service will only lead to the death of Napster.

    --

  • I think that a fair number of people would be happy to pay 4.95 a month to use napster, but that raises two issues. First, I dont think the RIAA would ever bite for that. Why take 500million in 2001, when they can eclipse that several times with normal record sales (assuming of course that you buy into RIAAs claims that napster is killing their profits and that with Napster gone they can regain said lost ground). The more pertinent question I think would be will I pay 4.95 a month to give you access to my harddrive and the bandwidth that I pay for? I think for napster to charge a monthly service fee, then they would need to provide some sort of return so that people wont feel like they are being charged to share out their own harddrive.

    jason
    www.cyborgworkshop.com
    ...and the geek shall inherit the earth...
  • The thing that has constantly annoyed me has been the fact that when the media covers Napster and the whole issue, they seem to always make sure to mention something along the lines of "Napster lets users trade copyrighted songs", "pirate music", or the like. The articles themselves are biased against it, and fail to mention one very important fact - Napster allows users to trade .mp3 music files, it's the users that decide whether to use it for commercial copyrighted music, or free .mp3s that have been released and are legal to trade as such.

    I have yet to see one story even mention that it has that legimiate use, that there are files that it is not against the law to copy and distribute.

    It would be like a story about VCR's and mentioning "VCR's, which allow people to copy movies instead of buying them..." and forgetting all the other uses they have.

    See, the media doesn't have a liberal bias, they have a corporate bias...
    ---
  • >>directly to the artists

    >RIAA/metallica? (emphasis mine): So, am I
    >to understand you'll pay for music you
    >download, as long as you don't have to pay
    >for Metallica

    metallica ceased to be *ARTISTS* the day they released "the black album". Up to that point their albums were quite good, inspired, groundbreaking metal. The black album, and everything since, has been nothing more than radio-friendly, MTV-fodder crap.

    Since then, they have become worse than sellouts. They have reinvented themselves as the #1 shills for the RIAA, talking heads for the very "establishment" they told us for years they were "rebelling" against.

    They became something worse, by many orders of magnitude, than sellouts. They became hypocrites.

    When you hear lars speak, you're really hearing what hillary rosen dictates. Metallica/RIAA are effectively the same entity. I see no point in distinguishing between them, when they do absolutely nothing to differentiate themselves.

    metallica, the RIAA, the MPAA, lars, rosen, valenti.... is there ANY difference anymore? When you read statements by any of the three establishments, or their talking head spokesmen, they're pretty much interchangable, the only difference (besides a healthy dose of um's er's and uh's from lars (see the /. interview)) is the name... the message is the same party line across all three: money GOOOOD, technology BAAAAD!!!

    Masters of Puppets indeed.

    john


    Resistance is NOT futile!!!

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

  • I can hear it now...

    All Internet users should pay $4.95 / month because they might use Napster or other evil piracy tools. We need to be able to recoup the cost of piracy, just as we do now for blank tapes and CDR's.
  • I won't argue with you on whether or not the media in general has a corporate bias, but lets not forget that the media sees P2P sharing technology as nearly as much of a threat as the RIAA.

    The whole publishing industry is based on Copyright, the former inability of making lots of copies without easily getting hauled into court, and ad impressions. Software that lets people trade their works with impunity and without any way to tally ad impressions scares them because it threatens life as they know it.

    Burris

  • $4.95--yes (Score:5)

    by IvyMike ( 178408 ) on Monday October 02, 2000 @12:06PM (#738154)

    I derive at least that much benefit from it, so sure, why not.

    In fact, if you can't afford to pay $4.95 a month, you should probably sell your computer, since you obviously need the money.

    If you refuse to pay such a small amount, just know that you're in the same category as those cheap bastards who ask for 50 ketchup packets at McDonald's and steal flatware at Ponderosa.

  • Hillary Rosen says it all: (Score:5)

    by mwalker ( 66677 ) on Monday October 02, 2000 @12:07PM (#738157) Homepage
    "It's awfully difficult to spend 40 minutes in the court listening to (Napster attorney) Boies arguing why they don't have to pay," said RIAA chief executive Hilary Rosen.


    Hillary is wise beyond her years. Which is impressive, since she's so goddamn old. Hillary is right - if you incorporate, if you distribute music, you're gonna have to pay. The RIAA basically has NO assets. They produce nothing. They exist only to suck money out of both sides of the artist-fan conduit, and to shape that conduit. That's a really good gig folks. Entertainment is the number one industry in the united states, and it has the highest profit margin.

    And when you've got a good gig, and someone tries to take it from you...

    someone is going to pay.

    File sharing corporations have no future.
    File sharing applications are the future.

  • If it means being able to access unreleased songs (Score:3)

    by tewl ( 226290 ) on Monday October 02, 2000 @12:07PM (#738159)
    I would definitely pay for a subscription to the service, but what I guess the record companies don't realize is that there are plenty of Napster users out there like me, that get introduced to new music on Napster and then go buy the cd (or try to find it on ebay if it's no longer in print, as the case was recently for me for KMFDM Naive orange cd).

    I like being able to download songs that are very very rare, or that are no longer being put out by record companies or just plain haven't been released.

    It's great to be able to find rare and unreleased songs and according to some record stores, napster has even helped sales...

    On http://cnn.org/2000/TECH/computing/10/02/napster.c ollege/index.html, it was written- "Take local record store owner Gordon Lamb.

    You might expect him to despise Napster. After all, he sells the music that millions of Napster users are swapping for free.

    But business at his college-town shop, Wuxtry Records, is good. And worldwide music CD sales are reportedly up half a billion dollars this year overall.

    Lamb thinks Napster should get some of the credit.

    "It has helped us a lot," he said. "People have discovered things on Napster and then come in and special-ordered them or bought them right off the shelves." "

    I think that other people would pay this nominal fee for use of this service, if it meant being able to get to material easy that record companies won't release.
  • Yeah, and then Napster can pay income taxes for it, everybody happy, right?

    Funny how everything is OK if the government gets money for it...

    Like with taxes on CD-Rs. Makes you wonder...
  • The question isn't if swapping music is illegal, it's already established that it isn't. You can make a copy of your Boston 8-track and give it to me in full view of the law without fear of retribution, as long as it is non-commercial.

    The question is if Napster is making a profit.

    I use Napster so I can spam-download music and I tend to discard 90% of it before it finishes playing once. As a result, there are artists that I'd never have listened to because they don't get airplay. Mary Lou Lord. Moby. BT. Boa. And with those I'm more than happy to send a few bucks to fairtunes.com [fairtunes.com] (and I really need to get off my *** and actually do that).

    And that is the crux. I will support the artist. Which to me is far more equitable than the thug-like, drug-pusher-like cartel of the RIAA. Now look, I know this sounds to you like a big knee-jerk reaction but I have serious issues with the RIAA that I've come to on my own without the every-present nudging of Slashdot. Yes, I know that there are people looking to freeload, but you can't simply lump me with them wholesale.

    My .02,

  • But they won't, the only artists with enough muscle to argue will get more 'behind closed doors'.

    All the up-and-coming bands will just sign on the line, because what else is there, a lifetime of pub gigs?

    This whole suite is now (as Napster has lost) a waste of time. It isn't changing a thing, and there needs to be change.

    Not just a change in the distribution, but a change in the parathingy

  • Some of you people make me sick (Score:3)

    by Accipiter ( 8228 ) on Monday October 02, 2000 @01:00PM (#738178)
    We all know what Napster is REALLY for, and I'm not going to waste time repeating it.

    One of the primary arguments behind the thiev^H^H^H^H^Hpeople who download Copyrighted works from Napster is "CDs cost too much!"

    But yet, we get people who bitch about the possible $5 subscription price. HELLO! This is less than HALF what your expensive CD costs!

    This only provides proof to what I've been arguing. 98% of the Napster community isn't there because "CDs cost too much." They're there because they can get something for free that they would normally have to pay for.

    And the minute they have to pay for it, they don't want anything to do with it. Even if it's an insignificant amount.

    For Christ's sake, you LIKE THE MUSIC, RIGHT? Show a LITTLE appriciation for the work that went into creating it!

    -- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?

  • Napster's popularity is due to the fact that it provides a level of pseudo anonymity. If you have to pay for the service, you'll be easily trackable. The people who are actually committing infringement are not going to pay. People who are downloading the truly free music most likely aren't sufficiently numerous to cover the opersting expenses of a company like Napster.

  • like no one saw THAT one coming (Score:3)

    by ndpatel ( 185409 ) on Monday October 02, 2000 @12:09PM (#738184) Homepage
    you'd think that napster was never in it to make money, or anything....

    OF COURSE they're going to subscriptions, just like every other content provider throughout history. magazines, cable tv, newspapers--hell, even /. makes ya login if you want to participate in the moderation system, which, in its own special way, is the thrill of it all.

    they have to pay that army of lawyers, liggers-on-of-shawn, and shawn's uncle somehow. not to mention the folks who actually are coding the damn thing.

    as much as we'd like to pretend, napster is _not_ under the GPL, and their fight is _not_ the same as Free Software's fight. while napster raises some interesting IP issues, they still want to make a lot of money with what they're doing, and for those looking to make napster into a shining cause of the New Internet, this was a train wreck waiting to happen. napster is just another channel on that miraculous box in the the den, only instead of the news and weather it's music on demand. isn't that what cable companies have promised for years with movies?

    napster has always been about the network it spawned, and it will go to great lengths to market, protect, and profit from that network, much like AOL and instant messenger.

    don't be surprised when napster sells out. this was never a fight about free (as in beer) music and the growing of community. this was a play fight for publicity, plain and simple.

    i feel bad for shawn fanning. i get the feeling he lies up at night and wonders how much better he could have handled this on his own, instead of letting the VC'ers take his creation away from him.
  • You should have posted this as AC. Otherwise you present the Mandrake project in a bad light. If creators of Mandrake don't respect copyrights they have no moral right to enforce GPL.
  • What's more interesting, though, is that, to appease the RIAA, Napster may institute a subscription-based service. Would you pay $4.95 a month to use Napster?

    I'm suspicious of this - you might even say paranoid. But right now Napster isn't making any money directly off the trading of music - Just Ad revenue, right? So what happens when they ARE making money directly off of the service? Even if they have an agreement with the RIAA (and they had better hire as many lawyers as they can afford to participate in their side of the drafting of such a document) there are often loopholes, and the RIAA may believe that in this agreement, they have a way to screw them.

    I know how ridiculous this sounds to some of you. I know others of you are nodding your heads in agreement. Still others are wishing they had moderator points to slap me with :) But remember, these people have consistently shown that they are the closest thing to pure evil (in the form of greed) that the world has seen in some time. They are more than willing to step on anyone necessary in their attempts to own the whole pie.

    Personally, I'd like to keep my pie to myself, but they don't want to see things that way. You should watch out for your slice when these greedy bastards come near...

  • This whole subscription thing is really a moot point. The RIAA already said no to the idea. They would rather take this to court and set up a precident that they can use to control everything about music. Remember when music was a form of expression to be shared and loved amogst friends? Neither do I.

  • They'll get my $5 IF AND ONLY IF... (Score:4)

    by Svartalf ( 2997 ) on Monday October 02, 2000 @12:24PM (#738196) Homepage
    ...I don't have to pay for any of the content I obtain from other Napster users!
  • "Yes Napster made us lose sales on our new CD, but sales on our old CD skyrocketed."

    Of course, you're not going to hear them say "Well, sales of our new CD are low because it isn't as good as the previous one. Luckily, we're still getting revenue off of our old one thanks to napster".

    Rich

  • So do I.

    I would prefer to have some assurance that this money went at least somewhat to the right place, and that non-RIAA artists would be compensated directly and without RIAA taking any cut.

    But ultimately it's about the service. If the service works and I can get the music, I'm happy.

  • Why didn't Napster ask about this first? (Score:3)

    by sheldon ( 2322 ) on Monday October 02, 2000 @02:48PM (#738207)
    It's really simple. The Napster executives could have said "Wow, that's really cool", let's go ask the RIAA for their permission.

    At that point the RIAA could have said yes or no, and perhaps Napster could have made their plans a reality.

    But instead they took the approach of promoting blatant piracy with the thought that it's better to ask forgiveness than permission.

    They should have known better.

  • Artists can't accept the money (Score:3)

    by gad_zuki! ( 70830 ) on Monday October 02, 2000 @02:53PM (#738212)
    RIAA artists and indie labels have a contract with the artists. The label pays to promote, produce, etc the artist and the artist agrees to their usually evil paying scheme. Lets say the "pay the signed artist" deal goes through then the RIAA will be suing their own musicians, and they will win everytime.

    Un-signed bands are a completly different story, you can send them whatever you please.

  • Re:Perhaps (Score:3)

    by ackthpt ( 218170 ) on Monday October 02, 2000 @12:17PM (#738214) Homepage Journal
    If Napster wins, Network TV beware...

    Next out of the pipe?

    Footster: Provides links for fans wanting to view copies of past Football games (NCAA/NFL paths) (Why not? #@%& TV networks never replay them!)

    BatsterUp: Links to copies of past Baseball games (Hey, remember that game when McGwire hit his 70th? Yeah, let's watch it!)

    BradySter: Uh... nevermind.. next

    Sitcomster: 20 minutes of dumb jokes and laff tracks at the click of a mouse...

    Toonster: Watch all your favorite old cartoons from peoples' VHS collection

    Filmster: Watch movies from other people's VHS/DVD collections stored on their drives.

    Etc..

    Some of these may seem absurd given the current size and download time, but consider in a few years when glass runs to each house... uh huh.

    Tip of the iceberg, eh?


    --
    Chief Frog Inspector

  • This is just as bad as the media tax.

    A flat rate per month is WRONG. It should be based on what you download, otherwise everyone who uses Napster will be paying the RIAA whether the music they trade is owned by RIAA members or not. If anyone is going to be paid for Napster, it should be the copyright owners, who may or may not be RIAA. If they get Napster Inc to agree to this, then it will just strengthen their monopoly and put anyone who competes with RIAA at a disadvantage.


    ---
  • To be fair, saying that Napster allows people to trade copyrighted music is 100% correct, it just neglects to show that there are legitimate uses. But today on CNN I saw some musicians talking about the benefits of Napster. Even some member of one of those new-fangled pop bands was saying (paraphrased), "Yes Napster made us lose sales on our new CD, but sales on our old CD skyrocketed." So at least some media outlets are showing both sides of the story.

    But you're right, you won't see a story that says, "_____'s new hunting rifle allows you to shoot infants in the head while they're asleep..."
  • That said, I would STILL rather a system be devised to pay the artists directly.

    What you're looking for is MP3.com, then. Forget ever being able to pay RIAA artists directly. Barring divine intervention, their souls were sold so long ago that they're no longer eligible for depreciation tax deductions on the RIAA's annual returns.

    I can live with $4.95 a month, but it would be better if any fee you paid for downloading an MP3 could be credited to the purchase of the corresponding CD. I object to having to pay for the shitty sound quality of MP3s.

    But hell, maybe that could be the RIAA's way to make everyone happy. People pay a small fee for access to MP3's with a stronger incentive to buy the CD, and all of us sharing files get paid a small commission by RIAA member companies when they make a sale.

    Of course, the RIAA is too greedy and too stupid to go for a system like that.

    --

  • >Would you pay $4.95 a month to use Napster? "

    It depends.

    If the subscription fee were simply going to Fanning and co. as payment for the wonderful service that is Napster?

    $4.99

    If the subscription fee were being payed into a general fund that is payed directly to the artists whose music is being downloaded?

    $9.99

    If the subscription fee were arranged so that there is NOT a general fund, but the fee that *I* pay goes ONLY to the artists whose MP3s *I* download, and the vapid crap that *I* never download doesn't see a penny of MY fee?

    $14.99

    If so much as a penny of the subscription fee goes into the coffers of the RIAA/metallica?

    $0.00

    john

    Resistance is NOT futile!!!

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

  • Gee, I'm technos, so I must be the creator of that ultra-rad prototype car shown at all the autoshows back in 1998, right?

    Mandrake != Mandrake Linux distribution.
    Mandrake == Enlightenment, that ultra-pretty WM for Unix/X11.

    Also, he wasn't exactly pitching copyright infringement
  • Its an interesting opinion, but from Napster's standpoint, and mine, they aren't distributing music at all, so they don't need the RIAA's opinion. That would be akin to the hoopela raised over Apple licensing Amazon.com's 1-Click(TM) technology.

    The Napster company provides a database that stores pointers to music that is offered and downloaded by users of its software. This is a valuable court decision for both parties, so I'm very glad Napster didn't cop out early.

  • Comment removed (Score:5)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday October 02, 2000 @11:55AM (#738231)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Thanks for the link. They don't look to have a lot I'd want to pay for-- and certainly not to commit to a 12 month sub, but this is exactly what I'm talking about. I don't care who makes the money, I care about my price as a consumer and my rights to fairly use my purchases. And this is exactly what Napster should at as an example of what they could offer to the record companies as a way of working.
  • ...with a strange "H" on the water jug. Now who is that woman in the picture? Looks sorta like Janet Reno with Sandra Day O'Connor's face.
  • So basically, the Napster server logs would show that the two paying guys from Nevada are currently logged in from over 10,000 IP addresses worldwide.

    Paying for access to a device created to transport pirated material...yeah, THAT'LL happen in real life!



  • By agreeing to this license:
    1. You certify that you are not member of:
    i) RIAA
    ii) Lawyer association
    iii) Law enforcement
    iv) An artist with copyrighted works
    2. That you won't sue us.
  • Seems like that's a reasonable price. Typical CD has 12 tracks = $12 @ $1/track = typical retail price of CD.

    The beauty is that instead of spending $120 to get 10 CDs for the 30 songs you really want, you could just spend $30 and have what you wanted. In the end, you could save a great deal of money.

    I like the liner notes, lyrics, and unexpected good songs on full CDs, but there are a lot of radio songs that I would $1 for, but not buy an entire CD to get.
    -----
    D. Fischer

  • I'm trying not to troll here... (Score:3)

    by adipocere ( 201135 ) on Monday October 02, 2000 @12:19PM (#738259)
    ...but your opinion sounds a lot like, "It isn't that I want to help the musicians, it's that I really hate the RIAA."

    If you aren't paying for music, you aren't helping the musicians, period. "The RIAA is screwing them, so I might as well do the same" doesn't put a dime in a musician's pocket. At least when I buy a CD, I have a general feeling that some of the money makes its way back to the musician.

    "...I feel that music, like other forms of art and all forms of information, should be free..." and I am going on the assumption here that you mean "without cost to the consumer."

    I wonder what you do for a living, and I would like to know how you would feel if some stranger came in and said, "I think what you do should be free. We've set up a system, and your boss agrees. No more paychecks for you."

    People work. Pay them for it. Until food, shelter, clothing, and the lower end of the hierachy of needs are free, don't start devaluing what a lot of us are making a living at. I just did a webpage. I made a few dollars. I make webpages for a living. Maybe you would like it that I made no money at all? Perhaps we should all work in factories, at fast foot joints, and barbershops, places where we have a tangible good or service to produce. Yeah, let's go back to that system where wealth was even more unevenly distributed and you had to be born to a family that owned a factory to have a decent lifestyle. Let's go work in those coal mines, because, gosh darn it, this information shouldn't cost anybody anything.

    Honest, I am NOT trying to troll, it's just that ... greed masquerading as "we know what is best for you" communism gets to me.

  • I would pay 4.95 because I care ! (Score:3)

    by cOdEgUru ( 181536 ) on Monday October 02, 2000 @12:19PM (#738261) Homepage Journal
    And not because I download music from Napster, which I do not very often owing to the fact that people are not quite open about their private collections like old days. Previously it was quite possible to download pretty much anything that you wanted to, and I use to leave napster running through out the night and see around 300 downloads by the next day. However nowadays, I have found people masquerading 56kb links as T3 and shutting off access to their private collection, while at the same time downloading from others. Thats what napster community has become.

    I would pay the amount but I dont really believe that everyone would, because most of the people who download music from napster really dont care about RIAA, Napster and what free digital content is all about. They just wanna download just another mp3 while Napster is still up and running. What Napster really did to the world was just opening up a new way to trade mp3 files. It really didnt care about anything other than that. I respect Napster and the people behind it for creating the first (maybe) Peer to Peer sharing mechanism, and its a sad thing that it was used for piracy. But then thats life. In a similar analogy, the only Ecommerce sites (after all this dot com hype) who makes money are the Porn sites. So its quite humane to take technology and profit from it no matter whats being exchanged and most of the times its quite impossible to define whats legal and whats not.

    I would pay 4.95 and I would hope that the court rules against RIAA (I dont care whether they rule in favour of napster) atleast to rip off the masks they been wearing protecting their own interests and not of their musicians. I hope someone would soon come up with a new model where musicians would be able to reach their fans directly and benefit from it. At the same time I think its crap when people say that music should be free. Maybe part of it, but leave that to the musician, he should be the deciding factor, not some 10 yr old kid in his basement :)

    My two cents
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • $5 (Score:2)

    by Restil ( 31903 )
    I won't use napster now for free as it doesn't provide a service I require. But thats just me.

    -Restil
  • I would pay for it for the first month to check it out -- (assuming it was a reasonable fee) ... to me (while free music was cool) a trivial fee for basically infinite music surfing would be well worth my money, as napster (yeah-including the damned chatrooms) led me to several of my last CD purchases ... (which were a few months ago now)

    bemis
    Linux has BSODs -- we just call 'em screensavers...

  • No. (Score:2)

    by dayeight ( 21335 )
    Why? Gnutella, hotline, swapoo, and even Beos has beshare (which is very nice, gui wise.)

    Dutch boy is putting his finger in the dyke, and more holes are appearing.. only ten fingers...

  • "appease the RIAA"? (Score:4)

    by gregbaker ( 22648 ) on Monday October 02, 2000 @11:58AM (#738282) Homepage
    Starting a subscription-based service is supposed to appease the RIAA? Doesn't copyright law (or precident at least) treat profit-makers much differently from those giving stuff away for free? I seem to remember reading that in the Wired interview with David Boies (can't find it online, sorry).

    Is this just a ploy by the RIAA to be able to waltz into court for the next round and say "See, now they're *selling* our^H^H^H the artist's music!"

    Greg

  • You mean a form of tribute.

  • Re:How much *I* would pay for Napster... (Score:3)

    by Proteus ( 1926 ) on Monday October 02, 2000 @03:54PM (#738285) Homepage Journal
    If the subscription fee were being payed into a general fund that is payed directly to the artists whose music is being downloaded?
    ... If so much as a penny of the subscription fee goes into the coffers of the RIAA/metallica? (emphasis mine): So, am I to understand you'll pay for music you download, as long as you don't have to pay for Metallica songs you download?

    Metallica may naive in going after Napster, but they at least have a more legitimate claim - they actually made the music that has their copyright on it.

    --

  • A similar service? (Score:3)

    by Wiggin ( 97119 ) on Monday October 02, 2000 @11:59AM (#738286)
    emusic.com offers a (kind of) similar service here [emusic.com].
  • At $1 per track it's still worth it to me for these reasons:

    1. I don't have to go over to Tower records to buy the CD. I can just burn my own (for 50 cents more).

    2. I tend to listen to pretty esoteric music that is often hard to find, even on-line. There are albums I have and would gladly pay $25 or more for.

    3. I listen to a lot of progressive groups that tend to only have 3 -5 tracks per CD. :)

    Still, I'd happily accept an equivalent per minute charge (maybe 20-25 cents a minute?) to download anything I like.

    However, the RIAA will not let anything happen that doesn't leave them completely in control to gouge us how they see fit, preferably by a pay-per-listen scheme that would grossly penalize those of us who listen to music 60 hours or more a week.

    Rick

  • Sorry for replying to myself...

    That's 20-25 cents per minute of music. Per minute of wall time would mean paying thousands of dollars for anything on Napster since it's usually hideously slow and drops transfers a lot.

    Rick

  • Re:anyways (Score:3)

    by ichimunki ( 194887 ) on Monday October 02, 2000 @12:38PM (#738298)
    Fairtunes is a great idea, although personally I'd rather pay a per download fee or monthly subscription on a Napster-like service that cooperated with the production companies to provide more "legitimate" (read complete, well-digitized) copies of songs, that I could feel were ethically and legally okay. Right now, with less than $4K in "tips" to artists, Fairtunes is completely off the radar. But given the contracts that most bands have with their record companies, and the oddities involved, like advances, royalties, etc etc, I have to wonder that a tipping service isn't at least as fraught with potential legal complications as Napster-- especially if it can be shown that these "tips" are in fact payments for what would otherwise be considered pirated copies of songs.

    Also, I'm a little skeptical of the need to cut out the record labels (or why I should care as a fan), if the bands themselves-- over and over again in the face of the obvious snow job they themselves are getting from the record companies-- won't refuse to sign with these jokers. There are so many small labels out there and the cost to produce a small run LP or CD is not that huge. Most of these bands seem perfectly willing to play the craps game that is rock & roll stardom. If they get screwed in that process, that's their problem. Maybe they should consider forming a union.

    As a consumer, I'm only interested in Napster as a way to obtain rare tracks and sample or single tracks (and hopefully they can work out some legal way between a Napster-like service and the RIAA members for this to happen), although I suppose I'd get into downloading full CDs worth of tunes if available. But if I don't like the price of a new CD at the music retailer, I don't buy it. That's the underlying principle of capitalism, and in this case it's not like it deprives people of something important like housing, food, or their right to bear arms.
  • I don't see your point. Why should I pay $4.95 that goes to the RIAA when the music I download is (for the most part) not released on RIAA-affiliated labels? Why should the RIAA get my money when I download the latest, say, Friendly Fire mp3s? The bands certainly aren't going to see any of it, and either are their labels - only an organization representing labels with artists whose music I am not downloading anyway is going to get money. So, no, I would not pay $4.95. Or any amount.

  • Hmmm... (Score:4)

    by zpengo ( 99887 ) on Monday October 02, 2000 @12:00PM (#738308) Homepage
    I'd only pay $4.95/mo if Napster promises that Dr. Dre and Lars Ulrich will stop coming to my house and beating me up.

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