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Napster Server Protocol Has Been Published
C|Net is publishing a story about a Stanford University Senior who reversed-engineered the Napster server protocol. The story also mentions a Web page in SourceForge which gives links to various Napster clients for different OS's. I wonder how many new Napster servers clones we'll have soon.
...would be to store the id3 tags 'offline' so that when the client clicks on the file it could then upload the id3 tag to the server and then send it to the client. An id3 tag is not big, so that would not be too much of a problem. I don't see any reason for Napster to have all of the id3 tags online for instant demand.
V
Original text:
I hate to sound raw and bitter (i'm both, but we really shouldn't go into that here), but while your at it, why don't we all ask for unlimited bandwidth, world peace, and the end to all diseases. (None of which will happen. Ever.)
The RIAA or some form of it, whether it be in idea or literal form, will always be around.
The problem does not stem from the fact that some big, nasty association is on the prowl all the time, it comes from the fact that the values that our societies are built on are fundamentally flawed. Values such as greed, lack of honesty, and good, old-fashioned foulplay.
While Napster is a great program, and I fully intend to continue to use it, I am not going to wish for anything like not having the RIAA around. Why?
Just like I won't be wishing that people will start using the privelage of voting and booting the conservative nitwits from their high horses.
To when Pigs fly,
Cheers,
Rami James
http://w3.to/rjames/
--
rJames.org - illustration
I don't remember the name of the company off hand but they had a really wonderful flyer with all sorts of options ... bottom line was $.60ea with paper sleves in lots of 10K.
-subsolar
Good. but tunnel it through Jabber, to piggyback off an existing infrastructure and to prevent just your one protocol being banned in the way Napster's is. And, forget about traffic analysis, in a Napster style situation and with multiple random wrapped bounces between sender and recipient, there simply isn't going to be time for the Feds to trace individuals. Better to optimize those packets so as to shorten the time available to eavesdroppers.
I just don't understand how since *WE* are paying for the service, you can just deny it... I could see if the RESNET was a free service offered to students (but like I said in an earlier post that is sorta hidden heeh) I wouldn't mind them doing what they want w/the network. *I* pay about $20.25/month for the service, I feel that the *users* should decide what happens w/the network. It is here for the students, and the students put the money into it. It isn't a free world I understand, but if my ISP was blocking say IRC because "it stole bandwith" I would think that they would just add more to accomodate their users, afterall it is a business. RESNET's are no different. They are a business. They get money from the students, and offer a service.
If the original Napster client hardcoded the hostname of the "server server" and not the IP address, it's trivial to associate a different IP address with that hostname (see /etc/hosts).
Oh, that's right, I'm sorry, i forgot: I have to join the million or so illegal immigrants, if I want to keep my own money, instead of paying out to them and those oh-so-privileged unemployed citizens
If people liked the music, the band should be able to get some concerts.
How often does the Orb tour? Orbital? Boston? King Crimson? I could name hundreds of bands, if I had the time.
Throwing out logic has nothing to do with it. You're just rationalizing not having to buy the music.
You'd think that true artists would care more about their music going around the world than making money selling CD's.
Further rationalization. While the "starving artist" cliche might sell a warehouse full of bad paintings, it's a pretty horrible life to live. Beethoven and other composers had "patrons," or people who commisioned them to compose pieces, often for specific events. The analogy doesn't fit. One patron has been replaced by thousands or million sof individuals, voting for music with their dollars. You're removing those dollars from the equation.
"True artists" need to make a living too. I know a lot of "true artists" who are waiting tables, washing dishes, or having to give up on their art because it's not paying the bills.
I apologize for replying to all the posts in this thread, but this "i want it for free and I'll get it for free" attitude is just plain wrong. I don't agree with the RIAA's reasoning, I know that it's just plain greed, but a lot of musicians are going to get screwed in the process.
If you're not willing to support the musicians, you don't deserve the music. Do you realize that you're bitching that the record execs are robbing the musicians while doing it yourself?
Which, by no means, excuses this.
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
"There is no way that this can be construed as being the function of our Internet connection." I find this statement to be amazing. the internet is what it is. Just because it does't behave the way you want it to is your problem. You could 1. add more bandwith charge the students more for the addition. 2. stay offline... your policy reminds me of the chinease goverments policy...if you give the students the connection and u dont like what thier doing charge them for the extra bandwith.
This gets into that whole "educational use only" argument. I live on campus, and the internet net connection that I *pay* for here is the only one I get. Are you about to tell me that just because it is hooked up to the campus network directly that I'm not allowed to use it for anything non-eductional? That I'm not allowed to look at anything interesting on the Internet? I take great offense to that. This is my home. This is my Internet Connection. I have no other. I believe I have a right to download whatever the heck I want.
The problem is that you (both individually, and the larger collective "you" of the masses of college students downloading and trading mp3's) are on their physical network and using a network more than partly funded by various 3rd parties. The university is held accountable when its students use the network to break laws (we could get into a discussion about whether copyright law is outdated at this point -- but you'd probably find me on your side there). The universities don't generally have a moral concern here -- they are a business. They have to watch out about copyright violations just like they have to watch out about kids getting killed on top of elevators (universities could give a crap whether you elevator surf or not, but their insurers make them care about their bottom line...).
Additionally, if a sizeable percentage of their bandwidth (btw, you don't know their utilization unless you work for the network administrators -- and even then you only get one piece of the picture, believe me) is going to mp3z, the research being done elsewhere might well be suffering. While you are their livestock (the masses used to generate income), the researchers, and the occasional future benefactor (which may emerge from the herds), are their real priority. If the researchers complain that the bandwidth the University bought for them is unusable, the University will act. This is, again, all a part of being in the University business.
Finally, since the University is a business, and a PR-based business to a great degree at that, rampant news stories about college students "Breaking the law" do not look good for Universities. Parents don't want their children going away to become criminals. Alumni don't want their degree tarnished. Donors don't want to give to a cesspool. This may seem like exaggeration, but this is how most universities view these things.
Believe it or not, you don't have a right to download and trade mp3's (again, we could have a long discussion about the validity of the laws which prohibit this, but they are the same laws the universities are forced to live under). Eventually the ability of the university to insulate you from the disciplinary structure of the rest of society will break and you will have to be accountable for your actions. Believe me, I understand how university life is -- been there, done that.
I doubt the previous poster was jealous of your bandwidth (I have more bandwidth than I can generally use coming into my house). Many of us have used and/or administered networks on pipes that would boggle you. Penis envy of a 10/100 line on a university-size public use network with thousands of users is rarely in order. The fact that you have to pay for your bandwidth, however, is an unfortunate part of the unfairness of college life. The university can make you pay, even though you have no other choice. The fact that 9x% of college students are between 18 and 25 years old points to the fact that if you're going to raise a stink over not being able to download mp3z on your pipe you are going to have to get mommy&daddy involved. Guess what? The university knows that mommy&daddy don't want to get involved if they know it's about mp3z/warez/pr0n/etc. Anyway, they stick it to you and you can't do anything about it.
With regard to cost issues, you should know that 5 years ago only the most cutting-edge and/or affluent universities had wired dorms. The fact that it's a "selling point" now is an indication of how much things have changed. The ubiquity of campus connectivity, however, belies the cost of this infrastructure. The universities (hell, the society at large as we subsidize the bulk of this infrastructure) will be paying for this upgrade for years to come. To assume that this is some sort of grift job to squeeze a quick profit out of students, or that wiring campus was cheap and easy (and therefore a right) is just plain ignorant. The problem with being in college is that, as the individual student in this day and age, you are the least important and least influential part of the university business plan; however, it may take 5-10 years after graduation to figure this out (truthfully most college grads never figure it out). Yet, we are generally sent to college at our most arrogant and idiotic phase of development, so we prattle on about our rights, our importance, and How It Really Is.
"Cause there's 40 different shades of black, so many fortresses and ways to attack, so why you complainin'?"
I'm sure the people who made up the DVD encyption thought there stuff was good too...
the problem wasn't someone cracking the key...it was the stupidity of A licensed DVD software comapany, they left one if the 100 or so keys, un-encrypted.
the beliefs of the Open-Source community shows the most stupidity...IE(no standards,forced open source,artists aren't in it for the money, so we deserve their stuff for free,etc.).
what makes you think that da crooks won't crack your beloved open-SSH, before someone else can patch it up!
it's just that easy!
This gets into that whole "educational use only" argument. I live on campus, and the internet net connection that I *pay* for here is the only one I get. Are you about to tell me that just because it is hooked up to the campus network directly that I'm not allowed to use it for anything non-eductional? That I'm not allowed to look at anything interesting on the Internet?
So you pay for it. Did you look at the agreement you most likely signed? It probably had some sort of 'educational use only' clause in there. If you don't agree with that, you shouldn't have signed it. Move off campus and get a cable modem or DSL and you can download all the porn and illegal MP3s you want, and the campus IT folks would have no say over it.
I take great offense to that. This is my home. This is my Internet Connection. I have no other. I believe I have a right to download whatever the heck I want.
The dorm is your home? Unless you own the place, that's not true. Sure, you pay to live there, which by law grants you certain priveledges, such as physical privacy, but you are using the campus network. You have the right to download only what they allow you to download. If they disallow televisions, and you want one, you have to either a) deal with it, or b) move out.
First of all, I have to pay, as I said.
So, assuming you are a savvy consumer, you know what you payed for in the first place.
Secondly, the cost of the bandwidth here is mostly fixed cost which has already been paid for. Adding my small bandwidth usage to the pot cost almost nothing to the University.
Who cares.
Third, having a wired school is a selling point. It probably makes them more money by attracting students.
Again, who cares? That has nothing to do between the contract you signed with the school.
Fourth, high bandwidth for cheap encourages students to become net savvy, as you said. This is a good thing.
No, it encourages them to download porn and illegal MP3s. Unless you can think of any other educationally oriented high bandwidth uses for dorm networks, that use off-campus resources...
Did you ever use the phones to call a friend? Did you have cable at school? This isn't about enterntainment, this is about some basic things that people in the US expect of their living quarters. If my dorm wasn't networked, I wouldn't be here. It's that simple.
Most people wouldn't sign away their rights, and then bitch about it, like you apparently are. It's that simple.
-joev
No matter how you slice it, Napster included a license agreement IN THE INSTALLER that required the end-user to completely accept its terms, or not install the application. The license agreement that David Weekly accepted told him he could not reverse engineer.
I have only seen "YAY OPEN SOURCE FOREVER" threads, and no discussions on the legalities of this.
----------
"They misunderestimated me." --George W Bush, Nov. 6, 2000
I only noticed the problem the first time, after I *ahem* dumped a batch of 2,000 mp3s onto my box. First connection took minutes, after that it seems back to normal (a few seconds).
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
I WIN....YOU LOSE
In my opinion, anything that's sending/recieving the full local pathnames of files is BAD.k \something.mp3"
Why doesn't napster use logical shares like an http server? It's obviously much safer to send something like
"//clientname/soundtrack/something.mp3"
as opposed to
"C:\private\pr0n\kiddiepr0n\other\mp3\soundtrac
Now that this is being talked about, it shouldn't be long before somebody comes up with a hacked client that peruses through unsuspecting Napster PC's.
-CausticPuppy "Of all the people I know, you're certainly one of them." -Somebody I don't know
He said that he had done so. He said that he "didn't have to, he could have chosen to have packet monitored", but he was using the client.
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
If you check byte sizes, you lost like 320 bytes of a file, or something less than .03s.
I actually DO think it is a publicity stunt. Here's one perspective to think about -- look at the history, and question the motives:
1. runs a huge pirated mp3 site at stanford, shut down
Almost 100% illegal content, which he was solely responsible for making available to the entire Internet, at the expense of his university. They soon discovered the site and shut his illegal website down.
Curiously, a Playboy.com article spotlights him as a victim of his university (laugh) and as the self-proclaimed leader and evangelist of the "MP3 Consortium", whatever the hell that is.
During a period when more than just a few colleges are cracking down on their irresponsible students, I wonder what brings the focus on this person alone? Suspicious..
2. discovers napster, champions it as a way to continue his habits while likely shirking liability
For whatever reason, spends a night re-inventing the wheel and reverse engineers the napster protocol (again), which is clearly in violation of the EULA distributed with the client.
When notified of his apparent inattention to the questionable legal nature of his activities and asked to take it down, he immediately sends an email to the open source napster developer's list explaining that he's under attack from Napster, Inc., saying "I'm not going to let them bully me!"
Amazingly enough, though much more significant and thorough reverse engineering has been posted and made publically available, a major news organization somehow finds this self-proclaimed evangelist of illegal activity and spotlights him, yet again.
No, folks, this person has a verifiable history of illegal activity, and maintains a juvenile attitude towards breaking the law, while painting himself as some hacker hotshot whose "horrible plight" everyone should empathize with.
Further, it seems clear that he has a strong thirst for media attention (hooray for vanity websites), coupled with (and made much worse by) actual intelligence. This reminds me of Agent Steal. Anyone remember him? If you do, then you know what I'm getting at.
Question the motives.
>The dorm is your home? Unless you own the place, that's not true. Sure, you pay to live there, which by law grants you certain priveledges, such as physical privacy, but you are using the campus network. You have the right to download only what they allow you to download. If they disallow televisions, and you want one, you have to either a) deal with it, or b) move out.
You don't get out much, do you? Hell, there's even been movies made about this - IF YOU PAY TO LIVE SOMEWHERE, AUTOMATICALLY, FOR THE LENGTH OF YOUR LEASE, THAT LIVING SPACE IS *YOURS*. PERIOD. You can do what you like in that space. If you want to have sex with 10 women at the same time in that dorm, you can (unless the lease SPECIFICALLY prevents that). THE LAW PROTECTS YOU ON THAT POINT. PERIOD. Unless you live in Cuba, or some other opressed country.
>So you pay for it. Did you look at the agreement you most likely signed? It probably had some sort of 'educational use only' clause in there. If you don't agree with that, you shouldn't have signed it. Move off campus and get a cable modem or DSL and you can download all the porn and illegal MP3s you want, and the campus IT folks would have no say over it.
What a shitty university you go to - NO MUSIC, ART OR BROADCASTING PROGRAMS there? woah...
>>Secondly, the cost of the bandwidth here is mostly fixed cost which has already been paid for. Adding my small bandwidth usage to the pot cost almost nothing to the University.
>>Third, having a wired school is a selling point. It probably makes them more money by attracting students.
>Who cares.
What a good argument - not - you just dismissed an important point out of hand. What a lamer you are.
>>Fourth, high bandwidth for cheap encourages students to become net savvy, as you said. This is a good thing.
>No, it encourages them to download porn and illegal MP3s. Unless you can think of any other educationally oriented high bandwidth uses for dorm networks, that use off-campus resources...
That is so easy to answer, I can't even imagine why you broght it up. Personal file server for extended file space (most uni's limit your home directory), X, audio/video conferencing - and that only scratches the surface.
>>Did you ever use the phones to call a friend? Did you have cable at school? This isn't about enterntainment, this is about some basic things that people in the US expect of their living quarters. If my dorm wasn't networked, I wouldn't be here. It's that simple.
>Most people wouldn't sign away their rights, and then bitch about it, like you apparently are. It's that simple.
Most people don't have to sign away their rights. Like the original poster said, HE CANNOT ACCESS HIGH BANDWIDTH INTERNET IN ANY WAY BUT THROUGH THE UNIVERSITY. What part of that don't you understand?
Imagine if your telephone had the same restrictions, no 976 number calling, no pornograpic conversation, no music, nothing but educational stuff. Imagine if the only other alternative to this telephone was to write people (which would have no restrictions whatsoever). Wouldn't you be angry if there was no alternative to the telephone that was reasonable?
--The ability to uniquely identify files (which would enable split downloads where you get parts of a file from different hosts)
--The ability to deal with other types of files (well, not really a protocol issue but controlled by Napster)
--The ability to continue after a legal attack on the "Server"
--Load balancing of the transfers
--...
The only real advantage is that they use a central server and are willing to take the heat for hosting that server.
Making a reliable transfer protocol is not difficult--look at GetRight. The trick is in communicating and hosting the databases. As long as there is a need of a central repository there is a vulnerability. It's not only that you could take out that one server site and shut down the whole network, but that there are a limited number of subnets that could be "Sniffed" to find out who was serving what.
Is there anyone out there who thinks that the files they "Host" for napster downloads aren't tracked?
What we really need is a more amorphous system where a list of IP's and files is hosted on each system and is synchronized constantly in the background. When you start your computer it would try to contact all the IPs it had before. If you are lucky, one will connect and you'll get a new list. If you're unlucky, you download a text file from any of hundreds of places where the latest lists would be stashed.
It could even be implemented as a BADFS (Big Ass Distributed File System). You would just "Mount" what you wish to share somewhere into the system and load any files you want from other areas.
Having different "Groups" to connect to might solve the problems that will occur because of the size of the directory.
"Two, Three, Many security holes." As Fidel Castro was paraphrased as having said.
Have fun in Babylon, little creep hackers.
The concept rocks, but the client blows chunks! A perfect example of an application that could use Open Source. I have never run the client for more than about an hour, since it always crashes within that time frame. on NT no less... That dude needs to be sued for putting out a shitty applciation!
[GASP!] Napster SENT the COMPLETE location of the file!!!!
Does this mean that there is a way to coax the client to offer up ANY file?
Hrm.... I can just picture Cult of the Dead Cow writing a BO plug-in for Napster, allowing you to download any file off of a windows box.
:-)
-- BlueCalx | http://nickd.org/
Here's a cute little project that shouldn't take very long to do:
A Napster proxy.
Run a server on one of the common ports, say, 80, and reroute requests to the real Napster servers.
What's that saying about routing around censorship, etc.?
...j
Scot Hacker wrote a book about mp3's for O'Reilly.
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/mp3/
uhh... napster is the author of napster. If you want to talk to him, get on EFnet, he uses the nickname napster (isn't that egotistical of him?).
Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't the people running Napster have a "see-no-evil, hear-no-evil" attitude about pirate MP3's? (They're just providing a service for users to trade MP3's and can't be held responsible for content, etc.) Granted, Napster themselves aren't the ones pirating music. However, if ISPs can be held responsible for allowing spammers to freely send spam off their mail server, why can't the music industry hold Napster responsible for allowing users to distrubute pirated music as far as they possible can? Even though spam is quite annoying, there's no laws (yet, unfortunately) against it, yet distrubuting pirated music breaks copyright laws. Are you supporting Napster just because you don't mind pirate music, thus you don't mind services that aid in distrubuting pirated music? (Not that I don't have a bunch of MP3s myself. I'm not trying to argue against pirate MP3s; my gripe is against Napster.)
Seems to me Napster is a company that wants to make a quick buck off questionably legal content that users provide (i.e. the MP3's they swap). This bothers me. It's one thing to swap music between friends, its a totally different thing to try to make money off it. Personally, I'd like to see Napster sink on principle. There'll always be ftp or hotline servers to trade MP3's on that are run by people not trying to make money off the servers.
George Lee
The latest beta 5, fixes this error, on the server side of the client. However, till people upgrade to the latest beta, their broken beta 4 will still continue to stop transfers at that 99% mark
Yeah.. On a Linux box you could use rdir to redirect traffic on localip:80/napsterport to napsterserver:napsterport, then ensure that napsterserver has an implicit route. No actual proxy would be needed.
:-)
Don't know much about routing do you?
Unless I have misread what you stated, your linux box *still* needs to get through my router to get on to napster. And if I block all outgoing traffic to port 6969 you won't get there, no matter how many redirs you have going because that implicit route still needs to get through my router.
Now something you could do is have an outside box do the redirection. Unfortunately all traffic would be going through that box so you wouldn't want to proxy too many people.
well i dont know about you but i currently own 12 cds - 10 of which my decision to buy was made after hearing a few mp3s of the bands. Try walking down to you local store and buying Opeth or My Dying Bride..
Don't know much about routing do you?
don't make me come up there and get all thumpin' on yo ass, tzanger! technos be da man. besides, y'all checked out dese here cute 'mick-lips'?
There was a mention of a different model of distributing MP3s (Open-sourced, even), using encryption, etc on a previous /. story, does anyone have more information on it?
The big problem with Napster is that there is no privacy for people swapping music. The RIAA is going to have to go after individual users, and it's going to get nasty.
-- Ender, Duke_of_URL
Actually, except for the hugest of performers, tours are generally break-even or even loss-leaders in order to promote the bands current CD.
If you think you're supporting a band by NOT buying their CD, distributing MP3's, and going to see them live, you're mistaken.
Yes, they like to perform, but that's not where the money is for most musicians. Even if they get only $1/CD, and a "mildy" successful band manages to sell 250,000 cd's that's decent money for a 5 person band.
People keep talking about how MP3's are so great for supporting starving artists, but in reality, some may benefit, but most will probably be hurt in some sense. They stand to lose their royalty checks for one, and without record sales to gauge their popularity, they have no idea of what their real worth would be.
Like them or not, the record industry is here for the long haul. Yes, they may end up getting a little revamped in the process of figuring out the internet, but in the end, they're needed.
Think of them as the VC's of the music industry. No one runs around trying to find a way to cut the venture capitalist out of the equation when trying to start a tech company, so why is everyone trying to cut out the people that actually put up the money to produce all the records they adore?
The problem is this website which not only encourages trolls - it demands them. They need to...
1) Remove the label "coward" it is meaningless unless Taco and friends will say it to your face outside of any legal jurisdication or with no witnesses present. Think about it, when you post, the first flame/troll comes straight from Slashdot - thanks assholes.
2) Eliminte downward moderation OR allow people to search "lowest scores first". Not only does this partially reverse the subversive act of censorship, it also allows the "good" moderators to rectify the stupidity of the "bad" moderators (without having to search through every freaking comment to find the -1's and such).
3) Eliminate anonymous moderation (it is far more "cowardly" than anonymous posting). Screw this "meta moderation" open it up and let's see who's saying what. Also, let any registered users with no posts in a thread moderate. Maybe a carrot like that would get me to register again.
We need more napsters and less RIAA
I don't see how free, illegal distribution of music gets the artists money without the record companies taking a cut. Artists realize the power of internet distribution, and are trying to capitalize on it. Napster is most definitely not a way for them to do so. Napster is a way for their hard work to proliferate to a million ears without a single penny of income.
This is the most ignorant thing I have heard all day. The truth is that promotion is the bigest obstical to a bands success and band who have any clue ARE making money from mp3 promotion. It is really fucking easy to realease an mp3 to all the pirate sites and include a message asking them to visit your website in the comment (or maybe even in the audio). No,w once they visit your website you can sell them all sorts of shit like: shirts, stickers, CDs, mp3s of other mixes of your songs.
Now, you say "well people would just pirate the other mixes that the band sells." Well, this is no problem for the band because they can just keep producing newer diffrent things and rolling the old ones into promotional material. The people who want it will pay because some of it will never show up.
The truth is that the whole ideea of buying a CDs full of static music is STUPID. Music should be a service and not a product.. just like software. If you really liked music you would be willing to pay for the new shit. Hell, the fact that lissening tothe same thing over and over again is why we have a DJ club culture.
Piracy is no threat to ANY artist because the artists has the distribution advantage. Piracy is just free promotion of what you have done in the past.. just look at what thei nternet comics have done. Now, you could say that we should not pirate RIAA music because we souln't want to give those artists free promotion.
Plus, If we added the way to bundle a webpage with a song then it would give an artist a way to add all kinds of profit making material: visual art, links to the artists web page, advertisments.
Hell, If I was a recording studio equipment maker I would give studio equipment to good artists for free with the requirment that they mention that they used my equipment at the end of the songs they distribute on mp3. Just think of all the minor leage DJs who will hear it everytime they play the song!
Jeff
BTW> It will not be long before there are companies specialising in internet promotion of music, i.e. pay us to upload all you shit tot he pirate sites.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
(Wow does slashdot suck... It takes FOREVER to post anything and then it breaks anyways. Hope this isn't there twice!)
>The dorm is your home? Unless you own the place, that's not true. Sure, you pay to live there, which by law grants you certain priveledges, such as physical privacy, but you are using the campus network. You have the right to download only what they allow you to download. If they disallow televisions, and you want one, you have to either a) deal with it, or b) move out.
You don't get out much, do you? Hell, there's even been movies made about this - IF YOU PAY TO LIVE SOMEWHERE, AUTOMATICALLY, FOR THE LENGTH OF YOUR LEASE, THAT LIVING SPACE IS *YOURS*. PERIOD. You can do what you like in that space. If you want to have sex with 10 women at the same time in that dorm, you can (unless the lease SPECIFICALLY prevents that). THE LAW PROTECTS YOU ON THAT POINT. PERIOD. Unless you live in Cuba, or some other opressed country.
>So you pay for it. Did you look at the agreement you most likely signed? It probably had some sort of 'educational use only' clause in there. If you don't agree with that, you shouldn't have signed it. Move off campus and get a cable modem or DSL and you can download all the porn and illegal MP3s you want, and the campus IT folks would have no say over it.
What a shitty university you go to - NO MUSIC, ART OR BROADCASTING PROGRAMS there? woah...
>>Secondly, the cost of the bandwidth here is mostly fixed cost which has already been paid for. Adding my small bandwidth usage to the pot cost almost nothing to the University.
>>Third, having a wired school is a selling point. It probably makes them more money by attracting students.
>Who cares.
What a good argument - not - you just dismissed an important point out of hand. What a lamer you are.
>>Fourth, high bandwidth for cheap encourages students to become net savvy, as you said. This is a good thing.
>No, it encourages them to download porn and illegal MP3s. Unless you can think of any other educationally oriented high bandwidth uses for dorm networks, that use off-campus resources...
That is so easy to answer, I can't even imagine why you broght it up. Personal file server for extended file space (most uni's limit your home directory), X, audio/video conferencing - and that only scratches the surface.
>>Did you ever use the phones to call a friend? Did you have cable at school? This isn't about enterntainment, this is about some basic things that people in the US expect of their living quarters. If my dorm wasn't networked, I wouldn't be here. It's that simple.
>Most people wouldn't sign away their rights, and then bitch about it, like you apparently are. It's that simple.
Most people don't have to sign away their rights. Like the original poster said, HE CANNOT ACCESS HIGH BANDWIDTH INTERNET IN ANY WAY BUT THROUGH THE UNIVERSITY. What part of that don't you understand?
Imagine if your telephone had the same restrictions, no 976 number calling, no pornograpic conversation, no music, nothing but educational stuff. Imagine if the only other alternative to this telephone was to write people (which would have no restrictions whatsoever). Wouldn't you be angry if there was no alternative to the telephone that was reasonable?
This seems like fairly good news. Imo if the riaa is able to defeat napster in the lawsuit then we have all of the new servers people can put up. Independent of napster of course. Although the riaa doesn't have anything on napster anyway. Best of all this should result in considerably better linux clients which is what we all want!
Actually, I implemented something sorta like this in Tcl and some C with IRC eggdrop bots, though I don't think I have the sources anymore. Basically you could join a certain channel, upload a list file which you were offering to a central bot that managed the database. Then anyone could easily get an index, search, etc from the central server bot(s), and it would filter the requests to fetch files to the appropriate children bots (or people) that offered the items. Alas, it didn't catch on back then (94 or 95), and my interests moved elsewhere...
;)
Ah well, one minor invention sticks around for years, three or four other better inventions fall by the wayside.
Thank-You!!!!!!
This will speed up prgress for many of us. No ones perfect and I am sure I have overlooked things. The more knowledge the better.
source,artists aren't in it for the money, so we deserve their stuff for free,etc.)."
Umm..NO standards? what are you smoking? Your using a few open standards as you post on slashdot. Ever hear of HTML and TCP/IP? Both well documented open standards.
I don't know where you get this idea of "forced open source", I have yet to see this anyware. If you don't want it opensourced don't open source it. And yes we do deserve their stuff for free, thats the way the artests want it. If they didnt then they would NEVER HAVE put their software under the GPL/BSDL/whatever.
And I know Open-SSH isnt uncrackable but if a bug was found then a patch would be but up by some nice person. How do I know this? OSS's track record. Look at older holes that where found, then look how long it took for a patch to hit the net. The time normaly ranges from a matter of hours to a day or to. Now look at a big closed source company like MS. It takes them a few days just to admit to the problem, then you are lucky to see a patch with in a month.
And DVD uses something like 4 bit encryption, them finding those unencryped keys was only a nice short cut, it would only have taken them a little bit of time to brake the weak encryption by hand anyways.
And yes it is just that easy!
I have to return some videotapes...
You're right!!!
/. is very hostile, I can see why it doesn't get anyone very far!
what im trying to point out..is that open source anything is like un-protected sex...you get FUCKED every time
so if I "use" your software to make me $$$ for doing nothing...it's alright then??
im also trying to point out the stupidity of almost all open-source supporters!
the environment at
the open-source "movement" is bullshit.......it makes any internet application Insecure, because it's like a locked door that everyone has the key to, and you hope that Mr. Crook (rimshot) doesn't decide to loot the place. If napster wants security, they should Never release their source
and why is any comment against slashdot's opinion moderated???? because slashdot is not about free speech, They're about communism.
Watch, this comment will be marked as (-1 offtopic), or (-1 troll).....because they don't want others to know the truth(I understand that there is going to have to be moderation, but either 1) different moderators or 2) different set of rules
Will anything be proprietary anymore? Are we heading to Open Source everything?
Am I being paranoid?
Is the Truth out there?
Where's Scully?
There's the little green men!
its called /etc/hosts or c:\windows\hosts. Edit that file to point to the right IP and you're set.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
this person didn't rape yo mama, he just spent a little time investigating something pretty useful. possibly the fact that it's on /. is a bit strange.
it's not like the protocol is some genius trade secret either. the ideas behind the workings of it are obvious, and in my opinion, napster inc. should have published it and encouraged multiplatform development anyway. actually the reason they haven't pitched a sh*t over the publication of it is probably because they realize that too.
anyway i think your personal attack on him was uncalled for, and is the kind of thing that makes /. feel like a junior high playground.
There's also one at
http://opennap.sourceforge.net/napster.txt
which, although I dunno how accurate it is, is distinctly more readable and understandable.
An outside box is what I had in mind.. The company firewall can be, er, restrictive sometimes, so I use a combination of rdir and IP masquerading on my private (outside) boxen to get what I need. I've run AIM, ICQ, Napster, use it to check my POP3 box and also use it to peruse the grey hat web circuit. (banned; the network people are using a dialup and a 'free' ISP cus they got sick of arguing with the powers-that-be)
And I do know a thing or two about routing. I'm not godlike, but I get by..
.sig: Now legally binding!
What an AWESOME last name! I guess his destiny was set in stone when he was born...
:)
I think i'll change my name to Hacker Ace, just to upstage him.
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Don't hold out on us!!! Where can I get the new program?
Now napster servers will become as common as your average Warez FTP server. There is no stopping the power of distributed computing
As soon as the RIAA shuts down one server, two more will pop up. Haven't we seen something like this before?
The way I see it, at MTU, is that I pay a fee for my bandwidth, seperate from all the otherr miscellaneous fees here. It's a monopoly (phone, cable, and fiber). I *have* to live here for the first year. As far as I'm concerned, they can shove it. I bop maybe 10kbit/s at any given time during the night [Napster] or maybe bursting at 200kbits for a minute or so sporadically on a fast d/l. They want to be the only option, they can deal with my bandwidth consumption. I can't get DSL here. That's now their problem.
I have been wondering, Napster was created by a small Californian (?) firm. Why? How do they plan to make some $$$ out of it. Have they planned to make napster a commercial (licensed) program after the beta period (changing something in the servers, so the beta wouldnt be able to acces again?).
// Fraxinus
recently there have been many articles in our campus newspaper about the speed of the network being slowed by MP3 transfers (not really, but they have to make an excuse for the poor technology). They are apparently blocking all access to Napster servers (or ports I really don't know). I recieve a "no route to host" error when I try to connect now.
:)
I really think that in order for Napster to live on they are going to have either allow for random ports or a lot of people are going to have to start setting up servers
$0.01: There have been clones out for ages, all you need is a packet sniffer, a napster clone and 5 min and you can have that "published" information... not to mention read the source code from one of the clients.
$0.01: And Napster really needs networked servers like IRC so the "hotlist" function actally works... you can find people without reconnecting nonstop.
Sorry you got hit with the "troll" label.
It's really simple. if you have the "source" to a program, you can change it any time you want. Assuming you know how and have the tools to do it.
New to slashdot?
If You will be the first one to bring it back up, i will be the first one to wait 4 U ! ;-) Ozzy....
"Open source" means that anybody can get the stuff that the program was written from for free. This allows independant people to be able to improve upon something the origional author may have neglected, fix bugs, and set a rapid pace of development.
;)
It also would work great on a beowulf cluster
Oh, ok. That makes sense.
Now, what does "troll" mean?
Ahhh... the oracle of South Park!
Given the protocol, what kind of interference can the RIAA and similar organizations foist upon the Napster users? Honey-pot servers collecting ip addresses? Water down their database? Is it just a matter of time before a list of "egregious copyright abusers" gets hauled into court to be made examples?
I haven't used Napster, nor have I read the spec, but I'm familiar with it (at least one friend if Napster- and Ebay-addicted). So pardon me if I'm demonstrating marked ignorance.
When I walk around the city, I often drop a few coins to street musicians (buskers) whose music I enjoy. Would it be possible to embed some sort of artist account ID into mp3's (eg, in the header) that would let users of Napster and similar software make voluntary payments to artists?
Perhaps not many people would do it, but if you make it easy, like dropping virtual coins into a jukebox or a street buskers' instrument case, maybe enough people would do it to allow artists to make a living--or at least produce a CD while remaining free of monopolistic recording companies and big-brother organisations like the RIAA and ASCAP. I'm fully aware that current mp3 payment mechanisms aren't being used much, but maybe if it were as easy as clicking a button, more people would contribute. This would also allow mp3 enthusiasts to take some moral high ground away from the bureaucrats who are "representing the interests" of the artists.
The client would have a SSL connection to a "bank database." Periodically you would add, say $50.00, to the bank using your credit card and standard ecommerce software. Then as you listen to new mp3's you could click a button for songs you would like to license.
If used, this would deflate the self-righteous rhetoric of the industry and union middlemen, who seem to think that consumers are common thieves unless we choose to buy our entertainment through their cartels. It would also remove their legal bases for shutting down independant artist and programmer efforts--unless they are going to try to argue that they are legally entitled to a self-serving monopoly.
see even if you are descended from George Washington dosn't mean shit in the modern world.
I am a decendent, and your are right...it doesn't mean shit other than an interesting 30 second conversation every year or so.
I think i just commited karmacide
Here's the email I just sent to the c|net reporter...
Hi Paul,
I just read your article on Weekly's reverse engineering of the Napster protocol. Maybe an editor chose the headline (Copyright defendant Napster finds its code posted), but I think it's misleading.
Weekly's page describes the protocol between client and server. It says nothing at all about how Napster *implements* the protocol, yet the headline suggests either the client or the server source code was posted. That would be like saying that knowing the HTTP protocol is the same as
having the source code to IIS or Netscape Enterprise.
Why is this important? Because reverse engineering is legal (in general), while publishing someone's source code is not.
There's also this interesting quote:
"Kessler said an important difference between Weekly's actions and those of the Macster programmers is that they did not publish their source code."
Well, Weekly didn't publish *any* source code, right?
Thanks for your time.
-Matt Jensen
Seattle
music may be a good way to express emotions to people... i've never heard a bit music in my life and i'm still able to communicate my emotions to people more effectively than most hearing people i know. if music has that kind of effect on you, i'm glad that i can't hear it. i see hearing people every day with their headphones on, bobbing their heads like they have trouble controlling their neck muscles. you know what?
you look stupid!
if people would open up to one eachother, and TALK, they wouldn't need music to express their emotions...
i always thought music was a form of art. That, i can respect. and while i can't hear your art, i respect it as an art form.
this is a bit off topic, but it's my turn to rant. musicians claim to be so devoted to their art, but all it seems they care about is exploiting their fans, and making money off of them. if that wasn't true, would there be a huge effort to ban mp3's? no. i am a poet, and i give free performances as often as i can, i enjoy performing, and i enjoy spreading ASL poetry as an art form. but i guess you hearing people would never understand being part of a dying culture being destroyed by technology.
Glenn Gould died in 1980s, if my memory serves me
right, and he was the biggest Canadian classical musician when he retired from stage. So it says nothing about the current music industry.
personally i think napster could be a whole lot better than it currently is first their hotlist mechcanism sucks cause every time you log on your on a different server so are the people you add to your hotlist so that just depletes the whole idea of a hotlist in the first place. second 30% percent of the time downloads cut off at 99% that pisses me off cause i burn cds third i hate the idea of people downloading mp3's off me without my authorization sure it's fun forthem to take all my bandwidth away I only have a stupid 56k modem and all the mp3s have someone else has them too and they have a cable modems and dsl and ti and t3 and they come after me those of u who have tried to download from me probaly have failed yes i'm the one with 700 mp3 a 56k modem and for some strange reason it always cuts out halfway when u download a mp3 but with all that it's still better then irc which is where i used to download mp3s and where i got most of them yes i remember those countless hours of waiting for an mp3 to download from an idiot who would end up disconnecting.
The right to vote is something that people were willing to die for. I think he's trying to tell you that it is still worth fighting to the death for the right to vote. Ask the friends and relatives of the people who were killed in Tienanmen Square for a peaceful protest.
How would you know you were really sending the money to the right person? You need some kind of certificate mechanism in there. I'm not trying to kill your idea, but it needs authentication. Otherwise, some con man in Bulgaria or NYC or HongKong will be ripping off artists in a different way than the RIAA
I don't believe that either, individuals are to blame. ISP's should not be held responsible, the users access should be revoked.
If Napster bans users for trading pirated music, then I stand corrected that they "see no evil, hear no evil." Even then, this is like an ISP allowing spammers to get accounts, and only banning them after the ISP receives complaints. Pretty passive policy, if you ask me
See your still seeing this wrong. Napster does not charge anything for the service at the present time. You can't just sue somebody because you don't like what they are doing. As soon as Napster does start selling the product then they are going to run into problems.
ISP's charge you for a certain service, you move beyond thier guidelines (and most ISP's say now that you should not spam), then you should be terminated. ISP should not get in trouble.
I serious doubt that Napster is going to continue to provide this service pro bono, unless it's going to get revenue from ad banners or sponsorship. I wouldn't be suprised if they charge for the final release of their software. They are a business, after all.
Well it is free now, like I said. No Banners, no sponsership, no nothing. And as soon as that changes, you'll see mirror servers coming up, and different clients, so you can connect to which ever server you like. We'll have a WWMW = World Wide MP3 Web. *grin*
"Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality." -Jules de Gautier
You mean, the same way DeCSS is in the public domain, dontcha? ;-)
Meesa thinks napster.com wouldn't agree with that statement.
---
If they did have 30-50 people working for them, I what the heck they do all day? They don't have any advertising, and their web site doesn't change much. I don't see much PR going on other than word of mouth. Their "jobs" page hasn't changed in several months indicating they haven't filled any positions (which indicates they don't have any money). hmm. I suspect napster is a tiny company - if it is more than one person.
-- Virtual Windows Project
I was being a little sarcastic because of the attention its getting in the media, I think its great he did the work. Seeing " Napster Code Exposed" by a hacker on news.com is sensationalism at its best, and thats what I was making fun of.
It's worse than that--it computes an MD5 checksum on the first so-many (I believe 300k) bytes of the file. No wonder it takes so long!
I've also found Napster Client B5 to be buggier than a streetlamp in July on my NT box....
Nonsense. We already have governments to enforce existing laws against actual crimes -- the DOJ can hold its own just fine. All organizations like the RIAA do is the stuff we don't like such as:
Enforcing a cartel atmosphere where prices are constantly inflating ($18 for a cd, huh?) and quality hasn't much improved
Lobbying Congress for some more favorable-for-the-industry-but-at-the-expense-of-e veryone-else copyright laws
Beating up on the little guy who's properly trying to use his music under fair-use doctrine but in ways contrary to the $ interests of RIAA-member corporations.
I agree with your first assertion that it's futile for us to merely hope that the RIAA will just disappear, but don't delude yourself into thinking they're actually good for something good. We don't need the RIAA any more than we need OPEC or DeBeers.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
Granted, Napster themselves aren't the ones pirating music.
...if ISPs can be held responsible for allowing spammers to freely send spam off their mail server, why can't the music industry hold Napster responsible for allowing users to distrubute pirated music as far as they possible can?..
That is exaclty my point.
I don't believe that either, individuals are to blame. ISP's should not be held responsible, the users access should be revoked.
Are you supporting Napster just because you don't mind pirate music, thus you don't mind services that aid in distrubuting pirated music?
I don't think there is anything wrong with it because where do you draw the line? Any Audio Media type is capable of being copied and transfered, MP3 just makes it more convient. If they abolish MP3s, who's to say people won't come out with a better version of a compression program and just use WAV?
Napster is a company that wants to make a quick buck off questionably legal content
Quick buck? Its completely free. I have yet to pay anything.
"Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality." -Jules de Gautier
The parent comment is not flamebait. Its moderator should be pyoonished.
I wish that were the case. In fact, most people sue others over what the others are doing.
You might be right, and a judge might just throw out the case. But that's for a judge to decide; I still think the lawsuit has some merits and deserves to be brought.
This lawsuit is supposely about protecting copyrights (and keeping people buying CDs, but that's another thread.) Napster is providing, free of charge, a way for users to distrubute pirated music. I think the music industry has a right to sue Napster, since Napster doesn't seem to want to take responsiblity for what their users do on their servers. Napster *owns* the servers, and, thus, should responsible for how they run their servers. I think there's a grey area as to how much responsiblity Napster actually has, but, again, that's for the courts to decide.
Well it is free now, like I said. No Banners, no sponsership, no nothing. And as soon as that changes, you'll see mirror servers coming up, and different clients, so you can connect to which ever server you like. We'll have a WWMW = World Wide MP3 Web. *grin*
:) Maybe that would be Napster's undoing.
George Lee
One of my favorite bands "grey eye glances" recently broke with their record company and had to stage a fund raiser to by back THEIR OWN damned music from the company that was protecting their copyright.
You can get the list of words that Napster will block if you have their 'swear filter' on by running strings on the .exe of one of their old clients (beta 3..) But just what does 'jodio, pendejo, and ramera' mean? Anyone know? =]
--
"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. "
""the open-source "movement" is bullshit.......it makes any internet application Insecure""
So your saying something like Windows NT is more "secure" then something like OpenBSD?
So some funky protocal made up by 3 guys at some company are more secure then the standerd protocals that have been well tested and looked over by 1000's of other people?
""Watch, this comment will be marked as (-1 offtopic), or (-1 troll).....because they don't want others to know the truth(I understand...""
No i dont think you understand, the moderators are not "they" or "The Man", they are your peers. If you posted under something OTHER then the coward account then you to would have moderation power at some point. If you RTFM you would have known that anyone with a user account and a non-negitive karma would be a moderator at some point and that the moderators only get 5 points to play with at a time. So the moderation power is always changing hands.
I have to return some videotapes...
And so the l0sers out there won't pound on my box whenever they have the urge..
Napster would be perfect if only it worked correctly..synching the servers & a stable client. Any more features will just mess it up more..look at ICQ. Even chat is superfluous...I don't wanna talk to the leeches...eew.
Why all this trying to get hundreds of terabytes of music on a computer? Aren't there more fascinating things than non-visual communication and data exchange?
;)
./term , you don't dance much do you? Seriously, music is one of the best ways of expressing emotions to other people. It can make you happy, sad, pissed off simply by listening. It is a powerful thing. Its Music
--fatboy
Read the constitution yourself.
Voting is a PRIVILEGE, not a right.
The declaration of independance declares
"inalienable RIGHTS". voting ain't one of them.
Voting is the privilege of citizens. If you are
not a citizen, you dont get to vote.
Guess what? I'm not a citizen, I dont get to
vote.
Which in itself I consider partially a violation
of my rights, in that I am being "taxed without
adequate representation".
Dont give me any "just become a citizen" crap.
That doesn't address the injustice that I
pay thousands of dollars a year in taxes, but
I dont get any say in what gets done with them.
Here's an idea to implement:
A file sharing system like Napster, but it shares arbitrary files, using a heirarchical directory structure.
* Its pseudonymous and anonymous, and uses multiple-bounce remailer-style protocols to guarantee an untraceable data stream from file provider to recipient. Traffic analysis is irrelevant, so it can operate at full normal speed. Pseudonyms are unique but are destroyed again at log-off.
* The entire data stream is encrypted (and re-encrypted in wrappers for each remailer-type bounce).
* It uses a serverless protocol, Jabber would be ideal, leaving no main server to shut down. Also by piggybacking on Jabber, it would be impossible to block just this file server protocol from within Jabber, and it would be commercial suicide for the ISPs to agree to block Jabber altogether.
* When you share a diectory full of files, you can merge it into the category heirarchy under an existing category, or under new categories, subcategories, etc. If you create a category, others will then see it as an option to merge their directories with. Directories can be shared under multiple categories.
* Searches are "search in category" and "search category and sub categories".
Should be do-able. Would be Fed-proof. Any takers?
Right, but I'm just stating the fact that I believe if one has a large enough following, you could stop touring and live solely on recording profits.
First off, there are many insecurities in napster. The port is opened when the program starts, and it stays open. Anyone with the correct knowledge can access your computer. I have seen it done. Second, in reply to an early comment about Napster being responsible for much of a Universities traffic... VERY TRUE, I know here (unnamed college) that Napster was specifically responsible for 60% of the traffic on the network in the first semester. The University got smart and is actually cutting Network throughput completely to anyone who trasfers data across Napster. It is very easy for them to track since Napster leaves its port open. I have had several friends lose there entire connection because of this, to get it back they have to write an essay! What a crock. PS Keep your eyes open for a program that will rock Napsters world. www.absolutepc.net
Well, I can only assume that you are using the Windows client. Normally, it /does/ store your list in a data file, and updates it everytime you restart the app (of course, update could mean rewrite). I'm running the linux 'nap' console app, which is fairly smart. No auto-updates, but does track what changes from transfers inside the app, then you throw it a -b whenever you want it to rebuild it's listing. Obvious solution? Use linux for your mp3 server. =) /very well/ when random reads are being done. =)
Also keep in mind that the napster servers are just overloaded when it comes to logging in - it usually takes me atleast 45seconds (if not several minutes) to just log in. And yes, I am quite sure that it's not doing anything with my mp3 files (they're on a scsi drive which is LOUD. so I know
"A good programmer is someone who looks both ways before crossing a one-way street." - Doug Linder
jNapster: cmdline java
gNAP, Gnapster: Gnome
kNapster: KDE
beNapster, Crapster: BeOS
jNap: Swing GUI Java (really good!)
apster for MacOSX (MacXter?)
Funny, coz I've been tweaking on jNapster for a couple of weeks now and just now does it make it onto the /. radar.
---
Perhaps the Napster server was designed specifically to serve only 99% of the file, thus acting as a kind of signal degradation as found in casettes, giving it legal plasibility: 88% is not a perfect digital copy.
Though I'm not big with MP3s, I have been intrigued by the Napster. People have mentioned potention security issues and wishes of an IRC-like distributed network of servers. So, I ask, who's up for it? Things could be expanded to a more general purpose server, not just MP3s. And if/when they shut down or something, we will be able to carry on the torch forever and ever...
Is no one else aware of the larger problem? Trading illegal mp3's might piss off the RIAA, but not too many people really care about it, because the American public is used to taping music off the radio or other people's tapes. Its such a widespread phenomenon that people don't really think of it as a crime. What about trading software, though? Its not too well known, but there's an underground community using a hack called "The Mule" to convert .zip files to .mp3 files that Napster recognizes to trade warez over Napster servers. Custom servers and clients will just grow the community. What happens when the SPA gets involved? Napster-like clients have the ability to make Hotline-like clients look like child's play.
soapbox_mode = 1;
I'm guessing you're not an American. But if you are, then statements like "voting is a priviledge" irratate me to no end. Read the constitution buddy. Voting is a right, not a priviledge.
I've got ancestors who died for the ability to elect their leaders as I'm sure you might. It isn't a priviledge given to us by the nice government, it's our right!
soapbox_mode = 0;
I've been informed by people who've analyzed the packet stream that Napster sends that it's horribly insecure - frighteningly so, in fact.
It would really not surprise me if something similar to your scenario were allowed to happen, though by current standards, I consider the sending of autoexec.bat to be pretty tame. In my opinion, it's pretty pointless to try to "hack" any box that still uses an autoexec.bat, but just think - the blackmail possibilities are endless!
Things like this coupled with the sheer instability of Napster (I have to reboot my box, a 500 Celeron with 128 megs of ram, every time I use it), made me just decide to delete the entire install and mooch off of my friends who have 60+ gig mp3 archives.
"During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I was riding the pogostick."
A good traveller has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.
I think it is a prefrence of listening. Using mp3's allows you to listen to a wide variety of songs, without haveing to change cd's, or buy cd's. If you get a good player, it will pick songs for you based on your prefrences, and then you
can listen to any given time's worth of random mixed up music. It is basically like listening to the radio, but being sure that only the kinds of music you like is going to be played, and there are no comercials...
A while back radio was dieing out as a medium that most people reall cared about. I am just wondering why people have such a fascination with music when most of the future is becoming based on highly visual interactive formats. I realize convience is nice but why sound? Is this the direction human society is taking?
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
I have noticed the last few days that some weird moderation is going on at /.
:)
I don't see why the above post qualifies as flamebait and there are a few
other examples of bad moderation on this comments page.
Most of you probably consider me stupid by now because I'm not posting as
an AC. But I don't care for Karma and I have been the subject of some 'nice'
moderation in the past. Hit me again baby!
I don't get it, how hard was it to turn on network monitor and click capture??
Actually, I personally know next to nothing about what's involved in network traffic shaping: does it happen at the router level? Do you put some software on your firewall? Most importantly, if it's software, are there any open-source traffic-shaping programs out there?
I'd appreciate learning more about this.
-----
The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
"The Source will be with you... Always."
>it's not like the protocol is some genius trade
>secret either. the ideas behind the workings of
>it are obvious, and in my opinion, napster inc.
>should have published it and encouraged
>multiplatform development anyway. actually the
>reason they haven't pitched a sh*t over the
>publication of it is probably because they
>realize that too.
in my opinion, the protocol is badly designed shit - typical crap from dos-weenie programmers.
probably the only reason napster haven't published it themselves is that they are rightly embarrassed by it.
the only thing i've seen which is uglier than it is the QWK message packet specification in the 80s, also written by a DOS-weenie BASIC programmer...and also, unfortunately, popular enough to have become a de-facto standard.
it would be easy to write something infinitely better based on existing standard protocols - e.g.
http for file transfer. it's not rocket science!
the fly in the ointment is that any improved replacement is unlikely to be adopted by windows users - having a better designed protocol and transport mechanism wont count for shit if hardly anybody uses it.
OK, this may sound pretty naive, but have you considered implementing some kind of traffic shaping solution?
I'm a network admin myself, and I've encountered the same sort of thing that you have (MP3 sites being the worse culprits) but I think that port blocking is overkill.
In addition to port-based shaping (telnet gets highest priority, FTP lowest, etc..) dynamic load-based shaping is a possibility (lowering the priority of packets to/from bandwidth hogs).. so that the single user (in your example) would get their effective bandwidth lowered automatically, instead of having to wait a week/month for you to analyze the traffic logs.
I'm not saying that port/host blocking isn't necessary in some cases (if you pay by the packet, for instance,) just that if shared bandwidth is the main concern, that there are other solutions.
I have reported your abuse of the moderation system to CmdrTaco.
sorry dude, this was no fiasco. no force was used to prevent it. the very first one to popup napster and a few other napster officials asked him politely in an irc channel to with-hold the source until a later date. [with-holding personal comments] he did not understand, and failed to comply with reasoning.
so we moved on. to us in #napster we just dont care about them, since some have written their own private clients or are happy with the "official" clients.
--ShadowGod--
I'm not a hacker hotshot, either. Do I not state explicitly that others have done a better job?Neither did I claim myself as such a hotshot. Where do you get this from? Or did you already make up your mind about me without even considering who I really am?
Finally, I'm not running from anyone. The very first thing that I did when I completed the analysis was to notify Napster. My actions are here for all to see, judge them as you may.
David E. Weekly (dew, Think)
David E. Weekly
Code / Think / Teach / Learn
h4x0r for
looks like a new kind of troll. at least its new.
guess the source whiners have to have SOMETHING to do
>"c:\WINDOWS\DESKTOP\mp3s\Nirvana-Lithium.mp3"
>[GASP!] Napster SENT the COMPLETE location of the
>file!!!! Does this mean that there is a
>way to coax the client to offer up ANY file?
>Uhm. Someone should check into this. If a file is
>not in the user's listed mp3's or their chosen
>directory, does the napster client still send it?
I just checked this. I hacked up the gnome-napster client to give me IPs, and then followed the protocol to ask for C:\MSDOS.SYS, and it responded "FILE NOT SHARED" with an abrupt disconnect. It wasn't a truly thorough test, but I believe the security is good enough to stop opportunistic file stealing. See log below
Connected to x.x.x.x.
Escape character is '^]'
1GET
NOBODY C:\MSDOS.SYS 1
FILE NOT SHAREDConnection closed by foreign host.
The reason I say it wasn't a thorough test, even though 95% of napster users use the win32 client, and linux clients are just starting to come out, was that there's no way for me to check the client version from this end. It gets sent to the server upon connection, but never gets transmitted between clients. So, it's a distinct possibility that this person may have been using a different client, and that it simply responds with FILE NOT SHARED if the file either isn't shared or isn't accessible. I'll keep playing.
Jason
em: infi*at*sleepdep.net
I pity all you code biters!
I will get a Napster server for my site and I can start serving up some mp3 files without the RIAA climbing up my ass. http://www.mp3smuggler.com/ --Aaron
If an injunction is served, they'd shutdown that server, effectively stranding *all* closed-source clients with no means of changing the connection address.
(If I'm wrong, tell me now and make my day!)
---
What we need is a general purpose protocol in which the server helps clients to search contents in them. Instead of trying to emulate what napster does, we can start from scratch and design a secure protocol. This does not need to be specific to sharing MP3 files. This can be used for sharing any type of files including program binaries and other multimedia contents. Once this protocol stabilizes and is published as an RFC, it just becomes one more internet protocol like ftp and http. And then, we can have meta servers (like Archie of yester years). We can have servers and meta servers specific to content type, etc. :-( ]
Let us see who can block a standard internet protocol. [Of course, we may then have filters which block specific sites, etc.
-Siva
I was wondering when someone was going to run tcpdump/snoop on their network and port this thing.
If Napster bans users for trading pirated music, then I stand corrected that they "see no evil, hear no evil." Even then, this is like an ISP allowing spammers to get accounts, and only banning them after the ISP receives complaints. Pretty passive policy, if you ask me.
I don't think there is anything wrong with it because where do you draw the line? Any Audio Media type is capable of being copied and transfered, MP3 just makes it more convient. If they abolish MP3s, who's to say people won't come out with a better version of a compression program and just use WAV?
As I said, I have my own MP3s. I didn't say abolish MP3s, I just didn't like the fact Napster was making money off people passing around MP3s.
Quick buck? Its completely free. I have yet to pay anything.
I serious doubt that Napster is going to continue to provide this service pro bono, unless it's going to get revenue from ad banners or sponsorship. I wouldn't be suprised if they charge for the final release of their software. They are a business, after all.
George Lee
Why in the world is this under the patents category? It has absolutely nothing to do with any patents at all. Napster seems to be claim their EULA was violated via reverse-engineering, but there isn't any mention of any part of the Napster program or protocol being covered by any patents.
Thanks! That's good to know. OTOH, could c:\msdos.sys just not be shared because it's a hidden, system, read-only, non archive file?
I'm prolly just being paranoid.
I think one flaw in your thinking, and an attitude to which I can't relate, is in your statement, "...why people have such a fascination with music..." Music is a very powerful force in many people's lives, it's not just a "fascination." My wife likes some music, but she can take or leave it. I, on the other hand, am PASSIONATE about music and am very aware of how it affects me.
Radio is fairly useless to me, because it panders to a certain mass-market. CDs are OK if I want to listen to a specific artist or type of music. But at work, I want to have a wide diversity of music available. Thus, over time, I've ripped a number of my CDs and put them on my workstation. I then set this large music list on "random" and I end up with quality music that keeps me entertained.
Yes the future will contain more "visual interactive formats," but music will always be around for those of us who love it.
I'm Peggy.
A while back radio was dieing out as a medium that most people reall cared about. I am just wondering why people have such a fascination with music when most of the future is becoming based on highly visual interactive formats. I realize convience is nice but why sound? Is this the direction human society is taking?
Some of us still enjoy listening to music very much. I think radio may have been dying out mainly because, as someone pointed out earlier, it only plays some of the songs you really care about. Me personally, I love it as I get to collect songs that I really like without having to buy the entire CD which may be worthless. I have a good handful of those CDs that I bought just for 1 song. It sucks. But MP3 makes it nice to collect just that 1 song. Plus, I've found songs that are now considered out of print and a rarity to find on MP3. I've even gone as far as to rip my CD collection at home. And with my computer hooked up to my speaker system, it's just nice point and click for a song. And I think sound will always be a medium that will never be lost. Highly visual interactive formats is nice...but it's not everything.
The problem with visual and multimedia entertainments is that they require more attention. I can turn on my MP3s, CD player, tape deck, turntable (Yes I have one - there's a lot of good music I don't have in other formats), etc. and still carry on a conversation, while making the room alittle bit more pleasant. I can put music on as I fall asleep, and enjoy it without it distracting me to the point of staying awake. Music doesn't show that anybody cares about other media any less, but it will continue to be a valid media type. Oh yeah, did I meantion driving? I can see it now ...
...
"Oh, the stores a few minutes away. Let's see whats on TV that I can throw on my heads up display while I drive there. Wait a minute, there's a pedestrian there!" (swerve, hits a tree)
And that's assuming he notices. Or was that only somebody on TV
Did someone say Reverse Engineering ? I smell lawsuit ,
Well need an injuction to stop people doing this, Ow wait that will mean stop using Napster as well, Ow well
Someday, we'll look back on this, laugh nervously and change the subject.
David E. Weekly (dew, Think)
David E. Weekly
Code / Think / Teach / Learn
h4x0r for
are there any web frontends that allow access to the napster database? is it even possible? i would be pretty cool to have a site that would let people download songs from the napter network through the web. especially for those of that don't have our own computer to put software on, but do have a high speed network available (university computer labs).
are there any web frontends that allow access to the napster database? is it even possible? it would be pretty cool to have a site that would let people download songs from the napter network through the web. especially for those of that don't have our own computer to put software on, but do have a high speed network available (university computer labs).
No, the NT password file (it's C:\winnt\system32\config\sam) cannot be copied while NT is running.
Could a Napster-type system be used to exchange algorithms such as DeCCS?
This from http://www.onelist.com/messages/napdevMessage: 2
e .txt
Date: Tue, 25 Jan 2000 11:37:30 -0500
From: Brian Ristuccia
Subject: Re: WARNING!
On Tue, Jan 25, 2000 at 03:27:49AM -0800, David E. Weekly wrote:
> From: "David E. Weekly"
>
> I was just contacted by Napster and asked to take my protocol documentation
> off of my servers. At any rate, I'd encourage you all to make copies of Dr.
> Scholl's document (and mine, if you so desire) since Napster may start
> cracking down on these documents. I'm not going to let them bully me! And
> remember: linking to documents is perfectly kosher. Looks like someone's
> already made a copy at http://lovenapster.tripod.com/
>
What were their grounds for requesting removal? I got a threat letter from
the MPAA asking me to remove DVD related software and documentation from my
web site a few weeks ago. I sent them a strongly worded response and haven't
heard from them since.
The threat letter:
http://osiris.978.org/~brianr/css/demand.txt
My response:
http://osiris.978.org/~brianr/css/draft-respons
Good luck.
--
Brian Ristuccia
brianr@xxxxxx.xxx.xxx
bristucc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx.xxx
bristucc@xx.xxx.xxx
Someday, we'll look back on this, laugh nervously and change the subject.
Napster demands this poor mook remove his reported observations because they MIGHT be used by some nefarious third party in a way that injures Napster's interests? And this differs from RIAA's complaints exactly how ????
Actually, a very well know pianist, Glenn Gould, retired from touring and made his living exclusively on proceeds from his recordings.
Ok I guess I can blow a couple of karma points right here and get this off my chest.
Why are mp3s so terribly popular? I mean all they are is basically a collection of electrnic bits representing a sound wave and such. It almost gets to the point where it's even more popular than porn and that's really a stretch for something to do. One would only see this type of thing in areas that involve narcotics and such. Why all this trying to get hundreds of terabytes of music on a computer? Aren't there more fascinating things than non-visual communication and data exchange?
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
And what, pray tell, is wrong with the Progressive Conservatives?
I was thinking the same thing as you - except replace Liberal with Conservative in your sentence.
And what does any of this discussion have to do with napster?
What's wrong with giving the middle finger to The Man(tm)? After all, he doesn't care about you either.
This world has never been fair, and never will be, because humans are (by nature) corrupt, flawed, etc.
There is no place for perfect morals in this world. If you act like that, people will just take advantage of you.
Wow, short sighted and bitter.
why don't we all ask for unlimited bandwidth, world peace, and the end to all diseases.
These things you mention we cannot control or create because of the laws of physics, world peace might be an exception someday. The RIAA is an organization exerting artificial control over a technology. This technology is egalitarian, it levels the playing field (removes their distribution channels), and that is unacceptable to them.
I don't know about you, but I like any technology that puts me on the same level as anyone else.
On some levels, we actually need associations like the RIAA to keep the really bad people (not us poor intellectuals (hehe)) from harming the industry.
1. Why can't I pay the artists a few bucks directly instead of paying 18 to a corporation who markets shitty music and spoon feeds it to the masses? Why can't we develop this model? All the terchnology is there, we just need to implement it.
2. The RIAA is a corporate representative. Corporations are fascist. You have no rights within a corporation. They'd control us externally as well if they could, the only thing that stops them is our government (which vaguely represents us). At least our government has some resemblance of democracy. I'd rather let them do the "protecting".
We can get rid of anything we want in society including the RIAA. All we have to do is say so. The only problem is getting everyone organized to do it, and prevent everyone from getting indoctrinated by the media. You know exactly what I'm talking about.
Why not just index a fraction of your collection per Napster session?
Not the optimal file-sharing solution, but seems
reasonable until file info cacheing[sp?] is included...
=-=-=-=-=-=
"...You and me baby ain't nothin' but mammals/
so let's do it like they do on the Discovery channel..."
Everytime I see a music listener like you asking why they can't just cut out the middleman and pay the artist a couple bucks, I get a little bit of badly-needed hope. Keep it up- and keep new formats like mp3 and old formats like Red Book Audio CD alive for me, man. When you're just a musician doing everything yourself without help or money sometimes it can take a long time to get things done- I'm waiting on an ADAT repair and need to build some equipment to do the MP3 mastering I need to do. Delays, costs, there's never enough time and I'm scared my chance might dry up and blow away (or be stomped on by the RIAA) before I get to step up to the plate and take my swing. Keep the faith! There are people out there who need you as much as you need them.
Oh, the NT password hash file comes to mind as a valuable file to upload and then run l0phtcrack on ...
Or, say, certificate private keys from the netscape directory, or anything in the pgp directory...
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
I'm not an artist. But I am an economist. The reason that record companies were able to prosper for so many years it that they provided a valuable service to consumers: they filtered out a lot of garbage. Magazines were expensive, too, and information was generally hard to come by. You couldn't easily get trustworthy opinions about an artist before you bought the cylinder or the 45 or the lp. Records were necessarily expensive, to make and to distribute, so folks couldn't buy and try and toss if bad.
Today, the situation has changed. Anyone can set up a site, load his music, and distribute it to the entire world, at (roughly) no marginal cost. It's equally easy for a music expert to set up a site with links to good stuff, for advertising bucks or just personal satisfaction. Slashdot is a non-musical example of this sort of site.
If an artist is really good, he should be able to build a reputation just as easily under the new system as under the old. Anyone who has a good reputation will be able to charge for his work, under either system. Under the new system, I think that neither the artist nor the consumer needs the middleman. This means much lower prices. Given the same technology, piracy will be a SMALLER problem under the new system, since the cost of content and incentive to pirate will be smaller.
It's true that the average band won't be able to make any significant bucks under the new system. My cousin, who IS a musician, found that's true under the old system too. The difference between old and new is that my cousin's band never got the chance to be pirated! They didn't even get the satisfaction of knowing that a million people had heard them via pirate copies. I should ask him whether that's good or bad, I suppose.
I think that once we have a standard way for artists to distribute music to the masses themselves, we'll all (except RIAA) be at least as well off. I think that MP3 will be there when I can get an MP3 walkman as cheaply as a CD walkman.
Nels
See what I've been reading.
This is what happens when Internet protocols are developed in a closed manner and hoarded by their creators. If the Napster authors had published the protocol as an RFC and then brought their software to market, it would be far more difficult for them to get sued by the RIAA, and they wouldn't have to sue other parties that implemented the protocol.
This is the Instant Message fiasco all over again (a fiasco which still isn't resolved). Is this to be the way all new Internet technologies develop? To be brought to life in a proprietary coccoon, remaining that way until Linux users want to access them and are forced to reverse engineer?
Perhaps the biggest danger of attempting widespread deployment of a closed protocol is that it has a good chance of getting eclipsed by a competing closed protocol foisted by a bigger company (such as Microsoft or America Online).
The biggest technological drawback of the Napster protocol is that it depends on Napster's servers. This is the same problem that ICQ and AIM have. Any openness-minded developer would have designed it to run in a truly distributed fashion. Yes, the actual data transfer is peer-to-peer, but Napster could have been developed to do the peer locator without central servers as well. The first thought that comes to mind would be running the whole thing over IRC.
Well, those are my thoughts. I certainly hope this type of thing doesn't become the norm.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
when I was in college (back in the early 80's) we didn't have oodles of bandwidth.
And I'm sure you hade to walk up hill both ways in the snow to get to class
BUT I personally see no need in funding their high-bandwidth entertainment downloads.
This gets into that whole "educational use only" argument. I live on campus, and the internet net connection that I *pay* for here is the only one I get. Are you about to tell me that just because it is hooked up to the campus network directly that I'm not allowed to use it for anything non-eductional? That I'm not allowed to look at anything interesting on the Internet?
I take great offense to that. This is my home. This is my Internet Connection. I have no other. I believe I have a right to download whatever the heck I want.
but using university resources isn't the right way. let them purchase personal accounts (like the one I'm using right now, from home). then their behavior is between them and the ISP they're paying each month. and the univ. won't have word one to say about it.
Listen, at most Universities, they are most of the state hooks up to the backbone of the Internet. Almost all net connections here in Arizona go through ASU. The University is already sitting right there, and the dorms are already wired, and you want people to sign up with an ISP. Are you nuts?
so its the free ride that I think the univ's are complaining about. its not the morality of grabbing mp3's. please - that's totally not the issue. its the cost of supporting the entertainment life of the students.
First of all, I have to pay, as I said. Secondly, the cost of the bandwidth here is mostly fixed cost which has already been paid for. Adding my small bandwidth usage to the pot cost almost nothing to the University. Third, having a wired school is a selling point. It probably makes them more money by attracting students. Fourth, high bandwidth for cheap encourages students to become net savvy, as you said. This is a good thing.
when I was in school, I don't remember the univ. funding ANY of my non-school related entertainment. not one bit.
Did you ever use the phones to call a friend? Did you have cable at school? This isn't about enterntainment, this is about some basic things that people in the US expect of their living quarters. If my dorm wasn't networked, I wouldn't be here. It's that simple.
perhaps go to a voucher system, as a compromise. "ok mr. student, you have X credits of bandwidth this semester. you can waste it on mp3 stuff or use it toward doing the research you're supposedly here to learn. its your choice."
I really think you over estimate the bandwidth used by mp3's. The amount of bandwidth that students use here on campus is just a fraction of what actually gets piped through the University.
This would never work. If you don't understand why not, then you don't know how Universities work.
Got HTML? Want LaTeX? Try html2latex
Alright, what we need next is support for different file types by Napster. Like .mpegs and .rms. So that er... new music groups can put up their own music videos without having to go through the tyrannical music industry. Yeah, that's right.
Ok. I wish that they either a) obliterate the chat server deal or b) just have it be linked to efnet or unet. Its really a waste. Second I wish that they would take out the full pathname for the file in the search as the recent reverse-engineered napster shows. Im paranoid. Third I wish that when you quit it asks if you want to kill active connections, but the box wont have a "yes" button, just a "no" button. Fourth I want it to be open source%#@ It could be so much better! Even though a lot of projects are open source w/napster it would work a lot better if they made theirs open source. This would kill their chance to make napster shareware, which will be inevitable. Lastly they should link to nix/os2/mac clients, when I first tried to find one it was a bitch (thanks freshmeat). Oh and they should let you run servers on your own (they keep theirs up too) and let you password it etc, which would basically be an ftp server, so I dont know why I said that.
A bettter compression already exists. It's called VQF. MP3 has taken off, though. It's common. An obscure, unpopular format doesn't scare anybody, just like one that requeres too much storage and time to get and keep wouldn't be worrisome (As was the case when MP3 was just starting out).
The clear line between MP3 (or, in fact, any other digital format) and other forms of copying is that where before there was a quality drop with each step away from the original (copy of a copy, etc.), now there is only the initial data loss in the encoding process.
Quick buck? Its completely free. I have yet to pay anything
That's right, so far you haven't paid anything. Now that the server source is out, you probably won't. However, I can't be the only one who ever saw the possibility of a banner across the top of the napster client. What about an advertisement as you log onto the server? Subscription fees? There was never any idealistic bullsh*t from Napster - I never saw a claim saying that the service would always be free of cost and advertising. Just because something has been free up to now doesn't mean there won't be a charge for it in the future. Anybody here ever been part of a public beta test for debugging commercial software? I thought so.
The part that scared me was the reverse engineering.
Is it easier to reverse engineer now-a-days?
From http://david.weekly.org/code/napster.php3 :
"c:\WINDOWS\DESKTOP\mp3s\Nirvana-Lithium.mp3"
[GASP!] Napster SENT the COMPLETE location of the file!!!! Does this mean that there is a way to coax the client to offer up ANY file?
Uhm. Someone should check into this. If a file is not in the user's listed mp3's or their chosen directory, does the napster client still send it?
Also, the article shows that when requesting a file, the client sends the full path name, but no info is given when SENDING a file. I wonder if something like "SEND
This could be really bad.
I have one main problem with Napster, and that is how difficult it is to serve my MP3s with it. I have >3000 MP3s, and it takes FOREVER for napster to load because (I believe) it's reading the ID3 tag of EVERY SINGLE ONE. Now, I realize that this is useful information for it to have, but it could be streamlined. For instance, all of the information could be kept ina seperate file, and each time you started napster, it would only look for changes in the mp3 listing.
Common sense is what tells you the world is flat.
I'm amazed at the numbers of just-out-of-journalism-school 20-somethings who end up getting hired by C|Net or ZDNet (especially the Sm@rt reseller people) who just don't get it.. They put in glaring (even to people I know who aren't Linux zealots ;-) things like this, and say "oh, good point" when told about it.. You'd think they'd have more of a feedback loop, what with peer review and the official editors.
:-)
Ahh well, it's fun to poke them and make them fix things
PS: Does anyone else think "sm@rt" reads as "sm at rt" ?
---
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
It's nice and neat that people can now set up their own napster servers so that it'll be easier to evade the RIAA and other assorted annoyances, but consider for a minute why anyone needs this proprietary protocol for something as simple as file sharing? What ever happened to FTP, a classic file-transfer protocol that has withstood the test of time? (I can't help the cliches... sorry.) An FTP server (there are free ones available for every OS) is much more flexable than running a napster client and picking one directory. FTP servers support virtual file systems, so you can have files on more than one physical computer appear under one FS (as I do) and both private and anonymous accounts, so you can control who gets access to what. It can also do things like ratios, which I find annoying, but some people like.
So what does napster do that FTP doesn't? First, chat. That's simple, just use IRC. Done. Second, searching. OK, there are already FTP search engines, and some might have open source. Let's all just pick one (or many) and let it index our FTP sites. How about audiogalaxy.com, mp3.lycos.com, oth.net? There we go: searching. Napster can search on bitrate... ok, that's not too hard to bulid into the ftp search engine. Instant messaging? That's probably the worst napster feature, as it adds one to an already too-long list of IM programs. What's wrong with ICQ, AIM, Jabber, etc? Even IRC can kinda emulate instant messaging.
So we already have programs with open protocols and open source that can do everything napster can, and do it better in every case. Why would we use this closed and inherently limited protocol for anything at all? Honestly, the only two reasons I can think of are these: it forces everyone to not have ratios for downloading, and it's easier to set up than an FTP server. The first isn't a big deal and can be handled by a community decision. The second is more of a problem, but someone can just make an FTP server that's simple to set up (only need to specify one directry) and it'll even contact the FTP spider and everything. It can't be that hard.
Sorry about that bold. Forgot to preview my comments (**blush**)
Jesus Christ! You made your point, you are the word. Now shut the fuck up! Get a girlfriend (if you can) read a book, bake a cake but please BACK AWAY FROM THE KEYBOARD.
Cards on the table.. I'm a musician, too. A pretty crappy one, of course. I don't sell my stuff - I doubt I could - but I give it away for free. It keeps me out of trouble, and it's cheaper than hard drugs :)
However, some of my friends are professional musicians. Some of them are very good.. some are also fairly sucessful. They don't like the RIAA. They don't cheer them on when they bust a load of lazy fratboys. I suppose they focus on the reality that they haven't lost anything anyway- a lot of the biggest mp3 pirates are students, who wouldn't buy the CD, even if they couldn't get the mp3 (due to the RIAA having had all mp3 site owners lobotomised). Speaking personally, if I buy an album I like, I have no compunction about ripping a track or two, and sharing it with friends. Actually, in the grand scheme of things, I've actually acted as unpaid evangelist. The net bridges geographical gaps, and by punting a few squarepusher tracks across the pond (or whatever), you can introduce people to things which they never would have come across. I know that I have shifted units by introducing people to new sounds, and they've done the same for me.
I go out of my way to track down and snag rare stuff- things what you can't buy in the shops, live bootlegs etc. These are recodings of artists I like, which I would buy if I found them on sale. Hell, recently, I came across a .jp import radiohead CD, containing a lot of rarer tracks which I already had as mp3s. Of course I bought it, since they're one of my favorite bands, and I'd rather have the CD...
People are still culturally insular, even if they have vast anmounts of technology, it doesn't mean that they will ever listen outside of the box built for them by the increasingly faceless media conglomerates.
To cut a long story short, I don't know the answer. However, I do feel that most of the contributions here have been black or white, and it's really shades and nuances of grey.
I don't agree with what happened with SCMS, with DAT, with the Diamond rio etc. RIAA need to be smacked up, and reminded that they aren't the fscking NSA.
On the other hand, mass piracy (I've seen sites with the entire billboard top 40 available for download) can't be morally justified either.
Ah well, end of ramble- food for thought though, for fundamentalists of both camps.
If you care sufficiently, feel free to come listen to my lame mp3s, they live here.
This thing has to do with two issues, Priorities and the scarcity of resources.
First the primary use of the network connection at universities is to aide student. Entertaintment although nice is a secondary to the first. If the second ever begins to conflict with the first. Esp in the case where persons A entertainment is interfering with person B education then person B takes the hit.
The schools bandwidth is a scarce resource. If people are gobbling it up on what is declared to be a secondary priority at the expense of the first. Then the school has an obligation to either stop it or regulate it.
And this I pay for it therefore i can use it has one flaw. And that is you are not the only one using it. Because you must share the network with others regulating becomes a nessecity.
I understand Napster's reasons for not releasing the protocol information before (he didn't want freaky hacks and stuff). However, OTOH he is currently the target of a pretty serious suit, so his rights to run his server service may be impinged. I can only see one way to ensure that the cool idea stays around, that's for him to release the protocol and make it open. Ideally I'd like to see this server and client opensourced so that it can be improved upon.
:)
His reasons for keeping the protocol closed seem to be pretty petty right now. With the threat of suit, it would benefit him to open it. The Napster concept is a really good one, it's a really useful way for data content to be shared in a fully distributed and peer-like manner.
The reality is that there isn't a whole lot to the Napster protocol that someone would want to purposefully disrupt. It's just a peer file sharing service, people really don't spend all their time trying to disrupt such a cool service. The Napster concept is an underground one, and most of the people who would care to DoS or crack such things are part of the underground mindset too; you don't mailbomb BugTraq if you're a person who uses it regularly.
Ps, Please moderate this up, I think it's an important comment
If you (like me) worry about the artist not getting their money, then you should buy their records.
Many ppl will then say that they can't afford all the music they "must" have and so on, and that's why they copy music instead of buying.
What is the solution then?
Well, why not at least try to buy the albums you like very very much, and listen to a couple of times a month, at least?
And that is even more important, if the band isn't a major band... An artist, like Prince, Madonna or Boyzone, will still survive if you steal their music,(how immoral that is, I leave for you to decide), but for a minor band a "few" thousands or even hundreds of illegal records could make an enormous difference...
--
"I'm surfin the dead zone
In the twilight, unknown"
You are so totally wrong that anyone can expect to be a studio band in this day and age and be signed to a major label. Try it, just try it. Hell, even bands that _lip-synch_ tour now! You're making this up. How is a band supposed to self-promote except through touring? You don't seriously think the label does promotion? They only do that for about 3 albums a year for which they're prepared to do tonnage. They'll do it for the Spice Girls. They won't do it for you and they won't sign your band unless you agree to tour and promote the album for them. The tour may be written into the contract. You pay for it yourself out of the advance that is taken out of your supposed royalties.
There's no such thing as losing income that was never there in the first place. That's like saying that bands lose huge amounts of income because there aren't coin slots on every radio. That's like saying recording acts traditionally make money instead of losing it. That's totally flat wrong...
Do you have any fscking idea how much a band has to PAY to get a gig at certain well-placed clubs? How much a band would have to PAY to get radio airplay, to get a video in even light rotation on MTV? You're so off base it isn't even funny. Music has _never_ been a sensible job, and in recent years (the last twenty or so) it has become even worse, and it is the record labels who have done the most damage. Have you ever read a music industry contract? Did you know that jotted down notes on a memo pad (seemingly innocuous) routinely become a legal straightjacket for acts, forcing them to accept a deal whether they like it or not, or to quit the business entirely ('deal memos', in other words, that force the band into an unspecified deal, at which point all the leverage is on the label's side and the band takes a really BAD deal because they have no choice- in effect they have already signed without seeing the terms).
That's not even getting into the fact that large numbers of 'indie' labels are in fact wholly owned subsidaries of major labels, kept for their 'image', or semi-independent indies kept on a very short leash. You didn't know this? Let's see a list of the labels you're thinking of, so we can look up whether they are actually run by BMG or EMI or Sony.
I don't know who you are, AugstWest, but either you have a lot to learn about the way this industry works, or you're just a label flack busily fighting for your side. And that's cool, fight away if such things please you. But the picture you're painting is a damned lie. You're trying to induce guilt by suggesting that not supporting the industry is depriving musicians of money. It would be more accurate to induce guilt by suggesting that _supporting_ the industry is supporting a system in which musicians are routinely screwed with mind-bendingly nasty deals whose implications they don't even guess at until it's too late, in which musicians are routinely broken and left to have their bands break up, twisting in the wind with no label support, in debt to the record company from failure to recoup even modest advances, contractually bound to not play or record a note except with the record label that is now no longer interested.
If you want to support that, be my guest. I think that turning the acts loose with whatever mp3 popularity they can get is probably a lot more likely to result in some sort of income for the band. That becomes a question of business, and whether the band can charge much for a gig, can sell CDs out of their kitchen, can print up posters or have T-Shirts made.
At any rate, if you're worrying about artist income or artist rights or artists' welfare, you're worrying about the wrong things. Start figuring out how you can destroy the major labels if you want to do some real good. Things were out of hand even as early as the '80s, but now they are just ridiculous. Don't even support it.
There is so much going around about how illegal Napster is, when it is completely unjustified. I think we are going to see another episode of the author of Napster getting arrested like Jon Johansen(DeCSS).
They can't go after all the individual people who are the problem, so lets go after someone who is completely innocent. Makes alot of sense, don't it?
Just for the record, if they ever figure out how to bring Napster down. I'll be one of the first people to bring it back up.
"Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality." -Jules de Gautier
These guys have several million dollars from a round or two of venture capital financing, from forward-looking investors in Silicon Valley and/or San Francisco.
My guess is that they are going to try to get bought out by someone like MP3.com or one of the Big Five (Four with EMI bought-out?) music groups.
The 30 or 50 people who run Napster are in this for the money. Big time. And who can blame them for that?
But lets make sure that the open source servers are fully operational before they decide that they need to strong-arm them into nonexistence. At some point, Napster, will be demanding control over all the client software. They have to do this or its game-over for the next tier of investment opportunity. Its not a matter of if; its a matter of when.
They have already shown that they are _extremely_ sensitive to PR issues. If you want proof, see how they handled the whole Linux napster client fiasco in December. So it will be interesting to see how they respond to such an open threat to any perceived proprietary nature of their technology.
Please moderate this up so people will realize that Napster is a larger company than they would have you believe. Their web site is a ploy to make them look tiny.
You should submit it as a possible upgrade in the next version. Alot of people have 1000+ MP3s, reading the ID tag of every single one is tedious.
But what if you were to get a better copy of a file with the same name?
I have 2 versions of the same song, one in 128 and another in 224. If I were to replace the newer one with the old, Napster would not be able to tell the difference between the old and the new one. In which case the listing would not get updated and therefore send the wrong info to other users.
Or course I guess you could have a separate, "Update List" button, to update yur list of MP3s when ever you want.
Personally I had a problem with the old Beta 3 version because of its lack of 640X480 support (my proxy is running on an older monitor), it was great when Beta 4 fixed this minor problem.
Submit it to the authors, you never know.
"Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality." -Jules de Gautier