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Napster, Gnutella, Bans, Lawsuits And More
It's been a busy week for Napster and Gnutella... mbell sent us an MSNBC story on Gnutella which gets a lot of stuff right, but spends more time proclaiming that it's all about kiddie porn to really give the point fair time.
the geek noted a wired bit about a San Diego ISP
banning Napster from their clients: this is because it's a "Server", not because it's controversial software tho, but it's at least nice to know your ISP is watching what you do. The thing that bothers me most is that accounts were threatened even tho they weren't exceeding bandwidth quotas. Seems harsh.
And finally
NeoMage pointed out that the once amazing (face it, Kill 'm All and Master of Puppets are amazing albums) Metallica has become the first 'big name' band to
sue Napster for copyright violations against the artists' music.
this has worked for me everywhere:
ssh to unix host in napster friendly network
tunnel socks thru ssh
tell napster you have socks5 on localhost
you might need to use a DNS server other than your ISP's too.
voila! instant policy subversion.
Metallica suing over (illegal) distribution of their music via the internet is...somewhat ironic. After all, Metallica first became known on the heavy metal scene due to the passing around and duplication of their tapes at concerts, clubs, etc.
pooptruck
The anonymity Gnutella provides may unfortunately promote such behavior, but the good outweighs the bad, he said: "The whole decentralized aspect of it ... There's no censorship at all. [emphasis added]
Hm, I wonder what the government and big businesses think about *that*. They can no longer keep us from viewing the things that they don't think we should look at... and they can't really track us down very easily if they find us viewing such "contraband"...
-- Dr. Eldarion --
How long before the cable ISP part of AOL/Time-Warner decides that napster, and any other file transfer software, is an illegal server. How convenient for the rest of AOL/Time-Warner, such as Warner Records.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
The suit says students who use Napster "exhibit the moral fiber of common looters."
How much more of a generalization could you make? This is like saying "everyone who owns a crowbar is breaking into someones house every night". There *ARE* people who use Napster for legit reasons. There *IS* a lot of stuff on Napster that you can't FIND anywhere else, because Napster is the only place it's distributed. There are plenty of uses for Napster, trading copyrighted songs is just one of them.
(and before all you yell at me, I *KNOW* the majority of people on Napster use it for "illegit" purposes, but there *ARE* people who don't)
-- Dr. Eldarion --
When you think about it, anything that opens a port for receiving on your PC is a server, right?
So, things like ICQ and Instant Messanger are servers - they should be banned by ISPs. Oh wait, that's different isn't it?
While we're at it, let's ban windows, because people might have file sharing turned on by accident - thus being a server - oh wait, they tend to turn a blind eye to that.
Well, they definitely shouldn't be playing internet playable games that open a port - oh hold on, they'll lose a bunch of customers that way. Can't do that.
I know, why don't we just pick and choose what defines the term server, as we see fit, when we see fit. That'll suit the ISPs just fine.
BlackNova Traders
Not only that, they've actively enforced it. At the time of the RIAA lawsuit they've actually banned I think fifty people from the network for copyright violations, at the request of various copyright holders.
----
----
Open mind, insert foot.
In a press release announcing the suit, publicists for the band and music companies even threw in a statement from Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich, who said it is "sickening to know that our art is being traded like a commodity rather than the art that it is."
Ahhh, yes the only way to enjoy art is to pay for it. Guess the idea of public art, street preformers, public art houses, and art accessability projects are bunk. Thanks for pointing this out Lars, otherwise I would have never have known that art is to be bought, and not enjoyed.
(mind you: I don't consider Metallica art, and I don't think the piracy of music is right. But making assine statements like Lars did deserive EVERYONES mocking laughter)
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
The guy wrote every tab himself from listening to the music.
Its not like writing tabs hurts cd sales, or even Music Book sales, as i have bought them all just for the proper music notation. (Tabs cannot properly express the music in its fullest).You are supposed to be a consumer, a black hole for goods, advertising and content. They only want to allocate enough upstream bandwidth for 10,000,000 buy buttons. Producing or sharing information is a subversive act and will not be tolerated.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Has anyone here actually used it regularly? I've tried. You're lucky to see ~2000 hosts (which breaks often if someone leaves), and even when it lists that many hosts, searches are painfully slow and frequently broken. It doesn't hold a candle to napster as is. This recursive method may sound very interesting, in that you can theoretically put hundreds of thousands hosts together without centralization, but this also creates major problems with message propogation. Assuming you could even hold together a network of 20k users, and each of those users creates only creates 10 bytes a second (e.g., searches, etc), that means that in order for all of those users to have access to the rest of the network, each user would average about 200kilobytes/second, easily more than most users can afford. Even the original developer of gnutella didn't think it would scale past, what was it, 100 users (i forget exactly, but it wasn't terribly impressive). Add to this DoS programs and jerks, and you can kiss a smoothly working "network" goodbye.
Furthermore, I think the anonymity argument is sort of laughable. It is no more anonymous than napster if we assume that napster.com does not leak information, the file transfers are still host to host. RIAA, MPAA, etc. can still come after you. Nor will this thing, as a smoothly working network, manage to avoid network admins (assuming it doesn't fall under its own weight before then) forever. They might not be able to merely firewall a port or a host, but there is more than one way to skin a cat...
I have some respect for the author, but this thing is hardly going to change the world. I don't believe decentralization like this will ever become smooth enough and easy enough to use that most users (as opposed to "geeks", and those who make a point out of trying to pirate) will find it economical to pirate their stuff off the net. RIAA, MPAA, and all the interests they represent are here to stay, gnutella and its cousins won't even cause them to stumble.
I just returned from the supermarket with a few bottles of Evian spring water. Taking a long, cool chug of this refreshing beverage reminded me of the ongoing controversy about Napster and the spread of MP3 music online.
Back before the internet, music was a scarce commodity. Sure, you could walk over to your friend's house and tape his Floyd album, but for the most part, the supply of music was limited by the number of records, cassettes, and CD's a distributor could produce and send out to the world. The law of supply and demand ensured that each piece of music in existance would have some quantifiable worth.
Along comes the PC and the Internet. All of a sudden, humanity has a tool capable of making exact duplicates of artwork, documents and computer programs, and another tool capable of transmitting this informaton to anyone in the world. Limited only by the speed of light and the sophistication of their storage equipment, anyone could take a piece of scientific or artistic work and generate an infinite supply of it. Elementary economics, where the worth of a good is inversely proportional to its supply, still applies in the digital world. As a result of a near infinite supply, digital media now has close to zero worth, and record and film companies are slowly beginning to realize this. "The music and movie industry is doomed!" these huge corporate conglomerates shout, "With all these pirates stealing our music, artists no longer have incentive to produce!"
Why do I buy bottled water? Water is a resource of infinite supply in most of the industrialized world--it comes out of the tap in my kitchen! Yet, I don't predict the bottlers will go out of business any time soon. The water I get for free from my kitchen sink is so full of chemicals and impurities that I am willing to pay for the luxury of clean water. But by offering water that is fresh and clean, the companies that produce bottled water give extra value to an inherently worthless product.
To put to rest another tired argument, think about this: Am I stealing from bottling companies if I decide to use tap water to wash my dishes? Am I a water pirate? Of course not! The suggestion that I am stealing by making use of an infinite resource, whether it be tap water or the digital version of the Backstreet Boys' latest single, is absurd.
To all you starving artists out there, I am sorry to say it but the digital cat is out of the bag--you're going to have to learn to live with it. Give your customers some motivation to pay for your product, or find a new job--that is, after all, how business works. You need to first decide whether your art is Evian or tap water, before you decide whether or not it's worth selling.
________________________________
Sorta like when you share a drive in Windows?
And the banning windows thing...hm. Not only does the ISP have nothing to do with that (Network Neighborhood doesn't exactly do anything with a 56k modem)
Oh, but Napster does? I fail to see the difference...
but any method of file sharing is only available from the local network, not anyone with a net connection, as Napster and any web server are.
Depends on your ISP - if they don't block the ports, your drive sure as hell is available to anyone with a net connection. Remember the whole Quake coder / GPL violator thing? Some guy just walked right onto his desktop, got the code, then trashed his system.
I think the ISP has every right to ban Napster on the basis that it's a server.
I agree with you there - if you knew up front that your ISP banned servers, well - there you go. Of course you could still use it in client mode, and not share any files...
And there are no arbitrary definitions for differentiation.
Ah, but I think there are. ISPs should not be able to say "no servers" and then pick and choose which programs to crack down on. They need better definitions if they're gonna write this stuff into contracts. "Server" to me means a program which sends information to a remote host that requests it. By that definition, ping is illegal, and so is mIRC (identd), and file and printer sharing under windows sure as hell is...
Well, anyway... whatever. I'm just glad I have a real ISP that trusts me with an IP, charges me for the bandwidth that I use, and stays out of my way.
---
'Been caught stealing...
once, when I was five....
I enjoy stealing. It's as simple as that. It's just a simple fact.'
A better band than Metallica will ever be.
Enter Napster -
Snag a file little one
don't forget, my son
to download every one
Download sin, download Fins
Download just for grins
Till the lawsuit comes
Browse with one eye open
Gripping your lawyer tight
Exit light
Enter night
Take my hand
Off to Napster lawsuit land
Something's wrong, I just might
Lose some moolah tonight
'Cause you're downloading sound bites
Dreams of power, dreams of ire
Dreams of songs on a wire
And of our Grammies past
Sleep with one eye open
Gripping your 'rm *' tight
Exit light
Enter night
Take my hand
Off to Napster lawsuit land
Now I lay me down to sleep
Pray the Lord my songs to keep
If they're downloaded before I wake
Pray the Lord my cut to take
Hush little Napster, don't send a byte
And don't issue a disk write
If you can kill with a hand saw
Then shouldn't they be against the law
Exit light
Enter night
Old hair-band
Exit light
Enter night
Freedom banned
We're off to Napster lawsuit land
The music industry applauds "Rage Against The Machine" because they improve their profits. The band's social message is simply a tool to brand and market them -- just like Britney Spears' bellybutton, Shania Twain's cleavage, or N'Synch's pretty-boy looks.
Rage Against The Machine is a calculated effort to appeal to a particular demographic -- frustrated, aggressive adolescent males. Despite their Marxist message, their CDs, concerts, and T-shirts cost at least as much as everyone else's. They measure CD sales just as much as everyone else. If you set up a website to give away MP3s of their music, their record company would sue you like everyone else.
It's marketing. Don't believe the hype.
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
I can't believe you people! When did music piracy go from something done late at night on IRC and ICQ or by passing CD-Rs around at an underground party, to a god-given constitutional right?!??
...The sooner Napster dies, the better; all napster does is make theft accessable to the terminally lame... (emphasis mine)
Translation: "I can't believe you people! When did freely sharing digital information go from something which took above-average computer skills and was thus Ok, to something which non-nerds could do?!??
"...The sooner Napster dies, the better; all napster does is make the power of the digital revolution available to everyone."
How pathetic.
Look, I'm not going to rehash the reasons why duplicating something is not a theft but a gift, and why the music distribution industry is so obviously antiquated by the existence of the Internet as to make propping them not just futile but actually against the interests of society.
Instead I'm going to relate a little anecdote. After I saw this ridiculous story posted to news.com early this morning, I went to www.metallica.com, which I correctly guessed was the official Metallica website, to see what the reaction there was--whether Metallica fans would be swayed more by their allegiance to the band or by their allegiance to common sense. (Well, mostly to see whether there were actually still Metallica fans...)
Unfortunately, when I got there I found that www.metallica.com's message boards are only available to "members". Ok, registration required, fair enough. Only one problem: to become a member, you need to pay them $25!!! Just to post in their message boards!!!!
And I thought to myself, wow--how could they possibly not get it any more??
See, Cid, ask yourself this: do you think that $25 message board is worth it? Of course not; indeed, it's almost guaranteed to be one of the worst message boards on the face of the Internet, because it will only consist of people who just paid $25 to post in a message board.
The point is this: elitism doesn't work anymore. On the Internet, everyone is equal, but everyone's power is additive. That's why Napster is so powerful--not because it does anything that hasn't been done before; like you said, it's pretty much just IRC and ftp tied together, automated, and made easy. But by virtue of being so easy, it gains critical mass, and it gains its own power; when the history of the end of the commodification of ideas is written, Napster will have no small part.
Meanwhile, you and Metallica and everyone else stuck with your outdated elitist worldview will sit on the side of the road and watch the world pass you by.
NPR's All Things Considered show ran a story yesterday concerning a lawsuit by some retailers over Sony selling their artist's CD's directly via the Web. The interesting part for this discussion was the mention that Sony and BMG have plans to begin offering an online service to pay for downloads of music. The audio feeds for the story are here: 14.4, or 28.8 and up.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
Ahhh, yes the only way to enjoy art is to pay for it. Guess the idea of public art, street preformers, public art houses, and art accessability projects are bunk. Thanks for pointing this out Lars, otherwise I would have never have known that art is to be bought, and not enjoyed
Excellent point. Till now, performing art has enjoyed the special distinction of being an unending source of revenue for the artist, or at least, the artist's contract-holders. While non-performing artists have generally been rewarded with lump-sum payments for their work from collectors, museums, etc, deriving only a small part of their income from licensing of prints, photographic reproductions and so on.
I don't see that the fine arts world is any the worse for this, and we certainly don't seem to be short of artists. Should we now admit that what is happening is a fundamental, unstoppable, change in the way the business of music is done?
As a musician myself, I don't see that these changes are bad. What is really being torn down is the system of manufacturing stars - entirely a creation of the music industry. If there is an endless supply of bands just as talented as metallica, and believe me, there is, then what you'll see is the recording industry no longer being able to control the vast bulk of the supply of music by limiting the number of newly minted stars. What's going to happen? Obviously, once the chokehold on supply is broken, prices will fall. That's exactly what's happening, although in all the confusion, it's sometimes hard to see that.
What we're really seeing here is the beginning of a real flowering of art for art's sake, in much the same way as the current exponential growth of code hacking for code hacking's sake. It's not necessary to drive a Benz to be a functioning member of society as a musician. There are still many ways to be paid for the work, and to be paid well for great work, but one of them - the one that supports the recording industry's monopoly on talent and supply - is coming to an end.
--
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
I remember back when I was in high school (about 10 years ago) that somewhere in asia someone had developed a music vending machine. You pay your $10 and pick out a certain number of songs. 20 Minutes later your CD pops out. With JUST THE SONGS THAT YOU WANT.
The record companies didn't like this idea. If you want 10 songs from 5 different artists, you have to buy 5 CDs to get them all. They wanted to get the ($15*5) instead of the ($2*5) from you.
If the record companies hadn't fought sensible and fair music distribution models then, they wouldn't have to deal with Napster, Gnutella and Hotline now.
They killed DAT. They'd love to have killed CD-R. They're quaking in their boots over Gnutella because it can't be stopped.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Yeah, just like there might be legimate reasons for walking around in KKK garb (e.g., hood and mask). But don't expect me to attack the guy who gets his house burnt down for verbally assaulting the dress. Metallica _is_ getting looted of their IP, they have a right to be pissed off. If you want to yell at someone, perhaps you should yell at 99.999999% of Napster, who uses it illegally. Furthermore, if you can use a service which is used almost exclusively by "looters", I think you should be able to stomach just verbal assaults.
Digital revolution? Freely sharing digital information?? Just whose "information" do you think it is to share? This isn't mathematical equations or obvious development techniques. This is an artform not everyone can perform. They deserve to get paid for it.
Who died and made you Karl Marx? Just what makes digital media so special that it no longer is beholden to ownership by its originator. Since when did putting something in a digital format make it community property? Copying of digital media that is not yours to distribute IS theft. This isn't about common sense or freedom. This is about greed -- and not the band's greed. This is about the greed of music listeners who want, as always, something for nothing. It's about people who think it's their God-given right to enjoy the hard labor of others at no compensation and who rail against those who did the work for having the the "outright gaul" to expect that they be given something in exchange.
Music piracy is just flat out wrong. It's explotation of other people's hard effort. You think all information should be free? Well here's a piece of wisdom worth remembering: "You get what you pay for." Just try looking for good music on MP3.com sometime. I swear, I've only liked less than 10% of what I've listened to. These people have talent and want to be recognized for it. What the heck is so wrong about that?
Allegance or common sense? What rhetorical nonsense. Who's coming off as the elitist here? What Cid was saying was that back in the days before Napster, people had the conscience to realize that whay they were doing was wrong and illegal and made efforts to hide themselves. Nowdays with Napster and the growing predominance of piracy, people like you come out and say that it's their right to steal and that those who are trying to "protect their rights" to the music they own and made are they greedy ones.
I make my counterpoint thusly: who is the greedy one, the one who works hard and asks for compensation or the one who does nothing and demands the fruits of the first's labor?
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
My problem is not one of lack of imagination; I've been using mp3's longer than most anyone (4+ years ago). However, I do not, I can not, fool myself into thinking that these theoretical 'learning benefits' are sufficient reason to effectively make intellectual property null and void. I, unlike you (as long as you wish to make blanket statements), know what it takes to create new and innovative things. Having seen, and been behind, many hi-tech startups, I understand risk and reward quite well. The principles behind protecting music are much the same. The artists need to get paid for their work. The people who bring their work to the masses need to get paid. To make a long story short, IP is necessary. Although I do not lose anything when when the artists get robbed of their IP, I am too intellectually honest to make up some bullshit excuse that I am 'learning'. Nor do I think most college kids can make such a claim. Damn few are incapable of rubbing together the money to buy an extensive CD collection if they are truely motivated. If they're not motivated, they'll probably never make anything of themselves anyways.
Furthermore, it is ironic that you are saying that these kids need expensive IP based music, while advocating its destruction for all intents and purposes. Why can't these kids just go to mp3.com, or what have you, and get 'free' music? What? I didn't hear you! There isn't enough good free music? Has mp3.com, or any other organization which distributes free music, truely improved this in the past few years? Interesting view point you have there. You basically want to have your cake and eat it too. You purport IP protected music to be necessary to learn, but IP is not necessary? How are these would-be artists going to learn in the future in a world with no effective IP protection?
This position is even more futile when you take into account the fact that we are not even talking about 'ideas' here. We are talking about byte-for-byte copies of a singer's performance (e.g., song, voice(s), instruments, etc.). It is hard to argue they are obstructing anyone by not allowing you to get an exact copy of their work. In other words, if their music did not exist (read: No IP, no music) you would have nothing to copy at all, and if their music does exist (read: IP, music) you just can't pirate an exact digital copy. You can, however, still: buy it, listen to it on the radio, take notes on its composition, emulate its sound, etc., etc., etc.
You may enjoy not paying for music. Although, I lose nothing when the artists lose, I am just too intellectually honest to try to justify this behavior with absurd excuses. In any case, the issue here was the school's take on this. The fact of the matter is that a great many schools have already taken steps against it.
Ahem, no. I've know many admin's too, in both corporate and educational institutions. The mere fact that some of them may participate in piracy does not mean they're willing to risk their necks over it. Very few institutions have the excess capacity to accomodate every student regularly trading mp3s. Perhaps you should talk to some of your admin friends again, and ask them how much their network slowed down when even a small fraction of students were using napster, et.al.
Umm, you don't understand. I have no direct stake in this other than my intellectual honesty. You, on the other hand, have committed yourself to a dream. A dream which you believe will profit you. I'm being pragmatic here...
And my statements are categorically different from yours, how? You say I am too committed to the status quo. I say you're too committed to committed to unrealistic change. They're flip sides of the coin. I'm not saying you're "scared", I'm saying you're eagerly anticipating change without thinking it through. Deal with it.
I, for one, am not worried. To reiterate, I: a) Realize the need for Intellectual property b) know RIAA is not so easily toppled. Does this concern me any more than it should you? No.