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I recently discovered AllOfMP3, a Russian music store, because I was trying to find music by Eva Cassidy online and neither iTunes or Napster carry her music.

This site offers pay by bandwidth download of digital music, $10(US) per 1GB, and even allows you to select the bitrate and format of your download (including MP3, Ogg Vorbis, WMA, etc).

I was a bit wary at first, and I carefully reviewed the legal info provided on the site. I was reassured by the fact that they accept PayPal and are PayPal verified among other payment methods, I decided to risk $10.

I have been greatly pleased with the results.

My questions for the Slashdot community are: Can you see any legal problems with using this site? If so what are they? This is by far the best deal I've seen in digital music, and seems to be legit as far as my understanding goes, so I keep looking for the catch. If there isn't one, well enjoy the music!

And yes I know... in Soviet Russia digital music plays you.

I posted this as an Ask Slashdot but it was rejected. Just thought I'd throw it out for anyone looking for good digital music dirt cheap. This seemed an appropriate place.

I recently discovered AllOfMP3, a Russian music store, because I was trying to find music by Eva Cassidy online and neither iTunes or Napster carry her music.

This site offers pay by bandwidth download of digital music, $10(US) per 1GB, and even allows you to select the bitrate and format of your download (including MP3, Ogg Vorbis, WMA, etc). I was a bit wary at first, and I carefully reviewed the legal info provided on the site. I was reassured by the fact that they accept PayPal and are PayPal verified among other payment methods, I decided to risk $10. I have been greatly pleased with the results.

My questions for the Slashdot community are: Are there any legal issues I could run into using this site? If so what are they?

This is by far the best deal I've seen in digital music, so I keep looking for the catch. If there isn't one, well enjoy the music! And yes I know ... in Soviet Russia digital music plays you.

> To compare to a test drive of a car, maybe they should allow a free sample, say the first 25% of the song.

A free portion of the song...you had better watch out, that's such a good idea, it wouldn't surprise me if all the other download sites outright stole it from you!

I believe what you're talking about is Napster Premium. For $10 a month (your small subscription fee for access), you can:

• Choose from over 500,000 songs from all genres of music.
• Collect your favorite tracks and tune into your own playlists.
• Download music on up to 3 PCs--for online and offline listening.
• Get more tracks for less when you buy in bulk through Napster's Track Packs.
• Plug into over 50 different commercial-free stations that are customized to your favorite genres.
• Interact with Napster radio--specify the tracks that you want to hear, and jump ahead or skip back through past tracks.
• Set up and save tracks to your own playlists and share them with others.
• Build your own custom radio station.
• and more...

...not quite. When you bought your music from the iTMS, you already knew that you would only be allowed to play it within iTunes or on your iPod.

That's it.

If you want to play it on a different device, there are many other sources for your music, including buying a CD and ripping it into whatever format your heart desires.

Whether you agree that "information should be free" or not is irrelevant. By purchasing your music from iTMS, you agreed to Apple's restrictions.

as does Napster

I can't see much good, when you can already buy tunes with iTunes and Napster and the like, for just $.99 per song. Can the price of a rented tune be that much less?

On a side note, unless they find a way to copy-protect sound waves, they will never be able to defeat copy protections. You can always play the song and record it in real time on an analog source.

The point is that copyright infringement is a crime, and the recording industry associations have the duty to find and prosecute those who commit it. (emphasis mine)

Why? The recording industry association don't create music, the recording industry association aren't needed to get the music out to the public anymore, the recording industry don't give the settlements to the artists and finally the recording industry lobby the fines up to rediculous amounts that would bankrupt any normal person and then offer to settle displaying that they don't need the fines to be as high as they are (the average settlement is just a few percent of the original charge, if they can afford to carry on this way then the fines are disporportionate) and that they are purely extorting money since nobody can afford to risk the full fine.

If the artists submitted the songs straight to ITMS, Magnatune, Napster or a similar system they could sell them at half the price and still make a greater amount since the middlemen who take most of the profit are gone. In the past artists couldn't set up CD presses or advertise themselves, but now they just need some studio time and a website - the RIAA and co. are redundant. With this system the artists could also, quite fairly, sue copyright infringers for the value that they deprived the artist of (say $50 per song to account for repeated uploads, and force them to pay legal fees if they loose).

If there's a gaping hole in this argument feel free to point it out, but I don't see anything that the artists can't do themselves/pay for independently rather than signing their rights to the RIAA's companies.

As we will all agree, the recording industry needs to accept that music downloading is here to stay, and they need to work with the fileshareing community, not against it. But few will disagree that artists deserves to be paid for their music.

There have been several models proposed to make (allow?) users to pay for music downloads. Some have been tried and failed, others are having more success.

Personally, I think the most workable model is the concept of a downloading license, which could be similar to the radio and TV license systems in the United Kingdom.

I don't know the details, because I'm not Brittish. By my understanding, nobody is required to pay for a TV (or music download) license. If they are found to be watching TV (or downloading music) without a license, they can be penalised. A license is not expensive, so most people pay their annual fee.

I suspect most users would be happy to pay, say, $10/year on top of their ISP costs, to allow them to legally download as little or as much music as they want to. If you don't want to download, or if you want to risk a fine, don't pay the fee.

Obviously, license fees should be channelled back to the artist, to compensate them for creating the music. Realistically, recording companies and management would take their cut en route.

A flaw in this proposal is that nobody knows what proportion of the revenue is due to which artists, because fileswapping is unregulated.

And that's where this monitoring technology could be best applied. As a rating system, to determine which artist is owed what proportion of the license fee pool.

Music fileswappers would be much less hostile to a monitoring system that channels money to their favourite artists than they would be to a monitoring system that tries to shut down fileswapping.

The monitoring/banning system as it is proposed ("evil, pure evil") will be worked around. A monitoring/rating system as I have suggested may be embraced.

tdmp

I keep seeing this over and over. Everyone seems to have forgotten that Napster does have a hardware mp3 player. Samsung makes it, but it carries the Napster name, and you can bet they get a piece of each sale.

>>I do use the service. And as a subscriber you
>>can download songs and burn those songs to CD.
>>The exceptions are songs marked with the red
>>Buy Only tag.

No, you can not burn 'downloaded' tracks. Only tracks you have bought. And yes I am a Napster user, before that a Pressplay user.

Here is what Napster says you can do with a download:

A "Download" is a Track that you may save to the hard drive of your personal computer and play back as many times as you want for so long as your subscription is current. You may make an unlimited number of Downloads while your subscription is current. You may copy each Download to up to two additional personal computers that you own (i.e. a total of 3 copies). You may not share Downloads with anyone else. Napster automatically renews your rights to all of your Downloads at the beginning of each Subscription Month (as defined below) so long as your subscription remains current. This means that in order to play any Download after the end of a Subscription Month, you must log on to the Service so that Napster can renew your rights for those Tracks. The Client will count the number of times that you play a Download, including while you are offline, for royalty accounting and analysis purposes.

Napster is compatible only with Win---s XP and 2K. Not even with 98 or NT will you have access to it. Meanwhile HP -- iPod by HP; Linux by HP? Maybe HP wants to diversify their products and is aware that relying too much on one technology will limit their business. IMHO HP has better business sense than Roxio, who targeted Napster only to part of 94% desktop users.

Even if a good number of Windows users come to realize uselessness of IE after all years and begin switching, the story is not over yet. There still are very many sites that are readable only with IE, and for these sites Windows/IE is the standard, regardless of w3c. Not to mention WMP9 and DRM, Microsoft has planted enough propriatery lock-ins to the Internet in the last several years so that it is impossible to get rid of IE (and Win) over night. I hope none of commercial mp3 download sites using IE/WMP will become a success, as they are endorsing this business strategy.

Maybe I'm too pessimistic. At least I can wish that the world is better place than what I think it is.

It means if Napster goes away and you lose your file, you're screwed. You can't get it again even though you paid for it.

If that happens then your screwed anyway, even if Napster are still around and turning a healthy profit, something I'd personally like to see. Read the licence agreement.

I quote: "If you have Purchased Tracks, it is your responsibility not to lose, destroy or damage them. Napster shall have no liability to you in the event of any such loss, destruction, or damage."

But since CD burners are mainstream now, and your allowed to burn each track to a CD up to five times, it's not too much to ask someone to take responsibility for looking after what they buy.

Napster has been doing the voucher thing for a while now. That being said, "a while now" means a few months :)

Don't know if this was a serious comment or not, but Napster won't do Win98 either. (don't know about the others). Check the system requirements at their site. Napster does look like they offer some features that iTMS doesn't do that I think are worthwhile, but then not only do they not do Win98, but they ONLY do Win2k/XP, no Mac. iTMS at least will do these as well as Mac.

Maybe except this one and this one and this one and this one and...

D R M only inconveniences those of us who pay for our music. The pirates will go on using uncrippled formats. DRM is precisely as effective for anti-piracy as the Evil Bit is for security.

It's not even about copy protection. It's about keeping us on the "new format treadmill", and locking us in to specific playback hardware/software.

Don't be fooled. Take a stand!

I submitted this earlier today, but was rejected. So here's what I had to say. It contains a bit more information.

After the University of Rochester announced last week in its school newspaper that students there would be offered legal music downloads starting the spring semester, Penn State President Graham B. Spanier announced today that his University has signed an agreement with Napster to launch a program in which Penn State will make Napster's Premium Service available at no cost to its students. This comes from the annual EDUCAUSE meeting of thousands of information technology administrators from universities around the country. Most notably are the panelists who are part of a P2P file sharing disscussion. They include, Cary Sherman of the RIAA, Jack Valenti of the MPAA, the Provost of the University of Rochester, and the President of Penn State. Too bad it's Napster and not iTunes.

I submitted this earlier today, but was rejected. So here's what I had to say. It contains a bit more information.

After the University of Rochester announced last week in its school newspaper that students there would be offered legal music downloads starting the spring semester, Penn State President Graham B. Spanier announced today that his University has signed an agreement with Napster to launch a program in which Penn State will make Napster's Premium Service available at no cost to its students. This comes from the annual EDUCAUSE meeting of thousands of information technology administrators from universities around the country. Most notably are the panelists who are part of a P2P file sharing disscussion. They include, Cary Sherman of the RIAA, Jack Valenti of the MPAA, the Provost of the University of Rochester, and the President of Penn State. Too bad it's Napster and not iTunes.

"To access the Service, you will need to install or activate Napster's proprietary software application; from time to time, you may also be required to install other software made available through the Service (collectively this software is called the "Client"). You may also need to install certain third-party software."

"Loss of Rights by Napster. Napster may at any time lose the right to make certain Tracks and/or Materials available. In such event, you will no longer be able to obtain these Tracks and/or Materials or to utilize the "Sync/Restore" function for Purchased Tracks."

"If Napster receives a notice alleging that you have engaged in behavior that infringes Napster's or other's intellectual property rights or reasonably suspects the same, Napster may suspend or terminate your account without notice to you. If Napster suspends or terminates your account under this paragraph, it shall have no liability or responsibility to you, including for any amounts that you have previously paid."

"To this end, the Software includes an auto-individualization feature that automatically collects unique system identification information about your computer and may be remotely activated in order to update security components used by the Windows Media Player. These updates, modifications and the like may occur on a periodic or as needed basis without notice to you."

"To access the Service, you will need to install or activate Napster's proprietary software application; from time to time, you may also be required to install other software made available through the Service (collectively this software is called the "Client"). You may also need to install certain third-party software."

"Loss of Rights by Napster. Napster may at any time lose the right to make certain Tracks and/or Materials available. In such event, you will no longer be able to obtain these Tracks and/or Materials or to utilize the "Sync/Restore" function for Purchased Tracks."

"If Napster receives a notice alleging that you have engaged in behavior that infringes Napster's or other's intellectual property rights or reasonably suspects the same, Napster may suspend or terminate your account without notice to you. If Napster suspends or terminates your account under this paragraph, it shall have no liability or responsibility to you, including for any amounts that you have previously paid."

"To this end, the Software includes an auto-individualization feature that automatically collects unique system identification information about your computer and may be remotely activated in order to update security components used by the Windows Media Player. These updates, modifications and the like may occur on a periodic or as needed basis without notice to you."

After spending the last two years going over like a Lead Balloon, Pressplay just rebranded itself with the Napster name.

The corporate overlords may want to buy into the customer goodwill that surrounds the Napster brand name instead of the apathy that surrounds the Pressplay brand name, but they're just polishing a turd. People didn't want to rent their music then, and they won't want to rent it now.

The emperor has a little kittyface mask on, but he's still naked.

From Blogzine.net...

[Note: The following article does not address the subscription side of Napster. Only the features it shares with iTunes]

Two weeks ago, about this time I was ecstatic. I was telling everyone I knew about this wonderful phenomenon of the 21st century....*trumpet sounds* iTunes!

Ever since I realized that buying 10 songs to listen to 1 song was not only silly but foolhearty, I've detested the RIAA's efforts to thwart legal digital music transfer. Why? Because I knew in my heart if such a service existed I would use it...even excessively. I love music. I hate CDs. I hate the RIAA.

iTunes was going to answer that need, and in many ways it did. In fact, I was content with its drawbacks...legal music was all I ever wanted. Getting rid of Kazaa Lite was all I ever wanted.

iTunes was liberating. I downloaded the 20MB of software from Apple.com the first day it was released....at 340 KB/s, a speed I rarely reach with my cable service. I loved it immediately. It had my artists, the songs were 99 cents cheap, the download was nearly instant, and the quality superb considering the bit rate was only 128k.

More than that, Apple, as always, had a snazzy ad and uber sexy hype about it. And perhaps deservedly so. "Hell froze over." read the home page "The best Windows application ever written." Great stuff.

Yes, iTunes was the answer, and I was spreading the word. "Woe to ye, sinners, pirates forsake thy evil theivery and embrace the salvation of iTunes!"

But in the back of my mind there were several problems, problems I was willing to brush aside at the time, or perhaps fix. In an IM dated, oh, I don't know...sometime last week I said something like this:

"I'm going to figure out a way to automate the peacful transfer of music to my Pocket PC from iTunes."

The problem was realized, it was out in the open now. Apple supported portable music, but only with their elite iPod. I would love to own an iPod, but I cannot afford one and won't be spending such a large amount of money on one. With apple, there was no alternative. I couldn't port music to my Pocket PC. Impooossssible. I also couldn't easily convert the songs to MP3s or WMAs. (Let's see, 1. Burn a CD 2. Rip the CD into the format of my choosing. 3. Type in all of vital information such as artist name. 3 easy steps!) This was a huge hurdle, one that I wasn't sure if I could surrmount. After toying with different audio codecs and attempting to find away to defeat the blasted DRM, I gave up...it was for all intents and purposes, impossible.

It was about this time last week I checked out the Napster home page. It wasn't available yet, and I didn't really like the looks of this new software. But one thing did catch my eye. Napster was going to use the WMA format. This could spell "Liberation". Liberation beyond iTunes, true liberation.

Fast forward to yesterday, I checked out the Napster site again, but this time I was greeted with a big "Download Now" button. I immediately downloaded it.

The interface is what I would call "iTunesian". It's basically a shameless clone, though not quite as sexy. It's a clone in a annoying sort of way. It was the "Bizzaro iTunes"....the same but different and very annoying. But I can learn to love that. I started out my adventure with Napster by searching for the Don McLean ode to Rock n' Roll, American Pie. It quickly appeared in the list, and in 30 seconds I was listening to its goodness. This brings us to our first benefit Napster has over iTunes.

Numero 1. Apple wouldn't let me have the song.

You see, I tried to download American Pie from iTunes l

I say the most nagging problem is those commercials they put out with the napster cat dancing around.

I think that once we heard all our favorite ways of pirating music were going away we were all pissed. Now that we're starting to all come around to the idea that perhaps a low cost service wouldn't be so bad, we're more likely to give Napster 2.0 a chance (especially since it looks like no one will pay to have their bandwidth used).

Here's my review, which I attempted to post as a new topic but got denied....

Below is a short review I have done of the three legit online music services I have tried - Rhapsody, iTunes, and Napster 2.

Rhapsody

As a s/w developer who sits in front of his computer all day, I'm a big fan of the online streaming services and a huge Rhapsody advocate. I consider it the best $10 that I spend a month and use it for at least 6 hrs a day M-F. I've also ripped my entire CD collection to a FireWire drive connected to a fileserver I have setup in my home network. In total, I have about 7000 mp3s
ripped at 192kbps VBR which take up about 37GB of storage.

But Rhapsody has it's shortcomings.....

- no portable support

- no way to play local media files

- purchased music can be burned to a CD once and then it's gone

- no one click album purchase

I live with most of these by simply ripping the CDs I burn from Rhapsody which allows me to mix them with my local tracks and upload them to my Samsung YP-30SH MP3 player. I have also purchased the licensed version of RealOne (w/o all the subscription crap) to manage my local files. I'm not a big fan of Real the company but RealOne has great ID3 and file management capabilities. I've tried all of the others (e.g. MusicMatch) and I simply can't find another media player which does what RealOne does for me. I should mention that most of these capabilities came from RealJukebox which has then merged with RealPlayer to form RealOne. Unfortunately, it is now bordering on considerable bloatware and I fear that since Real has purchased listen.com (i.e. Rhapsody) they are planning on merging the Rhapsopdy client into it which will likely result in both clients becoming less usable.

iTunes

When iTunes for Windows launched, I checked it out from a curiosity perspective. The U/I is very well done as one would expect from Apple and the purchase process is seamless. Apple has made it very easy for people to spend money :) I also like the notion that my purchased music are simply DRM-protected local files and I can play/manage them along with my local files.

But iTunes has it's shortcomings......

- iPod-only support

- no streaming service

- AAC format which has very limited industry support

I have seen so many messages blasting M$oft and WMA and DRM, and the same people giving accolades to Apple and iTunes. But from my perspective, iTunes/AAC is 10x more proprietary than WMA and Apple has not been anywhere near as forthcoming with developers as M$oft has been over WMA. There are at least a dozen MP3 players on the market supporting WMA and only one supporting AAC. It seems that since Apple is "cool", it's OK for them to be signicantly more proprietary than the "uncool" Microsoft.

As far as DRM is concerned - yes, it's a pain, but get over it - it's not going away.

Napster 2

So given my views on Rhapsody and iTunes, I was eagerly awaiting the launch of Napster 2. The advance information available seemed to indicate that it had everything I like about Rhapsody and more (e.g. portable support). I had decided that if it actually was what it's PR made it out to be, I'd bite the bullet and get a WMA-capable MP3 player.

But boy was I wrong......

I downloaded the Napster 2 client first thing yesterday morning and immediately felt a sense of deja-iTunes-vu. They seemed to have attempted to replicate the iTunes interface in almost every way but in a way that seems much more "scattered-brained". At this time, I'd like to say a word about these services' U/Is. Perhaps it's my old way of thinking, but I really like Rhapsody's album and artist-orientated U/I. Everything is laid out very logically and navigation among artists, albums, genres, related artists,
etc. is v

Well, according to the Napster web site Napster 2 is currently still in beta testing anyway. That bug should have been fixed before the software went to Beta, but hopefully it'll get caught (or have already been caught), before the release of the "finished product" on the 29th.

Napster has extensive content agreements with the five major record labels, as well as hundreds of independents.

From the Napster About Us page.

A link for those lazy people.

I would like to share with you a story - a story of pain, rejection, denial, loneliness, and perhaps, at the end, triumph and a happy ending. This story begins just three short years ago...

I was in my senior year of highschool, and as was the style at the time, I was very much interested in computers. I loved to take them apart, figure out how they worked, write programs with Microsoft's fine development environment, Visual Studio [microsoft.com]. As was also the style at the time, I loved to read webpages, in particularly, Slashdot.org [slashdot.org]. Perhaps you can guess what happened next. I began to slowly change - I developed an unhealthy obsession with computers, began to dislike and openly question America's policies, started shamelessly pirating music [napster.com] and software [gnu.org], and most dangerously, got turned on to that most deviant operating system of all - Linux.

Now I know many of you must be shaking your head in disgust at this point - "This must just be another one of those M$ trolls, hardee har har," but please, hear me out. This is very important.

As time went on, I got deeper and deeper in the Linux underground. I progressed through the various levels of "distros," from Mandrake, to Suse, to RedHat, finally to Debian, like a drug user going from harmless marijuana to cocaine and heroin. I thought I was so smart; I began sneering at other people who didn't use Linux - "Clueless Windo$e luzers," I would say. I was changing outwardly as well. I became a loner, hunched over the keyboard late into the night with the lights off, listening to my illegally downloaded music [kazaa.com]. All my friends left me after I broke their computers trying to install Linux on them. My hair grew long and unkempt, I stopped bathing and using deodorant, calling them "tools of capitalism and American greed." I got fired from my sysadmin job for installing slackware over the Solaris servers, and installing Debian over the Windows desktops. My bosses told me I cost the company hundreds of thousands of dollars, but I would not listen. "How could I be wrong, I'm using Linux?" I thought, "They must be M$ shills." You can see how far gone I was. No girls would look at me, let alone speak to me. I was in a world of pain, anger, and confusion [adequacy.org].

But, then one day, I took a long hard look at myself. I saw that something was wrong, but did not know what. I must confess, for a long time I denied what I knew deep down inside my heart - Linux was the cause of all my troubles. I saw what I had allowed myself to become. I was no longer a human being, I was a Linux Zealot. Instead of judging people by their thoughts, feelings, and actions, I judged them by their choice of Operating System. And so began the long road toward recovery...

I am still not fully recovered from my affliction, for you see, I have only one desktop machine, and cannot install Windows without losing much of my data. That's right, I am healthy enough to admit it, Linux is not for desktop use. I am planning my next desktop machine purchase, which will be an Apple iBook. The one good thing that came out of my years of torment is that I learned the power of Unix. Therefore, I will use MacOSX - a true Unix with excellent support and commercial software backing, something Linux will never have. By paying for my software from now on, I will be supporting the American economy. I want to help get America out of this economic tailspin [www.vasoftware] brought on by open source software [communism.org] and the dot com bust [fuckedcompany.com]. More importantly, I will no longer be an operating system zealot. I wi

To access the Service, you will need to install or activate Napster's proprietary software application; from time to time, you may also be required to install other software made available through the Service (collectively this software is called the "Client"). You may also need to install certain third-party software. ...

You may not authorize, encourage or allow any Tracks or Materials used or obtained by you to be reproduced, modified, displayed, performed, transferred, distributed or otherwise used by anyone else. ...

You may not attempt (or support others' attempts) to circumvent, reverse engineer, decrypt, or otherwise alter or interfere with any Usage Rules or Tracks. ...

You may burn each Purchased Track to a CD up to five times as part of any particular playlist of songs. ...

You may transfer a Purchased Track an unlimited number of times to portable devices that are compatible with the Service's Usage Rules and security requirements. ...

Any security technology that is provided with a Purchased Track is an inseparable part of it. If you have Purchased Tracks, it is your responsibility not to lose, destroy or damage them. Napster shall have no liability to you in the event of any such loss, destruction, or damage. ...

If you are using the version of the Service that is accessible from Microsoft Corporation's Windows Media Player 9 Series, you will only be able to burn or transfer Purchased Tracks using the Windows Media Player. I ...

You may use the "Sync/Restore" function to obtain another copy of those Purchased Tracks for up to two additional computers that you own. ...

Currently, the Service is only available to residents of the United States. You understand and acknowledge that you may not sign up for, access, or attempt to access or use the Service from countries outside of the U.S.

Of course this isn't enforceable, but the license agreement clearly states:

"Once you have burned a Purchased Track to a CD, you agree not to copy, distribute, or transfer the track from that CD to any other media or device."

There ya go. It's just PressPlay with a different face and a different owner.

Well, not quite. This Press release states that pressplay was the "foundation" for Napster, but from the information on their site, it sounds like Napster has a bunch more features, a different pricing structure, and a larger catalog of music. So yeah, it's from the same company as pressplay, and it shares some of the same software, but it's hardly "PressPlay with the Napster's name."

There ya go. It's just PressPlay with a different face and a different owner.

Well, not quite. This Press release states that pressplay was the "foundation" for Napster, but from the information on their site, it sounds like Napster has a bunch more features, a different pricing structure, and a larger catalog of music. So yeah, it's from the same company as pressplay, and it shares some of the same software, but it's hardly "PressPlay with the Napster's name."

The other thing was that their privacy policy page that they link to isn't up - it just redirects back to the homepage.

Their terms of use says that "Once you have burned a Purchased Track to a CD, you agree not to copy, distribute, or transfer the track from that CD to any other media or device" which makes me wonder -- if I burn a CD, can I rerip it to get rid of the DRM?

Check out the Napster Animations. They're pretty funny =)

The DRM is Microsoft's WMA 9.0, but they claim you can burn to CD, transfer to "compatible" portable devices, and can have them on up to 3 different computers - all similar to iTunes.

Details are still sketchy on which tunes/bands they'll be offering, just which devices their app will consider "compatible", etc. but it will be interesting to see if/how successful this will be.

What's interesting is it sounds like napster is coming back this thursday...

CNN article here

Also check out napsters web site. They have a number of amusing animations here.

Quite the surprise. I'm interested in what they have to offer and how well it works out for all.

While P2P and HTTP may be excellent ways of file sharing, for better or for worse, the RIAA _will_ stop them. Right now they have attacked legally, which is leading P2P developers to make some advancements in the way of encryption, anonymity, etc. The RIAA seems to realize, now, that there really is no way to stop technology. We have already won.

Now they are taking the overused advice of "adopt a new business model", which seems to be services such as Apple's iTunes Music Store (Soon for Windows), BuyMusic.com, Rhapsody, and soon Roxio Napster 2.0.

The new RIAA attack plan is to offer B2P services. The problem? DRM. If I buy a CD from iTMS, for example, it may be $9.99. I would buy the same CD in store for $14.99. No, I'm NOT paying five bucks for the album art, professionally burned CD, etc. I'm paying for the right to do with it what I want. There's something about having "SOMETHING" in your hands. They can't take that away from you, like they can with digital music.

P2P for me is a way of sampling music before buying the CD. This will never be replaced by a $0.99 deal, since I like to download it, and listen to the song throughout the day. At work I listen to different music than at home. At night, different music from the day. Walking music is different from sittin' or driving music. Rhapsody fails here, so does iTMS... you can only sample certain portions, while in front of your computer. It's not the same.

Why P2P is better than HTTP? It's easier. More people use it, than HTTP was used for MP3 trading. Does it matter? No, B2P will overtake them both. There IS a large number of people who ONLY want digital music, that's why they turn to P2P. These people will turn to B2P once it becomes "mainstream."

For the most part the RIAA doesn't have to do legal battles any more (though it is a nice source of income), they can attack it by offering new online services, just as EVERYONE has been saying for years. Me, I'll stick to brick and mortar, and P2P though.

I've been a hardcore netizen since 1998, when I used to dial up from my uncle's home to a text-only shell account with a 1,500 bps modem :-) I remember waiting minutes to download a single JPEG file, then transferring it to my local machine using Kermit, and opening it up in Internet Explorer 3.0 on Windows 95, only to realise that it's the wrong one! Those were the days when I learnt to use Pine and Lynx, my favourite mail/www combo.

Those were the days of Internet success stories: ICQ, Napster, Winamp. Remember ShellSock?

In a perfect geek encounter, I met bluesmoon on comp.lang.java. Google didn't even exist back then.

Now, when I look around, I see "techies" with 5-10 years of experience in the software industry and no clue what All Your Base... means :-) Clearly, these guys have been here for the money. I, however, am here because I love it. The Internet is changing lives, and I want to be responsible for some of it. Somebody give me that perfect job! :-D

especially since napster still hasn't started up again...

And that "Mozilla Foundation" site. What are they thinking? "By developers, for developers" - that's what they're thinking.

Want to see branding? Even in death, Napster does it better. Far, far better.

napster? really? they're not a functioning service/company any more. I think you're either making things up or astroturfing for the RIAA/MPAA. Or you could be a time-travelling sysadmin from 1999, but I think that's kind of unlikely.

Oh, I'd hazard a guess and say not as long as this did?

$0.99 per track. I think that's a bit steep unless they have some slick way of giving you album art and liner notes or other bonus materials.

To me, the fact that the good songs on an album are no longer "tied" (by antitrust definition) to the filler more than makes up for that. This service is for people who want singles; this one is for people who want albums.

When you have a crime to investigate, and you have no suspects, where do you start? Obviously you begin by looking at the person or persons who have the most to gain by perpetrating the crime.

This is why we must consider: who had something to gain from the disasterous crimes of September 11th? Obviously not Osama Bin Laden, who would net no financial windfall from the destruction of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Although he has loudly applauded the "terrorist" acts of September 11th and even tacitly taken credit for them, there is no reason to believe that he is anything more than a bandwagon jumper. Being blamed for the destruction of the World Trade Center has done more for his image than any amount of militant Islamic rhetoric.

But if not Bin Laden, then who?

It so happens that on December 11th, "coincidentally" 2 months after the tragedy, Credit Suisse First Boston quietly agreed to pay out US$100 million in order to settle an 18 month old investigation into its handling of certain high-profile technology IPOs (Initial Public Offerings). One of the most controversial amongst these being the IPO of VA Linux Systems, Inc. (LNUX) .

VA Linux Systems, Inc., now known as VA Software, is widely derided as a poster child of the dot-com bust, though inexplicably still in business. At the time of the IPO, VA Linux (Software) shares opened trading at nearly 10 times their $30 offer price, closing the first day of trading at $239.25. This meteoric rise made many early investors rich, strangely on account of a company which purports to sell a hobbyist operating system which can be obtained for free on the Internet. "The VA Linux initial public offering is a prime example of market manipulation in an IPO by investment banks, their customers and the issuing firm," said Steven Schulman, a partner in the law firm Milberg Weiss Bershad Hynes & Lerach, which specializes in filing shareholder suits.

"Because certain favored customers of the investment banks agreed to buy shares in a new issue at inflated prices in the aftermarket (in return for getting an allocation of the shares at the initial offering price) the share prices to which the IPO eventually soared were actually driven by artificial market forces," continues Schulman.

But what does the VA Software (Linux) IPO have to do with the attacks on September 11th, and what has that to do with the Credit Suisse settlement? Well, considering that VA Linux (Software) got CSFB into trouble in the first place, it stands to reason that the VA Linux (Software) Board of Directors were complicit in the stock fraud from beginning to end. As the investigation progressed against CSFB, the unscrupulous VA Software/Linux executives, their pockets bulging with filthy lucre plundered from trusting, hard-working investors, must have realized that their days in the country club were numbered if the SEC discovered their wrongdoings.

The SEC, or Securities Exchange Commission, is a federal regulatory agency, and cannot be bribed. Therefore, with a possible stint in federal prison looming large, Larry Augustin and the rest of the crooks, including outspoken gun violence advocate Eric S. Raymond, decided to undertake more active means to halt the investigation.

The Plan

It so happened that all the evidence in the CSFB/VA Linux investigation was held at the SEC Northeast Regional Office in Manhattan. More specifically, 7 World Trade Center, Suite 1300. The board decided that a simple burglary or arson attempt would not be satisfactory to destroy the evidence; anything so simple had a significant chance of being botched, and regardless of success would leave too many witnesses or living accomplices.

It was then that Eric S. Raymond suggested something he had read in a book by Tom Clancy. Crashing two planes into the World Trade Center Plaza would guarantee the destruction of the SEC offices, killing the operatives and possibly a number of SEC investigators at the same time. The plan seemed flawless, and would cost little more than the price of a few plane tickets. In a secret session, the board voted unanimously in favour of Eric's suggestion, and began to put it into action.

VA Software/Linux, at the time of planning the attacks, had no shortage of H1-B visa workers, who they employed for the purpose of writing and improving hacking, encryption, and other terrorist tools for the Linux operating system. It had been decided that a hand-picked few of these foreign H1-B workers would be used as the "patsies" in the operation. A contest was held, and the most zealotous Linux advocates were chosen for this secret assignment, direct from the board of directors. They accepted their mission after being told that, if successful, it would guarantee the adoption of Linux in the desktop market.

Alan Cox was brought into the fold to provide some planning and logistics for the mission. It was he who determined that since there was no adequate flight simulator software for Linux, the patsies would need to train at a flight school in order to pull off the plan successfully. It was also his idea to hijack a third and fourth plane for the purpose of crashing them into Washington D.C., to express his extreme rage over the DMCA, or Digital Millenium Copyright Act. The board of directors agreed with this addition to the plan in the hopes that it would help divert attention from the purpose of the WTC attack.

The H1-B workers were given false identities by using Linux hacking tools. Once they had attended the necessary flight training, they stayed at the Massachusetts home of Richard M. Stallman for a brief "faith building" retreat. During this time spent at the house of Stallman, between the nauseating stench of patchouli, Stallman's incessant, pitiful recorder playing, and Stallman's droning seminars on the grammatical and syntactical accuracy of various statements by Microsoft representatives, the H1-B workers were effectively hypnotized to the point that they were ready to lay down their lives for Free Software. It was then that they departed for Boston's Logan International Airport to board the planes.

(The preceding inside information has been obtained from a credible source close to the VA Linux/Software Board of Directors. He/she is in hiding for obvious reasons in light of this damning evidence, but has presented hard, physical evidence of VA Software/Linux's complicity in the events of 9/11 to federal investigators.)

Troll 68 of 208 from the annals of the Troll Library .

in the mp3 world it was called napster.

This was removed from the front page, in case anybody's wondering what people are talking about here.

Funny stuff...Napsters Home page

You think that's funny? Go to Napster.com and click the image. :)