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CEO of MP3.Com Accused of Domain Squatting
Frac writes "
Think Michael Robertson, CEO of mp3.com, is a pioneer of mp3s and nothing else? Think again. Apparently he is a domain squatter of various registered trademarks that don't belong to him, according to Wired News. A search on network solution's whois reveals that he has a large collection of domains under his belt, a lot of which are names of products that he doesn't own. They are registered under his name, and Filez and mp3.com, his companies. Domain names include tu-cows.com, audiograbber.com, talk-city.com, and metacrawler.net. "
*sigh* Quick pointer. You label mp3.com as a criminal organization, but up until now, I've never heard of them engaging in any "criminal activity". They don't distribute copyrighted music, which is what you're implying, if not saying outright. Are you suggesting they're criminals merely because they associate themselves with the file format .mp3? As a side note, IMO, mp3.com has never been good for much of anything except finding the odd piece of freeware or listening to laughably bad music.
I had to review a software package that let you make MPEG movies by adding in your Mp3s + any images you had. This software was set on my lap since it might be packed in with our software that we currently sell.
One interesting thing it had was a search box, with a checkbox for "music". So I stuck in my favorite commercial artist, and it did a search for mp3.lycos.com. And of course, with ANY hit you get with mp3.lycos.com, you get all sorts of interesting FTP errors/excuses since most of the sites were housed on some 13 year old's computer linked to a cable modem. The result? No MP3s.
So, with that in mind, and the whole political aspcets of commercial MP3s available on the net, I said to my manager(s) NOT to include this poorly written(the GUI was proprietary) software package with ours. We're not gonna endorse it.
Needless to say, the package wasn't included after them reading my 6 paragraph commentary on it.
I will say this, even though I disagree with the RIAA's stance that MP3 == theft, his registering domain names such as piratetunes.com and piratemusic.com, will serve as a nice bit of evidence for the RIAA, just as the "fuck the law" statement posted out here was used by the DVD-CCA.
I think it's funny that they call him the leader of mp3 distrobution.. at most his site accounts for maybe up to 3% tops of all mp3's that are distributed.. I know some people personally who have collections larger than his entire site.
You call those sunburned little bumps breasts?
Like he bought mp3.com because he loves and wants to promote the use of mp3s.. He's in it for money just like everyone else.
mp3.com has never been good for much of anything except finding the odd piece of freeware or listening to laughably bad music.
Stealing bad music is still theft. BZZZT. Thanks for playing.
I notice that you also mention that they distribute "freeware", a.k.a. cracked ("GPL") software. This also is theft, and if it's worth downloading, even your pathetic low-quality excuse doesn't wash.
It appears to me that you have committed multiple felonies. Are you quite sure that you should be discussing this in public?
There's no need to elaborate. You disgust me.
Honestly, anyone who's dealt with Robertson on a personal basis know's he's a greedy prick. No two ways around it. Some of us have know about this sort of thing for a while, and it keeps getting funnier. Wait, no it doesn't.
That's nice; please tell me how those artists made money off your music warezing.
Or for that matter, please show me ANY musician that is making money off MP3's right now. Sure, you all scream "fight the system!" but MP3 doesn't provide any way for an artist to make money..it's just another distribution method.
That i2Go.com has owner of a bunch of the obvious homesteads for MP3. Some kinda CEO hobby?
"URL postcards: Collect them all!"
So, who is going to be the first to own these domains: MichaelRobertsonsucks.com MichaelRobertsondomainsquatter.com MichaelRobertsonstolemydomain.com
Actually, He just said, '...with my first post...', not the first post, so I consider the blessing intact.
Okay, here, an example
Search for underworld, born slippy
Average results:
Many copies of born slippy [nuxx] from trainspotting, which is NOT THE REAL BORN SLIPPY
An Aphex Twin mix of born slippy, called the pink floyd mix, which is not by aphex twin, it is also under the artist Aphex Twin, even though Richard D. James DID NOT DO IT
Many songs named 'Born Slippery'
Now, search for KMFDM - Muppet Techno
Guess what? Its a cool song, but its not KMFDM.
Do a search for ANY Aphex Twin
99% of them are either mislabeled, incomplete, or just faked.
Personally, i use napster to get either tracks i cant find in stores (Coil, very good music, but fuck.. anyone who releases a cd of 100 prints is fucking nuts [elph, elph.zwolf]) or a few tracks that are never publically released (Aphex Twin did a soundtrack for a video game, but they dumped it, so he released them on the internet only.
If you want the fucking music, go buy it.. I have about 10 gigs of mp3's, but, hey, guess what? i own 90% of the cd's that the music came from. The other ten, as mentioned before, would be the shit that i cant find. If i could, ID BUY IT.
I know that there is alot of shit off of mp3.com, but look at Nuclear Rabbit, Chapiaz( idont remember the name). there were lots other, but I cant remember the names, and I formated the drive that had all my mp3's on them (it was hard, but i had no choice... damn windows to hell!).
Why in the world would an audio compression format (an ISO standard at that) be banned??? Clueless luser.
he purchased it when he saw all the search engine requests that mp3's were getting and saw it as moneymaking opportunity. considering that mp3.com has had an ipo and has made robertson millions of dollars, $1000 for the domain looks like a friggin steal :P
I used to look after a tutorial section on layer3.org back in the day and I remember alot of anamosity between the 2 sites. I believe it was "Wick" of layer3.org that exposed Robertson of trying to pimp AAC as MP4 after he bought the domain name. www.layer3.org is back, in a somewhat limited capacity, and Wick ran a short piece a week ago about Robertson owning audiograbber.com.
Songs from mp3.com are there with the artist's consent.
You may yet learn to lead an honest life! Gifts are rank, inexcusable charity. Anything labelled "Free" is nothing more than a welfare handout. There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch!
Your conscience has a lot to answer for, but you seem to understand that you have done wrong.
Now you must make amends, but I have faith in you.
This "cybersquatting" is just another way for companies to sue for another dumb reason!!! The whole concept and law is dumb and you folks should not accuse this mp3.com owner of doing something wrong. A good example of this law used poorly is when Apple forced a Canadian kid to turn over imac.com. The kid, like me, was just a big Apple fan. The kid had no choices, but to turn over the site. A site he and probably some friends paid with their own money. I hope he at least got the fees for the domain. It should not, I repeat, NOT, a persons fault for such actions. It should be the stupidity of the company, in this case Apple Computers.
Heh - Not for long, I bet. :)
Hmmm - any suggestions on where they could be redirected? *grin*
If you're stoned I highly recommend (ah! ah!) Triton and Nereid's wires song.
And when they do it with land they're called real estate speculators. A domain name is not a trademark, it's an URL, nothing more than an address. If businesses were too ossified, introspective and stupid to realize what the Net was to become, screw them. As long as these 'squatters' aren't using the URL to represent themselves as associated with the company namesake, they're perectly entitled to benefit from their foresight.
Wires! Wires!
DNS is justa tools... Not a crime ! If we continue on this way... IRC chan. like #nokia #usa #perl #linux #boston #decss #cocacola will be forbiden.... let's copyright index.html" and "click here" and sue all webmaster around the world.
Here!
MP3.com was registered by the person who's NIC handle is "MP3". Michael Robertson purchased the domain name MP3.com from that individual in 1997/98 for $1000.00. I wouldn't consider that squatting.
.
Does mommy read a chapter of the Jargon File to you every night before you go to bed? Have you memorized all of it yet?
Loser.
This has got to be one of the worst slashdot stories in a while. C'mon guys, you can and have done better than this.
That's not true - at least as far as the music I listen to goes. If you are into punk, then mp3.com has a pretty good standard (try some of the South American punk bands, for example). If you are Celine Dion fan, well, whst do you expect? ;)
He registered MP3.com before he even bleepin knew what an MP3 was. I chuckle with giddiness as their stock price drops.
But how was it NOT cybersquatting before? He was still taking names intentionally to trick people. Maybe noone had come up with the word cyber-squatting, but it was still extremely deceitful and sneaky, and I don't see how the fact that his company wasn't as big makes it okay. It's like saying "Oh such and such company spams people all the time with UCE but when they started doing it they were small. Let's give them the benefit of the doubt".
Dillinger Escape Plan is on it somewheres
Back when I first got into mp3's, I went to mp3.com and found that it was nothing other than some domain that somebody bought that had a few links to mp3 players and stuff. layer3.org was always a better site with more information and everything. MP3.com is just making money off a pseudo-brand name, which I personally believe is bullshit. Not to mention that 99% of the artists on mp3.com suck dick, but that's besides the point.
hahahaha you are so fucking clueless
so you're a fucking freak and expect people to tailor music sorts to you? i really don't get why you think something that helps out other people select music is a bad thing. its not like you still can't poke around in the shit that filters down to the bottom.
Artists do not make most of their money of records. It is the record companies that take most of this money, like the tyrants of the music industry they are. This is the same reason groups like Beastie Boys and others allow their MP3s to go for free. In fact, most artists, when asked about the "problem" agree it has more to do with the record company then with them. And it's time the record industry learns, 20 dollars a cd is hardly worth it when people would rather get it free. If cds were cheaper, I would buy them, as there are more benefits as well, but that is not the case.
>Many copies of born slippy [nuxx] from
>trainspotting, which is NOT THE REAL BORN SLIPPY
You must not have been on the same server as me. I *always* have tracks 1 and 3 of the black born slippy ep available for upload. What bothers me is how when you do a search for orbital, you always find some loser's copy of 'Orbital - Little Fluffy Clouds'.
I'll be pilloried for this heresy, so I'm posting as an AC because I don't need the inevitable persecution.
mp3.com is a criminal organazition, so it should come as no surprise the its leader is a criminal. The pretended-amazement routine around here makes me ill. This is what mp3 is all about. That's why you all like it so much: It's a convenient form of theft. You're stealing music from creative people. You're depriving them of their livelihoods.
That's your whole ethic: "Never pay when you can steal". When you take the work of an honest programmer, crack it, and "release" it under your "GPL", you're doing the same thing.
Theft is like a sacrament to you people.
What is your definition? Breasts are fully exposed.
Looks like this article has to remain unblessed.
I bet yours are bigger, aren't they?
You seem to have some strange definition of the word "naked".
i don't see the big deal if someone registers a name of something or similar.... its always been first come, first serve.... now big companies want to cry over not getting their name.... well too bad they should have taken the net seriously sooner but why should we bend over backwards for them just cause they're late getting here?
I've known this for at least 2 years. Michael and his old filez.com hobby don't like to play it fair. Don't you guys remmember when winamp was www.winamp.lh.net and mp3.com bought out www.winamp.com and www.macamp.com and then either re-sold or gave them back to the owners? Thats why the winamp.com page had a note about it and the macamp page (now renamed) was www.macamp.nu Sorry about the Anonymous coward stuff, will register in a sec - Tomcat http://boris.virtualave.net
Yes, the signal to noise ratio is very low with most of the music on there (figuretively speaking) - some of it's not bad though.
Their Beam-It service rocks, though. I've beamed about 200 of my CDs so far and I use it all the time, even when I am at home because it is so convenient. To top it all off, it works great on Linux.
-----
Free P2P Backup, Windows & Linux
I personally dont care if he squats domains or not. Personally, I own tons of domains. I dont consider it squatting. I am not going out there and registering domains of other peoples trademarks. Just domains that I one day could use as a legit business. I am not trying to decieve people and redirect them to my website. I think thats the big difference between buying domains and squating domains. Squatting has to do with buying other peoples trademarks to confuse people. There is nothing wrong with buying tons (even thousands of domains) otherwise, that sound cool, and could be used.
Regardless, I dont care about the past of this charecter. Mp3.com is one of the best sites on the internet. I whole disagree with anyone that says most of there stuff sucks. I really have never heard a band on mp3.com (in a music category I like, which is primarily everything buy Jazz, Country, World, etc..) that sucks. THe only ones I have heard that sucked was because of audio quality, not the music. Their electronica section just rules. So does alot of there AltRock/Pop area. Granted if you are a teenie bopper who likes to listen to backstreet boys (actually, there is some stuff you would like) and other Top 10 bands you might not find what your looking for.
Jeff Knox
Well in my completely biased subjective opinion, yes, I've found good bands on mp3.com:
You're entirely right though - there's an awful lot of crap. But then, that's subjective too...
I was shocked to discover a colleague of mine at work squats on a number of domain names. But it was less disturbing and annoying than other situations where coworkers have tried to sell me vitamins or package tours.
The bottom line is that Michael Robertson has turned out to be a capable leader of a significant and influential commercial venture. He didn't flame out or allow the situation to get away from him. I think he stands a good chance to end up in the Gates/Dell/Chambers category rather than the Kahn/Woz/Andreesen pile. It isn't an easy road, And it isn't as if he paid for "MP3.com" with bags of money form Chinese spys or bogus profits from futures contract straddles.
I wrote parts of this stuff
I meanti s?STRING=all+"person_name"
http://www.networksolutions.com/cgi-bin/whois/who
Sorry..the html screwed it up.
I have personal compilation cds that I made myself that have several songs from MP3.com. When you listen to punk, almost all of it comes from the "underground" anyway. I listen without prejudice, and sometimes find some real gems that are just as good as anything I would buy in stores. (Anyone that likes pop-punk should check out Juvenile Wreck or the Preschoolers.)
I think certain genres fair better than others on mp3.com. If you want Backstreet Boys clones that need big record label money to make videos and promote an image, mp3.com won't please you. However more DIY types of music, like punk, techno and hip-hop will do well on mp3.com.
I don't give a damn about fighting the system. I make money off the system. I think the GPL is going to destroy the software industry for years if it is not stopped. As for these musicians, several of the ones I like have CDs available you may purchase through MP3.com and I have purchased them. You should really do your homework before posting.
While 99% do suck dick, I have still found several dozen songs worth listening too (all from the European region too, maybe coincidence, maybe not). The thing is, the rankings system on MP3.com actually works and the best do float up to the top.
my.mp3.com rocks! That's by far the best thing to come off mp3.com.
A while back URB magazine did a "best of" sort of feature on mp3.com's techno artists, creating a list of artists, none of whom were on mp3.com's top lists. Mp3's had the audacity to state their suprise that none of their 'most popular' artist such as the rather dull Ghost in the Shell weren't on the list at all. A little bit of hunting around the electronic section should turn up the URB list.
Well, I would assume /some/ of the revinue from www.emusic.com goes back to the artists - there are some reasonable names there.
And I do pay for music, from there.
It just goes to show you that most 'good guys' really aren't. I seriously doubt that he was ever in it for anything but the money.
Is it just me, or is the DNS system seriously messed up. What ever happened to a bit of common sense?
Doesn't he know that you're supposed to dump the old one and get a trophy wife after the IPO?
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Someone go to www.kids.com, or one of the various other domains that C|Net has registered to bounce unsuspecting people to their damn portal. What is the difference here? I haven't seen anyone bashing CNET for the fact that they have a million domains that just dump you the content of CNET.com Yeah, we should burn them all!! =) -S
Scott Ruttencutter
We Apprentice Developers and Designers
The name of that song is "Land of Confusion". Besides, you forgot to close an tag.
-- Genesis Zealot
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
This is slightly off topic, but when you search for mp3.com (http://www.networksolutions.com/cgi-bin/whois/wh
It stops at 50 entries. Is it possible to search for the remaining entries?
actually, there's a lot of talent if you check out their electronic music stuff..
not a big fan of rock/popular though
Michael Robertson originally registered mp3.com becuase it was a very popular search term. He started out with the domain as a squatter. Since then however, he has taken the domain and created something really useful. Now domain registering is a first-come first serve basis, and domain squatters often take advantage of this. Michael, however, has turned something which we all tend to look down upon and actually inovated. So before you guys go beat him like a little girly man, remember that his domain squatting eventually transelated into inovation.
I eat dog. Free DVDs. Horray!
and how exactly do you innovate with other people's trademark, like win-zip, tu-cows, talk-city, metacrawler, windac, and audiograbber?
It is in fact hard to find decent things on mp3.com, but for whomever likes latin music (bossa) I do have two recommendations:
Cilico+Amigos=Parceria
and
Rio Bahia
I absolutely loved the first (Cilico...), and I bought their CD, hopefully others will do it as well.
-- the cake is a lie
considering the things that MP3.com puts in their Meta tags, this doesn't surprise me at all. robertson is definitely skewed towards being a social engineer...
-- your knees hurt, don't they?
Etoy.com of Toywar fame are swiss, like cheese (or whatever)...
I strongly believe that trying to be clever is detrimental to your health. -- Linus Torvalds
A friend of mine offers his tracks on mp3.com also. (http://www.mp3.com/bri)
By now he didn't make much money (about 50 $ or so) with it.
His point is: "I don't want my music be bought by the people (although, thanks for the cash)! I want my music to be HEARD, to be ENJOYED by the people! It's fun to see the people dance to your music."
About the music on mp3.com: There is crappy stuff, but then there is much brilliant music on also. I'm into trance/techno/acid and I've downloaded many files that really rock.
But maybe, you want to have a look at the Internet Underground Music Archive at http://www.iuma.com.
Sort of like the GPL works: The programmers fame lies in wether the GPLed programs are used by the people.
--- If OS were buildings, then the first woodpecker to come around would erase 95 % of civilization.
And The Internet Underground Music Archive:
http://www.iuma.com
And Noisemusic (for the Technofans)
http://www.noisemusic.org
more stuff is on the ftp-server
ftp://ftp.noisemusic.org
--- If OS were buildings, then the first woodpecker to come around would erase 95 % of civilization.
I picture it as a star-rating for "maturity" and overall "quality" and a brief, independent description of the music. Not a full, serious review, but enough to give people the idea of whether they might like it, and whether it's worth downloading.
This implies that there's some absolute standard of musical quality, which is clearly untrue.
It's clearly untrue across genres, but it's not clearly untrue within a genre (though that depends upon the genre -- techno might be an exception). I think it's pretty easy to distinguish between serious, professional bands (yes, there are quite a few on mp3.com) and half-assed, amateur garage bands (yes, there are many of these on mp3.com).
I wouldn't personally trust anybody random stranger's taste in music enough to even bother to download what they considered worth listening to.
Which is one of the reasons an independent site would have regular reviewers, each of whom gives e.g. a description of their musical tastes, and a list of their favorite bands. Readers would be able to get an idea of how close their tastes match up with the reviewer's, and then weigh the reviewer's opinion accordingly. This is more-or-less what I've been doing through USENET and discussion boards for years, and with pretty good success. There are a number of people whose opinions I trust enough to buy on their recommendation alone. There are many, many more whose opinions I don't trust.
To within half a percent, pi seconds is a nanocentury. -- Tom Duff
I'm sure they have neato stuff, but I've only got one mp3 that came from that site (and I didn't get it myself) and I know it came from there because at the beginning of the song, there's an audio message that says "the best mp3s on the planet a mp3 dot com"
blah on them!
do they still do that? I'm guessing no, since they're being recommended here, but if they do.. then what do you use to edit that clip away?
Insert mind here.
And you are trying to tell me that I'm letting people rob me by putting my music online. I have a cheque at home from mp3.com telling the lie of that one. And even if I sold no CDs, I don't need the money. I have a good job programming computers. I have my music freely distributable because I'm far more worried about people hearing my music than making money. It's my choice what I do with my content.
(*) I'm hoping this guy is smart enough to realise the difference between mp3 files and the mp3.com website
postmoderncore - art and creation are a higher purpose
The fact that you choose to help them rob you is not relevant.
Don't be absurd.
you sound pretty absurd to me.
furthermore, this isn't even the kind of funny troll post that i'm looking for down here. no, it's just strictly lame.
:)
sh_
ps. moderators, could we just stick to leaving the top level post at 0? -1 is far too generous.
Interested in learning Chinese or Japanese? check out Chinese/Japanese-English Dictiona
On one hand he represents a fight against the "old media rules", yet on the other hand he breaks the unwritten laws that he is trying to get written. Quite Sad indeed.
It's reminiscent of the time one SAT prep company -- might have been Kaplan -- bought a domain name that would, reasonably, better match up with a rival, which might have been the Princeton Review. They were forced to hand over the domain.
Here, we have a chap who apparently buys other domain names, that are basically unrelated to his business EXCEPT that the likely users of the others are also, most likely, failry net-savvy. These folks might be perhaps more likely to be interested in MP3's.
It would seem to be a pretty clear-cut case of squatting. Have any of the proposed anti-cybersquatting laws passed yet? I seem to recall some having provisions against registering names similar to trademarks in bad-faith...
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
you can't forget about mp4.com
-motardo
was a business man.
h tm
he founded MP3.com based on looking at web search results.
Robertson tinkered with several Internet ventures before focusing on the MP3 idea. Searching for trends in Net site traffic reports, "I like to look at the bottom," he says. "And from the bottom of those charts, I started seeing some sites that had MP3 in the name. I was curious about what exactly MP3 was. And that's exactly how we stumbled onto it."
http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/cte251.
so if you find it funny that a BUSINESS man would cyber-squat on a bunch of domains then you need to stop writing so much code and take a look in the WSJ. whadda think? this guy was doing it b/c he loved music?
right.
/* Half alive and half dead too, work is for suckers and the sucker is you. - "Half-life" by Local H*/
Micheal bought the domain name for $1000 and his wife thought he was crazy... I bet she hasn't complained for a while ;)
He cant hold them forever.. he'll just lose them in court to the people who have respective trademarks, unless they put up a service called audiograbber, or metacrawler... although i doubt that.
Its trademark infringement, and its up to the companies to shoo him off their trademarks
--jay
Legally obtaining something is not the same as legally distributing. If one downloads an mp3 of a copyrighted work that is not freely distributed, it is one's own responsibility to make sure one owns that album prior to listening ..
MP3.com is not about pirating! MP3.com, if you've ever been there, and i believe you have implied that you haven't due to your lack of knowledge of the subject.
MP3.com offers individual artists a forum through which they can distribute their electronic music (mp3s) ... sort of an artist community
It is ironic how rich and/or successful people get pointed at, or accused for that matter. For what? For actions and deeds, that many of us would have dealt with in the same way - If we only had the opportunity and vision Mr. Robertson had at that time?
:) Just sharing my opinion on what I know...of course I may be very wrong :P) They provided the golden opportunity and many made use of it. And it's only their right.. (not ethical? there are not many people thinking about ethics when it comes to money I think.)
:o/
I definatelly do not approve of domain squatting. But I doubt that at the time Mr. Robertson registred these domain names, there was anyone that ever heard of the term 'domain squatting / cyber squatting'. Everyone bought domain names that 'might' become a success. Even if it was a name of a trademark registered name or what so ever.
I am of the opinion that if someone should be blamed, accused and pointed finger at...then it would be InterNIC / Network Solutions, who provides in domain-names w/o putting any restrictions to it, i.e. preventing 'domain squatting' etc. I don't think anyone even worried about this at that time (did they? I didn't do a research on that
It's regretfull that wired.com news section is serving gossip, instead of real news.
Anyway - I just thought wired.com is full of BS in that article. I rate it the 'Monica smoked Bill's cigar' level. Bill is still where he was..if not more popular... Mr. Robertson got a mention extra..so did mp3.com - who are they kidding?
(off topic) By the way, I saw that some of you were bashing on mp3.com. The whole concept was and IS great, no matter what you say. To those who couldn't find anything good (there is plenty imho), try
http://artists.mp3s.com/artists/34/bassic.html (VERY good I think)
http://artists.mp3s.com/artists/54/emma_h.html (..another excellent artist, very much EBTG like)
Take care,
Stepan aka the-lamb
stepan
I just tried www.thirdworld.com and I came to ecards.com (It's the card that counts)
Don't people have any moral left?
And mp3.com is a good thing(tm) IMO
I love watching media companies quake in terror over MP3s.
Last night I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I'll never know.
You miss the point. I don't even like most of the music that is produced by "serious, professional bands". In fact, I like very, very little of what's produced in the music industry, mainstream or otherwise. But, I dig your point about "regular reviewers". There's some validity to that for most people. Just not for me, since nobody has even vaguely similar tastes in music to me.
* mild mannered physics grad student by day *
* mild mannered physics grad student by day *
* daring code hacker by night *
http://www.silent-tristero.com
Check out Evil Adam (http://www.mp3.com/eviladam/) if you like Heavy Industrial or Video Game music.
--
Peace,
Lord Omlette
AOL IM: jeanlucpikachu
[o]_O
...a quasi-good techo band.
Ghost in the shell is an Anime, and many of the things you love about The Matrix were borrowed from it. Go and see it.
It isn't as good as Matrix though.
--
Here, Here!!
Moderate this up...
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
NPS Internet Solutions, LLC
www.npsis.com
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
www.haidacarver.com
However, this not only misleading people with suggestive domain names.... this is purposly registering domains that are similar to trademarked or well known names, and redirecting them to something completely unrelated. While it's not redirecting people to a porn site (hell, if I wanted a porn site, I could find one easily), but it's still misleading, and still using a name similar to a trademark.
What to do about it though, is a tricky question. We don't want heavy handed tactics to become the norm. After all, we saw what happened with eToys.com (an on-line toy company) vs. etoy.com (which if my memory serves was a french art group.) However, there must be some way we can make such practices unappealing.
--
Intelligence is definitely a recessive trait.
There is a guy who sometimes plays at a pub nearby that I frequent, and although he is an O.K. songwriter, he can't carry a tune worth a damn. He only got the gig because he is friends with the manager. But guess what, he gets on the top downloads lists! How? He always asks his drunken following (a dozen or so) to go download his song again so he can get on the top downloads list, and then he emails everyone who ever gave him his email address and tells them to do the same. That is why the top downloads list on MP3.com still doesn't help.
I remember a few years ago, when there was some controversy (?) about how mp3.com had also registered mp4.com. This was when layer3.org and mp3.com were almost "enemies." Also, I remember filez.com being pretty crappy...
Oh well, just some thoughts.
zsazsa
It seems pretty convenient that this article on his business practices comes out in the midst of the RIAA's attack on the world.
</CONSPIRACY>"See, he's pirated all these domain names and then he moved to pirating MP3s. He's an evil hacker/communist/nazi/witch!!"
A choice of masters is not freedom
[shrug] Somebody claimed that they distributed cracked software, a.k.a. "GPL" or "freeware", on their site.
GPL means GNU General Public License. If software is written under this license it is freely distributable. It is not cracked. Free ware is a term that means software that is available for free, with no charge. It is also not cracked. Cracked software is commercial software that has been illegally modified to no longer have copy protection, or demo software that has been modified to function as it was a full version. GPL and Freeware do not fall under the catagory "cracked".
If the black market has reduced the market value of music to the point where musicians must give away their work for free, I would hardly say that mp3.com should be applauded for doing the damage.
Most of the MP3s that are being traded in the "black market" are ones my famous major label acts. These acts still sell their cds by the millions, so I don't think music has been "devalued" just yet. The acts on MP3.com are generally unknown, unsigned acts. My friend has made his music available on MP3.com, under the name Amphibian, simply so that others can hear his music. To him music is a hobby he doesn't expect to get paid for. The internet allows him to reach a much larger potential number of people than he could by playing his songs to people who come over to his house. Many other bands have similar ideas about uploading their songs to MP3.com, or they feel that maybe if someone hears one song of their CD, then thet\y might buy the whole thing. This has been going on for years, in the form of cd and tapes of lesser-known bands included with CMJ and other music magazines. The internet is just a better channel for distribution, that's all. It's not like these musicians are worthless because of mp3 technology. Some of the music on mp3.com may be worthless with or without mp3s, but thats beside the point...
And, yes, this domain name squatting is reprehesible, but a lot of companies use reprehensible business tactics. I'm not defending them, either- it is our duty to call them on it when we discover it and I'm glad the got caught. I just am trying to point out the misunderstandings about "freeware" software and the devaluation of the music market.
josh
with the invention of napster, searching for mp3's on the internet is pointless. why spend all of your time surfing the net for one song when you can hop on napster and get three or four with one search? robertson is just trying to utilize the internet trademark holes to bring users to his site via popular URL names in which users may think the trademark owns. how many people pay for their websites by advertising and banners? with things like alladvantage and dialpad, advertising can bring in a nice revenue. if traffic is increased on a site like the way is has on mp3.com because of the misdirected traffic, a nice little profit could be turned out. i feel bad for the poor college students whose universities ban napster and force them to use such methods as mp3.com to get their music.
Because the feds are morons. Sure MP3's shouldn't be banned, and problably couldn't be, but we all know how companies and feds deal with things that aren't illegal, but are really really grey (Nintendo thinks emulators are illegal, even though they are perfectly legal. There is nothing wrong with an emulator, but nintendo is still suing people over it. Same thing with sony. They could try the same thing with MP3's. They problably wouldn't get far, but it would scare alot of people off (they would probalbly claim it was a standard made specifically for pirating music or something)).
And loser is spelled loser, not luser.
piku
It seems like his MP3.com success was just dumb luck. It's just luck that MP3's took off, and since he had the domain in his possession decided to really make some money off of it. Watch when (hopefully if) MP3's get banned or something, he will disband the site real quick because he can't make any money off of it.
piku
Kinda offtopic, but I wonder what's going to happen when all of the colleges ban napster.com =)
Domain squatting is perhaps the least of
his "crimes". A few years ago some students
offered a free FTP search engine to the world,
running on hardware their university had provided
for them as a research project.
FTPsearch.ntnu.no was widely known to be the
fastest and most comprehensive FTP search engine
in the world, and the software was even free for
anyone to download and use.
Mr. Robertson apparently saw that this would be
a sweet service to sell advertising for, so he
set up www.filez.com and made it a sort of proxy
for ftpsearch.ntnu.no (today ftpsearch.lycos.no).
The traffic on the poor research PC the university
had put up grew and all the while, Mr Robertson
sold advertising on his leeching service.
On the filez.com website there was no mention where the searches were performed, nor was Tor Egge credited with the creation of the software.
After a while Tor Egge grew tired of this and
added a delay for requests coming from filez.com.
Robertson tried to counter this in various ways, but in the end he had to give up and actually install the search software on one of his machines and actually start doing some work.
I am telling you this because the world needs
to know that Robertson is a dishonest person. Robertson has a history of acting in bad faith. Robertson is the last person in the world you would want to bet money on unless you are willing to take the risks that the press might uncover some real dirt.
Oh, and if you doubt the truth of this story I
suggest you contact the norwegian press or even better, contact Tor Egge and ask him.
A domain name cannot be a trademark violation by itself, since there's no way of knowing what class it's in with no context. It's only if the domain is used for a commercial purpose in a misleading or confusing way that there is a potential problem.
--
http://www.networksolutions.com/cgi-bin/whois/whoi s?STRING=all+ does not show all teh domains registered by person_name. There could be more domains also.
:-)
My theory is based on the arg that " "all" means to search all fields"
CP
A domain squatter is someone who registers a domain hoping to sell it off in the future for a nice chunk of change. Say 10 years ago, you decided to register microsoft.com, hoping to sell it for a cool billion today. That's domain squatting.
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
The only thing I don't know is the background of the guy who sold it. Here's an excerpt from the April 9, 1999 issue of the San Diego Business Journal (it's not a public domain article, so I'd rather not post the whole thing -- it might be available for free if the SDBJ has it on their web site):
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
How about collaborative reviewing? You download a few songs, and then upload your ratings to the database. Then it could show ratings given by people who rated things similar to how you did. If I like band X and band Y, and you like band X, then the database would suggest band Y to you.
Too bad Slashdot doesn't work like that...
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
The thing that really aggravates me is when Robertson/MP3.com try to act like some kind of champions of freedom. Like with the beam-it thing, they tried to get people to their site to test it, and promoted beam-it as basically "standing up to the man," which everybody loves to do. They are defending our freedoms in the face of the big bad record companies. Of course, this was just a ploy to get more hits to serve up more banner ads. That is the only thing that matters to them: how to keep people coming back to the site. And this domain squatting thing is just another example of that; it is another way to generate traffic to mp3.com so they can serve up more ads. Everything else is secondary, and it will be until something more profitable than selling ads comes along. For example, when it becomes more profitable to sell their database of email addresses, I'm sure they will do that. Or if somebody will pay them to track what songs you listen to with beam-it, I'm sure they will do that too. They are a business, and the only purpose of a business is the make money, so they cannot be faulted for trying to do that, in fact, I think by law they have to try and make money for the shareholders. But they must (ok, not "must" but "should") also be ethical, and stealing domain names from other people/companies (audiograbber et alii) is not ethical. But, again, the only thing that matters to them is money, and as long as it is more profitable for them to keep the name than to give it up (e.g., people stop visiting mp3.com in protest of their stupidity), they will keep the domains--unless legal action requires them to surrender them.
On the other side of this, why wasn't audiograbber registered by its author while it was still in development? Domains should be registered before the product is announced, and probably two or three alternates wouldn't hurt in case you decide to change the name of the product. If I am about to release a new compression program called EvroZip, I'll make sure I have www.evrozip.com, if for no other reason than to keep anyone else from it.
This is why I registered www.evanhoffman.com. Evan Hoffman is not a very common name, but I've found more than one. And I'm glad I did register it, because I've gotten five or six emails from other Evan Hoffmans who wanted the name. So while MP3.com isn't playing nice, audiograbber should have taken audiograbber.com long ago. As for cd-now.com, I don't know if an upstart (remember when cdnow was an upstart?) can go and register every permutation of their name (unless they have a war chest like Dubya--
- http://www.georgebush.com/
- http://www.georgewbush.com/
- http://www.bushsucks.com/
- http://www.bush2000.com
- Click for more
)But now CDNOW is huge, so I'm sure if they wanted cd-now.com their lawyers could get it for them.
PS-Does anybody else remember when mp3.com was all about illegal mp3s? Does anybody remember Blex's Page of Good MP3? The true MP3 vets remember Blex.
_________________
rooooar
I'd like to see him innovate "win-zip.com" into something.
Oh, and I stole a promotional flyer from the grocery store, too. It said "Free, Take One" ... but the fact that they chose help me rob them is not relevant. I'm on a downhill slide, it's all so clear now...
What I've really been longing for is a series of independent websites that act as indices into the massive mp3.com archive. An independent site could post reviews from people they pay to wade through all the noise, searching for the elusive signal.
I agree, though I don't think it's necessary to pay people. I'd volunteer to help out with a bunch of quick reviews a month... and I'm sure a lot of other people would too.
Such a system would have to be carefully designed of course, but even an independent opinion on what a band sounds like (not even a full review) and their relative "maturity" would be very useful.
To within half a percent, pi seconds is a nanocentury. -- Tom Duff
j(geek and hip hopper--and on mp3.com).
postmoderncore - art and creation are a higher purpose
I must say that, while it makes sense from a certain standpoint, that it's funny that they decided to reject the offer to transfer the domain to the 'rightful' owner because it was "past the deadline" and "the other party didn't accept the offer".
http://www.domainsurfer.com/
-------------------------------------------
Domain squatting is really getting annoying, I've registered a few just to put up a web page on them that says 'if you have a legitimate use for this domain, contact me and i'll *give* it to you' because I was afraid a squatter would take them over. bleh.
Just because you disagree doesn't make it offtopic or flamebait.
This is the problem with the whole "promote your band with free music on MP3s" is concerned: most of the world happily lets the media industry tell them what's good, and aren't in a hurry to change that. Other, non media sanctioned sounds are therefore, by definiton, not worth listening to. They're not interested in wading through thousands of songs to find something that they might have missed otherwise. The media industry has lots of money, and they use it to their advantage to process signal out of the noise. A free music system has no such signal processing capability.
* mild mannered physics grad student by day *
* mild mannered physics grad student by day *
* daring code hacker by night *
http://www.silent-tristero.com
There is nothing wrong with registering a few domains, heck we have guys that register over a 100 domains per day.
I'm not sure what to make of this trademark issue though, its arguable both ways. But I don't think we can say that this mp3.com guy is squatting so long as he payed for the domains he registered.
Just my two cents...
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
NPS Internet Solutions, LLC
www.npsis.com
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
www.haidacarver.com
Again, the part about Michael not knowing much about mp3's other than that it was highly searched for on the internet is what I read, too.
-Scott
"there once was a big guy named lou
I doubt a class action suit from all those trademark owners would look good for MPPP's price...
DISCLAIMER: This is just my personal opinion... not a troll or flame. (annoying but necessacery because some people can't moderate)
I am willing to bet that he registered the websites before mp3.com became very popular. Remember that it's success is fairly recent. As another poster mentioned above - he was in search engines. At the time he registered mp3.com. He probably was not thinking about making it into the music giant website that it is now.
IMO however, now that mp3.com is one of the best music websites, he may change his opinion. If a website I had has become as successful as mp3.com, I would not want to ruin my reputation on the internet, by being labled a domain name squatter.
Give him some time to recognize that domain name squatting is not the thing to do and I am willing to bet he will give up those webpages... anyways - just because someone wanted to make some money (by selling domain names - that he probably registered a while back - before it - cybersquatting - was the problem that it is now) is not a reason for the slashdot crew to slam him.
Is it progress if a cannibal uses a fork?
Has anyone ever actually pulled anything decent off mp3.com???
thank god they didn't register napster.com! heh
-FluX
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"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
This implies that there's some absolute standard of musical quality, which is clearly untrue.
I won't argue with that point. However, you seem to be implying that, since there isn't an absolute standard, using someone else's standard is useless. It isn't. And it is *certainly* better than nothing. If some site, be it commercial, community-based, or a combination, would choose some representative individuals to sift through and rate things, it would provide a wonderful starting point for the rest of us.
If you don't agree with their opinions, then no bother. You don't gain anything by their rating, but you also don't lose anything. The full archive is still there for you to dig through. But if the rater happens to have similar tastes, then that person has saved you a great deal of time by locating "good" music for you.
You're dead on that record companies provide a filtering service for mainstream music. Unfortunately, they cut out a lot of music that we happen to like, so it never makes it to the radio and Blockbuster. With a rating system, that isn't a problem. If a reviewer doesn't like it, he gives it low marks. The piece is still there to be discovered by others, though.
And what if you think all the reviewers are loco? No problem, you can band together with some others are pick out music that you want to emphasize.
With mp3's, the community can provide its own means of distribution. I don't see any reason why the community can not provide its own filtering, as well. Picture this: a music 'zine web site, financed by banner ads, or a subscription or whatever, hires a few reviewers to maintain sections discussing different genres of music. These people keep abreast of the new music pooring into the archive and rate it as it goes by. They pick out their favorites, and discuss the strengths of various groups. Seems feasible to me.
Or, if you don't like the centralized approach, you could simply have a listener-supported rating system where the listener base rates music that they download. Surely other people around here remember the Hornet Archive? It is now closed, but I used to follow it quite closely, and it would rate mod's as they were released. I don't see any reason why their system couldn't be applied to mp3's.
I think a web music index to mp3.com could work. I've seen something similar work on Hornet. However, it would take someone who was quite dedicated to set it up. Hornet had Snowman, I'm not sure who could be recruited for an independent mp3 site.
--Lenny
...unfortunately you have to wade through *seas* of crap to find it. A while ago, I went off on a "screw record companies" trip and tried finding new music on mp3.com instead. It was a depressing experience. I found pounds of poorly recorded ska and kilos of uninsprired techno. I soon went back to the record store.
mp3.com keeps track of the most popular downloads, which is a pretty good idea. It seems that that would help you zero in on the "good" stuff, right? Unfortunately, I found that it wasn't very useful. Perhaps most people download indiscriminately, or perhaps they have poor taste. Or perhaps there just isn't much to be had at mp3.com
What I've really been longing for is a series of independent websites that act as indices into the massive mp3.com archive. An independent site could post reviews from people they pay to wade through all the noise, searching for the elusive signal. I can understand mp3.com not wanting to post star ratings themself, but it would be very nice if another site(s) could take this up, to give us some clue of what's good and what's not.
Perhaps this could even be a community effort?
dreaming on a Sunday,
--Lenny
If you've ever read an article bio of him, you've probably read how he got started with MP3.com. His field was search engines, and he noticed that one of the most popular searches that people were doing (if not the most popular) was for "mp3." He didn't really know much about MP3s, if at all, but when he noticed what a popular search term it was, he went and registered MP3.com.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Some more information here from Dimension Music. Apparently Robertson simply refuses and ignores requests to have the rightful domain name handed back to their right owners. The programmer behind Audiograbber is getting pretty upset, since mp3.com wholeheartedly endorses MusicMatch, audiograbber's competitor, and audiograbber.com redirects people to mp3.com.