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Napster Shut Down Until Trial
tealover noted thatMSNBC has headline saying that Napster has been shut down by the judge. As of this writing, its still up, and the Napster MOTD is telling us to expect an announcement in a couple of hours. More when we got it.
here is a zdnet story. I've attached the MOTD below.
Update: 07/27 12:40 AM by CT : this washington post story reports that the injunction will go in effect PM friday. Boycotts against the RIAA are being discussed.
This is the motd you get when you connect to napster as of 8:02 eastern:
You have probably heard in the news about the recording industry's lawsuit against Napster. The RIAA has asked a federal judge to shut Napster down, and an important hearing will be held at 2:00 p.m. PDT Wednesday, July 26 at the U.S. District Court in San Francisco.
Wednesday at 7:00 p.m. PDT we will give the Napster community a brief update of what happened in the courtroom via a live webcast that you can view at www.napster.com.
Read The Fscking Article. =)
t ml
The RIAA said it would post a $5 million bond requested by the judge against any financial losses Napster could suffer from being shut down pending the trial.
http://www.zdne t.com/zdnn/stories/newsbursts/0,7407,2608120,00.h
Pablo Nevares, "the freshmaker".
Pablo Nevares, "the freshmaker".
If Napster is disabled for a week, they might recover. If they're disabled for a month, I don't think it matters past that point, they'll have lost most of their marketshare and mindshare and I doubt they'll ever recover.
:/
That's what I call some DAMN signifigant harm to Napster.. I thought that an injuction was only granted to prevent signifigant harm to one party when it would not signifigantly harm the other party.. Oh well, I guess the law runs different if you're the record industry.. Unless it's settled in a month, Napster is the walking dead.
I give it $100 if they don't settle within a week. They'll have to implement something where any song with a particular word in the title is rejected. And the RIAA gets to choose which words. And if you have a song that has those words in the title well, sorry.
The second wave was a lot more intelligent, people recognizing that Napster isn't really the best example of a responsible musical revolution. I wonder what that says about slashdot readers.
Frankly, I think this decision is a lousy excuse to start protesting the RIAA. Clueful people should have been protesting them beforehand. Even though the RIAA doesn't have the artist's interests at heart, at least their actions against Napster are in line with most artists. Ask yourself why you are protesting the RIAA? For artists rights? Or because you irresponsibly want your free music? jeez.
Napster is a hypocritical company whose actions aren't in line with the rhetoric it spews. I couldn't believe their "Sharing" argument. They'd expect people to believe that a million people swapping cds is the same "in essence" as three friends swapping cds. Please.
This is good for musicians that are trying to protect their investments. Napster has never been a cause, they don't stand for artists' rights, consumers' rights, or anything like that. They has never looked out for any other interests other than accumulating eyeballs, traffic, and bucks.
tune
skkkoooonnnggggkkk ptui
In reality, the Napster shutdown is not the worst fallout that could result from this case. Napster is essentially a business that has as its strategy using the trading of copyrighted works as a means to make money for itself. In this sense, Napster is not significantly better than the RIAA in terms of exploitation of other people, though the RIAA companies certainly have exploited more artists and customers in their actions.
The worst of the outcome in this case lies in how digital copyright violators are perceived by the mainstream media (and especially the representatives in DC) after this case is over. The business aspect of Napster has unfortunately been associated with the users of Napster, but in reality (as shown by the earlier articles on the insides of Napster, Inc.) the reasoning and purposes of the two groups of people differs widely.
Napster users could very well being using Gnutella, Freenet, or any other service (including OpenNAP servers) that allows the "piracy" of copyrighted works. The justification of those users would still have the same validity, though, regardless of the service being used. The Napster business group, though, as described above, is essentially planning to exploit the copyrighted works of others to make money. Due to the fact that Napster, Inc. is being sued, though, the users will likely be branded "pirates" and "thieves" along with the company due to the inevitable adoption by the mainstream media of the RIAA's lexicon.
So, in conclusion, I would say that losing Napster is not the bad part of this case. It is the possiblity that users of those services, people who violate digital copyrights but feel that such action is justified in some way, will result from this case with a bad reputaion, unable to be taken seriously since they are perceived simply as criminals, just like those once-famous Napster executives.
SB
www.DigitalRenegades.org -- Are your opinions being unfortunately buried in discussion boards? Submit essays, short bytes, or article responses to be posted concerning why digital copyright violations are widespread and continue to occur.Great. Once again the major labels fuck things up for everyone. There's a lot of music available via Napster that isn't on the major labels. Don't they have a say in this? Where the fuck are the independent labels in all of this? Why shut down Napster instead of having Napster block the music by the major labels?
Everyone loses now. The people promoting their music from major labels. The music that I won't be able to try out otherwise. Who fucking cares if people are downloading Britney Spears songs. They hear that shit on the radio anyway. What about all the music that doesn't make it to the radio? I enjoy searching for songs, then adding people to my hotlist to see what other kind of music they listen to. It's like the Amazon "people that bought this also got this CD" situation but better. I see songs by people I have never even heard of all the time. The best part is that I can hear the whole song and learn about someone new. That's really important to me before I try to hunt down a CD that might not even be carried by Amazon or any other major retailer. Not to mention the amount of money that I am going to have to plunk down before I even get to listen to the whole CD.
What a shame. For both the major labels dominating the whole situation and the smaller labels failing to stand up and be counted.
</rant>
Prevent email address forgery. Publish SPF records for y
I for one applaud the judge having the guts to drop the hammer on The Entitlement Generation. This proves that the justice system does get it, and is not intimidated by crap like "it's a new world, and you better get on board before you get left behind."
The Entitlement Generation is an attitude that began with the hippies of the 60s, but is going full-force among the GenX crowd. They feel they are entitled to the big salary coming out of college. They feel entitled to free health care. They feel entitled to stock options. They feel entitled to free web sites without any advertising.
And yes -- they feel entitled to the work of recording artists.
I would bet that most of the people outraged by this decision have never created anything of value in their lives, and most likely never will. They will never watch the fruits of their labor ripped off. They are the people who suckle at the teat of society.
What sickens me are the people who justify their actions by rationalizations like "music should be about the art, not about money." Well, to those people I say that it's nice of you to make the decision for the artist.
When I see people with their pseudo-socialistic attitude that they deserve everything for free, it makes me think that the old days of requiring property ownership before you can vote weren't such a bad idea.
--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Without those sheep, there wouldn't be such a large supply of music available. Before Napster, I used USENET to find mp3s and unfortunately never could find much of what I wanted, because largely a few people post what they themselves like. A small number of USENET people take requests for mp3s, and I always felt bad for asking since I'm on an ass-slow connection and can't upload easily.
/. reader, I tried Gnutella when it was available. My conclusion? Why bother using it for mp3s, when using Napster produced more results, and greater chances of finding a high-quality 192kpps or greater version (I may be on a slow connection, but I can't stand crummy low bitrate stuff; I'm half-blind, but my hearing is great...). Plus, there's nothing wrong with ease of use. I will never understand why some people around here are practically *offended* by ease of use. Why use a more complicated system if an easier-to-use one, which saves the user's time and effort for other pursuits, is available? If I wanted files other than mp3s, Gnutella or Freenet is the tool of choice, but for mp3s nothing can beat Napster for both variety and for saving my precious time (until the plug is pulled, at least).
/. are nice down-to-earth people, but some have these Sysadmin=God complexes, and look down on people who appreciate ease of use and such principles. Quite frankly, we have the Mac to thank for making computers popular and sparking interest of the generation which spawned the Net, and cheap x86 boxes with Windows to thank for turning the Net into the common ground of immense possibilities which it is today. While *nix owned the Net on the server side, without those Windows and Mac users the Net would still be a small playground for a few comp sci majors and academics.
Then came Napster, and Napster was good. Type in a song title and artist, and the odds were that it was there. The key was sheer volume of users whose entire collections were available at any given time. Being a faithful
Try getting something terribly specific like "When I Fall" and the other tracks from *Martinis & Bikinis* by Sam Phillips on USENET or Gnutella; not very likely, whereas I pieced it together from Napster after a little nightly diligence. I repeat: those "sheep" you condescendingly talk about are the reason for that, since sheer number provides greater chance for finding the files you want. Please, stop being such elitists, some of you. Most people on
Napster is now belittled by some around here for bringing this sort of file sharing to the masses. Nothing personal, but those few who dislike anything made for the masses ought to stop actingng like such l337 hax0r chillun. There's a difference between the mind-numbing stupidity fostered by AOL, and stuff that's just easy to use as opposed to stuff which actively promotes stupidity. Not everyone is or wants to be a guru, try to understand that and don't belittle something merely because of its ease-of-use or shininess. What is actually bad about what Napster has done (aside from the debate over morality of mp3 trading)?
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."--Tacitus, *The Annals*
Ok, don't start going into Napster withdrawal syndrome yet ;-) There's an excelent alternative to that: OpenNAP. Its a napster network, free from Napster Corp. And there's plenty of users and music on the OpenNAP network too. The site also lists alternative clients, even for those using Windows. Plus there's gnutella and other alternatives (I have'nt checked them all out yet).
- I am a musician (see URL link above- please visit it if you haven't already?). A NON-RIAA musician. The RIAA labels are my competition, and crushing, stifling competition they are too, and I have to work really hard to get production values comparable to the majors (or better).
- I had songs on Napster BY REQUEST. I publically asked people to put my songs off mp3.com in their Napster directories, if they could, if they didn't mind taking the trouble to do so. I own my songs AND the mechanical recordings of 'em and I have an absolute right to permit such distribution. It's _my_ say-so, not the RIAAs, not mp3.com's.
- Napster is being shut down anyhow- the RIAA lawyers successfully convinced the judge that _I_ don't exist, just like the RIAA continually tries to convince the listening public that I don't exist, that nobody like me exists.
- So- the judge is taking away a _major_ distribution channel from me, at the request of... my competition.
Who thought _this_ one up? Wait, don't tell me, it might just possibly be the the same trade organisation that taxes the blank tapes I record MY MUSIC on, said taxes again going to my competition. Yes, the same people who arranged that I have to pay money to help the Backstreet Boys out-PR me have now arranged to sabotage a _key_ internet distribution mechanism that could work in my favor- and of course are also suing the 'label' (mp3.com) that I signed with (ever hear Roger McGuinn's take on the mp3.com contract? This is the leader of The Byrds. He loves the mp3.com contract- it's actually _fair_. Quick, kill it before more people realise how brutal standard major label contracts are! Competition must die!)I don't remember agreeing to steadily pay off my biggest, most implacable competition to bury me. Please, Judge Ma'am, stop the music industry, I'd like to get off? Seems that owning my own music, owning my own equipment, recording only my own songs, attempting no samples and expecting no industry PR is not enough for me to be allowed things like non-RIAA distribution channels and the ability to buy tapes at the store to put MY MUSIC on and not pay taxes to my biggest competitors. So please, Judge Ma'am, if you hear of a free market out there somewhere won't you let me know? Apparently me buying all my own gear and recording all my own stuff and trying to put it out there through services like Napster is not permissible. Tell me, is this for my own good? Should I learn to behave? :P
(this is turning into a song- now if only my lungs will hold out to put out a quick single- fighting off chest-cold from hell)
How can you negotiate with people like this? How can you even have sympathy for them?
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Up until now the vast majority of the internet community was able to ignore the court battle - as long as Napster was not actually shut down they could afford not to care. Public opinion is about to make itself known in a big way for the first time, as everyone is deprived of their music source. I'm predicting two things: 1. Napster will never come out of this alive, unless there are so many restrictions imposed on it that it no longer is the Napster we know. 2. The free alternatives are about to get a big boost in user numbers and probably in developer interest. The part I'm afraid of is that they will start censoring traffic at the server level. What I wish they would do is stop selling CDs in the stupid way they have so far. Why are most of us interested in Napster, despite the lower sound quality of MP3? Because we don't want to pay $18+ for one or two songs we like off of an album. If the music industry were to get their act togeather and create a site where you could create your own CD containing ANY 60 minutes of music you wished, from whatever author, I think at least some of the demand for Napster would fade. Certainly a lot of the legitimate use would. Plus, they'd make more money. I think most of us would be willing to pay $3-$4 per song if we knew we were getting songs we liked. Yet I've never heard of them doing that. Is is power, or wanting to maintain an image, or what? If they let us sample songs from such a website, and then let us order a CD of exactly what we want, I think everyone would be better off. But then, that's just me.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
If you win, you could sue to make him pay you for the water during the time you had to give it to him.
All the court is saying is that use of Napster represents a probable violation of RIAA and their artists rights, and that it's continued use is causing immediate harm to RIAA and their artists.
Oh, and Napster isn't being shutdown, they're just being asked to not allow the sharing of commercial music... Simple greps will take care of that...
Napster really just opened the floodgates. MP3s have been huge for a very long time, and Napster merely made it very easy to distribute and obtain MP3's, increasing everyone's collections. Now that the music trading is so prevelant, do they think that this flow of it will stop? There are amazing numbers of MP3s out there, and people are all too happy to let people dip into their stash for access to someone else's.
Pulling Napster out of the picture this late in the game is not going to have the effect they want. The river will merely find a new path, and this time the path won't be a single set of servers, or one company that people are dependant upon for MP3s. This time the water will flow in many directions, over many very distributed and varying forms of trading that we've been building all this time.
It will be so distributed that they will have no hope of stemming the flow. They may have done much better by riding Napster--- leaving it functioning until they can work a way to encourage Napster to work in their favor. And instead they shoot themselves in the foot. By removing our need to depend on Napster, they're giving up all chance of controlling where and how we get our MP3s.
And now, suppose the Napster CEO comes on the webcast and delivers his rallying cry? Stand up against the monster RIAA that wants to take away your music. Why should we? The RIAA is doing nothing but forcing us to make the next step... leave behind the central, haltable, stoppable location in favor of many other means which are harder to trace and much harder to prevent.
Napster was just a step. By shutting down Napster now, the RIAA is just ensuring that we take the next one.
If the public has its way, that last step will be on the heads of the once immortal recording industry.
Just because you're floating doesn't mean you haven't drowned. - They Might Be Giants, Dark and Metric
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