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I keep hearing this repeated that the list was delivered on hard-copy only but napster's own notice on their site says they had a soft copy.

On Thursday afternoon, May 4, Metallica sent computerized lists of 317,377 Napster user names alleged to be infringing Metallica's copyrights.

This makes me wonder where this hard copy claim got started and if I should consider it FUD?

P.S. (OT) My god slashdot is fast on this new server!

Q: What information has Napster received from Metallica?

A: Metallica delivered a computerized list of 317,377 distinct usernames to be banned from Napster. The list contained usernames, filenames of allegedly infringing music for each user, time, date, and the IP address of the Napster server to which the user was connected. That information did not contain the user's IP address or personal information. Metallica has stated that it intends to limit the scope of its notification to commercially released Metallica albums, making "no claim of infringement with respect to recordings of songs made by fans at Metallica live concerts."

Go get your free Palm V (25 referrals needed only!)

I see no obvious way a form could be linked in court to a specific Napster user unless the user testifies they submitted it. There's no authentication that the name and address entered belongs to the person completing the form. There's no authentication by any obvious strong cryptographic means, no witness's signature, notary, or anything else normally associated with a legally binding document, let alone one where the alleged signer starts giving up their legal rights.

I suspect anyone could submit a form on behalf of any napster user. (Those more familiar with Napster's registration process are welcome to correct me). Yes, that's possibly perjury, but could someone sumbitting a false form be tracked down with only an IP address to find them?

I don't listen to Metallica, so I'm not directly involved in this issue. But I wouldn't fill out the damn form if I *was* blocked inadvertantly. It feels to me like replying to the opt-out address in SPAM email. If someone wants to sue me, they can use the traditional methods to find and serve me. (Been there, done that, my attorney and I are waiting)

IANAL, standard disclaimers apply.

If there's one good thing that this entire deal is doing, it's letting music fans know that Metallica acknowledges bootleg recordings as material that they shouldn't touch.

From here.
"Metallica has stated that it intends to limit the scope of its notification to commercially released Metallica albums, making "no claim of infringement with respect to recordings of songs made by fans at Metallica live concerts.""

This also had a little more info on it, straight from Napster.

kwsNI

:wq!

(iii) reverse engineer any portion of the Napster service or browser

Yet on their home page, they recommend Macster for users on Macintosh boxen. And the official FAQ lists (unsupported) clients for other platforms.

(iii) reverse engineer any portion of the Napster service or browser

Yet on their home page, they recommend Macster for users on Macintosh boxen. And the official FAQ lists (unsupported) clients for other platforms.

And in other news, following their glowing success in their suits against MP3 dot Com and Napstar dot Com RIAA has decided to "let it ride!", filling suits against Washington University, Necmer Soft, Inc.,The Apache Group, Netscape, and Microsoft. Only Microsoft was available for comment saying, "... this is no different than STAC...", making reference to the buyout and dissolution of STAC by Microsoft a number of years ago.

Gez. Fuck it! Let's sue the whole damned country. (*whisper*) Oh, Metallica is already doing that...

[And people say Communism and Socialism are Evil (tm).]

And the bottom line is, they need to prove they are losing money due to napster. I am not talking about the legality of it - sure, distributing illegally copied music is illegal - but rather the feasibility of the band winning any damages. They can throw some poor Metallica fans in jail for violating copyright laws (assuming they spend a lot of $ and time setting them up and directly identifying them while they are committing crimes). Truth is, a lot of those people already probably spend a bunch of their hard earned money on Metallica music already, not to mention t shirts, concerts, and jimmy hats.

The industry is not at this point suffering due to "piracy." Future technological developments threaten it only if it refuses to change -- welcome to capitalism.

just a couple things, thanks for the discussion also. (here's a quick hello to everyone lurking,."Hello!")

I had a conversation about this last night with friends, some of which have high-speed connections.

Me too. We were listening to some of this (KVHW) using this. Them someone mentioned these guys. So I used this. And everyone heard what we were talking about. Which opened the door to summarize this discussion for them. :-) Later, I pointed out how we were all felons, pirates, and all that was evil in the world. Then, we went to this show, and made a night of it.

There is no philosophical connection between the Free Software/Open Source movement (if you merge them together for simplicity) and piracy of intellectual property.

Except that some folks in the FS/OM movement don't believe in piracy of intellectual property as a concept. I fall short of that extreme, but believe our current situation regarding IP, is, flawed.

Therefore, those who don't pay for such content are parasites relying on the "rubes" who do pay for it.

Then I guess I'm some sort of pararube, eh?

Basically, we'll be down to hobby content.

If Linux is an example of hobby content, then I'm all for this scenario. I like to think of Free Software (and hopefully someday Free Music) as the baseline for measuring software. If your commercial software isn't as good as the stuff I can get for free...your stuff sucks and isn't worth my money. As we raise the bar for what you can get for free, you have to raise even higher the bar of what you sell. This provides the necessary motivation to succeed, that other forms of communism (i.e. in the real world) lacked. Just so I can be honest with both you and myself on what I'm really talking about. Eliminating scarcity changes value fundamentally, it's time to deal with it.

If you want to continue this, may I suggest e-mail?

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in an interview that you can watch on http://www.abcnews.com the CEO of napster says napster is made for fans to find out about new music, to help underground bands.

This is something people forgot. This is what I use Napster for. I'm talking with a couple friends. Someone mentions a band. I go home, DL, and listen for a bit. Those of you "Napster is the Dread Pirate Roberts" whiners, need to hear some good music, it might open your mind a bit. And don't argue with me what Napster is for, argue with them. And you wonder why the RIAA is suing them for 100k a DL....the best way to capitalize a market is to destroy competition.
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Which leads me to a second opinion: what is RMS's opinion on the current lawsuit by Mettalica against Napster?

Thank you!!

Alot of you are complaining about Metallica's greed, when all you want is a handout. Where I live, I hear allot of people complaining about not getting what they want for free. And, of course, anybody that has 2 cents in their pocket better fork it over...

One guy I overheard was especially pleased with his state of financial affairs:

"...I'b work for de gubbmint!"

Guess who pays his way...

Long live communism, Huh?

Alot of you are complaining about Metallica's greed, when all you want is a handout. Where I live, I hear allot of people complaining about not getting what they want for free. And, of course, anybody that has 2 cents in their pocket better fork it over...

One guy I overheard was especially pleased with his state of financial affairs:

"...I'b work for de gubbmint!"

Guess who pays his way...

Long live communism, Huh?

Four people (or 24!) on one connection is likely going to generate more traffic than one person on one connection.

Unless that one person was running Napster... oops, now that is illegal on campuses too...

Have they banned FTP yet? You can download MP3s over FTP...

Is it just me or are the American businesses and authorities getting dumber by the minute?

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I can't help but notice that Napster, being the epitome of software that violates the DMCA, is nevertheless flourishing. The powers that be in Congress and the recording industry have decided that their intellectual property must be protected with the full power of the law. Instead, things seem to be backfiring for them and the law is weakened in the process (something which I do not thing is a good thing.) By passing legislation that attempts to prohibit certain means of distribution the industry is engaged in a kind of Operation Foot-Bullet, bringing publicity to the fact that their goods are easily copied and even what software to use. In the process, the law that they spent so much to get passed is being proven to be largely ineffectual. This leads to decreased confidence in the ability of the nation-state to protect corporate profits, something which may or may not be a good thing in the long run. But either way, the distributed and open nature of the Net has put another small chink in the armor of the nation-state. We'll see how many chinks it takes to bring the whole fucking thing to its knees.

The ambitious goal we should set for ourselfs is: Unlocking the knowledge of humanity.

A far more sophisticated system is need then napster to acomplish this. Such a system was first discussed by V.Bush in 1945. Napster is only about sharing standard mp3 files. UseNET is also all about distribution of information. Napster is dedicated for MP3, where UseNET allows distribution of text, audio, CDROM images, etc in all forms. The current traffic volumes are around 1 GByte / day ! Compared to this volume Napster is small, yett Napster is more usefull then the special news clients that gather all MP3s from a binairy newsgroup.

A very important feature lacking in both Napster and UseNET is advanced review and moderation. Slashdot is an example of how review should work: by the people and for the people. When the produkt is becoming more diverse the need for distingtion increases. The MP3 files of Napster are fairly standard. Only the quality of the encoder matters if you rip directly of the CD. For images things become more tricky. The resolution can be checked by simple scripts, but the overall image quality must always be rated by the users. The description, quality and content of video can be entered by the user colectively. Shashdot proves that a review mechnisms on text work effectively and gems of information can be distinghished. This information is the greatest challange. Currently there are tutotials for mastering the art of C, C++, java, perl, php3, etc. programming. It would be a great leap if such writings could evolve from the work of several people on the Internet, each contributing the unique piece of knowledge and experience they own.

We therefore need to add rating and review mechanisms to the open source Napsters that distribute the knowledge and information of humanity. The mechanism of karma, and score's for the content need to be refined for the various types of information.

With such a mechanism copyright issues are no longer relevant and information can flow and evolve freely. To pay the people for their work it must be possible to send small amount of money directly to the people, instead of the big amount of money that is currently asked by the media industry. This small transfer of money should be optional.

Just my 5 eurocents,
Johan.

Someone said making napster illegal would be like making (among other things) the USENET illegal. The problem with this analogy is there isn't the same level of direct culpability with regards to the USENET as there is with Napster. The USENET is a far larger and amorphous entity than Napster is. Who would you find liable for file trading on the USENET?...The USENET isn't a product of a given company like napster is...

Another analogy was made to VHS and cassette tapes. I would say this isn't the best analogy but instead think of "video stabalizers" or "cable decoder boxes". So called video stabalizers have long been used to try to break copy protection in copying a tape from one VCR to another. Similarly, cable decoder/descrambler boxes have long been used to circumvent the cable companies scrambling. Now, the problem here, and with napster, is that all three products have the possibility and potential to be used in a completely legal manner. If I am working on a video project on some crappy old VCR, I might use a video stabalizer to improve my image quality; if I by accident knock my cable box off my TV and break it and want a new one without wanting to pay the cable company, I may just choose to go buy one from a shop down the street. Similarly, if I am an independent music producer (some small indie band or whatnot), I may choose to try to use napster and it's chat rooms to promote my band by giving away free samples...

Legally the question becomes then not can the product be used for legal purposes, but what is it most likely to be used for. And this is where the law gets REALLY hairy. Then, "intent" has to be proven, which is a mess in and of itself, and it gets crazy. Two perfect examples though are syringes and "burgalarious tools". If you are caught in a drug bust, or whatever, it is against the law to carry a syringe without a valid reason why (at least this is true in Massachussetts...some MIT students recently got in trouble for just this (amongst other things)). Also, if you are caught breaking into a house and you have a bag of hammers, screwdrivers, etc. (esp., lockpicks!), you can be cited for illegal possession of "burgalarious tools". In both these instances, the person is usually caught doing something else, and these are secondary charges the cops like to tack on additionally, but still, a good example of how something completely legal can be found to be illegal.

It's scary, I know...

Now, departing from the legal side, Napster has technical problems galore (still being so new). Here's just a couple complaints:

• Multiple servers that don't communicate, and yet provide no notice to the user that there are in fact multiple servers nor which server they are on
• Search queries that can't be aborted
• Lots of firewall problems
• Lots of connection issues
• Lots of UI problems (like I can't look at what files someone has without explicitly adding them to my hotlist)

And now on to the article...first, I was amused to see this sentence in the second paragraph:
"At a time when the MP3 industry is under fire from multiple directions, the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) has filed a lawsuit against the small start-up company out of San Mateo, California, known as Napster. "
So there's an MP3 "industry" now, is there?...heh...

And here's a bold lie by the RIAA:
"We love the idea of using technology to build artist communities"
Yes, when it's a community around an artist that already is well set in the industry...new small artists not really interested in the RIAA? Uhuh. No way...The RIAA is not only not interested in them, it doesn't like them! They are potentially dangerous!

And here's a misnomer on Shawn's part too:
"I think it's pretty obvious to most people that Napster is not media specific".
Well, no. Currently, it is. It doesn't have to be, is what I think he's trying to say, and eventually won't be, but currently, yes, it is.

But in general, I don't think this article really says anything new. Big companies hate it, small individuals like it, and so it goes as per usual... Interestingly, Jon Katz was recently at MIT and stated this was an excellent example of how Geeks and young smart computer kids have usurped the "Corporatism" that exists today. I wondered about one point he made: he mentioned corporatism was different than capitalism, but I just don't see how?...

your morals are based on following the letter of the law of the land. That's important when deciding what is right and wrong. Some of us, however, feel that sometimes the law is wrong. And when breaking it is the only way to show that, well, go visit here and hopefully we can show how silly many of these laws are and you won't have to condemn us for listening to a wide variety of music in an ultimately convenient way.

--

Okay now i'm sorry if this point has already been brought up. I read a lot of posts in this thread, but didn't see it addressed. You see, whether there are legitimate reasons for having/using mp3s or not, the fact is that almost all (say 80+%) of mp3 traffic is stricktly a violation of copyright law. If you don't believe me, check out Napster.com and log on. You'll find times when a full terrabyte of music is available, and guess what, this is stolen music. There is very little difference (read: none) between taking a copyrighted song in mp3 format and simply stealing it from a store.

Don't get me wrong. I'm in no way saying there's anything wrong with stealing artists music. In fact, I fully endorse stealing mainstream music, but why the hell is everybody (again this might just be me mis-interpreting /. posts) trying to defend mp3 on some kind of self-rightous level? Most mp3 traffic is illegal. That simple. Of course the RIAA files a lawsuit against mp3.com, and so they should. The way the .mp3 file format is being used is a genuince violation of copyright laws. Now, whether you give a damn about said copyright laws is entirely another matter (like i said, i fully endorse ripping off mainstream artists... there's no way in hell anybody whose merely an entertainer deserves as much $$$ as they get).

Guys, bag on the RIAA all you want, but their lawsuit isn't some kind of sinister-conspiracy. It's what anybody would do in their position. No need to be self-rightous. Anyway, it makes no difference. The music industry as we know it is undergoing a severe rape. And I say it's about damn time.

One opinion that seems to be widespread both on slashdot and among the "cyber-liberterian" community is that the Net isn't censorable or history is on or side. Sentiments along the lines of, "everything will work out, so I don't need to do anything except mirror DeCSS until I get a letter from the MPAA."

The Net not censorable? This is not the case!

Consider two stories recently from slashdot: universities around the country banning the use of Napster, and one university banning access to the webpage dialpad.com. It is only a matter of time before governments and others start seriously toying with the idea of various technical solutions to prohibit access to pornography, copyrighted materials, source code deemed illegal, whatever.

The most dangerous way to approach this threat is to assume everything will be okay. Every one who reads slashdot that lives in Norway should be writing dead-tree mail to complain about the treatment of Jon Johansen, everyone in the US should be writing congress and the press to point out that the MPAA is using the DMCA to usurp fair use rights in spite of the intent of Congress. If you live in Australia you should be writing letters every month ccomplaining about the net censorship law, if you live in Arizona you need to write your representative to complain about the propsed legislation to prohibit students from using their net access for non-educational activites.

The net hasn't "destroyed the very idea of censorship." The last thing we can afford to do is assume this. Those who value the current freedom of the net and the current freedom to code should be writing one letter at least every month to a politican or newspaper.

One opinion that seems to be widespread both on slashdot and among the "cyber-liberterian" community is that the Net isn't censorable or history is on or side. Sentiments along the lines of, "everything will work out, so I don't need to do anything except mirror DeCSS until I get a letter from the MPAA."

The Net not censorable? This is not the case!

Consider two stories recently from slashdot: universities around the country banning the use of Napster, and one university banning access to the webpage dialpad.com. It is only a matter of time before governments and others start seriously toying with the idea of various technical solutions to prohibit access to pornography, copyrighted materials, source code deemed illegal, whatever.

The most dangerous way to approach this threat is to assume everything will be okay. Every one who reads slashdot that lives in Norway should be writing dead-tree mail to complain about the treatment of Jon Johansen, everyone in the US should be writing congress and the press to point out that the MPAA is using the DMCA to usurp fair use rights in spite of the intent of Congress. If you live in Australia you should be writing letters every month ccomplaining about the net censorship law, if you live in Arizona you need to write your representative to complain about the propsed legislation to prohibit students from using their net access for non-educational activites.

The net hasn't "destroyed the very idea of censorship." The last thing we can afford to do is assume this. Those who value the current freedom of the net and the current freedom to code should be writing one letter at least every month to a politican or newspaper.

My school (Tufts University) blocked Napster way back in November when it first started getting popular. I just started using CuteMX as a replacement (which I found at download.com), but unfortunately, it doesn't have as many users.

The new Napster beta circumvents the obstacles our network administrators put up, so they went and blocked access to the Napster website completely! Well, using our good friend the Anonymizer we have managed to download the new version anyway and spread it around campus. What will the network folk come up with next? Suspensions for all Napster users?

Anyway, the whole trial and tribulation has been documented on our online underground newspaper . You should read it - it's rather funny.


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I have many a friend into mp3, and I really don't think any payed for them ^_^ These people are all adolescents, and would normally be out pumping money into the Label's coffers, but instead I can log onto their ftp servers, and find hundreds of songs they just got off Napster. And it's not all 133t d00dz boasting about how many thousand they have. Mp3's are replacing CD's entirely for them. If they ever needed a CD, they'd burn it. These people are 'growing up' with the concept of free, readily availible music.

I'm not boosting the RIAA or anything (CD's are far too expensive for my liking), but what mp3 stands for really is a clear and present threat for the labels, and they damn well take it seriously. Are any of my friends gonna have 'second thoughts' and go out and buy a CD because The Smashing Pumpkins are losing money? No. Are they gonna go back to paying a lot of money for one or two songs they like (Canada doesn't have a real singles market). They ain't goin back

I love that game (I've even cloned it for Linux and other platforms that support Allegro), but Tetris sucks. The company that makes it is greedy.

But let's get back on topic, shall we?
Try typing "Tetris" into the song title search box on the Napster client and see what cool techno remixes don't pop up.

As long as we sit and hope that napster wins, they will lose.

This is not just an indictment of apathetic /. readers; napster is doing very little to organize any kind of community support. At their website they have little more than a list of web articles about their lawsuit.

Visit their site; ask for ways of helping. If anyone can think of a similar situation (a large company suing a challenging internet startup) where the smaller company won, please reply to this thread and suggest possible tactics.

As long as we sit and hope that napster wins, they will lose.

This is not just an indictment of apathetic /. readers; napster is doing very little to organize any kind of community support. At their website they have little more than a list of web articles about their lawsuit.

Visit their site; ask for ways of helping. If anyone can think of a similar situation (a large company suing a challenging internet startup) where the smaller company won, please reply to this thread and suggest possible tactics.

Napster is currently named in a law suit filed by the RIAA in regards to illegal MP3 distribution. Perhaps this case can be overturned with the help of this new ruling? Of course, Napster isn't a common carrier, but it isn't providing the information, either. It is only providing a means for people to exchange information ... just like ISPs.

For those of you who are like me and don't have some one to explain Napster is:
An application much like well made hotline where users can trade mp3s or leech of other Mp3 traders while chatting and also includes it's own mp3 audio player (who cares?).. I have used it a little since this morning It's pretty impressive.. for more information vist Napster.com

One example of this that comes to mind is the Napster software that was recently featured on Slashdot. For those who missed the article or are unaware of what it does, it basically establishes a "dedicated MP3 network" of users who connect into central servers and share their MP3 collections with all other users who are connected. If you want to find (for example) Billy Idol's "Rebel Yell", you enter the song and artist name into a search dialog, and it presents you with a list of dozens of users who are "sharing" that file, along with their connection speed and ping times. Then you pick who you want to download it from, initiate the transfer, and that's it.

Naturally, the Napster web site and welcome message prominently display warnings about copyright law and piracy, and they strongly stress that the software is only to be used to trade non-copyrighted MP3 music. But nobody is actually naive enough to believe that that's what people use the software for. The Napster developers know damn well that people are going to use the software to trade copyrighted music with each other. You only have to log in once to see that this is the case; a search for any song that is or was once even remotely popular will invariably produce many matches.

A couple of months ago or so, I bought a Creative CD-RW drive, and on the box it states that the included software will allow you to "share the latest independent MP3 music files with your friends." Here, again, Creative isn't fooling anybody. They know that there's huge demand for the ability to download music from the Internet and then burn it to CD where it can be played on a Discman, in a car, in the home stereo, or anywhere else. And guess what? Most of that music can't exactly be called "independent."

So are the Napster folks a party to piracy? What about Creative Labs? I think the answer to these questions is "yes"; it's kind of hard to argue that MP3 location software and CD burners have not contributed to copyright violations related to digital music. But (at least in my mind) there is a difference between being a party to piracy and being a sponsor of it. By placing obligatory warning messages on their products ("Thou shalt not pirate") and by essentially saying "Hey look, we're not responsible for what people do with this", the Napster and Creative Labs folks may have absolved themselves of legal responsibilty for what their users do (or have they? IANAL.)

In the end, I think it's clear that the user is responsible. There are certainly legitimate uses for an MP3 distribution network; it's a great way for garage bands across the world to get quick and cheap recognition for their work. And of course there are tons of legitimate uses for a CD burner! Since the technology is so neat, and since the providers of these technologies have no way to prevent people from misusing them, I don't see how we can place the responsibility on them.

Anyway, it isn't my intent to either condone or condemn music piracy. It is my intent, however, to illustrate an example of the sort of "moral dilemma" that some software and hardware makers face, instead of falling back on some lame gun analogy. :-)

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This Napster thing looks kinda neat, but I would be a bit worried about giving the world access to my disk. The site is a bit sketchy on the details.

JM

I think that these people are monumentally stupid if they think they're being "forced" to do anything - there are easier ways to get what you're looking for.

With mp3's, use something like napster, or mp3 usenet newsgroups. If you're looking for warez, IRC or alt.binary.*.

Internet - WARNING: Use of fully-functional brain required during use of this product. Working with Internet without a fully-functional brain may lead to needlessly viewing pr0n, or mindlessly clicking through the yahoo directory searching for nothing in particular.

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