Napster Execs Resign, Company Appears to Teeter 229
renard writes: "The NYT is
reporting that five top executives at Napster,
including founder Shawn Fanning and CEO Konrad
Hilbers, resigned yesterday. This occurs in the
wake of their Board's rejection of the latest
buyout offer from Bertelsmann AG - as Hilbers says, `I am convinced
that not pursuing the offer is a mistake.' Could
this be the end for the upstart MP3 indexing service
that changed everything?"
Revolutions Outlive Pioneers (Score:4, Insightful)
The P2P architecture pioneered by Napster is what matters.
Just like 3dfx (which is no longer) revolutions outlive pioneers.
Re:Revolutions Outlive Pioneers (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Revolutions Outlive Pioneers (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed, it didn't start the music-sharing thing: before CD-Rs and MP3s we all had double decks.
It didn't start the MP3 revolution either: way back before Napster, lots of people were already encoding MP3s (L3enc first then Fraunhoffer and Xing...) and sharing with friends, normally using burned CDs but also with some useful useful FTPs, where one had to enter 'hidden' directories until the music could be found.
And it didn't even start P2P, because it is not a real P2P service...
But still, Napster deserves lots of credit, because it is the single thing that started the revolution, for its simplicity of use, bringing many users that were not computer geeks to the world of music sharing. It is, in a word, the service that made MP3 sharing popular, and now that it is popular, it will remain that way forever, no matter how hard they try. Cheers for Napster.
btw, if you want to read about what is p2p and what is not, check this [openp2p.com].
Re:Revolutions Outlive Pioneers (Score:2, Interesting)
Napster didn't do jack shit that was even close to original. On IRC we were doing P2P programs using various scripting languages and what not. The only thing that happened to Napster is Shawn had a nice uncle or grandpa or whoever the fuck he was that gave him the money to try to make it a company so the masses heard of it. There was no original or innovative code that went into Napster. I remember seeing the first Gnapster (sorry Jasta) and thinking it was IRC without the IRC client. Oh, so you have DDC connections with SQL searching while each client registers? Big deal. Back in the days of good IRC pirating everyone just posted a list of files to listen for, and people typed search requests into the channel and if you had it for trade you answered. Sometimes you needed to upload first, sometimes it was free. This worked better than Napster ever did in my experience working with Napster (Although on IRC it was all porn
Putting 3dFX and Napster in the same conceptual group is just wrong. 3dfx came up with new and innovative ideas for openGL acceleration and lost because they got lazy in the market. Name one technology Napster actually created, instead of just wrappering around? (I'll give you a hint, the Napster servers was just a hacked IRC server)
Company Appears to Teeter (Score:4, Funny)
More info... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:More info... (Score:2)
Re:More info... (Score:1)
Re:More info... (Score:2)
Shawn Fannings CV (Score:5, Funny)
is published at todays gnuheter:
http://www.gnuheter.com/article.php?sid=1486 [gnuheter.com]
Re:Shawn Fannings CV (Score:2)
Why Bother? (Score:4, Funny)
Napster haiku (Score:4, Funny)
Only the lawyers got rich.
H. Rosen smiles.
Re:Napster haiku (Score:3, Funny)
We had software called Napster
Before the Dark Times.
Re:Napster haiku (Score:1)
I hope it is the end... (Score:2, Interesting)
To try to build back a userbase on the napster name would be a mistake imo
It would not supprise me if those 5 execs left at the same time to persue a similar product without the history that napster has had
Re:I hope it is the end... (Score:2)
Isn't it fortunate that Napster didn't try to patent the basic idea? If they'd done that, the shrivelled husk of the company would still be worth a fortune to the vultures - ownership of that patent would presumably allow the firing off of C&Ds to anyone involved with Gnutella, FreeNet, KaZaa et al. "But Gnutella and FreeNet are decentralised!" Yeah, but surely they ALL require a single central download location for the client software... even if those sites are run by non-profit orgs, the hosting will come from a commercial (ie., sueable) corporation.
Hmmmmmm, now I come to think of it, perhaps someone should register a P2P patent portfolio and turn them over to the FSF to prevent such eventuality happening?
Re:I hope it is the end... (Score:2)
Hmmmmmm, now I come to think of it, perhaps someone should register a P2P patent portfolio and turn them over to the FSF to prevent such eventuality happening?
Not really necessary. Any kind of patent for a system like this would have "prior art" written all over it, and even if approved (as we all are aware of the PTO's shortcomings), it would be easily fought in court.
Oh well, they're all disgustingly rich anyways... (Score:1)
It's funny, laugh (Score:1, Flamebait)
As far as the actual content of the story, it just goes to show what incompetent boobs were running the show. Too much VC money was flowing through them to allow them to give up, I presume.
Re:It's funny, laugh (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's funny, laugh (Score:2)
Why is this a surprise? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why is this a surprise? (Score:2)
napster hurt all of us more than it helped us.
free comercial music is not a business modle that is even legal. I would not cry if the US government said that
"any one trafficing in Music that does not allow such trafficing in the copyright agreement over a file sharing system will be put it prison for 5 years nad suffer a $100,000 fine.
thats all good for all the people who want to use technology in legitimate waays such as moving my CD colection on to MP3 and then throwing it around my personal network and MP3 player or making MP3 CDs for my car.
a law like that would be desirable over somthing like the DMCA or Disney's bill...err I mean Hollings' bill.
Re:Why is this a surprise? (Score:2)
that is what the law protects, a person's RIGHT to make the decisions for their works.
yes the DMCA goes to far, and yes Copyright terms need to be limited to somthing far withing the liftime of the creator and the audience, but NO, you have no right to break the law and get away with it.
I again say that punishing those that traffic in music that is not designated to be shared over P2P services for free is a better solution to the problems that the music industry is having than trying to creep into my living room and take control of my electronic equipment.
Re:Why is this a surprise? (Score:1)
- It just handled MP3 files
- It requires a centralized server
- Most people are already used to KaZaa
- It just handled MP3 files (worth mentioning twice)
The courts didn't kill their technology... they did, by not trying to develop it further themselves. I, for one, will not shed a single tear for the demise of Napster.In other news... (Score:3, Funny)
Rest of population, doesn't really give a shit. Grandmother unavailable for comment.
duh! (Score:4, Insightful)
I thought it ended a long time ago. we already knew it wasn't going to come back in any way shape or form like the good ol' napster.
Ethics? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Ethics? (Score:2, Funny)
The Brand That Would Not Die (Score:1, Insightful)
The Napster brand has changed owners multiple times. Owners with different agendas have tried (and failed) to shape the brand and the underlying technology to their agendas. During this cacophony, the brand has been rendered irrelevantt in a marketplace of far superior competitors.
Napster is done. It has been rendered irrelevant. Let it die already.
Here is... (Score:2, Informative)
Who Cares... (Score:1)
Although for a short time it was great, and most certainly changed the face of audio entertainment, we can see Darwinism at work. Ideas and implementations which exist in our current tech world, exist in a hostile world, where the single greatest threat comes from the "subpoena attack". Those devices and implementations which are immune to this attack are the ones which will thrive and survive.
If it hadn't been for the destruction of Napster, I doubt there would be the flurishing of the Gnutella clients we see today. And IMHO, although Napster was great for music, Gnucleus [gnucleus.com] is a far better tool for sharing information/entertainment than Napster ever was, or could ever hope to become.
Napster was already dead (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Napster was already dead (Score:1)
No, Napster was killed by already-existing copyright law--it was illegal to facilitate the distribution of pirated music before the DMCA as well as after.
Re:Napster was already dead (Score:2)
Re:Napster was already dead (Score:2)
Putting the last nail in your own coffin, from the inside, I mean.
~z
my only friend, the end (Score:2)
Could this be the end for the upstart MP3 indexing service that changed everything?
No, that was March 25, 2002 [newsbytes.com].
The whole problem with Napster... (Score:4, Interesting)
Does anyone have any idea why they did that? It cost them dearly, but I've never understood why they made that distinction. Was it to keep porn off the network? Was it to brand the service? What the hell were they thinking?
Re:The whole problem with Napster... (Score:3, Interesting)
I imagine because it gave them an identity and it gave them a role to play. At some point, they surely were planning to cash in.
Besides, if you know what you're indexing, it's easier to make special purpose software that is tuned to the content. Or, rather, it's easier to do that if the law doesn't shut you down.
Re:The whole problem with Napster... (Score:2, Troll)
Here's the real problem with Napster IMHO. No business model - no income. This is why there's no love lost from me now that napster's finishing its death throes.
How exactly are you going to make a profit with something like Napster? Please don't tell me through ads. It's only now that people are figuring out ads don't provide enough revenue to run a business. Look at Kazaa (nevermind the capitalization thing - that is so stupid). Kazaa had banner ads in its client. Didn't make them enough money, so they resorted to bundling their product with spyware. This will also inevitably fail.
If Naptster had gone to a subscription-type service (in its heyday, when it actually had music on it), it would have failed. The only reason Napster was successful, IMHO, was that, by default, it would share any files you downloaded. Thus, people who don't dig through options dialogs before using a program ended up sharing all their files, unwittingly. The Tragedy of the Commons is the principle that one should apply here - if you give people the choice between sharing their files (and their bandwidth) and just leeching off others, they'll leech, and they won't even feel guilty about it.
Now, if you would actually pay for a service like Napster, you would have to evaluate why you're paying for the service and what you're getting for your money. Word would get out that sharing doesn't help you in any way, and in fact can hurt you as it takes away bandwidth.
If Napster had gone to a subscription service where you would pay less if you were sharing more files, people would begin crapflooding it. Taking stuff from /dev/random, appending an ID3 tag and sticking .mp3 at the end. I can do this with dd and perl, but, for the windows users, all sorts of little utilities would pop up on tucows.com that allowed them to do this.
If they had gone to a subscription service where you get unlimited bandwidth for paying (and everyone who doesn't pay has a download rate limit), people would end up hacking clients to get rid of the limit if it were client-side, and sharing Napster accounts (perhaps even on Napster) if the limit were server-side. I can think of a bunch of technical things you could do to combat this, but the point is that people would try to find a way around it. And especially if you're paying for Napster's bandwidth you would evaluate whether or not you want to allow downloads.
Subscription models were possible with Napster as it kept data on its servers; this is not really possible with Kazaa or the other modern p2p networks. However, this is a double-edged sword - the RIAA proved that Napster was responsible for its data since it was server-side, and with a subscription model, Napster would not just be gratuitously providing data, but would be actively selling copyrighted materials. I don't know if there's really a big legal difference here, as the RIAA can force whatever court outcome it wants.
Also, keeping the data server-side meant that Napster had to pay huge bandwidth bills. With Kazaa, they pay much smaller bandwidth bills as they only send authentication and search queries from their servers, not the actual mp3/mpg/whatever data. Bandwidth is very expensive.
I'm glad these p2p network companies are dying. However, I don't like why they're dying. They shouldn't die because the RIAA has enough cash to force any legal outcome; they should die because they have no business model. I'd like to see the free market, not the monopolistic RIAA, determine the outcome.
surprised (Score:2)
Seriously, while I didn't ever understand their business model, I mourn the loss.
A year ago I could get any mp3 I wanted. I was just getting into a lot of music (that I have since bought on CD), so this was great.
Even six months ago, when Napster was gone, there was Kazaa.
Now, even that is gone (under Linux).
Gnutella is a nightmare.
I have to say, this is the first instance I can recall where innovation has been squelched by the twin swords of control, legislation and litigation. For some reason, I doubt it will be the last.
The revolution was fast, but the counter-revolution was furious. Let's start preparing for the next round.
Re:surprised (Score:2)
The system is more like IRC than any other p2p system I've used before. Plus there's nothing you can't get. There are file format filters to help your searches but the system itself doesn't care what kind of file you're sharing.
--
Garett
Re:surprised (Score:2)
I don't know what any of these people think they gain by trying to lock users out of P2P networks with closed protocols. It completely disregards the whole point of P2P. Taken to its logical extreme, the ideal P2P network consists of one person sharing files with himself.
Re:surprised (Score:2)
Look at commercial HTML, JPEG, WAV editors...all based on open standards. They get by on being better software, not by locking out competitors.
Good ol days (Score:2, Interesting)
I find it funny that Napster came and went, the FBI raid came and went and it seems to be business as usual as the new Eminem album is leaked as well as a (bad) cam job of Episode II.
Piracy may never be so widespread and popular again, but it will always exist. Anytime you don't have a free market, a black one will exist.
How to make black markets grey (Score:4, Interesting)
http://101574.clicktwocents.com [clicktwocents.com] tips me with my favorite kind of money if you've got any (and around here, I give the stuff away!) but I have 0 musical talent. The Radiators [radsfans.net] are quite good, though.
JMR
Re:How to make black markets WHITE (Score:2)
Re:Good ol days (Score:2)
Rush - Vapor Trails
Moby - 18
Korn - The Untouchables (a full two months before release)
Weezer - Maladroit
New Snoop Doggy dog album
New Eminem album
15 tracks by System Of A Down (songs in consideration for the next album; they're not even mastered yet)
Probably more I'm forgetting.
Re:Good ol days (Score:2)
Epitaph (Score:1)
When companies appear to die after turning down offers, I wonder, what do you have to gain by not just taking whatever money and running? Ok, maybe they'll sleep better at night, but somehow I don't feel that figures into it all that much.
Obviously some monkey business going on (Score:2)
Looks like these guys are a little worried that if they take the money and run, the record companies will hunt them down and beat it out of them.
Oh, my (Score:3, Insightful)
Fare thee well.
Dead but refused to admit it... (Score:4, Interesting)
There was little point in maintaining the company anyways... from a business perspective, the company possessed little which couldn't or hasn't been engineered elsewhere.
Arguing from a brand name perspective also falls apart as it has been damaged in the eyes of the market and consumers in a number of high profile media reports.
Many of the original millions of users had no intention of contributing financially and have since moved on to other products... it was mainly a way for them to leech music.
This meant that it effectively was running at a loss with little chance of making money from past 'customers' or attracting new customers. The company possessed little valuable assets and legal cases as well as monetry concerns was killing it off slowly.
The biggest surprise was how it has managed to survive this long...
infighting and greed (Score:3, Interesting)
I hope people were able to salt away money as a cushion for their future.
Re:infighting and greed (Score:1)
They don't want to cut their losses. Still holding on to the notion that they might turn it around and get their money back. They'll probably just lose what money they have left.
Re:infighting and greed (Score:2)
Imagine this scenario: Bertelsmann doesn't want to write off the company as a total loss so they offer to buy it for a pittance. Hummer Winblad (the VC) has the right to block a deal; this is their only negotiating leverage. They tell Bertelsmann that unless they pay more, the company sinks. Not a bad negotiating strategy; the only problem is if Bertelsmann gets pissed and calls the whole thing off (by, as it seems they did here, lowering the original offer. That's a slap in the face in this sort of negotiation.)
But, no way to really know what happened behind closed doors.
Good for Them (Score:5, Interesting)
Having said that, this also makes me kinda optomistic for the future. The future where all the old dinosaurs that are running the world now finally retire, and get replaced with people that have a clue.
"Early days of the Internet"? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Early days of the Internet"? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:"Early days of the Internet"? (Score:2)
You are allowed to name the beast: Microsoft.
Re:"Early days of the Internet"? (Score:2)
-Puk
Re:"Early days of the Internet"? (Score:2)
True, but relatively speaking, in today's context the "early days" typically refers to pre-90's in my book. I know that's a large chunk, but the Internet got much more exciting with HTTP and HTML. Yeah, yeah, it was still cool before that, but only scratching the surface of its today's potential.
Most of the lusers I help think of "Internet" and "World Wide Web" as synonyms
Re:"Early days of the Internet"? (Score:2)
My brother pointed this out to me when citing a cluser's attempt to flame someone for claiming he had been using email for ten years. Something like a biting "email hasn't even been _around_ for ten years!" (this was five years or so ago).
Probably works well as a general principle. Call it "Moron's Law" and it will become a de facto Principle Of How Things Work...
Do those early days really count? (Score:2)
The same is true of the "early days of TV" -- sure, it was *invented* and very narrowly used in the 30s and 40s, but for most people the early days of TV means the early-mid 50s when people generally starting buying and watching TV regularly.
The same is true of the internet -- I worked at a major University and we didn't get general internet access (IP connectivity of our computers) until probably '90. Dialup wasn't an option until '91 or '92, and generic consumer access not an option until 93-94, and even then it was limited and expensive.
The "modern" internet as a mass phenomenon (cheap home dialup, most server sites accessed via high speed dedicated connectivity) didn't really start until '94-95 and wasn't even a popular force until a couple of years later.
Counting 72-90 as "the early years" is legitimate only if you're talking about the six geeks who did something with it then.
Dying. (Score:1, Funny)
huh? (Score:2)
Napster "ended" when they lost their copyright infringement case...
Re:huh? (Score:2)
Karma Police (Score:5, Insightful)
If every musicians in the world went broke from napster, I would still think it was great.
There would be other incentives besides money to create music and life would go on. Maybe there wouldn't be so much of it, but is that such a bad thing?
If I were a musician, of course I'd be pissed, just like anyone else who chooses a profession thats core business model has become obsolete.
I'm sure this post is short sighted, poorly thought out and doesn't consider the massive effect entertainment has on the economy.
I don't care and neither did the thousands of napster users who were told by the recording industry that they needed music in order to live.
The music they forced down the throats of our generation is what encourages this attitude, now they reap what they sow.
Re:Karma Police (Score:2, Interesting)
Can you name me one musician who ever went broke from Napster??
The fact of the matter is that the only people in the music business that napster hurt were the middlemen. Not the artists themselves, but the middlemen who take all the money for the artists respective work.
Under the current system, almost all artists make their money from concerts, not from CD sales. Therefore, even if people downloaded music without paying for the CD, it really didn't hurt the artist all that much. Instead, it offered free advertising for how good that artist's music was.
I can distinctly remember going to see a band that I liked before Napster really started getting popular. I saw them at a club, and no more than 200 people were there. A friend of mine put their stuff up on Napster (yes, this was illegal). 3 months later, they were playing a larger venue, and the show was sold out. Over 900 people were in attendance. Personally, I think a lot of this was due to Napster. People who had never heard of them could now listen to all their music.
Honestly, what's better for the artist? 200 people buying their CDs at $15 a pop, of which they might see $.50 to $1 per disc, or 900 people paying $20 a pop to see them play live??
Re:Karma Police (Score:2)
Second, 900 * $20 = $18,000. Subtract the cost of production, and what do you have left? Will this model work for any but the most established artists?
Re:Karma Police (Score:2)
What is it about music, that requires the consumption of resources in order to produce, that it should be free? If music is such a fundamental part of our culture, then why not take the next logical step and say that ALL art should be free? Art, to a significant degree, defines culture.
What is it that extols upon you or anyone else, a right to the benefits that someone else's music might offer? When was it, exactly, that artists were put here so that your life might be a little more enjoyable?
Please tell...I'm trying to understand the basis for your reasoning.
Re:Karma Police (Score:2)
Napster was MP3s for the AOL crowd. (Score:3, Insightful)
The legacy Napster did leave behind is the other filesharing networks (Kazaa, etc.) That's good. However, the genie's out of the bottle, and those services are next.
Time to fire up the ol' FTP client and Usenet reader...
Very good comment (Score:5, Insightful)
The new, BMG-owned Napster was very much a Responsible Grownup proposition. Responsible Grownups would centralize the files, take them out of that greasy-kids-stuff MP3 format and put them in a Responsible Grownup format with "rights management" that would curtail your ability to format-shift, time-shift and repurpose the music you downloaded. The system really looked like it was going to brutally suck.
So I can't really feel too sad for poor old dead Napster. Death was the best it could hope for now. Dead, its name can remain synonymous with revolutions; had it lived, its name would have been synonymous with crap.
Life Free or Die: Napster should've quit long ago (Score:2)
I can't wait for the follow-up article... (Score:2)
Napster reminds me at (Score:2)
It is quite amazing to see that even the view of daily activities, like listening to music, improve following Moore's law [webopedia.com].
teetering? (Score:4, Funny)
Lest we forget (Score:5, Insightful)
Bertelsmann poured in excess of $85 million into Napster (that they've declared), and they're getting none of it back, because the fucked up control freak DRM-infected new-Napster technology that it paid for is utterly without a market. That money is gone, burned, buried.
Now... where are they going to recoup that $85 million from? Pay cuts for their executives? Hmmm, I think not.
That $85 million is coming from two places. From their artists, and from us.
You have a think about that the next time the RIAA tells you that you're stealing from artists, and that you'll suffer in the long run. Bertelsmann paid $85 million to come up with a worse system than one 19 year old college dropout knocked up in his spare time. And we're going to pay for it. No doubt they will spin that so that their incompetence becomes our fault for using Napster in the first place.
It was a reasonable investment (Score:2)
Do you believe in death after life?
Brief History of Napster (Score:2, Informative)
Re:um, boohoo? (Score:2)
I suppose you would say the same things about Yamaha, HP, LG, and Philips if they go out of business.
I mean, they are all piracy boosters. They make CD Recording drives, right?
Or perhaps you should just stop being so... generic?
Re:um, boohoo? (Score:1)
Saying napster had legitimate uses? Such as what? It only indexed music.
If I want to look for a good non-signed local band I certainly wouldn't use P2P. Those stupid "it helps the little guy" excuses are the masses way of justifying downloading 10GB worth of RIAA music.
If Napster was truly altruistic they would have banned IPs from those who sent/got copyrighted material. Instead they let it go for years before being slapped around.
Tom
Re:um, boohoo? (Score:1)
Exactly. Napster never put in a filter until they were forced to in an effort to stop you from putting non-pirate music online, just as HP never put a filter in their CD Recorders to stop you from recording tracks without the copyright bit set.
>If I want to look for a good non-signed local band I certainly wouldn't use P2P.
Just because you don't want to doesn't mean no one else would. I enjoyed the surprise of finding quality indie bands on Napster. For once they were at the same level as "pop" music, and this is what is really freaking out the RIAA. That an indie band with no label could become popular just by sounding better than Britney (shouldn't be too hard, really).
Napster was the great leveler, and I appreciated it for that.
>If Napster was truly altruistic they would have banned IPs from those who sent/got copyrighted material.
They did. Many times and in many ways.
And if Napster were truly altruistic, in my opinion, they wouldn't have tried to turn it into a pay service and wouldn't ban anyone at any time.
Either way, Napster is as much a front for piracy as a company that makes CD Burners.
Both can be used for bad and good. And, to tell you the truth from what I've seen, more CD Burners are used for warez than for backing up hard drives.
Are you always an extremist? (Score:2)
Are you going to burn millions of CDs and then mail them out on request, for free?
The Extremists are the Copyright Cartels (Score:2)
The example I'd like to use is my old single I have on the shelf (six inch vinyl record, now hopelessly scratched but still playable, if I still had a record player) of "Too Drunk to Fuck" by the Dead Kennedy's. Not their best work, but I was 16 when I bought it (for juvinile "its got profanity, cool!" reasons), and it introduced me to a great punk band whose other albums I have owned (and seen get destroyed at parties, etc.). Somehow through all that, this one single survives through today.
So I downloaded the mp3 off of the internet, and can now listen to music which I've legally already bought and paid for, but for which the equipment I had is now no longer in service, and the format so dated that the only equipment I can now buy costs a small fortune.
Napster had many legitamate uses
I should note that all of the music on my hard drive is legal. I own a copy, in one format or another, of every single mp3 I've downloaded, and every single ogg file I've ripped myself.
So, which is the more extremist position to take? The idea that music and other information should flow freely, as it arguably did for the 3 million years humanity was around prior to the British inventing copyright as a means of censoring the then emergent printing press (with great success, I might add), or the idea that copy control policing technology should be built into every digital device in America, from your computer to a baby's rattle (as proposed by "Disney" Hollings and promoted by the Copyright Cartels) to prevent the possibility that someone, somewhere, might violate someone's government granted, monopoly entitlement?
I think you need to examine just who you are calling "extremist" and how your defining the word. "I don't think that word means what you think it means."
Re:The Extremists are the Copyright Cartels (Score:2)
Lets use this example. If I go to Borders and buy a book on P2P from O'Reilly and I decide to use it as home plate in a game of baseball, is Borders or O'Reilly responsible for replacing it?
While technically it would be legal to use a electronic source of the book should you happen to find one (assuming you could prove you owned the original), it wouldn't be the responsibility of the author, publisher or retail store to put the book in an electronic format just in case you're careless.
Besides, I don't know what your problem is really. My original post was in reference to CD-Recorders and was an asshole response to a sarcastic comment that I was too braindead this morning to identify as sarcastic, to which I had posted a retraction already.
Re:The Extremists are the Copyright Cartels (Score:2)
Ah, but that argument is disingenuous--O'Reilly isn't claiming to be selling you only a license to the book to use as they see fit, they're selling you a physical object with words on it that you can use as home plate if you want (at your peril).
The record industry, on the other hand, claims that music is like software--that you only own the medium. Yet, they want to have it both ways--claim they've only licensed you a right to use, but yet deny you the right to a backup copy (e.g. MP3, tape for the car, what have you).
Record companies should be forced to provide downloadable backup copies in the event they (God forbid) ever succeed with DRM.
Re:The Extremists are the Copyright Cartels (Score:2)
You go to Wal-Mart and buy a shiny new copy of the latest 3D first person shooter. A year later, it's too scratched for the game to read the CD and therefore the game won't run because it says you don't have the correct CD inserted. Most games I've seen allow you to obtain replacement CDs for the price of shipping (with a little overhead). But they still don't let you easily backup the actual game CD and have it work the same as the original.
So should the RIAA make it easier to obtain replacements for damaged material? They are selling a usage license for the information on the CD, but they are also selling the media that it comes on. So how is that different that software? That sounds like they're just doing what software companies do, nothing radically different.
Re:The Extremists are the Copyright Cartels (Score:2)
Where can I send my Judas Priest 45 that's worn from normal playing for a nominal cost replacement--on period media or current?
The record companies want it both ways. They want to say you only bought a license, but also want you to pay again when the physical media wears out of is obsoleted.
Re:The Extremists are the Copyright Cartels (Score:2)
Re:The Extremists are the Copyright Cartels (Score:2)
2.) Read the whole thread.
Re:The Extremists are the Copyright Cartels (Score:2)
If I already bought a license for SimCity and I lose the original media, and I want to still play it 10 years later and the original media doesn't work any more, should I have the right to get replacements for free or at a nominal cost? I wouldn't expect Maxis to do that, why do you expect the music guys to.
If the reason the original SimCity media doesn't work any more is because I bought a new PC without a 5.25" drive, then is that Maxis' responsibility to provide me with new media? Nope. What they originally sold me was something that worked on what I had at the time, that's all.
On another note, software has the ability to implement copyright protection in many ways. SimCity used to use a lookup card, now games make sure the original CD is in the drive. Now the RIAA is trying to retrofit old technology to handle DRM. Of course it's going to get flack because people are used to the old way. Nobody protests the software industry for putting copy protection on their stuff.
Re:The Extremists are the Copyright Cartels (Score:2)
Well, that's not going to happen either. All we can do is work within the system that we've created for ourselves.
But personally, I don't think I'd ever want to start my own software company if I was required to provide an infinite warranty against carelessness.
Re:The Extremists are the Copyright Cartels (Score:2)
Do you not think book publishers would be doing the same stuff the RIAA does if it all of a sudden became possible to easily and cheaply duplicate a book and distribute it over the internet? I know it's done now but the process to create them is not that easy and to a certain extent destroys the original copy if you take apart the book to run it through a sheet feeder.
Re:um, boohoo? (Score:2)
Re:um, boohoo? (Score:2)
The net result is that it made the recording industry start clamping down on things like MP3 ripping and CD copying (both of which I do legitimately; I make MP3s of CD's to listen to on the computer/iPaq and copies of CDs to listen to in my car). All that Napster has done for me in that regard is make my life hell if I want to continue doing that with new CDs.
I'm not going to start the argument about "Napster helps CD sales" because it's been beaten to a pulp. My guess is that it cuts both ways (some people would figure "why buy if I can get it off Napster?" others would try it on Napster then decide to buy)
Re:um, boohoo? (Score:1)
I love the last bit the best. Um, even if you are going to buy the CD you have no right to infringe copyright. Thats like downing a 1L of pepsi just to "test the market" first. Same goes for those pirate-game-but-only-for-24-hours-then-delete people. Copying game even for 10 mins is illegal in most countries. Just because you plan on buying a copy in no way makes that ok.
Thats what radio is for. If you want to here what is new tune into your local radio station. They at least [probably] legitimately have copies!
Tom
Re:um, boohoo? (Score:1)
Napster didn't do that. Overgorged and overpowered corporations who have far to much power in our government have done that. I didn't like Napster nor did I use Napster but place the blame where it belongs.