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"After all, hackers are AOL customers, too."

If you download Winamp or the free software from Nullsoft, you're an AOL customer. If you use a branded (Netscape 4.x or 6.x) version of Mozilla, you're an AOL customer. If your local cable monopoly is Time Warner, and you have cable TV or a cable modem, you're an AOL customer. If you watch CNN, TBS, TNT, TCM, or Cartoon Network, you're an AOL customer.

It's becoming increasingly difficult to use the tool of boycott against media conglomerates.

Wouldn't it be cool to include ALL OS's? Not just the *NIX's (getting one package manager to correctly handle both BSD and Linux is a complicated task as it is), but Mac, Windows, etc?

I don't know whether you'd ever get all the *NIXes to adopt one package format (heck, not even all of the *NIXes that use the Linux kernel use the same package format, so far; is it even possible to generate an RPM that works, for a given instruction-set architecture, on all distributions that use RPM?).

It's probably even more unlikely that you'd get Windows, or MacOS Classic (MacOS X might be considered "one of the *NIXes", although it may be different enough from other *NIX-flavored OSes that it'd be even less likely that it'd adopt some standard package format).

If they could get something that would reliably install stuff under Win2K (InstallShield really doesn't cover it),

It might be possible to have tools such as Easy Software Product's Package Manager (as mentioned in another posting; ESP are the folks who do CUPS) work with various non-*NIX packaging tools, as well as handling the various *NIX package formats it now handles (debs, RPMs, SVR4 packages, IRIX packages of some sort, HP-UX packages of some sort, source tarballs).

Some tools for packaging on Windows include MindVision's Installer VISE (available for Windows and MacOS), for which "qualifying shareware and freeware developers" can get a free license (it's what the GTK+ and GIMP for Windows uses), and Nullsoft's "SuperPimp" Install System, which is also free. (I've not used either of them, so I can't say how good or bad they are.)

and do compiling for makefiles (I don't even know if there is something to do makefiles in Windows anyway),

Well, there's a tool called nmake, which comes as part of a package called "Visual C++" from some company up in Redmond, Washington that has done some software for Windows; its makefiles aren't exactly like those for the various *NIXes (but those aren't all the same, either - you have System V make, Sun's make which is a superset of SV make, GNU make, Berkeley make, etc.).

It's not clear that it's a package manager's job to deal with the differences between the "make"s on various platforms.

Its up there, in the free section.

http://www.nullsoft.com/free/aimazing/

AIMazing and other useful binaries are available at www.nullsoft.com

Check the nullsoft website. It's still there.

// Ian Shaughnessy

I know the proverbial 'cat' is already out of the bag -- but AOL couldn't be *TOO* worried about this, otherwise i'm sure they would have pulled the software from the nullsoft homepage ... just a thought.

bemis
shut up dude! i'm trying to impress your mom!

http://www.nullsoft.com/free/aimazing/

Source code included! Apparently, AOL took it off of Firehouse, but forgot about Nullsoft's own website. Heh heh.

And, just in case they take it off of that website, you can still get it (a slightly older version) from BetaNews, right here:

http://fileforum.efront.com/d etail.php3?fid=968658671

I'm all for it, but we have a problem. Most of your truely 'net savy users think that they ahve some kind of privacy that they aren't willing to give up in order to really make a difference.
The kid broke the law, and he broke the campus rules, and the only way to clear him of that is to have the rules changed. Yes, it sucks, and No, it's not really fair. But if no body cares enough to make formal complaints, if no one takes this personaly, then it Will keep happening.
We can blame a lot of different people for why the system is wrong, but instead, let's try to come up with a solution. The artists are bound to the corprations, the corps don't know how to make money off the MP3's, and untill we show them how, they're going to fight us. It won't be easy to implement and force this kind of change, but who else is going to do it?
Let's not forget that one of the major tools of the pirated music comunity was distributed for free, full release, and NullSoft was bought for How much?

• That line of defense makes no sense.. think about it.. if I release poisonous gas in Times Square, then decide, three hours later, that I did the wrong thing and start handing out gas masks.. does that clear me for the 1000's I killed in the first place?.. How can you do something (make a program and release it publicly) then hours later decide nevermind (remove the link) and ever think that clears you of a thing... you still did the damage.. just because you later changed your mind doesn't make a bit of difference (I'm sorry that I killed your family but I relized what I did is wrong and I wont kill anymore so don't punish me okay?)...

MP3Board is currently getting sued by the RIAA for copyright infringement by distributing MP3s. MP3Board has turned around and sued AOL because their subsidiary, Nullsoft created Gnutella. MP3Board wants AOL to share some of the liability for music piracy if MP3Board is found guilty. MP3Board's reasoning is that piracy wouldn't be happening as much if AOL's subsidiary hadn't created Gnutella.

---

Hell... let's sue the DOD for creating DARPANet... let's sue the estate of Vanevar Bush for coming up with an idea about knowledge-sharing back in the 40's.

What is it going to take to make these people realize that they keep going after the wrong people in all of this?

Originally, Gnutella *WAS* GPL. But, the authors (who worked for Nullsoft, which is owned by AOL,) were told (by AOL) to stop it. Since I'm guessing their contracts (as most programmers contracts do nowawadays) said that their employer (AOL) owns their code, they were forced to comply.

But, someone leaked the code to someone OUTSIDE AOL, and it's slowly being maintained. If you check their homepage, you will see that they plan on re-releasing the code, fully under the GPL, when they hit version 1.0. So, Even the "official" Gnutella isn't "official", since the only "official" source was closed by their "official" employer...

And, as was argued when it first happened... Since AOL owns the original code, they can change the (distrubution) license at will. Even on GPL-ed software. If I write a piece of software, and release it under the GPL, then for you to use it, you must agree to my chosen license. If, at a later date, I decide to charge for it, and change the license to a more restrictive one (such as Microsoft's,) I am fully within my rights to do so. And, if you were using my software, I can revoke your license, because I'm the copyright holder. Even if you made (and released under the GPL) modifications, since your original license was revoked, all your derivatives are illegal now. It's a REALLY slippery slope, which is why the FSF recommends that if you release under the GPL, you should also sign over your rights (copyrights, that is) to the FSF. Then, no one can force you to change your license, only the FSF could change the license. But, (again due to legal intricacies) if your software is really owned by your employer (like the original Gnutella) then THEY legally own the copyright, so you never had legal authority to choose the license, or sign your rights to the FSF... Ah, what a tangled web we weave...

The main reason I think RMS doesn't go after Gnutella is because he knows that they WANTED to GPL it (the authors even thought they did) but couldn't. Legally, AOL could stop the whole "official" Gnutella project anytime they choose to by sicking their lawyers on the current maintainers. But, since the important part of Gnutella is the protocol, it's too late to stop it. With the already-released (under the GPL) clones, there is nothing AOL (or anyone else) can do about it..

Reference URLs:

• The current Gnutella home page. These guys are not affiliated with Nullsoft or AOL in any way. They just acquired the source code, and are updating it.
• Nullsoft, Inc. The home of the original authors of Gnutella. There is no Gnutella info here.
• America Online. The beast.

Disclaimer: there are well over 1000 comments in this thread. This one will necessarily be to some degree redundant. I apologize in advance, and will do my best to say things that are worth repeating anyway.

. . . I would say that I'm quite, I'd say, more than surprised, I'm quite stunned at the lack of communication and input from the record company. Obviously, you know, with record companies we never really usually depend much on what they have to offer in terms of creative things, but I am stunned at the low volume of support from the record company, both publically and privately.

I am too. One would think that the record company would jump to protect their investment. Unless, of course, they understand better than Lars that MP3/Napster is something they can't fight.

I mean, obviously, Peter and Cliff, our two managers -- they're our closest advisors -- we have been, they've been advising us for 18 years now. Our managers are basically the fifth and the sixth members of the band. They're a total partnership. We view both of them as equal. And they're equally involved in this.

. . . we don't take anything from anybody. We take advice from our two managers, but ultimately we override them a lot.

These two comments paint their managers in very different lights, I think. In the first, they're friends; in the second, merely advisors. After reading the first quote, I was surprised to hear the phrase "We take advice from our two managers," because I would have thought that those managers would be part of "we".

. . . when it comes to my relationship with the Internet and with my comptuer, the fact is that we don't spend a lot of time together.

I would never fault Lars for not using the web, or for not being a geek. These things aren't everyone's cup of tea. But I think it's important to note that Lars admits here to not being well-versed in computers or the internet. He is attacking something about which he is not adequately educated, and I think it shows. He and the band, and their lawyer too, would do well to familiarize themselves with the structure of Napster, the nature of the internet, and the concept of filesharing before they make themselves look foolish in court.

. . . when somebody fucks with what we do, we go after them.

What are they, a street gang? Never mind, that's not important. What's important is that it is Metallica themselves who are setting up the Us vs. Them dichotomy of this debate. People don't trade Metallica MP3s because they hate Metallica, they do it because they like Metallica. These people consider themselves fans, and if the band has not already alienated these fans by getting them banned from Napster, they will surely do so by insisting that they [the fans] are trying to "fuck with" them [the band].

You don't sit down and sort of try and sort of justify yourself, well, 'Maybe our time and energy would be better spent thinking about something a year or two from now.'

Why not? Everyone else in the music industry seems to be doing precisely that. (Or hiding their heads in the sand, I guess.) It is astounding to me that a band with as long a history as Metallica might not have extensive experience with either planning for the future, or adapting to the present. MP3 will force the industry to develop a radically new way of doing business, but there's no reason Metallica shouldn't be blazing that trail.

We really felt that it was time for somebody, an artist, with a potential of a public platform, to get involved with this.

I do applaud Metallica for using their fame to draw attention to an issue they believe in. At least they were at the head of some parade, even if it had to be a misguided one.

Now, are we aware of the Gnutellas and all these other things? Of course we are, but you can only take it one step at a time. And I believe, and the people that we talk to about this, we believe, that the minute some of these companies become active, when they basically come to a point that they become fully funcitonal, we believe that there will be technology and a way to go after them in the way they can invent this technology and make it untraceable. We believe that as quickly as they can make it untraceable we believe that you can find a way to fuck with it . . .

I believe it will be very difficult for Metallica to "fuck with" Gnutella. First of all, the last I heard -- and someone please correct me about this if I'm wrong -- Gnutella wasn't even supposed to be released. Its own developer doesn't support it (and barely acknowledges it). Who is Metallica going to sue to stop Gnutella? It's pirated music being transferred via pirated software. And even if I'm wrong about this, or if it changes, it's the concept that's important, not the implementation. Like CmdrTaco said, "Yeah, we should definitely ban peer-to-peer file sharing over the Internet, and NFS pisses me off, too." If we can't use Napster or Gnutella, we'll use DCC. Or FTP. Or HTTP. Or we'll invent a new protocol.

It's true, what Lars says, that as quick as hackers can find some way to facilitate the flow of MP3s, "The Man" can find some way to block it. But the cycle doesn't end there -- the hackers circumvent the block, the Man blocks the circumvention, etc. Where does it end? With the simple fact that, because of the way computers have been built from the early days, it is effectively impossible to prevent a string of bits from being copied.

So it's sort of like -- the thing about this sort of mob mentality, what we call the 'Internet Extremists,' it's all kind of cute -- 'Yeah, we want to fuck with the system,' 'Yeah, we have a right to get everything for free.' But I believe that if you have the energy and the resources to chase 'em -- and that's one thing we have is a lot of energy and a lot of resources . . .

Why doesn't he just walk around wearing a t-shirt that says "I Am The Man"? He dismisses the notion of rebellion as "cute" and brags about his vast supply of resources (read: money). I think this is a very damaging thing for Lars to have said, though I must admit I'm glad he's said it. It certainly does suggest that Metallica is firmly entrenched in the corporate world.

So of course there will be at some point -- we are not stupid, of course we realize the future of getting music from Metlalica to the people who are interested in Metallica's music is through the Internet.

This, on the other hand, is encouraging. It suggests that Metallica haven't doomed themselves to being legacy artists.

That ultimately is what the biggest beef about this whole thing [is], is that Napster could have so easily avoided this whole thing. It's like, OK, 'It's January, my name is Napster, or I'm Sean, or whoever the CEO was at the time, we have this service, we would like to know if you are interested in being part of it.' If we'd said Yes, then there's no issue, if we'd said No, then this whole thing would have never -- it's really what this is about, it's what this whole thing ultimately comes down to, you know.

This is plainly ridiculous. Either Lars simply does not understand how Napster works, or he is being deliberately silly in the middle of making what should be a critical argument to his side of the story. Napster never asked a single band if they wanted to be a part of their service. Likewise, Napster has never made available a single work belonging to a single band via their service. The service they are providing is not, as Lars seems to imply, to the bands. They are providing a service to their users, a service that allows them to transmit files of certain types across the internet. (Never mind Gnutella, which permits sharing of any file, period.) It is the users who share the files, and if anyone should have asked Metallica first, it's the users. I have said elsewhere that Metallica was right to finger individual users, if they feel they must persist in this attack, and I stand by that statement. (Actually, it was Dr. Dre to whom I was referring, but it's the same idea.)

Unfortunately, it seems that this comment is only a perpetuation of the consistent misunderstanding of the way Napster works that Metallica, Dr. Dre, and their attorney Howard King have shown since we first heard King say "Tha t [Napster's offer to ban usernames who were identified as sharing Metallica/Dre songs illegally] was not a satisfactory response. That was a comical response." Metallica, Dre, and King do not know how Napster works, and apparently, they do not care to find out. Worse, they do not seem to think they will need to.

It's sort of like, you know what, fair enough, I can certainly respect and I would certainly somewhat agree with the fact that paying 16 bucks for a CD is probably, you know, pushing too much. But, it's the marketplace that dictates that, not me.

Quite right. And this is what scares people who make money off of music. One of the rarer moments in the history of capitalism is upon us: for once, the consumers are going to tell the producers how the industry will be run. People are not willing to pay $16+ for a CD. In fact, people don't necessarily want the entire CD, and they may not be willing to pay a cent. The marketplace is speaking, and it's saying, music should be free. No one has told Metallica not to charge money for their music. But MP3 listeners worldwide are telling Metallica that they're not going to pay it. Is this frightening? Should this worry us? Only if we're the sort of people who think that music is created to earn the artist money. But if we believe that music is art created for art's sake . . . .

Understand one thing: this is not about a lot of money right now, because the money that's being lost right now is really pocket change, ok? It's about the priciple of the thing and it's about what could happen if this kind of thing is allowed to exist and run as rampant and out of control for the next 5 years as it has been for the last 6 months.

. . . look, our record sales have gone up in the last three weeks, OK?

You heard it directly from Lars, folks: the amount of money currently being lost due to MP3 trading "is really pocket change". And now he suddenly starts thinking about the future. Convenient.

Well, 1st of all, you have to remember that you're talking to somebody who advocates bootlegging, who has alwyas been pro-bootlegging. We have always let fans tape our shows, we've always had a thing for bootlegging live materials, for special appearances, for that type of stuff. Knock yourselves out, bootleg the fuck out of it, we don't give.

The bottom line is the size of it. The size of it and the quality of it. . . . So it's the quality, the quality and the scale.

So is it okay to make and trade MP3s of bootlegs?

I can't help feeling that this is a bit hypocritical. Metallica insists that their crusade is about principles, not money, but then say that it's okay if your illegal copying only costs them a little bit of money, but not if it costs them a lot.

So back to the question again, the 'commodity' really becomes about it being traded around illegally, and rather than the art that it is.

Is Lars trying to say that art isn't art if there's not a price tag attached? If someone doesn't receive compensation for it? Art is art because it has an effect on the audience. And I'm talking about an effect aside from the removal of $16 from the audience's wallets. Art's effect on the audience, 99% of the time, has little or nothing to do with how it got to the audience, or whether the audience had to pay for it.

Napster has the right to exist. I support Napster's right to exist, OK? But I want them to support my right to not be part of it.

This is a reasonable request, made to the wrong people. As Lars has already demonstrated he doesn't know, Napster is not responsible for the contents of their users' hard drives. This appeal ought to be made to the users.

. . . you have to remember that statistically, for every one band that you hear about, for every one band that a record company helps make successful, they lose their fucking shirt on the nine other ones you never hear about . . .

. . . which wouldn't happen if music were traded without restriction or cost. There would be no need for record labels, and thus the only money lost when a band failed to achieve its goals would be whatever money its members had contributed themselves.

But record companies will never be completely extinct, for one reason and one reason only, that there will always be a need to develop younger artists, and record companies will always be able to play a big part of that, because this whole thing about "I'm a young band, I'm an upstart band, I'm going to put my music on Napster, and then I'm going to become successful?" Fantasy. The only way you you will become successful is by having a publicity and promotion campaign behind you that elevates what you're doing above what your competition is doing.

This is not even true in the current music industry, where bands like Fugazi, a dedicated anti-commercial act, can do their own marketing and achieve a level of popularity that longevity that rivals many corporate-sponsored acts. But if the current music industry is rendered obsolete, and consumers go back to trusting their own personal tastes to decide what music they'll listen to, instead of advertisements, radio and TV, then not only will this scenrio Lars rejects be possible, it might be the only way to succeed as a musician.

It's very very simple. One of the -- when we monitored Napster for 48 hours three weekends ago, we came up with the 1.4 million downloads of Metallica music, there was one, one downloading -- one! of an unsigned artist the whole time.

Inconceivable. There is not a snowball's chance in hell that, in a 48-hour stretch, only a mere one out of the millions of songs transferred via Napster was written by an unsigned artist. I don't know what caused Lars (or NetPD) to make this massive error in calculation, but it is statistically as near to impossible as you could hope to get.

As for those 1.4 million downloads, here is a short list of things Metallica does not know about them:

• Metallica does not know whether or not the files were actually transferred, unless they downloaded them themselves, or shared them and watched them being uploaded. All they could know is how many were publicly available for downloading. To know how many actual downloads there were, they would have to monitor a host-to-host transmission as a third party, which is eavesdropping, and is illegal.
• Metallica does not know whether or not the files that purported to be MP3s of their music were actually MP3 files. They could just as easily have been empty files carrying the name of a Metallica song and a .mp3 extension.
• Even if they were MP3 files, Metallica does not know whether they were their MP3 files. Renaming another band's song would be child's play. The disk space required even to download and listen to a sufficiently large sample of 1.4 million MP3s is a lot more than Lars has on that computer he never uses. The task itself would be mind-numbing and eventually downright infuriating; I can't imagine anyone having the patience to do it.
• Metallica also does not know how many of those transfers were between two users who already owned the albums, and thus had legitimate rights to own copies of the songs. Doubtless these users account for a significant percentage of the 30,000 who challenged the ban Napster placed on them at Metallica's request.

You can sit there and talk about how this is great for up and coming artists or for unsigned bands, but a big counterargument that nobody gets is, me and you could form a band together, and we could like, make a demo and then we could put it up on Napster. Who is going to give a fuck? Nobody's going to care, because they don't know anything about what sets my and your band out from the gardener and the guy who cleans my pool's band. The record companies will never be extinct, because there will always be a need down at that level.

More bragging about how rich he is. In regards to this assertion, read The Brunching Shuttlecocks' An Open Letter From Metallica, which dispatches the notion better than I could, and more humorously too.

I believe ultimately -- and this is sort of what I was talking about before -- that the hardest thing about this is to try and come up with a system where it becomes an individual's right to choose how he will want to partake in this sort of stuff through the Internet. That's the hardest thing because it becomes very difficult, it's very difficult to generalize, like I said before. It's not fair to sit there and say, 'Napster can't exist,' because there are people who would like to use it. And it's not fair to sit there and say 'It has to exist and you have to be part of it,' for the people who don't want to use it.

This is a very good point, and an insightful one as well. Lars is right, this will be a very difficult problem, and in fact, I'm not sure I want to see how it gets solved. It also addresses a more important issue: the question of how to ensure that authors retain copyrights to their work, and how to ensure they're properly credited for it.

We believe based on the people we hired that we're probably not more than a year away from where you can basically download Mission Impossible 2 the same day that it opens in the theatre . . .

Another example of how much Lars hasn't bothered to find out. This is, of course, more or less possible today, though with the problem that a two-hour movie will generally be a much larger file than a five-minute song.

I guess that's all I have. I'm sure it's plenty. There was other stuff I wanted to respond to, but I can't remember what it was, and damned if I didn't waste enough time writing this already. I guess it's obvious where my sympathies lie.

Unfortunately, the media companies will continue to use the legal system to punish individual people. I see the current environment of 'piracy' more as an environment of civil disobedience against not only the laws and licenses of the media monopolies but also against the punishment of individuals under these outdated laws.

Woah, I'm sorry, did you say "WinAmp's MP3.com site"? I'ma afraid you made a factual error there, as MP3.com is owned and operated by Zco, Inc. You probably meant to say something like winamp.com, or nullsoft.com.