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Interview With The Creator of Napster on ZDnet
Carnage4Life writes, "Here's an interview with the creator of Napster on ZDnet where he talks about various issues including designing Napster, what plans he has for Napster and the growing number of bans on Napster in college campuses due to the fact that it is a bandwidth hog." Beyond the issue of "bandwidth hog," something that more colleges/unis are being threatened with is lawsuits from the recording industry because of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. You'll be seeing some more on the DMCA from us this week.
Faulty Moderation Fixed Whoever the fool moderator who moderated this down was READ THE MODERATOR GUIDELINES, I would have made this a link to the moderator guidelines, but you are not worth the effort whoever moderated this down.
Interesting that you think this, given that the backend actually runs on Linux 2.2.x servers.
yeah, a stop search button would be handy. The latest NapFAQ claims this is a bug that occurs with capital letters in searches. I haven't played with it much lately to see if this solves the problem, but try it. I heard that Napster has been reverse-engineered, opening it up to the possibility that now naughty people could figure out how to pry on more than just your shared directories. Anyone have any info on this? Just how the heck Napster ever plans to make any money is beyond me. How do they pay their bills? Matt MP3s of sports cars at www.enginemusic.com
> The argument that something like Napster foments
> piracy is the same tired old issue that surfaced
> with the first reel-to-reels, then the cassette,
> then the VCR tape, etc. Yes, there will always > be free-loaders. But is blaming the "engine"
> that was created for legitimate purposes the way
> to solve the piracy and copywrite issue? This is
> like suing all the cassette recorder
> manufacturers for promoting piracy. They tried
> it at one time and failed. It'll never happen
> here either.
Napster has less in common with a tape recorder than it has in common with a music shop, or even a bakery where people come to talk.
Napster does not itself replicate any data, whatsoever, however it does stand by and watch other people violate the law.
If you witness an automobile accident, you must do what again?
If you witness a homocide, you must do what again?
If you witness drug dealing?
If you witness someone stealing from an establishment?
If you witness vandalism?
What if someone regularly deals drugs on your property, and you know about it?
What if someone sells pirated tapes from your property, and you know about it?
When you fail to help uphold the laws of the state, you're contributing to the problem. It's not a matter of Napster unknowingly being used to distributed pirated material, it's a matter of them attempting to ignore it.
If I use a courrier to transport a bomb, they are not responsible for my acts. If I use a courrier to transport a bomb, and they *know* it's a bomb, then they're a part of my evil.
Ah, but the person you're responding to is referring to consumer-level piracy: in other words, you snagging a copy of a movie from a friend. And this hasn't materialized on any large scale. The pirated movies you see for sale on the street weren't made by consumer-level pirates. They were made by large-scale, organized pirates. These people are less affected by the price of VCRs - if most people had $100 videocassette players (i.e. no recording) and videocassette recorders were $1000 items, you'd probably still see the sort of piracy you're describing.
So Napster does differ from the VCR, in that it facilitates a lot of exchange of pirated material between people who haven't invested much in equipment for the specific purpose of piracy. The arguments that work for the VCR won't work for Napster.
If we can choke the net with compressed audio
downloads, just wait till we get 500 or more
channels of streaming video...
Who was it that used to say bandwidth is free???
Compare that to XMMS!
Just wait and see.
I say screw the RIAA...i'd have no pity if music artists were poor...if they want money they should go to college and get a job...if they have a real passion for music then they'll live with what they get despite mp3 trading...that would do a lot to eleminate all those shitty flash in the pan and clone boy groups (can't dare call them bands) that keep coming out
so you mean that seinfeld episode involving Jerry videotaping movies (with a camcorder) wasn't fictional?
This is a revelation to me. Honestly.
> There are lots of interesting issues to think
/search puff daddy and see 65 songs. It's not my responsability to alert the authorities of a possible illegal activity. Heck, we even have a notice up that says you're solely responsible!"
> about when it comes to Napster. First and
Indeed.
> formost is the legality of the whole thing. This
> is still very much up in the air...while I
> personally think it should be legal, two
> comments were made on here I want to address.
It should be legal to start communities where things are shared. However, this sharing should not violate laws regarding the material.
It's not so much of *should* Napster be legal, as much as *is* Napster behaving in a respectable and legal manner.
> Someone said making napster illegal would be
> like making (among other things) the USENET
> illegal. The problem with this analogy is there
> isn't the same level of direct culpability with
> regards to the USENET as there is with Napster.
You'd be correct in stating that Napster and USENET are not similar, because they aren't. One allows for chained redistribution of information, where as the other brings people together to do it.
> The USENET is a far larger and amorphous entity
> than Napster is. Who would you find liable for
> file trading on the USENET?...The USENET isn't a
> product of a given company like napster is...
This is mostly irrelevant. Anyone, whether it's Napster or a USENET server should not be above responsability to follow the law, and to aid in the process of law enforcement.
If USENET server B finds that a user posted something illegal to server A, it would be server B's job to inform server A, and the authorities.
It would then be server A's job to aid as much as possible in determining the person[s] responsible.
Just because you're automating the distribution of material or information, does make you somehow unresponsible for knowingly allowing others to violate the law.
> Another analogy was made to VHS and cassette
> tapes. I would say this isn't the best analogy
> but instead think of "video stabalizers" or
> "cable decoder boxes". So called video
> stabalizers have long been used to try to break
> copy protection in copying a tape from one VCR
> to another. Similarly,
This is also a bad analogy.
Let's say Napster was a person.
Napster is friends with Bob and Joe.
Napster gets Bob and Joe together, and then Joe sells Bob some crack.
Napster is witness to this, and fails to inform the authorities. Napster has violated the law.
Napster doesn't really promote legal distribution of copyright-free music (which you'd think linux users would prefer) as much as it says this, and then says "Well we're not responsible for the acts of our users, even though we can at least suspect they're violating the law when we can do a
Yeah, well, I'm putting a "You are solely responsible for your own activities" hat on, and the next time I see someone gun another person down, I'll just say "Hey man, nice shot!"
love your -sig, can I steal it?
> And that was exactly my point with my post about > comparing Napster to ebay. And in fact, how > many times have we heard in the news where > people have tried to trade and auction stuff > like human eggs or children, etc. using ebay? These were serious? In that case, it would be ebays responsability to turn them over to the authorities, once it was brought to their attention. > That was my "monkey wrench" to generate some > more discussion. Do we go after ebay for > allowing the trading of copyrighted material? If they *knowingly* participate in the sale of illegal goods, they should be held responsible. It's no different than going to an auction house and bidding on a crate of drugs, when an the proprietor of the auction house is aware of the contents. If they're ignorant of it, they've done nothing wrong. > Do we sue the Bell or AT&T companies for being > the conduit via the telephone or even the > internet for illegal activities? Do we go > after the U.S. Postal service when someone uses > it and it's employees and it's trucks as a > conduit for transfering illegal items? Only if they're aware of it, and choose to ignore it. > In order for someone like a Napster host to > realistically monitor these types of activities, > we would then need to go into "Big Brother" > mode. Would this not violate privacy? Whenever Napster is aware of a possible copyright violation, they should be required to inform the authorities. There's no big brother aspect, because their users have open shares, and Napster is fully in their right to record who uses their service. It should be Napster policy to be vigilant in monitoring their users, in order to be most effective. Not that they need to find each and every violation of copyright law, only that it should be their policy to attempt it. They should be *required* to inform the authorities of any possible copyright violation that they are aware of.
Everybody in America should be aware. cars can be used for many dastardly deeds as weel as cause tragedy. For example: 1. Cars can be used to escape the police after robbing a bank! 2. Cars can be used to run over old ladies who are crossing the street. 3. Drunk people driving cars kill people. 4. Cars have to be insured. we all hate the insurance companies! 5. Young boys and girls go to the makeout spot and lose their morality with the help of, you guessed it, CARS!! I hereby propose that we sue all car makers and shut them all down because they have the ability to cause all this trouble, even though thats not what they were really meant for..... I think we should have the RIAA in charge of the prosecution too. It only makes sense
By far the cutest pokemon...and it's even TALENTED!
Grr..Stupid HTML....I would like a readable post.
> And that was exactly my point with my post about
> comparing Napster to ebay. And in fact, how
> many times have we heard in the news where
> people have tried to trade and auction stuff
> like human eggs or children, etc. using ebay?
These were serious? In that case, it would be ebays responsability to turn them over to the authorities, once it was brought to their attention.
> That was my "monkey wrench" to generate some
> more discussion. Do we go after ebay for
> allowing the trading of copyrighted material?
If they *knowingly* participate in the sale of illegal goods, they should be held responsible. It's no different than going to an auction house and bidding on a crate of drugs, when the proprietor of the auction house is aware of the contents. If they're ignorant of it, they've done nothing wrong.
> Do we sue the Bell or AT&T companies for being
> the conduit via the telephone or even the
> internet for illegal activities? Do we go
> after the U.S. Postal service when someone uses
> it and it's employees and it's trucks as a
> conduit for transfering illegal items?
Only if they're aware of it, and choose to ignore it.
> In order for someone like a Napster host to
> realistically monitor these types of activities,
> we would then need to go into "Big Brother"
> mode. Would this not violate privacy?
Whenever Napster is aware of a possible copyright violation, they should be required to inform the authorities. There's no big brother aspect, because their users have open shares, and Napster is fully in their right to record who uses their service.
It should be Napster policy to be vigilant in monitoring their users, in order to be most effective. Not that they need to find each and every violation of copyright law, only that it should be their policy to attempt it.
They should be *required* to inform the authorities of any possible copyright violation that they are aware of.
Go on, slashdot, accept the correctly formatted post. I blame the trolls for this.
The music is not tranfered through napsters servers, it is tranfered from client to client, I am on a cable modem and I get download speeds over 110k sec but my average is around 60k sec. Maybe the person you are downloading from lied about their connection speed or their bandwidth is low.
> So if transfer of copyrighted material is
> forbidden, would not that impact any online
No one is forbiding the transfer of copyrighted material, assuming it's not a violation of copyright law, and any other agreements with the person you procured the material from.
> "trading" sites or even flea markets at a county
> fair? What makes a digital transfer any
> different then a "physical" one except the speed
> at which it can be done? And I say this in
In fact, there should be no difference. I've mentioned many examples of where you are required to inform the authorities of wrong doings that you witness.
Let's see you open up a shop in your town where people come in and copy each other's CDs and leave.
> terms of someone making a copy of a certain
> music format (vinyl - so now you have 2 copies)
> and then transfering the original to someone
> else via a site like ebay. If that's the case,
> should ebay be policed for this type of
> copyright infringement?
Why is it hard for you to understand that this is about ignoring illegal activity, when you know it's happening? Trading MP3es is not wrong, but trading someone else's property is. Having people abuse your property by exchanging goods on it isn't illegal, but knowing that they're doing it and not alerting the authorities is.
Not only is it impossible for Napster to *not* know (or at least suspect, which warrants alerting the authorities), it should be their policy to attempt keep people from violating copyright law on their property.
Ooog, I just went to download Real7 while talking on the phone and not really paying attention. I ran into three 'enter your credit card number' dead ends before finally finding the free player link.
It's probably the last time I'll bother downloading Real Player -- these sorts of tactics just play right into MS's fingers. If it's too hard to get the player, sites will just start using ASF.
Well, he also mentioned that he views the current program as a prototype. I get the impression that he thinks Napster isn't ready for prime time yet. Perhaps he felt that the 'dozers wouldn't complain about beta quality, because they're used to that sort of thing.
I don't watch television, so I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about here, but several states have Good Samaritan laws, which protect them from liability when they volunteer to help others. This ranges from emergency medical attention to food donation to reimbursing people found acquited of crimes, that suffered monetary damages. Perhaps if you spent less time letting cable companies suck your brain out, you would know this ;-)
The big problem with "AUP" is that it depends on a police force to enforce it. I wonder how much your post is motivated by the fact that you get to be one of the jackboots and therefore have the 'responsibility' sniff around at people's traffic.
This might fly at at a private institution like Oberlin, but no way at a public university, not unless you have a warrent. Network-level solutions are the only way.
Companies (as in employers) certainly do have a right to instigate controls for bandwidth provided to their employees, for business use.
How difficult would it be for the record companies to use Napster itself to trace people who are downloading illegal mp3's.
Very difficult indeed, how would they know which files are legal and which illegal? Download the entire file to check? Real practical... Especially when downloading from modems
Nothing can be said about the files legality basen on the filename alone, impossible
> Perhaps Napster should go the way of IRC, and > run as multiple servers, e.g. eu.napster.com, Napster does have multiple servers. > us.napster.com, etc. He could then > link reliable servers into a small network, > allowing for more balanced bandwidth. BZZT napster is client->client They could, however, allow for "proxies" that colleges could use to hold mp3s for a few days, and then have local users be able to grab that, when they search. Or they could just have the clients prefer local subnet ips to remote ones. So Bob down the hall shows up first, when I search for music. > Napster is an incredible innovation! I just wish Napster is not an innovation. It's IRC with binary headers, and a somewhat unimpressive database for allowing peer->peer search and transfer.
> Making Napster illegal would be like making
:)
> Usenet or IRC, or eve a search engine illegal
> simply because there is illegal activity by
> their users. It would be like making a bandwidth
> provider or ISP
I own a shop. A and B walk into the shop.
A shoots B. I am guilty of no crime, if I report the incident to the police.
>
> and relatively impossible to track
> down the users trading mp3's on Napster.
Yeah, real challenging. IP address -> ISP -> account -> pimple faced wannabe geek downloading music
The real struggle there is the legal hassle of "chasing them down", not the technical aspect.
would think so, but at some point, like with ebay, when your user base grows beyond your
;-)
abilities to monitor it, then what? > I hate to say, the "out" of "I didn't know it
> was happening" gets used as an excuse. At this
It certainly could be used. I believe AOL tried to use this argument with Microsoft, over their software piracy problem.
> point, now that the Napster issue is in the
> media - they can't really claim that they didn't
> know... But do we ban this sort of "trade
> engine" technology or do we hire cybercops to do
> the "monitoring" - that's what I meant by "Big
> Brother".
Well I wouldn't say we hire anyone.
Really, what companies should do is:
have an e-mail address or some other means for users to indiciate a possible violation of the law
have a small staff to haphazardly look through the various shares available on their service
Actually follow through with their responsability as citizens, to aid law enforcement.
Even if a suspected person is innocent of any wrong doing, they're better safe than sorry. There's no need for them to terrorize their users or use gestapo tactics, simply to do their part in upholding the law.
If corporations are unwilling to comply, what is likely to happen, is more, what should be pointless, legislation will occur requiring companies to self police, or the fbi will need to start a "copyright violation investigation squad". It would be nice to avoid this sort of Government involvement, as well as possible resulting negative audio encoding legislature, or the movement from open audio format standards to proprietary standards.
It's pretty common to find pirated videotapes in ma+pa video stores. Are you sure that you know what you are looking for?
I don't know what it is. Maybe we're just used to it - we tolerate management screwing the customer to save a few extra bucks. If the telcos tried this shit, they would face severe customer backlash. Somehow, people have less tolerance for a missing dial tone then a ping timeout.
I think it's pretty obvious.
Windows --> Money.
Linux --> Where's the source?
CSS was not invented to control piracy through copying, as CSS does not prevent copying. CSS prevents playback, useful for leveraging your muscle against those who don't serve your corporate interests.
It's no surprise that Napster so closely resembles irc. "Napster" is the irc nick of its creator, who hangs out on EFnet a lot. Kind of a junkie, like I am :)
I think if he wants to cure the bandwidth problem he should have the program close when people click the x button! Not minimize to the bottom right hand corner and fool every newbie.
Out of curiosity why didn't he initially release a *nix client to begin with rather than buying a book and struggling to learn how to program the API under windows?
Because he realized that there a lot more windows users than unix users.
(Score: +1, Obvious)
:-)
Main Entry: piracyain Entry: piracy
Pronunciation: 'pI-r&-sE
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural -cies
Etymology: Medieval Latin piratia, from Late Greek peirateia, from Greek peiratEs pirate
Date: 1537
1 : an act of robbery on the high seas; also : an act resembling such robbery
2 : robbery on the high seas
3 : the unauthorized use of another's production, invention, or conception especially in infringement of a copyright
Can anyone recommend the best Linux Napster tools. It's been a few months since I've tried, but a few months ago all the linux Napster stuff I tried was woefully inadequate. If there are decent Napster tools out there, then I'll forego the http access at http://www.mp3smuggler.com/.
Isn't it ironic how Puff Daddy is quoted defending the RIAA, since his music is ripped from other artists... :)
WWJD? JWRTFM!!!
I'll second gnapster, it works VERY well here. In fact I think it works a LOT better then the official windows version behind a firewall.. course that could be Linux vs windows.. hmm...
Raises hand. I've never run napster. I'm pretty sure the only tracks I have downloaded (using ftp, or rcp, or Netscape) that I don't own the CD of are from two CDs that arn't available in the USA (plus stuff from MP3.com). One I have on order, but Wax Tracks keeps pusing the US release data back The other is H2SO4's Imatation Leather Jacket (I think). I havn't been able to find it anywhere.
I even spent about $200 buying all the import singles of my faverote band just so I didn't have to steal them.
More intrestingly, my avg. spending on CDs from 1993 to 1998 was about $0. In 1999 I spent at least $500 on them. (all from listening to a legal CD archive at work, and partly because my new car has a CD player)
I would hardly describe any point in the past as being a utopia. However, I understand what LeSwoosh means.
;)
There was definately a time in which large businesses were very rare. Shipping concerns were the largest privately owned businesses, and corporations were quite rare and tied closely to the government (e.g. the East India Company)
So although the marketplace was smaller due to there being less trade and communication as there is today, virtually any individual could go into virtually any business easily and through dint of hard work, good prices and luck be just as successful as his competitors.
Nowadays though, while the market is larger, there are typically several large concerns which overshadow any market. Rather than accept the positive aspects of capitalism (you are likely to improve yourself by having someone to compete against; it's better for everyone in general to have competition all across the board) with the bad (if you can't actually have a better business than your competitor you're doomed; competition all across the board means for you too) the modern day corporation is usually anti-capitalist.
By this I mean that they do not wish for there to be a fair fight in the marketplace. They do not wish to risk their standing even if they will improve themselves. The number one goal of most modern corporations is to keep themselves at the forefront of their market, even if they don't deserve to be.
Basically capitalism works out well for everyone in the end, although any one business may find that its fortunes rise and fall drastically. Corporatism works out well for the large businesses on the top but poorly for everyone as a whole because things do not improve as well as they might have otherwise.
Note that in computing every advancement I can think of has come from research labs and academics unconcerned with making money, or from small startup companies and entrepreneurs. Large companies (outside of their pure research divisions - e.g. Bell Labs, Xerox PARC) never come up with anything because it might disturb the status quo.
(support the silver standard
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Missing in this analysis is that it is not illegal to copy music in all countries. For example, Canada amended its Copyrigh Act in 1998 such that it is no longer illegal to copy "musical works" as long as the copying is done for private use. See section 80, as amended, and the explanation of this section. Many /. readers will recall the furor over the copyright levy imposed in Canada, but many missed that the levy was the flip side of legalizing the private copying of musical works. In other words, it is no longer illegal in Canada to copy music for private use, and the levy was put in place in an attempt to compensate artists for private copying that does take place.
Now, the BIG question that remains for Canadians is the following: if I'm in Canada, and I log onto Napster and connect to someone's MP3 files in the USA and download a file, am I subject to Canadian or US copyright laws? Where is the copying taking place?
I send thanks. It is one of greatest new tools on the internet.
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
Making Napster illegal would be like making Usenet or IRC, or eve a search engine illegal simply because there is illegal activity by their users. It would be like making a bandwidth provider or ISP mother their clients, which is just blatantly ignorant. There is no way the RIAA can stop Napster, and relatively impossible to track down the users trading mp3's on Napster. :)
EraseMe
> This quote seems to sum it up:
> I send a letter to a friend over postal mail.
> In the mail, i say "I have a package for you.
> I'll send it via fedex". I
> then send him a kiddie porn video. Is the postal
> office criminally negligent for allowing the
> transmission of child
> pornography?
Sorry, that doesn't quite cover it.
Because what's really happening is your are writing to the postmaster general and saying: "who has kiddie porn?". The post master general writes back and says: "Bob has kiddie porn. Here's his address. By the way, getting kiddie porn is illegal." Then you write to Bob and say: "Bob, will you send me a free copy of your kiddie porn?"
Windows --> Money.
Linux --> Where's the source?
I don't recall paying for the Windows version...
Finkployd
There's already plenty of precident of things being banned because of what they "can" do...
Though it's in a completely different league, on one hand the second amendment states that we have the right to keep and bare arms, but on the other hand, you can't have automatic weapons, many states bar handgun sales, "cop killer" bullets are illegal, and private sales are on their way out of the picture too...
Those are all things that our second amendment protects, and are no problem if only law abiding citizens ever get guns... But because of the minority of gun buyers, criminals, who would use the guns for the "wrong" purpose (after all, guns are made for killing, but you can't just kill anybody), the majority loses out.
Yeah, it's a leap away from napster in terms of effect on society and stuff like that, but it's also a perfect example of consitutional rights being taken away because they could be or were abused by a miniscule percentage of the population.
Yeah... But at least BeamIt attempts to introduce some form of authenication in that it wants to know, or reasonably believe, that you own the CD (or at least have it in your possession)... Napster doesn't do that.
And come on people, be honest... Everyone who has never ever ever downloaded one song from napster which they did not already own, raise your hands high above everyone elses so we can call you liars. I admit that i did. I also admit that I deleted the song, as well as the program immediately thereafter. A LOT of the music i listen to is produced by small artists on small labels, and they DESERVE to make money from people buying their CD's... I'm not about to just let anyone who wants it to download it from me.
The reason it works like that is because the backend was changed recently from a substring-match-class searching mechanism to a keyword/token-based matching mechanism. Most people don't experience the difference, but to the few who do: such is our price for making a better search engine.
--jordan
I don't see why what you describe is such a risk. This risk exists already with FTP files and anything you download from the Web. Why should Napster be so special and different in this respect?
What about WMA? Or other audio formats?
--jordan
> Is Napster going to eat into CD sales?
> Absolutely--and I believe that the end result
> is going to be a lot of prudning in the
> industry.
That's interesting; the RIAA posted reports that CD sales are at record numbers this past year. Yeah, Napster sure is eating into their pockets.
--jordan
Yeah, we all remember the /search mechanism in IRC, don't we? Oh yeah. Glorified IRC client, indeed. :-)
--jordan
FYI, Linux != Unix . I suspect that the poster was not actually ignorant, and that he was referring to the fact that Napster servers do NOT run on Unix.
thee doesn't need to be an offical unix client --
... froinstance gnapster, which, in my opinion s even better than the real thing (it can connect to non napster servers)
there are already several clones/workalikes
they just need to give their blessing/approval to one
------- Oh damn.... the Sigfile escaped... -Great OM
-"If I recall, it's about a 500K download; what's winamp alone, about 2MB?"-
If I recall correctly, the normal Winamp download is about 600k, but you can get the 2 meg download to have support for windows media and mjuice formats. I've never found a reason to go for the bloat version.
A planet where apes evolved from men? Long live the apes.
Sure, if all you're dealing with is a small subnet. But what about big operations, where you've got upwards of 50k users? 100k users? It gets pricey. Adding more bandwidth or traffic shapers gets pricey, and not-for-profits and Unis don't always have the funding to solve problems like this by throwing money at it. Sometimes adding something to the AUP makes sense. I know that in an academic environment, research and educational uses should come first. If that's distance learning, or engineers trying odd new things, or whatever. Joe and Jane User's resnet connection is low priority by comparison, imnsho. If Joe and Jane User want faster better more from a resnet situation, Joe and Jane ought to pony up and get themselves some commercial feed. Alright, maybe that's taking it too far. But at the very least, during business hours, doesn't it make a bit of sense? I think I saw a suggestion for bandwidth limitations on resnet stuff here on /. earlier. And for a Uni, I couldn't agree more. I like the high speed connection when I'm not working, but I waste it. Someone who is actually using it for work deserves it more.
itachi, who got to boot a luser on Friday for violating security policy despite warnings
No, I went to Oberlin. I work elsewhere. And an AUP is based more on trust than anything else. People violate AUPs all the time, but the only people who get in trouble for it (at my workplace, anyway) are those that cause admins to get email saying "hey, someone is your domain is doing ____ to my box, could you make them stop?" or the like. No admin has the time to sit there sniffing traffic watching for misbehavior. Shutting off someone's port when they are in the middle of DoSing someone, on the other hand, is more of a job requirement, don't you think? As for the need for warrants, it depends. IANAL, but my understanding is that if a reasonable and understandable AUP is presented, any uni/corp. can kill a connection based on behavior that violates policy.
:)
itachi, who resents being called jackbooted. I wear hiking boots with steel toes
i think that jabber was going to add napster like file searching...
here is some more info...
nmarshall
#include "standard_disclaimer.h"
R.U. SIRIUS: THE ONLY POSSIBLE RESPONSE
nmarshall
The law is that which it boldly asserted and plausibly maintained..
--Colonel Burr 1783
Because there are so many mp3s, and many people store greater than 1000 mp3s on their computers, if you and I go to the same college, there is a large chance I'll have the mp3 you're looking for. Maybe napster could add in the abilitly to search napster clients on a local network before they searched those that are in europe or australia? So search all those with 204.17.30.x, then 204.17.X.X, etc, and finally search the napster servers. It would surely lower some of the bandwith stress on the college networks.
There's more than just Napster. Someone else has mentioned another one (although I don't recall the name and am too lazy to look it up right now...). There's also CuteMX (by the people who brought you
CuteFTP), Hotline, and of course, IRC is a super set of the functionality present in Napster, save a search function.
There's probably even more that I'm not familar with, but I think the point is made: It's not about Napster, it's about the concept of easy-to-use global file sharing. Previous methods work, but are a bitch to use or to find specific things. The ones that allow one to share any damn file they want, as opposed to JUST mp3s, will be sue-proof.
--
These are *MY* opinions.
These are *MY* opinions.
They will not be *YOUR* opinions until the Orbital Mind Control Lasers are operati
What really gets me angry is how there is no mention of IRC. For about as long as MP3's have been available, I have been on DALnet trading mp3s with "bots". This is almost identical to what is being done on Napster. And, anyone who has ever been on IRC, will immediately see the strong resemblance between Napster and IRC, especially when it gets down to the Channels.
Napster is nothing original, it's just a user-friendly (aka: usable by techno-ignorants) implementation of a foundation laid by IRC about 3 years earlier. I find it almost impossible to believe that he arrived at Napster with no influence at all from IRC, and when he mentions that there was no simmilar way to obtain MP3s, he is overlooking the easiest of the time, IRC.
It really gets my goat how this guy is taking the credit for what has already been done, and is still widely being used even today. For an experiment, pick up an IRC client, log into DalNet or EFFnet or some similar server, do a channel search for the word MP3 and limit results to rooms with 30 to 200 people. You will get probably 150 rooms, all organized into genre by room topic, and filled with bots ready to fill your harddrive.
SO remember, NAPSTER IS NOTHING NEW, IT'S LIKE SAYING FORD INVENTED THE CAR! (Dailmer and one other guy in Germany did) FORD JUST MADE IT AVAILABLE TO THE MASSES. That is nothing to be overlooked, but certainly it should be known that the two achievements are not synonymous.
"Lazyness is the first step towards efficiency." -Patrick Bennett
Yes, please, for the love of God, give us a stop button in the search menu!
Seriously, that is my only real complaint with the user interface, besides locking the user out of the program until the login process either loads or they hit 'cancel,' and the fact that the 'X' button doesn't kill the program.
I suffer daily from this Bandwidth Hog problem. About 10 people in our office use Napster. They all do it via our feeble 64k line, mainly becuase the 400k DirectPC thingie sucks.
/. at 500-800 BYTES per second. It's ridiculous. Part of the problem is that it uses HTTP (afaik), so throttling or even blocking it doesn't work.
:P
...Student, Artist, Techie - Geek *
They discovered Napster en Masse, about three weeks ago. (They're Mexicans!)
I typically view
Besides, our Sys Admin is this quiet guy who knows what kind of grief he'll get if he attempts to impose sanctions.
The plus side? The management don't understand why the line is suddenly so amazingly slow. We're upgrading to 512k in a month
But yeah, I'm all for the Uni's doing this - sorry!
Mong.
* Paul Madley
*...Slacker, Artist, Techie - Geek *
Remember: Nothing is Cool.
Of course, one of the things that makes Napster work the way it does is that the file transfer itself is peer-to-peer, which conveniently means the files are never stored in anyone's server. Therefore there are N,000 separate individuals at any one time that they would need to go after. As N->infinity (and it definitely seems to be rising steadily), it's going to become completely unfeasible.
Which explains why they go after Napster. Napster may not be doing anything illegal, but at least they're one specific company that stays put.
[TMB]
You can resume a download. It's called the "Resume Download" button.
And you can exit the program by right clicking on it in the system tray and hitting (get this) "Exit"
From what I gather, Napster does _NOT_ track IP addresses of its users, so it's not quite that simple.
What you say is right on target regarding MP3s, but Napster very much promotes piracy. It is a means for people to copy copyrighted music from one person's computer to another -- what part of that is not blatant piracy? Sure, you can trade public domain music or only download songs you already own legally. But the former is a huge minority, and the later is rather pointless since you may as well rip your own music, and actually have control over the quality.
The Napster community is like a video or music store where anyone could walk in with a blank tape (or buy one at the store) and make copies of the music/movie right there, then walk out of the store with their own copy and the original remaining at the store for anyone else to copy. This is quite obviously lawsuit-bait, but should Napster be the one to bear the brunt of it? I don't think so, it's just a tool that's oblivious to copyright. But the actual network, and those computers being used to do the copying of copyrighted material, yeah they're gonna get burned.
Any sufficiently advanced civilization is indistinguishable from Gods.
There is one great and really new concept with Napster: It created a music community that shares and is expanding it everyday [Its the users that are expanding the community but anyhow...] That is why "Nappy" is mostly talking about UI improvents so much, they are improving UI so that more people can use the program more easily and enjoyably.
Can someone tell me what this "Sig" box is for??
I remember back when Netscape cost money, and then became free (as it is now.)
I guess that's not what you meant.
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NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
They [the CIA] are big and powerful and well armed, and they keep secrets from the very people they purport to protect. They cannot be trusted to have humanity's best interests first and foremost in their minds.
Just out of curiosity, if they're so big, powerful and particularly, secret, how do you know so much about their "murder, rape and destruction"?
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Besides, I'm out of school a long time ago, sonny.
Sorry; so much of Slashdot is young and naive, I guess I'm making too many assumptions. :)
Obviously the system we have nowadays strays far from the so-ideal of so-called "free" trade. I'm don't think capitalism is a good word to describe it anymore.
This is what I've never understood. We have more choices, more information and more opportunity than at any time in history, yet many people like you seem to have some image in their mind of a point in the past when we had some "mom and pop" Utopia. Tell me, when was this golden era of Capitalism that you are comparing "nowadays" to?
And please don't tell me you long for the gold standard.
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That's great, except it has nothing to do with the point I made. What I said was that I have no legal obligation to report a crime.
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If capitalism was linked to free markets, there would be no drive by companies toward monopolies and oligopolies, since they would be harmful to capitalism itself.
I'll accept your refinement of the definition ("capital"-wise, at least), but this doesn't make sense to me. Of course there is a drive toward 100% marketshare, since every company has the desire to sell to every possible consumer. When dominant marketshare becomes detrimental to free competition through abuses of power, we call it a monopoly. And that's why we have anti-trust laws.
In my experience, it is a word used by people who see that so-called free market capitalism regularly produces results which seem unsound, but are unwilling to question whether capitalism itself provides incentives toward sub-optimal outcomes.
I agree with that to some degree, although I would phrase it differently. I would say it's used by people who expect 100% perfection from capitalism, and call it corporatism when it fails to achieve it. They cling to the naive notion that it's possible to legislate perfect economies, and wilfully ignore the historical evidence that every other economic system produces far worse abuses and misery.
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I'm all about choice and freedom. If you believe thats what we have today, I should like to get my glasses tinted the same shade of rose. Just because we begin each ball game by singing about "the land of the free and the home of the brave" doesn't make it so. The real trick has been to make the general populace believe that's what we have. Pulling that one over on us was quite a coup. Yes, we have choices, as long as they are the ones printed for us by the corporations and federally approved. Theres quite a difference between "freedom of choice" and "freedom from choice". I'm all about choice. I just don't like this mandated menu.
Sorry for the long quote, but I think it's all important. You throw out all these statements as if we live in some police state or something. It's long on drama (maybe you should've been a drama major...), but very short on facts. I never claimed that we live in a perfect society (far from it), but I see no reason to have this cynical, pessimistic outlook on life. I mean, what would it take to make you happy? It's seems perfectly clear to me that, on balance, life is getting better with every decade that passes.
"The land of the free and the home of the brave" are not intended to be descriptive of every event that ever has or will take place in the US. It's meant to be the ideal, a statement of the foundational vision for the country.
And what "mandated" menu are you talking about? That you only have the Colas that the "corporations" allow you to have? You have total freedom to make your own Cola if you want (or fill in your own product). Products are not legislated into existence, they are created by real human beings. If you don't like a particular option, then make one yourself. But to complain that someone isn't delivering you custom made-to-order products is just silly. What is it you expect? Of course your options are limited to what people actually produce. What other option is there?
BTW, what is a gold standard? You mean an ideal? If that's what a gold standard is, sure I long for it. Don't you?
The value of the dollar used to be tied to the price of gold (which was originally legislated in the constitution). The "gold standard" was abandoned in the sixties (early 70s?), but every so often someone complains that we should go back to that valuation method.
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Why has he switched to windows-only?
Because he wanted the program to be useful to the most people (namely, a lot of his friends in the beginning). The number of people who use Unix/Linux day-to-day with multimedia capabilities is microscopic.
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The number one goal of most modern corporations is to keep themselves at the forefront of their market, even if they don't deserve to be.
Well, of course. But on average, this is done through better products. Can you cite times when inferior products have made it to #1? Sure. But over time, the better products win out almost every time. The point isn't that capitalism is perfectly efficient; the point is that it's self-correcting (with rare exceptions).
Note that in computing every advancement I can think of has come from research labs and academics unconcerned with making money, or from small startup companies and entrepreneurs.
I've got news for you... 90% of all computer innovations came straight out of IBM in the 50s-70s.
But in any case, it's hardly surprising that many innovations come out of small companies. An innovation or an efficiency is how small companies start and survive. But to say that innovations never come out of big companies is just absurd. I could cite any number of them: Post it notes. Cellular phones. Satellite communications. Composite plastics. Laser Printers. Railroads. The "butterfly" laptop keyboard. Auto-everything cameras. Microprocessors. Compact Discs. And my personal favorite lately: Electronically Image Stabilized binoculars (by Canon).
And let's not even get into the amazing track record of the medical industry, which is almost exclusively the realm of large companies.
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It IS that simple. Imagine that I work for a record company. I load up napster and search for our companies latest hits. I then get a list of people who are serving it. Now I click on "Download". All I'd need is to monitor the ip's Napster is connecting to.
Have you guys noticed that the way Napster searches for songs has changed in the last week or so. Before, if you were looking for a Paul McCartney song you could search for "Pau Cartn" and it would work. Of course, this sometimes took a really long time. You can't do that now, you have to put the whole word: "Paul" or "McCartney" or both. As a result, the search is noticeably faster. I'm supposing that now they have an index of keywords while before they just did an extensive string search. Now, the problem with the current solution is that it's not rare for people to misspell the name of an artist or a song (Brittney Spears, Metalica, for instance). Can someone give an opinion on what the best algorithm for this kind of search would be or if indexing is the only way to go (although I'll miss many songs whose name I don't know completely)??
"All the things one has forgotten scream for help in dreams". Elias Canetti
Right now, they don't; but in the future, they could put banner ads in the client or sell a "Plus" version of the client like RealPlayer does.
Actually, I think a better analogy would be to compare Napster to the copy machine in the public library.
How many people are using it to make illegal copies? Almost everyone.
Does the library know about it? Absolutely.
What has the library done about it? Posted a little warning saying, "Hey stupid, don't copy anything!" :-)
Actually, I think there might be some precedent here....
I have a friend who runs an ISP, and I think there have been some attempts to shut down ISP's whose newsgroup servers have downloaded illegal binaries. He would really like to filter out the porn stuff. However, he told me that if makes any attempt at filtering at all, he could be held liable for the binaries that didn't get filetered. He was actually better off (legally) not to filter anything at all.
www.onshare.com
Oh yeh.. + you don't need a client to access the files that people are sharing.. can search and download via a web browser (without any plugins).
Right now Napster is simply building up market share. They're building up a lot of it. If they start charging is the question... Remember when Netscape/McAfee/tons of other software used to be free... I do.
So far I've gotten all my Karma from telling people they are wrong... :)
The case for Napster is so similar to IRC that it could be the same case. The legal issues faq explains all, but in short the idea is this:
I don't advocate illegal MP3's, but I think people should be aware of facts, and while this seems like a "loophole", This quote seems to sum it up:
I send a letter to a friend over postal mail. In the mail, i say "I have a package for you. I'll send it via fedex". I then send him a kiddie porn video. Is the postal office criminally negligent for allowing the transmission of child pornography? Or say for example, criminal activity occurs on Greyhound bus lines, without their knowledge. Would the bus company and the driver be responsible (or said to "support" such activity)? How much more then can an irc network or administrator be liable?
-from undernet legal issue faq.
~zero`
sig?
in my opinion it would have been better if he would first build a unix version of napster, letting the good community benefit from good things, and then let microsoft and maybe other big coperations to port it to windows, if they still want to attract people. yet if it would have been developed for unix, things would be much more secure, the napster for windows is really insecure indeed. altogether, if you know unix, first develop for unix, then let the others port it if they want and do the black work.
Dan.
The ambitious goal we should set for ourselfs is: Unlocking the knowledge of humanity.
A far more sophisticated system is need then napster to acomplish this. Such a system was first discussed by V.Bush in 1945. Napster is only about sharing standard mp3 files. UseNET is also all about distribution of information. Napster is dedicated for MP3, where UseNET allows distribution of text, audio, CDROM images, etc in all forms. The current traffic volumes are around 1 GByte / day ! Compared to this volume Napster is small, yett Napster is more usefull then the special news clients that gather all MP3s from a binairy newsgroup.
A very important feature lacking in both Napster and UseNET is advanced review and moderation. Slashdot is an example of how review should work: by the people and for the people. When the produkt is becoming more diverse the need for distingtion increases. The MP3 files of Napster are fairly standard. Only the quality of the encoder matters if you rip directly of the CD. For images things become more tricky. The resolution can be checked by simple scripts, but the overall image quality must always be rated by the users. The description, quality and content of video can be entered by the user colectively. Shashdot proves that a review mechnisms on text work effectively and gems of information can be distinghished. This information is the greatest challange. Currently there are tutotials for mastering the art of C, C++, java, perl, php3, etc. programming. It would be a great leap if such writings could evolve from the work of several people on the Internet, each contributing the unique piece of knowledge and experience they own.
We therefore need to add rating and review mechanisms to the open source Napsters that distribute the knowledge and information of humanity. The mechanism of karma, and score's for the content need to be refined for the various types of information.
With such a mechanism copyright issues are no longer relevant and information can flow and evolve freely. To pay the people for their work it must be possible to send small amount of money directly to the people, instead of the big amount of money that is currently asked by the media industry. This small transfer of money should be optional.
Just my 5 eurocents,
Johan.
Capitalism is an economic system. It has one underling assumption. That society exists to serve man, not man to serve society. Yet we still hold on to the belief that capitalism is best for the consumer. It may be some of the time, but that is not why it is designed. The only purpose of legislation is to protect this assumption. To allow man to best serve him.
"They cling to the naive notion that it's possible to legislate perfect economies, and willfully ignore the historical evidence that every other economic system produces far worse abuses and misery."
Brilliant! Legislation that regulates Capitalism only harms it.
Capitalism also provides the moral basis for our society. The most fundamental assumption we make is that life is valuable. This is an assumption that can be found in almost every civilization.
If life is valuable, and the society holds this to be true, capitalism is the only economic system that can exist. Because, capitalism says you are valuable. It implies the basic self worth of the individual, by giving him the right to do whatever he wants with his property and his skills. Whereas socialism tells him that his skills are valuable but he is not. This self-esteem, that only capitalism can grant, cannot be underestimated. Would Edison have persevered with the light bulb without a basic sense of self worth?
Corporatism is simply a paper tiger created by those socialists who want have not done well. It is interesting that those who are socialist don't want to take credit for their own actions. This is the other part of capitalism, if it states that man is free to act as he wants, then it also states that man is responsible for his own actions and his own success.
Best regards,
Nate Custer
"The poet presents his thoughts festively, on the carriage of rhythm; usually because they could not walk" Nietzsche
"I honestly don't believe that our country today is what the founding lawyers had in mind."
Yes, you are right, the founding fathers designed a system that did *not* trust the common people. They put almost all of the true power (treaties, judgment of Impeachment, etc.) in the senate. Which was designed not to be elected by the people. But by the intelligentsia, the aristocrats, the men who knew what they were doing.
What has changed fundamentally is that we are living in a true democracy, (or at least very close to it). It is governed by polls (the people's vote), and by those who want to buy or influence the people's opinion.
The problems you point out are caused by those who are behaving as capitalism shows them they should, for their own interests. You can't fault them for that.
Nate Custer
"The poet presents his thoughts festively, on the carriage of rhythm; usually because they could not walk" Nietzsche
Aww... I'm just hoping that Napster dies a nice legal death so that we can get more people back looking for mp3s on IRC. Doesn't the world need a few more thousand IRC addicts?
They could even do it without using entrapment as they could browse somebodies hard drive and take a listing of the files they had (or even download them for evidence)
Then it would be up to the individuals to prove that they have purchaced legitimate copies of all the music otherwise they face prosecution.
This would solve the problem of Napster being used for Piracy. Some people would say it is big brother, but it can be seen as legitimate policing to free up the resources of Napster for use by up and coming bands and those that embrace the free music distribution network (which many artists have used successfully in the past with tape copying drives, like Phish and Ani DiFranco)
I can't see anyone but the guilty objecting to this, because as we have heard from the arguements, Napster is only a tool and it is bad individuals that pirate. *grin*
*proto-consumerist aside* Hmm, I wonder how much I could make from consultancy fees to the record companies...
Working for the (other) man
Can RIAA "win" its lawsuit in any sense that works from the point of view of preserving its business model? Suppose the worst happens and Napster is put out of business. It seems like all that would happen is that a large number of Napster clones would spring up on home networks throughout the world. Even if the RIAA could shut these down -- and there are a lot of jurisdictions out there -- how could it even find them? Certainly if I were to set up a clone I wouldn't publicize it -- I'd just tell people I know and let them tell people they know, etc. What could the RIAA possibly do about that? It looks to me as though business models that depend on control over the distribution of stored static content have no hope at all, and I include mp3.com's business model in that. Am I overreacting?
Perhaps what they should consider doing is open-sourcing Napster and making the server software available as well. Then you end up with a more decentralized structure similar to IRC or USENET, and less of a target to hit. It also seems to me that the trick that Hotline Server admins use ("click on my porn and casino banners to get the site login and password") would be pointless, because users would flock to the free servers, making them the ones with the most variety, and therefore, the most attractive. Again does anyone know if there's a published RFC of the Napster protocol? If so, please drop me an email at dan.NOSPAM.bailey@NOSPAM.mindwired.com! Thanks!
blog |
As for a golden era, I don't know when America as a country was ever in one. A case could be made, I think, that the last Golden Era was the few years leading up to and including the drafting of the Declaration of Independance and the subsequent Revolutionary War. After that, the lawyers got ahold of it, and most of 'em who couldn't hack the courtroom became politicians.
This is trivial, but the Declaration of Indepence was written by lawyers. Of course, they all had "better" morals than many lawyers do today - john adams defended the soldiers involved with the boston massacre to make sure they'd get a fair trial. how could you say the golden age of our country was the few years before and after the revolution? not only was it not a country for part of it (heh), but it was a time of death and destruction and all the neat stuff associated with wars. Not to mention that most of the people were poor and uneducated.
There have been many "golden era"s in which the majority of the people were happy - we're in one right now, if you haven't noticed. The economy is/was booming, people are making money, and we've been relatively peaceful. I don't know about you, but my life is pretty much troublefree, as is just about everyone I know
Macrovision is hardly gone, they just got some of the kinks out of it. Every VCR, in order to get the VHS logo license from JVC, has to refuse to record a Macrovision-encoded signal properly. (Apparently some older VCRs didn't seem to mind the signal and would allow you to copy the tape OK.) As well, the design of TVs has changed so that they are more tolerant of the Macrovision signal.
Try to copy a commercial movie tape and you'll still probably get the flashing colors and distortions from Macrovision.
Consumer "piracy" with VCR's and cassette tapes was/is not so uncommon as you make it out to be. Trading cassette tapes (of Aerosmith, INXS, etc) was very popular back when I was in high school. I don't know much about VHS trading, but I frequently see it going on, and there are web sites where you can trade or buy everything from the Max Headroom series to Little Lulu cartoons.
I agree that the analogy of Napster to previous devices is somewhat flawed, but not for that reason.
The difference with Napster is that thanks to its network architecture, it's much more visible and accessible - that's the whole point of the way it's built.
In principle it's not all that different than email networks of people who trade VHS, cassettes and DAT's. It's just way more efficient and easy to find.
Another case of software development being years ahead of the hardware and infrastructure? Software development has always been years behind hardware development; the bandwidth problem is valid, but it's one of the few times in the history of computers that it's happened, and rather than being a result of faulty design it's simply vastly increased volume in internet traffic.
that definition has become popularized because of people lying about the words true meaning. That doesn't make them any less the liars for calling it that.
Napster has the shittiest user interface I've ever seen. Its protocols are from the mid-1980s. And its chat rooms are pointless. I love it. Napster is the single most powerful concept brought to bear yet in the crowded mp3 retrieval world. As far as RIAA is concerned, they already fought this battle once and lost. The courts ruled the Diamond Rio was not illegal; simply because something could be used for illegal purposes doesn't make it illegal. In actuality, many (though definately not most) of the files exchanged over Napster have been authorized for electronic distribution. Thus, it has legal uses, and cannot thus be declared illegal. Just a thought. Jouster
"I think it's pretty obvious to most people that Napster is not media specific".
Well, no. Currently, it is. It doesn't have to be, is what I think he's trying to say, and eventually won't be, but currently, yes, it is.
Personally I understood this sentence as saying that the concept of Napster is not Media specific, that maybe someone could have thought of the same but with software instead of music, not as talking about this specific implementation of the concept.
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
Of course, one of the things that makes Napster work the way it does is that the file transfer itself is peer-to-peer, which conveniently means the files are never stored in anyone's server. Therefore there are N,000 separate individuals at any one time that they would need to go after. As N->infinity (and it definitely seems to be rising steadily), it's going to become completely unfeasible.
;-)
;-)
Let me throw a monkey wrench in here for a moment...   When I read your statement, I thought about ebay.   Why?   Because much of what ebay does is (in a way) "peer to peer", ie., people trading stuff between themselves - and although I only visited there once or twice, I wouldn't be surprised if people would trade say, their entire vinyl collections (after making a tape copy) to someone else...  
I don't know all the intricacies of software EULAS or copyrights (and please forgive my previous misspellings of it!) or the various licensing issues...   and I may be wrong, and someone please correct me, but don't alot of the music licenses forbid "transfering" to others, although maybe they mean in the "commercial" sense (or do they)?
Which explains why they go after Napster. Napster may not be doing anything illegal, but at least they're one specific company that stays put.
So if transfer of copyrighted material is forbidden, would not that impact any online "trading" sites or even flea markets at a county fair?   What makes a digital transfer any different then a "physical" one except the speed at which it can be done?   And I say this in terms of someone making a copy of a certain music format (vinyl - so now you have 2 copies) and then transfering the original to someone else via a site like ebay.   If that's the case, should ebay be policed for this type of copyright infringement?
Just curious if anyone wants to comment on this...  
-- Win2k: "It's not so much that it's only 65,000 bugs, it's just that they stopped at 65,535 to prevent an overflow."
It's pretty common to find pirated videotapes in ma+pa video stores. Are you sure that you know what you are looking for?
;-) Here's a U.S. cultural learning experience for ya...   In the "downtown" areas and commercial strips in many neighborhoods in the east (and I'm talking Boston, NY, Philly, Baltimore, D.C.), you will see vendors who will setup a table, put a cute little table cloth on it, and spread out a whole array of "goods for sale" at "really cheap prices"...   hee hee.   And what a selection too!   You can get umbrellas and paper towels and plastic gloves and tapes and incense and greeting cards and watches and knit hats and sunglasses and CDs and bootleg NFL jackets and bootleg NBA basketball tank tops and hot but "official" NBL baseball caps - all on the same table!   Man...   you gotta come east some time.   I've been west myself (Texas, Missouri, Colorado, California, Washington state) and no, I guess you don't see it that much there - although I *know* you do have stuff like that in places like Venice Beach in L.A., 'cause I saw it!   Our east coast cities have assorted "vendor ordinances" that cover the hotdog guy in a cart all the way up to the guy who sticks the table out on the sidewalk.   It's almost guaranteed that everything on that table is bootlegged...   ;-) But the guy is "in business for himself" (and thus supposedly "not on welfare", ie., "self-employed"), out in the weather, trying to "make a living".   C'est la vie.
Common? In a big city? On the sidewalks? Where do you guys live? As a music aficionado who travelse the Western states about once a month for a week or two at a time, I see lots of drugs, booze, and lots of bodies for sale on the streets, but bootleg copies conviently for sale have not presented themselves to me.
I don't know about the poster who you're responding to, but *I* live on the east coast babe...  
I believe you. Perhaps I was not looking in the right places. My theory was that employees who make incomes at stores who have much invested in the retail market would not be happy at bootleg vendors not playing by the same rules and promptly call for enforcement. They might be upset at someone who is selling a good collection $16 cd's for $4 and call the cops to bust them on one of many of the city's ordinances.
You know...   when you wrote this part, you had me rolling on the floor because what actually happens is that the guy with the table full of music tapes will PURPOSELY setup shop *right outside a music store*.   In fact, alot of fruit vendors, who operate out of trucks, do the same here in Philly, where they will park their fruit trucks across the street from a supermarket and sell their fruit for *alot* less then the supermarket...   Of course, as you said, the stores try to chase them away and some have even gone to the city councils, etc., to pass more ordinances...   But many lose because of what?   "Competition" and the fact that many who make the ordinances don't want to stifle the competiton.   Of course the next step is for the store to try to prove that the guy is selling bootleg stuff, and so either the guy sneeks real stuff in his batch before they haul him away (and then the store loses the case again) or they pack up and move in front of a different store and go through the whole process again...  
Believe me, it's a never-ending battle and alot of chain stores have given up over here...
-- Win2k: "It's not so much that it's only 65,000 bugs, it's just that they stopped at 65,535 to prevent an overflow."
Most cassettes and videos are pirated?
;-).   I would NEVER buy crap like that off of any vendor or in any of the prolific "electronic" chain stores like the old "Sound of Music" chains, which were also shutdown due to pirated and "hot" stuff.
Read my statement again.   I said:
When was the last time you strolled the streets
And I said:
Most of the music cassette and video crap sitting on the tables for sale are pirated.
In most big cities, there are "street vendors".   These street vendors have tables setup on the sidewalk.   It is a well known fact that most of the stuff on these tables on the sidewalks (including the so-called "designer" watches and pocketbooks, etc.) ARE fake.   Ever wonder what one of the causes for closing down the "Crazy Eddie's" chain out of New York was?   Ever walked into similar chain stores in any big city?   I guess not.
have yet to see one pirated shrink wrap cassette or video. Granted, I have seen taped music in a few homes, but in a retail store? Where do you get this information?
I don't mean to start a flame (which is useless) but I would like to note that just because you haven't had a certain experience, then you cannot assume that it can't happen or doesn't exist.   That's pretty arrogant.   I have been the victim of the receipt of a pirated tape that was legitimately purchased as a gift.   What is the mark of a pirated tape - even one with a legitimate-looking box and shrink wrap?   It is one that you play and you can tell that some IDIOT was sitting in a movie theater WITH a camcorder, recording the thing, and then passed it along to piraters to reproduce.   And how do you know this other than the jerkiness and blurriness and otherwise poor quality of the tape?   Why you can HEAR the audience cheering and talking in the background.   Needless to say, the thing went in the trash.
And I live in Philadelphia and maybe you need to visit the city more often...  
-- Win2k: "It's not so much that it's only 65,000 bugs, it's just that they stopped at 65,535 to prevent an overflow."
Those aren't consumers selling the tapes - the are professional crooks with high speed dubbing machines. They rent a copy of "The Matrix" and buy a box of blanks, they feed the tapes into dubbing rig and sell the copies.
;-) And what I'm going to say is "da truth".   I have seen movies offered "for sale" *while* the movie was STILL playing in the movies.   Get it?   For example, "Mission to Mars" is about to release soon.   I guarantee you that if you come here to Philly the day after that movie releases, some idiot will be out on the street hawking it.   It'll be carefully hidden amongst the VAST selection on the table.   And NOT in the "seedy" parts of town either - on major business strips.   My friends and I laugh about these "bootleg" tapes where the picture is all blurry and you can literally hear the movie audience in the background (and people buy them too - and what got me is that they WERE shrink wrapped).   You can get shrink wrap machines easily.   The box puzzled me for awhile except that what I heard happens is that someone "knew someone" who "knew someone" who "worked as a trucker" who "knew where the a stash of boxes were" (that were pre-assembled in advance for the eventual release of the video) that for some reason "got damaged and had to be thrown out" blah blah.   THIS is how it happens.   There's a whole underground economy going on out there.
;-)
No no no no no no...  
You couldn't make a profit trying to do this consumer gear. The heads couldn't take the wear and tear - even if they did you couldn't copy enough tapes in a day to make any money.
Say I'm Joe Q. Bootlegger and I got me a brand new portable video camera + a tape for my birthday.   I'll just hop on over to K-mart, get me a cheap pack of tapes, pay my $5.00 matinee fee, find a good seat, point the camera at the screen, and set the tape to record.   Then I go home, get my 2 cheapy VCRS, connect them together with a couple of wires, and record away.   If the average cheapy tape costs maybe $7.99 on sale for 4 and I make 4 copies and sell them for $10 each, have I not just made a $32.01 profit for myself (not counting the movie fee 'cause I wanted to see the movie anyway)?   Not bad for about 2 hours of sitting in a movie theater and a day's worth of dubbing and packaging it.   If I opt to sell the "real popular" ones for $15 (still about $10 less than what it would be when it released for real), I'd make $60 minus $7.99 materials cost, or $52.01 profit... divided by 10 hours, and that would come out to about $5.20/hr. - more than minimum wage.
This is no "rent a movie already out on tape and dub it".   This is RECORD a movie playing in a movie theater, dup it, and sell it.
Trust me.   I no lie....  
-- Win2k: "It's not so much that it's only 65,000 bugs, it's just that they stopped at 65,535 to prevent an overflow."
Common is relative. The movie industry raised fears that they would be destroyed by rampant piracy - that just about every average Joe would be trading movies rather than buying/renting.
;-)
And that is why they (ESPECIALLY companies like MCA - who released the "Back to the Future" series) put Macrovision on the tapes - and this did in fact stop alot of the dubbing because very few dual VCR combinations could get around what it did to the brightness translations (ie., the Macrovision signal put on the tape being copied would send a brightness "overload" signal to the recorder, which would tape THAT, inturn manifesting itself at the TV when you played the dubbed tape back - this might not be the exact "techical" description, but it's the jist).   This caused that fading in and out of the picture + plus you got those black and white-checked lines scrolling through you picture.   In fact, there was such a furor over it because it impacted *legitimate* viewing of a tape, that many companies decided to pull it.   And so no, the rampant consumer copying DIDN'T happen - but what I'm talking about is a new phenomena with the drop in price of video cameras and the ability to inconspicuously sit in a movie theater and tape.
The undeniable fact is that the vast majority of people used VCRs legally, and the vast majority of people use Napster illegally. The funny thing is that most Americans get this, while the geeks (who are building huge MP3 collections) are in denial.
True too...   but it's the ease of the technology that allowed that.   When the audio cassette tape recorder came out, how many people threw out their records and bought the identical album on cassette?   Or did people opt to record their collection on tape for convenience - not very difficult to do.
-- Win2k: "It's not so much that it's only 65,000 bugs, it's just that they stopped at 65,535 to prevent an overflow."
Ah, but the person you're responding to is referring to consumer-level piracy: in other words, you snagging a copy of a movie from a friend. And this hasn't materialized on any large scale. The pirated movies you see for sale on the street weren't made by consumer-level pirates. They were made by large-scale, organized pirates. These people are less affected by the price of VCRs - if most people had $100 videocassette players (i.e. no recording) and videocassette recorders were $1000 items, you'd probably still see the sort of piracy you're describing.
;-)
Let me echo what I said in response to another post.   In the past 5 or so years, there has been a proliferation of "tapes for sale" on vendor tables.   These aren't mass-produced (ie., the "big" piraters), these are HOMEMADE, ie., someone buys a ticket to a popular movie, carries his little palm-sized 8mm video recorder into the theater, props it up on his shoulder, and starts taping.   He then takes it home to his tiny transfering setup, and reproduces a bunch of tapes.   He then proceeds to hawk them on the streets or sells them to someone who will hawk them - while the movie is playing in the theater!   Sometimes they are able to get legitimate shrink wrap boxes and everything.   Doing this with music is even easier, because they make their own labels.   Again, these aren't major "chinese" piraters - these are little CONSUMERS trying to make a quick buck, right here in the US of A.
Capitalism and entrepreneurism.   Ain't it something else?  
-- Win2k: "It's not so much that it's only 65,000 bugs, it's just that they stopped at 65,535 to prevent an overflow."
Napster has less in common with a tape recorder than it has in common with a music shop, or even a bakery where people come to talk. Napster does not itself replicate any data, whatsoever, however it does stand by and watch other people violate the law.
;-)
And that was exactly my point with my post about comparing Napster to ebay.   And in fact, how many times have we heard in the news where people have tried to trade and auction stuff like human eggs or children, etc. using ebay?
That was my "monkey wrench" to generate some more discussion.   Do we go after ebay for allowing the trading of copyrighted material?   Do we sue the Bell or AT&T companies for being the conduit via the telephone or even the internet for illegal activities?   Do we go after the U.S. Postal service when someone uses it and it's employees and it's trucks as a conduit for transfering illegal items?
In order for someone like a Napster host to realistically monitor these types of activities, we would then need to go into "Big Brother" mode.   Would this not violate privacy?
Just adding some more to think about....  
-- Win2k: "It's not so much that it's only 65,000 bugs, it's just that they stopped at 65,535 to prevent an overflow."
And come on people, be honest... Everyone who has never ever ever downloaded one song from napster which they did not already own, raise your hands high above everyone elses so we can call you liars. I admit that i did. I also admit that I deleted the song, as well as the program immediately thereafter.
;-)
I don't think that's the issue that I was beginning to allude to...   I think the issue is moving towards eventual oversight and regulation ?? (ie., don't blame the hapless user, blame the company who gave the user the means to do illegal activities) - and I know that alot out there are against gov't intervention in general and would perhaps prefer "self policing" from a company like Napster   Perhaps the discussions here may prompt a change in the software engine.   But I'm sure that there are many such "underground" entities out there where shady activities are going on and it's just that Napster "got caught".   However, sometimes policing gets to the point of diminishing returns...  
-- Win2k: "It's not so much that it's only 65,000 bugs, it's just that they stopped at 65,535 to prevent an overflow."
so you mean that seinfeld episode involving Jerry videotaping movies (with a camcorder) wasn't fictional?
;-)
This is a revelation to me. Honestly.
And I'll admit honestly that I'm one of the miniscule few who never watched that show and maybe saw one episode while with some friends, and whether this practice was going on *before* the episode, I don't know ('cause I don't know when that episode aired)... But since Seinfeld is supposedly taking place in NY (???) I wouldn't be surprised if they were merely "reflecting" what goes on in real life out there...   especially on the east coast.   Such shows often the put things like that in there because people can relate, thus it's funny...   When the size of and price of the camcorder dropped significantly, the proliferation of these bootleg tapes certainly increased - as it's easy to sneek one in, find a good seat in a mostly empty theater in some gigaplex complex running the movie on a million screens, and have at it.   The key is to try find a half-empty *quiet* theater...
-- Win2k: "It's not so much that it's only 65,000 bugs, it's just that they stopped at 65,535 to prevent an overflow."
Grr..Stupid HTML....I would like a readable post.
;-)
;-)
> And that was exactly my point with my post about
> comparing Napster to ebay. And in fact,
> how many times have we heard in the news where
> people have tried to trade and auction stuff
> like human eggs or children, etc. using ebay?
These were serious? In that case, it would be ebays responsability to turn them over to the authorities, once it was brought to their attention.
Well...   it was all in the news and ebay pulled the listings from their site.   I expect they went through a procedure to try to track who posted it because selling children and wives, etc. is obviously illegal.   I am unsure whether ebay caught it or someone else though...
Whenever Napster is aware of a possible copyright violation, they should be required to inform the authorities. There's no big brother aspect, because their users have open shares, and Napster is fully in their right to record who uses their service.
I would think so, but at some point, like with ebay, when your user base grows beyond your abilities to monitor it, then what?   I hate to say, the "out" of "I didn't know it was happening" gets used as an excuse.   At this point, now that the Napster issue is in the media - they can't really claim that they didn't know...   But do we ban this sort of "trade engine" technology or do we hire cybercops to do the "monitoring" - that's what I meant by "Big Brother".  
And as an FYI, everything I've posted is basically from a devil's advocate standpoint to generate some discussion, because I think that this has some far-reaching consequences that we don't even see yet.
-- Win2k: "It's not so much that it's only 65,000 bugs, it's just that they stopped at 65,535 to prevent an overflow."
Why is it hard for you to understand that this is about ignoring illegal activity, when you know it's happening? Trading MP3es is not wrong, but trading someone else's property is.
;-)
;-)
Don't ever assume what I understand and don't understand.  
If you see my other post to you before I did this one, you'll note that there will often come a point when you can no longer realistically "police".   Case in point - jaywalking.   Technically, if a sign is posted at an intersection that says "No Jaywalking" and I see a person begin to walk across the street against the light, I have the right by law and/or ordinance to confront that person and make a "citizen's arrest" for that person violating the law.   What are the chances of me doing this?   Nil.   Why does the cop on the corner watching the person jaywalk not take action?   Why doesn't that same cop arrest EVERY person standing at the scene watching the guy jaywalking - since they witnessed a crime and didn't report it?   Because the amount of time and resources to process that person through the system would not justify doing it.   This is what is happening to the internet - it is getting too big to police.
This is the reality.   I not arguing the law with you.   Yes, every citizen (I'll only say this for the U.S. because I don't know the laws of other countries) has a "sworn" duty to uphold the law, but reality says that it doesn't happen - whether it's the little guy on the street, or the cop who is supposed to do it, or the corporation.   Do we lock everyone up or do we educate people on what "stealing" means?   Some may feel that the loss of 3 cents or whatever of royalty for each mp3 copied illegally is not as valid, or better, is not as obvious as a crime by say a robber who breaks into the music company and rips off $10,000 and cases of CDs.  
It's all relative... but stealing is stealing.  
-- Win2k: "It's not so much that it's only 65,000 bugs, it's just that they stopped at 65,535 to prevent an overflow."
>But do we ban this sort of "trade ;-)
;-)
> engine" technology or do we hire cybercops to do
> the "monitoring" - that's what I meant by "Big
> Brother".
Well I wouldn't say we hire anyone.
And I guess I used the word us too loosely and didn't really mean us as in "we the citizens".   But if we, the citizens, keep telling companies that produce these types of products that they are obligated to monitor if they want to stay in business, then they will do the hiring...   And there's already an increasing number of "cybercops for sale" out there as it is....   We won't necessarily see the gov't as the traditional "Big Brother", it'll be the corporations who are trying to protect their assests from lawsuits...   The gov't has nothing to lose but your tax money (which is important to us, but of no real "personal" value to the gov't).   But a corporation has ownership of their assets, thus making it a more painful loss and thus making them more likely to protect those assets via a cybercop...  
-- Win2k: "It's not so much that it's only 65,000 bugs, it's just that they stopped at 65,535 to prevent an overflow."
Uh question to moderators...   why is this flamebait?   It may be a rant, but certainly not a flame unless we have some music company representatives online here who take personal offense and want to take it as a flame!   Nuthin' but the truth spoken here...   I still have my $15, almost 15-year old Lionel Ritchie CD sittin' here dusty in a cabinet.
;-)
Just curious...
-- Win2k: "It's not so much that it's only 65,000 bugs, it's just that they stopped at 65,535 to prevent an overflow."
What you say is right on target regarding MP3s, but Napster very much promotes piracy. It is a means for people to copy copyrighted music from one person's computer to another -- what part of that is not blatant piracy?
;-)
Well... right now, I can go to a store and buy a dual cassette recorder/player.   My purpose might be to record a public affairs show and then make copies of my own recording... nothing illegal about that... no copywrite infringement.
And this is my point - and I expect that the libertarians and gun supporters would agree - it's not the device that gives you the "means" that is to blame -- it's the PERSON with the device.
If a law is clearly spelled out and a person chooses to violate that law, then I'm afraid that the person is to blame.
Should we ban all such media distribution devices because there are those who choose to break the law with them?   No one is forcing them to only copy and illegally distribute copywrited material - that is a choice.   Sure, realistically, we know that it's going to happen, but must *I*, as someone who wants to maybe use these things for legitimate purposes, be punished as well?
Just some food for thought.  
-- Win2k: "It's not so much that it's only 65,000 bugs, it's just that they stopped at 65,535 to prevent an overflow."
When VCRs were first released the movie industry's protestations were immediately shown to be baseless. Pirating (on the level of _consumers_ which was the industry fear) never materialized.
;-)   When was the last time you strolled the streets of any "big city" (fill in the blank) in the U.S.?   Most of the music cassette and video crap sitting on the tables for sale are pirated.   In fact, I have often seen complete, shrink-wrapped videos of movies *for sale* that are STILL playing in the theaters!
I hope you're just kidding.  
When Congress allowed the VCR format to go ahead, that was back in the late '70s, when the average consumer VCR cost well over US$1000.   Now that the VCR can be had in many cases for under US$100, video piracy IS rampant and music cassette piracy even more so.
I hate to say that it's a fact of the business and this is why there was Macrovision (remember that?), which was used to try to stem the piracy tide.   This encoding was subsequently dropped in many cases (because people got around it anyway and many VCRs wouldn't even legitimately PLAY the movie without gumming up the picture).
This is also why DVDs were incoded with CSS - to try to STOP piracy.   And thus the source of all the grief around DeCSS... which by the way is supposed to allow the playing of an encoded digital video - not necessarily allow the pirating of it... but I digress.
-- Win2k: "It's not so much that it's only 65,000 bugs, it's just that they stopped at 65,535 to prevent an overflow."
I hope _you_ are just kidding. :) CSS was not invented to control piracy through copying, as CSS does not prevent copying. CSS prevents playback, useful for leveraging your muscle against those who don't serve your corporate interests.
;-).   Forgot to wrap my "tongue in cheek" code around the statement...   ;-)
You're preachin' to the choir...  
-- Win2k: "It's not so much that it's only 65,000 bugs, it's just that they stopped at 65,535 to prevent an overflow."
Common is relative. The movie industry raised fears that they would be destroyed by rampant piracy - that just about every average Joe would be trading movies rather than buying/renting.
But relatively, piracy was uncommon. During the early days of VCRs they were very expensive. A pair of decent Betamaxes of VHSes in 1982 would have run you over $1000 (1982 dollars - double it 2000 dollars). I knew a couple of people who had dual rigs and basically copied everything they rented, but that was 2 out of 100s. Compare that to Napster: how many legal downloads would you guess are made each day? 0.1%? 0.01% Less?
The undeniable fact is that the vast majority of people used VCRs legally, and the vast majority of people use Napster illegally. The funny thing is that most Americans get this, while the geeks (who are building huge MP3 collections) are in denial.
+--------------------- You idiot! I told you we were facing the wrong way!
Those aren't consumers selling the tapes - the are professional crooks with high speed dubbing machines. They rent a copy of "The Matrix" and buy a box of blanks, they feed the tapes into dubbing rig and sell the copies.
...
You couldn't make a profit trying to do this consumer gear. The heads couldn't take the wear and tear - even if they did you couldn't copy enough tapes in a day to make any money.
As for the shrink wrapped movies - they come from Asia (try getting a US print shop to whip out some "Scream 3" boxes for you - not happening) where IP laws are weak and enforcment even weaker. Once you get smugglers involved its pretty clear it ain't "consumers" anymore.
BTW I lived downtown in a major US city and I see pirated tapes for sale maybe once a month, or when I walk through Chinatown. Thats it. On the other hand if I tended to go where stolen/pirated/illicit goods were sold I might think they were more prevelant
+--------------------- You idiot! I told you we were facing the wrong way!
You may note that if you happen to be disconnected there is next to no chance of reconnecting to the same server (i guess thats right) that you were on, so you can't "Resume Download".
In the article, he keeps talking about using Napster "to locate and retrieve different types of data other than just MP3s or audio files." This sounded like a good idea to me, but I couldn't think of any other type of file Napster would be good for. One idea would be program files, but if Napster ever started trading software, this could be a HUGE problem (with trojans, backdoors and such) because anybody could easily share malicious code on the Napster network. What else would the Napster design be used for?
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
I'm thoroughly impressed with Napster's programming staff (Shawn Fanning and any others). They have actually written a lean, efficient windows app. As of now, the thing plays mp3 audio, provides a chat room, and facilitates both efficient client/server communication (search & library functions) as well as the "peer to peer" transfers between users. If I recall, it's about a 500K download; what's winamp alone, about 2MB?
Of course, it's still in beta, so I hope they stay away from some 32-bit rendered UI for their full release. The minimalist approach is both refreshing and superbly usable. Sometimes when I leave its window, I'm surprised to see the start button and not the gnome paw.
It's still a shame that it takes a bunch of AOLers downloading on 28.8's to spawn such an approach.
I can't deny that we have made major advances in civil freedoms. In fact I don't want to deny it. I'm glad for it. It goes to show you what people can do when they put their minds to it. All of your examples were major advancements in the cause of freedom and truth. I am suggesting that we are now in the midst of another, more subtle and consistent type of oppression. That's what makes it so dangerous. Its difficult to spot. I like to think that one day in the middle future, we will be able to add to your noble list this fact: "Freed all of humanity from the effects of corporate lies and propaganda." This isn't a problem for any particular class. Not the blacks, not the indians, not women or hippies or children. Its a problem for everyone
I happily exclaim that civil advances have been made. Your implication that I don't see this is unfoudned. I am claiming that even though our culture in some ways is becoming more fair and homogenous, in others we are having the sense knocked right out of our skulls. I'm sure the corporations love it: a homogenous demographic is easier to sell to and ultimately dominate.
Look closer if you dare. With apparent increased freedom for America's oppressed subcultures, our choices are being limited in other, more subtle ways. Through the clever, continuous, calculated use of commercial propaganda, our choices are being subliminally hardcoded directly onto our psychological BIOS from birth. Not by the secret police, not by the KGB, but by the corporations and the marketing firms they employ. Its insidious in the true sense of the word. I actually made this point up above a post or two, but didn't stress the point strong enough for some to see it, I guess.
The CIA is bad, man. They are big and powerful and well armed, and they keep secrets from the very people they purport to protect. They cannot be trusted to have humanity's best interests first and foremost in their minds. What does the tether of accountability mean to ambitious men who answer to nobody? Corporations are bad, man. They've proven not to have humanity's best interests first and foremost at the boardmeetings and at the factory. Both of these organizations will underwrite and organize and enact murder, rape, and destruction. Look into it, man. If there is any evil in this world, its highly concentrated at the top of these organizations.
-Jason
This is true. I suppose I spoke harshly and overgeneralize. I respect and admire the work of many lawyers, not the least of which is our founding fathers. But I think there are more than just a few bad apples out there nowadays. The problem is systemic. Its the current system in which they feed that is the corrupting force here. I honestly don't believe that our country today is what the founding lawyers had in mind. In the long run, I think the majority of the lawyers churned out will end up serving a darker purpose than truth and justice.
-Jason
The fact that you doubt this proves my point after a fashion... the constant corporate trickle of propaganda has not prepared most people emotionally to handle it when they hear that all is not what it seems. See, not only are you not aware of the abuses of power, not only are you reluctant to believe it, but you are also reluctant to find out for yourself. Should you be bold, you will look it up anyway. Like I said, you can follow the trail right from the bodies to the soldiers, to the generals, to the advisors, to the weapons, to the money. It is right there for you to find out, if you have the willpower to fight your gut instinct telling you, "no way, this guy is full of it." Open your eyes. Look it up. The net is a great source for information. Most of it is crap, but you find some real gems. You can find lots of information here, right at your fingertips, and the gov't can't do much about that. Its scary shit and its right under your nose, but you are reluctant to look. This is okay. You have been brainwashed your entire life with a soft, friendly cloth. Only when you find out who holds the cloth, you see its not so friendly.
Push through your reluctance and look it up. El Salvador. Chile. East Timor. Be patient and follow links and take notes, soon a picture will form. It all heads right back home, and its just the tip of the iceberg. Observe where the money and the guns come from. That much is relatively easy to trace. Whats harder is to spot who tells who what to do... that is the part that usually requires one read between the lines, because that is precisely what the CIA and other spook organizations keep secret. But the lines are there to read.
Again I say, look it up. Don't take me at my word, don't believe me blindly, don't let me persuade you without you verifying my claims. That you doubt me is good, because it shows that you are not completely credulous. These are extraordinary claims and they should cause you to wonder. But I don't pull these claims out of my hat, Tim. If you perchance dare to look it up, I mean spend some real time doing research, you will begin to wonder if I am right. Then, not long after, you will see it.
How the hell did we get on this subject anyway? :)
-Jason
I hadn't heard the term "corporatism" before this, but I assume that the author is commenting on the difference between theory and practice. In theory, capitalism is a good plan, imbued with justice and honesty. Among other things, capitalism suggests fair competition. It suggests a level playing field. Its suggests that the best product win. Its a good idea in theory. Capitalism is a process based on the noble process of sharing honest information.
Now, corporatism totally distorts the ideal of capitalism. It doesn't share information, it manipulates. What is the distorter? Money and power, of course. The best product does NOT usually win. Consider that more Coca-cola gets drank in America than water, and I can't think of a better all around product than water. Why is this so? Marketing. There's not much money to be made slinging a healthy product that falls from the sky. So we are told to "Do the Dew", or that "Its the real thing." Most of us follow blindly along. There are countless examples of this. Windows v. Linux. Petroleum v. Solar. RIAA v. Napster. "Corporatism" is based on manipulation, not information.
"Corporatism" throws out of capitalisms rules of fairplay and honesty and self-restraint. "Corporatism" is capitalism's evil twin. Its the subtle difference between "May the best man win" and "Every man for himself" played out to its bitter end. Today, this subtle difference is amplified to a global level and is very, very dangerous. "Corporatism" either knows not, or cares not, of the consequences of unchecked, unprincipled growth.
Sigh. Anyway, good luck Napster. You can beat those bastards.
-Jason
That point is nowhere NEAR as interesting as your sudden ressurection - do you whip that out for parties, or is this a regular thing? Your Dad would love to know where you are, by the way.
Actually, you don't need VMWare: ;)
1) Upgrade to a recent version of WINE
2) Install Napster for Windows using WINE
4) Switch to the Napster directory
5) Run napster like this:
wine -dll commctrl,comctl,commdlg,comdlg32=n napster.exe
6) Download away
Its almost entirely functional except the ping feature doesn't seem to work.
The only ones I've used are nap, gnome-napster, and gnapster. My personal favorite is gnapster, it's really professional and works perfectly for me. I've only used the windows client 1 or 2 times but it didn't impress me half as much as gnapster.
Yes. Glorified IRC client.
/msg on a vanilla IRC client). The querying client may then request a file transfer from whichever client reported a match and seemed the best bet (fewest transfers in progress/fastest link/whatever).
http://www.var.cx/dfsi/ describes the "Distributed Fileserver over IRC project, which appears to have died because of Napster's success.
DFSI, technically, appears to be the better solution: a vanilla IRC server is all that is required on the server side. The web page says that bandwidth usage is heavy, but my brief look at it didn't flag anything that would be significantly more bandwidth-intensive than Napster.
The way it (and Napster) works, is that the client broadcasts a search query on a channel. Other clients on the channel send their matches as a private message (like
I dunno how firewall-friendly IRC file sends are, but other than that I can't see much wrong with it. Certainly better than inventing a new protocol.
--
That's right. Open source, Open protocol, the way something with this kind of potential should be. Check out OFSI, the Open File Sharing Initiative. ;)
This idea is to provide a similar service as Napster but with ALL file types. Plus to be better, faster, etc...
Because it's an open project we feel it has better potential, because as many open projects have shown, open projects evolove much quicker and much better.
Sorry for the plug, I just felt this was an opportune time to bring OFSI into some light.
Check it out, help is wanted!
-kidlinux.
When was the last time you strolled the streets of any "big city" (fill in the blank) in the U.S.?
Most of the music cassette and video crap sitting on the tables for sale are pirated.
Most cassettes and videos are pirated? What big city do you live in? You stated somewhere in the US, so that rules out China. I have yet to see one pirated shrink wrap cassette or video. Granted, I have seen taped music in a few homes, but in a retail store? Where do you get this information?
It's pretty common to find pirated videotapes in ma+pa video stores. Are you sure that you know what you are looking for?
Common? In a big city? On the sidewalks? Where do you guys live? As a music aficionado who travelse the Western states about once a month for a week or two at a time, I see lots of drugs, booze, and lots of bodies for sale on the streets, but bootleg copies conviently for sale have not presented themselves to me.
I believe you. Perhaps I was not looking in the right places. My theory was that employees who make incomes at stores who have much invested in the retail market would not be happy at bootleg vendors not playing by the same rules and promptly call for enforcement. They might be upset at someone who is selling a good collection $16 cd's for $4 and call the cops to bust them on one of many of the city's ordinances.
According to the ninth circuit court you have the legal right to load a MP3 of a copyright song that you own on CD. I remember reading that off a link from slashdot, but couldn't find it in slashdot's search, but here is a diffrent summary http://www.nylj.com/tech/091399t3.html, unfortunitly it doesn't really discuss space shifting. As I recall the judge essensally ruled that owning the CD was like owning a "right to use", so owning Ray of Light on CD gave you the right to listen to it in MP3 or other forms. He went on to rule that it didn't matter if you gained the other form from a source that wasn't allowed to listen to it (which I found supprising). I wish I had kept a link to the ruling. Does anyone have one?
MP3.com's "BeamIt" relys on this ruling (as far as I can tell).
So you can't just point to the large number of copyrighted works in Napaster's list, you have to show that the people downloading the songs don't have the legal right to do so!
You are very ignorant of the difference between backend and frontend, obviously. Coding a Linux client would involve starting from the ground up - it literally has no similarity to the server. By your logic the same argument could be made for any service. Does the existance of Apache (the "backend") on Linux in any way help along the development of the "client" (browser)? Of course not.
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I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
Well, from a practical standpoint, it sounds like he's been really damn busy. This thing literally blew up in his face, yet as he says there are still a ton of problems with his flagship product. Right now he is worried about appeasing the 80-90% of the people who would be on Windows anyways, and to that end he has a lot of work to do. The infrastructure is a mess (I still can't logon during peak hours, 5-9PM), the client sucks (can't even abort a search), and there is a lot to be desired. He feels a very palpable sense of urgency to get these things right before someone else does, which is why he left school, etc. I'm sure that a Linux client is in the works, but there are more important priorities right now. The evolution of ICQ went the exact same way - they spent a good year or two ramping up their servers and creating a better client before they ever bothered with Linux. A Linux napster, by the way, is kind of a moot point, considering that there are 7 or 8 unofficial ones out there already. Some of these work a lot better than the Windows client itself. But for the sake of appearances, I doubt he will forget his Unix roots.
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I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
They mention in the article that Napster is a formal company now, and it appears as though they have employees and the like. My question would be, since napster is free to download, and since you can use the servers for free, how does Napster's corporation make money?
-R
Perhaps Napster should go the way of IRC, and run as multiple servers, e.g. eu.napster.com, us.napster.com, etc. He could then link reliable servers into a small network, allowing for more balanced bandwidth.
It would also mean that individuals could run their own segregated napster networks, for internal usage.
Napster is an incredible innovation! I just wish there was a Stop button when doing a search. The Unix clients still need quite a bit of work as well. Is there a rfc like document for Napster protocols available (so that I could write a perl module or the likes)?
EraseMe
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Well, unless they change the protocol, and force everyone to upgrade, they can't very well charge me for the old one. Besides, in that unlikly case, we juse make an open source clone. That's pretty much been the standard operating procedure all along.
Finkployd
I would expect using it to exchange certain 'types' of picture files could be potentially more popular than exchanging MP3s.
There is nothing technologically new, or even innovative about napster.
It simply gives the average dork an easy way to start sharing mp3 with everyone, and as some have said, takes certain steps to do things for them (like, not actually shutting down when you hit the close button, just minimizing to the systray and continuing to share).
Napster simply does what us geeks have always done, but in a simpler manner. The only ones who this benefits are those who can't cope otherwise. Those of us with a clue, share things with our friends over standard protocols.
Napster is garbage. The code is garbage. The application is garbage. And all the hype is garbage.
It was simply something written at a time when something of this nature would get lots of attention.
Feh.
I know the trade in DATs is (or was) a huge 'industry' as such, people trading lists of what bootlegs and other stuff they had was very popular...
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
--
The shareholder is always right.
Describing himself as a member of the security community, i can almost see why he was paranoid enough to think a linux client may have been the start of security issues, except for the fact he was more familiar with unix programming to begin with. Out of curiosity why didn't he initially release a *nix client to begin with rather than buying a book and struggling to learn how to program the API under windows? Anyways, Napster is a really great tool despite the bandwith problems it causes, and thats all i have to say aside from complaining how repetitve he was, saying over and over again (i don't know how many times) how they were working on the UI and the scaling of the network.
just my $0.02
-----------
#!/usr/bin/perl -sp0777iX+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0j]dsj
$/=unpack('H*',$_);$_=`echo 16dio\U$k"SK$/SM$n\EsN0p[lN*1
--Ks9
The great thing behind napster is the whole idea, too bad that the implementation is a disaster. I already read complaints about the 'x' not exitting the program, and the lack of an stop button. But the most annoying thing of napster is the fact that you cannot resume a file. When your link hickups you loose connection (protocol problem?) and you can forget the last 5% you had left to complete. $olid
Another RIAA statement I found interesting was that they deem it unacceptable to "build a business" on top of pirating the recording industry. Last time I checked Napster was completely free, and I doubt Napster Inc. has made a cent off of the RIAA let alone anyone else. How can they with no ads or sales of the client? Now, Napster is still in the beta stage yet and may turn shareware or payware, but for the moment there is no business of pirating..it's a free exchange of files.
"In individuals, insanity is rare, but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule." -Nietzsche
While they're at it, why don't they sue the creators of the TCP/IP protocol for creating something that is frequently used to trade illegal files. And sue the postal service because I could burn an MP3 CD and snail mail it to you. Why don't they lobby to get laws passed requiring the entirety of humanity to be isolated in little metal boxes since any communication could lead to the illegal trading of their copyrighted materials?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Napster gets Bob and Joe together, and then Joe sells Bob some crack. Napster is witness to this, and fails to inform the authorities. Napster has violated the law.
There's no such thing as a good samaritan law, despite what you might have seen on Seinfeld. I have no legal obligation to report a crime to the authorities.
The better analogy is that Napster is like manufacturing safe cracking tools. They can be used for legitimate or illegal purposes, but the manufacturer has no obligation to follow every purchaser around to make sure they don't rob anyone.
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But I think the main reason behind closed-source and windows only was because of the "your ad here" banner in the client. An open source version of the software would almost certainly breed a bannerless version, which appears to be where napster was planning on getting their cash from. Just a thought...
mcrandello@my-deja.com
rschaar{at}pegasus.cc.ucf.edu if it's important.
There's an article in the most recent US News & World Report with "Napster guy" also.
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/ issue/000306/napster.htm
Pablo Nevares, "the freshmaker".
Pablo Nevares, "the freshmaker".
If you (a campus sysop) really want to throttle down the bandwidth used by napster, why don't you install a traffic shaper? A fast x86 with linux will do the trick for a subnet with approx. 200/300 clients.
Ofcourse, users can enter a different data-port, but with a little packet-sniffing the shaper could detect this and limit that users bandwidth.
It really isn't so hard to implement
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If code was hard to write, it should be hard to read
This might stop universities banning the software, just restricting the throttle allowed on-campus.
We ran a leech server from a university campus for a few weeks, and hammered out gigabytes each week ... and shut it down before anyone complained!
This is another case of software development being years ahead of the hardware and infrastructure.
However we need tools like this as the only way bandwidth is going to be improved quickly is when it is made to look inadaquete. Like all other hardware, from CPU's to memory, the fast bandwidth will come along soon and it's arrival will be sped up by these bandwidth killers.
"Do you think we could wipe out world hunger forever if scientists figured out how to make AOL's Free CD's edible?"-
- "We love the idea of using technology to build artist communities, but that's not what Napster is all about. Napster is about facilitating piracy and trying to build a business on the backs of artists and copyright owners," said Cary Sherman, senior executive vice president and general counsel of the RIAA.
For the 1000th time. COPYING is not PIRACY. No matter how many times I say it, it seems that some people just don't get it. Piracy is where you brord a ship, beat the hell out of people or kill them, and then loot their stuff. This isn't even close to copying a CD. For christs sake. Give it UP!!Amen.   And that was the gist of the "VCR" thread, ie., it being so easy and prolific, that the criminality is lost.
Personally, I'm not an advocate of bootlegged music, but I can't help rooting for Napster. We all know that music CD's are grossly overpriced. I don't think that the RIAA would have to worry that much about the bootleg industry if they could keep their prices reasonable; but paying $18 for a CD is absurd, especially when they are cheaper to produce than vinyl LP's (which sold for under $10). CD prices continue to rise in spite of the fact that the music industry is bigger than ever. I believe that the music industry is top-heavy with overpaid execs who aspire to add another $10 mil to their compensation package.
Amen again.   I remember buying my first consumer CD player in 1986.   At that time, there were only 4 CD manufacturers in the world (located in Japan, Germany, and a single one in the U.S.).   The store where I bought the player had a little box that had maybe 10 CD titles in it, with a bunch of duplicates.   That was it.   I reluctantly picked up a Lionel Ritchie CD for US$15 and slinked on home.
The CD industry of 1986 then promised me this:
- "As soon as we get more manufacturers to retool for CDs, the price will drop to the level of record albums, that is, $7.00 per CD"
- "CDs will last forever."
- "CDs don't skip or scratch like records"
- "CDs won't rot or warp like records"
- "CDs will sound better than records"
Then there was all the hullaboo with the AAD and the ADD and DDD (analog recording/mixing/mastering vs digital recording/mixing/mastering) and what sounded better.It's interesting that it's the young folks today who are pushing the mp3s and the Napsters, but tell me why *I* shouldn't support mp3 when I was basically lied to and ripped off by the CD revolution???   Within 5 years, you couldn't find a vinyl record anywhere except maybe a used record store.   So what the industry lost in record sales, they made DOUBLE in CD sales by effectively eliminating the cheaper format.   Seems that payback's a bitch...  
Just adding more to the discussion...  
"
-- Win2k: "It's not so much that it's only 65,000 bugs, it's just that they stopped at 65,535 to prevent an overflow."
The argument that something like Napster foments piracy is the same tired old issue that surfaced with the first reel-to-reels, then the cassette, then the VCR tape, etc.   Yes, there will always be free-loaders.   But is blaming the "engine" that was created for legitimate purposes the way to solve the piracy and copywrite issue?   This is like suing all the cassette recorder manufacturers for promoting piracy.   They tried it at one time and failed.   It'll never happen here either.
.mp3s) and so they make even more $$$ by capturing a wider range of audiences, ie., those who purchase vinyl, cassette, CD, and now mp3.
What usually DOES happen is that the business suddenly realizes that they have a new format to sell (which they have started doing with
The bandwidth issue though, is a concern.   Despite claims to the contrary, the infrastructure out there is not what it should be to handle the increases in streaming media.   More choices of bandwidth providers would certainly bring the costs down for upgrades, but I expect that most sites, particulary at colleges, have gone with their local Bell company at quite a cost.   Perhaps the latest network providers - the fiber providers - may be the answer.   Fiber will certainly offer the bandwidth needed to do this sort of thing.
-- Win2k: "It's not so much that it's only 65,000 bugs, it's just that they stopped at 65,535 to prevent an overflow."
Those of you out there who use IRC clients such as mIRC, may have noticed that Napster is just an IRC client with its own servers. After all, commands such as /whois and /msg in IRC do the same thing as the commands in Napster's chat rooms, and the downloading/uploading in Napster is the same as the DCC sends and gets of Napster. The only major differences between Napster and IRC are the restriction to Mp3's and the GUI in Napster.
Oh yes, and as a sidenote, Napster is not the only one of it's kind, a program called iMesh is another IRC client with a GUI, but iMesh has 2 major differences; support of audio, video, and still images, and it has fewer users.
-Múñk¥D-
In the article, Shawn says "Obviously, a natural extension is to include other types of file formats, things like that. I think it's pretty obvious to most people that Napster is not media specific, but I could see a system like Napster evolving into something that allows users to locate and retrieve different types of data other than just MP3s or audio files."
This struck an odd chord with me. While distributed storage undoubtedly makes sense, what does it do for the long-term preservation of data? As we move towards distributed storage, don't we place the content more and more under the control of trends and fads?
The web is, in a manner, a type of distributed storage too (I think?), and can maybe serve as a weak demonstration of my concern: When I conduct a search and find a myriad of invalid links, it indicates to me that what I'm searching for is an unpopular topic, and has therefore been eliminated to make room for the newest download that, like the data it has replaced, will also be forgotten in a matter of weeks. One can't blame webmasters for this problem - it takes time and effort even to maintain an archive. If the majority doesn't want the data, why put in all that effort? This extends to commercial sites where that time and effort translate into dollars lost.
One might argue that by bringing shared storage down from the level it is on the web to the level of the individual user in fact makes it less susceptible to these trends, as there has to be at least one other person "out there" that wants to share the data with you. But can I really count on this the next time I want to know about the mating habits of Pseudoceros Bifurcus?
Is any work being done on this problem - if, in fact, it is a problem at all?
But is so much easier to sell a pretty product with promises and use that money to make it better than it is to create a very high quality product that makes its money through repeat buying and reputation for quality. (just to play bil^H^H^Hdevil's advocate. (-;)
'Course this is a good reason why the OSS developement model works good. The quality is built by people who use it and really care. Because there is no money involved, nothing is rushed, cruft can be easily discarded, and programs -work-. Then later the marketers come along and get to add all the shiny happy buttons, but they are basically left to stand or fall based on their ability to appeal to the peole who need and depend on friendly goo-E's.
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+&x
An unusually excellent article on the whole napster mess here at USC can be found here.
Basic summary: the folks at ISD (the network admins) issued a preliminary statement that they were going to ban napster due to bandwidth concerns and legal worries (even huge universities don't want to be sued). As you might expect, students expressed outrage at this proposed suppression of their so-called rights (this is a debatable issue, leave it for the next post). Then USC's legal department came back with their answer... and it was no!
Turns out that there is probably more chance of losing future lawsuits if USC starts censoring out certain websites, than if they just let students have free access to the entire net, no questions asked. (Think of all the problems that internet filters have.)
So, instead, ISD held a nice roundtable discussion with student groups and hammered out a compromise. The rule now stands that whatever site you want to access is open (the head of ISD was quoted as saying to the effect that he didn't really want to know where students were going!). The only limitation is on bandwidth: students who exceed 40% of their bandwidth allocation (about 500k/sec) for more than two consecutive hours will have their ethernet port shut down. It's a nice incentive, especially since they are really slow about reactivating ports. Everyone involved agreed that this was an acceptible outcome of the situation.
"I came here to kick ass and chew bubblegum. I'm all out of bubblegum." MSE USC APX AIA CSI CASp
Personally, I'm not an advocate of bootlegged music, but I can't help rooting for Napster. We all know that music CD's are grossly overpriced. I don't think that the RIAA would have to worry that much about the bootleg industry if they could keep their prices reasonable; but paying $18 for a CD is absurd, especially when they are cheaper to produce than vinyl LP's (which sold for under $10). CD prices continue to rise in spite of the fact that the music industry is bigger than ever. I believe that the music industry is top-heavy with overpaid execs who aspire to add another $10 mil to their compensation package.
Is Napster going to eat into CD sales? Absolutely--and I believe that the end result is going to be a lot of pruning in the industry. Hopefully, the end result is going to be a dramatic drop in CD prices before they lose totaly control over music distribution.
Knowing this, I was a little surprised when I read to following in the ZDnet article:
Now this is weird. A true unix-developper creates a windows program (ok, that is possible
Strange
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--
If code was hard to write, it should be hard to read
Gnapster
gnome-napster
GTK Napster
iNapster
jNapster
Knapster
Linux Napster Client
Jnap
OpenNap
;)
Would anyone like to throw some review of the different Napster implementations available for Linux? Or should I just run Napster over VMWare?
EraseMe
What really tickles my toenails about this article, is how the author of napster keeps harping on 'Prettying Up' the client.. even though he knows that there are major issues with how stable/efficient the infrastructure underneath is.
As a professional GUI designer, this type of problem runs across my desk a lot. Marketing maniacs push and push a product to market as fast as (in)humanly possible. They don't really care if the program actually functions, they just want it to look fancy and have a lot of useless features. (HOT LINKS!! WTF?!?)
This is a common trend in the software business today.. and it REALLY has to stop.
Less features; better programs. Everybody (well, everybody but the management) is happy.
Don't mind me, I just had a GUI change thrust into my lap by a certain clueless manager. IT'S ART DAMN YOU!
--
rJames.org - illustration
Someone said making napster illegal would be like making (among other things) the USENET illegal. The problem with this analogy is there isn't the same level of direct culpability with regards to the USENET as there is with Napster. The USENET is a far larger and amorphous entity than Napster is. Who would you find liable for file trading on the USENET?...The USENET isn't a product of a given company like napster is...
Another analogy was made to VHS and cassette tapes. I would say this isn't the best analogy but instead think of "video stabalizers" or "cable decoder boxes". So called video stabalizers have long been used to try to break copy protection in copying a tape from one VCR to another. Similarly, cable decoder/descrambler boxes have long been used to circumvent the cable companies scrambling. Now, the problem here, and with napster, is that all three products have the possibility and potential to be used in a completely legal manner. If I am working on a video project on some crappy old VCR, I might use a video stabalizer to improve my image quality; if I by accident knock my cable box off my TV and break it and want a new one without wanting to pay the cable company, I may just choose to go buy one from a shop down the street. Similarly, if I am an independent music producer (some small indie band or whatnot), I may choose to try to use napster and it's chat rooms to promote my band by giving away free samples...
Legally the question becomes then not can the product be used for legal purposes, but what is it most likely to be used for. And this is where the law gets REALLY hairy. Then, "intent" has to be proven, which is a mess in and of itself, and it gets crazy. Two perfect examples though are syringes and "burgalarious tools". If you are caught in a drug bust, or whatever, it is against the law to carry a syringe without a valid reason why (at least this is true in Massachussetts...some MIT students recently got in trouble for just this (amongst other things)). Also, if you are caught breaking into a house and you have a bag of hammers, screwdrivers, etc. (esp., lockpicks!), you can be cited for illegal possession of "burgalarious tools". In both these instances, the person is usually caught doing something else, and these are secondary charges the cops like to tack on additionally, but still, a good example of how something completely legal can be found to be illegal.
It's scary, I know...
Now, departing from the legal side, Napster has technical problems galore (still being so new). Here's just a couple complaints:
- Multiple servers that don't communicate, and yet provide no notice to the user that there are in fact multiple servers nor which server they are on
- Search queries that can't be aborted
- Lots of firewall problems
- Lots of connection issues
- Lots of UI problems (like I can't look at what files someone has without explicitly adding them to my hotlist)
But hopefully, these will all be sorted out in later versions...so I strongly hope napster is around for a while yet!And now on to the article...first, I was amused to see this sentence in the second paragraph:
"At a time when the MP3 industry is under fire from multiple directions, the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) has filed a lawsuit against the small start-up company out of San Mateo, California, known as Napster. "
So there's an MP3 "industry" now, is there?...heh...
And here's a bold lie by the RIAA:
"We love the idea of using technology to build artist communities"
Yes, when it's a community around an artist that already is well set in the industry...new small artists not really interested in the RIAA? Uhuh. No way...The RIAA is not only not interested in them, it doesn't like them! They are potentially dangerous!
And here's a misnomer on Shawn's part too:
"I think it's pretty obvious to most people that Napster is not media specific".
Well, no. Currently, it is. It doesn't have to be, is what I think he's trying to say, and eventually won't be, but currently, yes, it is.
But in general, I don't think this article really says anything new. Big companies hate it, small individuals like it, and so it goes as per usual... Interestingly, Jon Katz was recently at MIT and stated this was an excellent example of how Geeks and young smart computer kids have usurped the "Corporatism" that exists today. I wondered about one point he made: he mentioned corporatism was different than capitalism, but I just don't see how?...