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Napster Aftermath: Fan Vs. Corporate Rights
The Napster court fight has become an unprecedently significant focal point for many competing interests -- corporations, fans, some artists -- grappling with intellectual property and copyright issues in the Net. It's also underscored the vulnerability and alienation of the tech culture, which may scorn Washington-style politicians, lawmakers and corporate lobbyists, but still is very much at their mercy.
The only real winners, of course, are the lawyers, as usual, and the handful of companies rich enough to pay and benefit them. The idea that individual artists are now safer and better protected by their good friends at RIAA, Sony, Bertelsmann (BMG), and AOL/Time-Warner may be the saddest and most wondrously naive legacy of the Napster flap. Maybe Little Red Riding Hood should have gotten into bed with the wolf, after all.
Everybody reading this knows who the real losers are -- the Net, music-lovers and sharers, artists not under contract to large conglomerates, individual consumers, and the notion of the Internet as a free and unrestricted space that connects individuals to information in culture in new and powerful ways. Rolled over by this ruling are the fans who've experienced years of extraordinary access to a shared culture, and have experienced access to music as an ingrained part of their lives and culture.
One legal expert after another has warned that the implications of RIAA's suit against Napster go far beyond music and will directly affect the sharing of other media as well. The ruling will definitely set the tone for how intellectual property is defined on the Internet, as it now stands, and pending further appeals, intellectual property will belong to a handful of super-corporations who can afford to acquire and defend copyrights. It also has implications for the open source and Free software movement, which have sparked a new and growing movement towards open media and new models of revenue for the information industry as well as for software. If the Napster judge's notions of copyright hold up, walls and fences will spring up all over the Net and the Web.
For more than a decade, music and other media fans have experienced an unprecedented period of free access to culture, particularly music -- a tradition many are now calling piracy. An entire generation has grown up learning, collecting and loving music, and entertainment companies have seen their profits continue to soar -- the much aggrieved recording industry posted a record $15 billion in profits last year. The recording industry has spent tens of millions of dollars in legal and public relations fees to turn this social evolution into a crime.
Lost in the mega-bucks brawling over copyright and intellectual property is the individual fan -- Napster says 20 milion people have downloaded its software -- who is not represented in court. But these people have some legitimate claims in this issue, although their concerns have been almost totally ignored. Conglomerates have also spent tens of millions of dollars on lobbyists who influence Congress, and now own most of the media outlets who cover Net issues like copyright. Fans and music lovers, like citizens, have no lobbyists in Congress.
Constitutional scholars will be brawling about this for years, but a convincing case can be made that new laws like the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, the basis for many recent legal actions against so-called copyright violators -- are a corporatist perversion of the whole idea behind copyright and intellectual property.
The framers of the Constitution were seeking to protect artists and authors when they enacted copyright laws. Their notion was that without some protection against copying and theft, writers would have no incentive to create new works. Copying books was difficult, and it was simple to enforce and prosecution laws against it. The Net is another story -- it's the biggest Xerox machine in the world, and it's almost impossible to completely shut down the copyrighting of intellectual property. Common sense would dictate that new ways of protecting artists and corporations be found that recognized the new reality of the Net.
Even then, people like Thomas Jefferson preached radical notions of open media. He feared the ownership of ideas: "that ideas should freely spread from one to another all over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man .."
What Jefferson was describing was the reality of the modern-day Internet, especially the rapidly-proliferating open source and open media idea: an environment using point-to-point, distributed architecture to move ideas freely and all over the world. Clearly, artists need to be paid for their work, and authors protected from theft. But there's no evidence that the entities copyright laws were meant to protect were billion dollar media corporatations with a distinctly unfair unadvantage over individuals when it comes to defining and enforcing copyright conventions.
In the last few years, spurred mostly by the proliferation of culture-sharing sites on the Web, media companies have launched a brilliantly successful blitzkrieg on behalf of corporate and "artistic" rights to control intellectual property, culminating in the DMCA and the spate of recent legal actions against Napster and individual music downloaders. No such campaign has been launched on behalf of music fans, who were literally bled dry for decades not just for artistic compensation but for fat corporate profits.
According to MIT's Henry Jenkins, writing in MIT's Technology Review, [http://www.techreview.com/articles/ma00/viewpoint.htm] no case involving fan rights has ever reached the courts. No civil-liberties organization has offered money or other support to fans who are denied access to their culture by corporate lawyers. Copyright and trademarks are now deemed legal "rights" granted to property owners, while fair use is a "defense" which can only be asserted in response to copyright infringement accusations. Most people caught in copyright battles, or on the receiving end of hundreds of thousands of warning letters being issues in response to the DMCA lack the financial resources or the political acumen to take on vast entertainment conglomerates in court.
And one of the most insidious consequences of the DMCA and the entertaining industry's war against sites like Napster is the elimination of the notion of "fair use" which gave fans and users some limited protection against absolute copyright enforcement. Fair use is the right to use copyrighted material, regardless of the wishes of the creator or owner of the material. A copyright gives the owner certain rights; fair use limits them. Under the right of fair use, you can quote from this column to criticize it, quote sections from it, and reproduce them to attack, support me, or disseminate my views. In these and other ways, you have the right to use this column independently of how I say it ought to be used,and that doesn't make you a "thief" or a "pirate." Copyright was never meant to be "absolute," or even long-standing, especially when it comes to intellectual, rather than physical property.
But the DMCA and recent court rulings against music-sharing eliminate any idea that the downloading of music constituted "fair use" of artistic work. Some fans and legal scholars have argued that sites like Napster, Gnutella, Free.net and Scour.net promote the sale of music, especially for personal use. A marketing professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania commissioned one study that fond that over 91% of Napster users buy as much or more music than before they used Napster, with 28% purchasing more. Lawyers for Time Warner, Inc., Sony and Bertelsmann, represented by the RIAA, cited studies that found that 22% of Napster users said that because of Napster, they didn't buy CDs any more or bought fewer CD's. In the United States, it's possible to get studies supporting any conceivable point-of-view.
It seems logical that there is a significant amount of "fair use" involved in the downloading of music. It also seems logical that people who can download new CD's for free won't pay $16 for them, and perhaps shouldn't have to. At the same time, even music industry lobbyists concede that free music sites, from MP3.com to Napster to Gnutella, have provided new artists with new forums for their work, permitted music lovers to experiment with new forms of music, and generated tremendous interest in music that is contributing, directly or indirectly, to record music industry sales.
Rather than seek some new legal middle-ground -- sites that offer some free as well as paid music, for example, or experiment with new ways to provide artists with revenue -- the music industry has sought and won the most extreme legal remedies, ones that will continue to be undermined by new technologies and the evolution of new music-sharing sites, some legal and above-ground, some not. What seems inconceivable is that tens of millions of young music fans are going to return to a system where they can only listen to music they pay exorbitant prices for. That isn't going to happen.
But what does seem to be happening is that media companies are hijacking culture, and using artistic compensation as a smokescreen.
As Jenkins points out in his article, if Shakespeare, Lewis Carroll and the authors of the Bible were covered by the DMCA, none of their works would have received a fraction of the attention or influence they've generated.
Fans are more than consumers. They are entitled to have some rights, just as artists and corporations are. They pay the freight, especially in cyberspace, which has seen a mind-boggling flowering of fan zines, sites, mailing lists and Web pages. Fans are critics, journalists, and story-tellers. They are constituents in their own folklore and have rights of access to their own culture. Virtually all discussions of intellectual property in cyberspace are about responding to corporate and political anxieties about controlling text, images, sounds and information.
This leaves the fan out in the cold. Most of them can't afford to take on the lawyers for Viacom or Fox.
We've sold our souls by buying this drivel for so long. Now we are paying the price.
t
MP3s have often been touted as "CD-quality". Why trade a lower-quality medium based on lossy compression when you can trade the real thing. I think a real kick in the pants would be to start trading actual Audio CD images in response to the napster shut down.
This is a battle happening in the courtrooms and pressrooms.. not one happening in my livingroom, where I will happily continue to download whatever I want, whenever I want. Attached are some links you'll want to follow after the shutdown. I've been handing them out via e-mail and on IRC. Cheers!
This friday (07/28) Napster will be shut down by a federal judge. Additional information can be found at the end of this e-mail. You all know what Napster is, and alot of you probably use it. The RIAA (the people shutting Napster down) believes this will put an end to people sharing music online.
Therefore, in light of this, I am presenting a dozen alternatives to Napster which you may utilize with the same functionality as Napster. I would also urge you to boycott the RIAA by not buying any of their music from your local retail outlets or online until they drop their suit. Either way remember that any fool can make a law (or a ruling) and any fool will mind it. Consider this my way of telling the RIAA where to stick their injunction. Cheers!
~ Signal 11
Napster clones
--------------
http://www.napigator.com/ Convert the Napster client to run on the OpenNAP servers, or search both networks simultaniously. Windows only.
http://opennap.sourceforge.net/
OpenNap: the open source napster server.
Napster alternatives
--------------------
http://gnutella.wego.com/
From their website: "Gnutella is a fully- distributed information-sharing technology. Loosely translated, it is what puts the power of information-sharing back into your hands."
http://freenet.sourceforge.net/
FreeNet. From their website: "Freenet is a peer- to-peer network designed to allow the distribution of information over the Internet in an efficient manner, without fear of censorship. Freenet is completely decentralized, meaning that there is no person, computer, or organisation in control of Freenet or essential to its operation. This means that Freenet cannot be attacked like centralized peer-to-peer systems such as Napster.
http://sx.scour.net/
Scour Exchange. From the website: "With Scour Exchange you can share your favorite music, videos..." Windows only.
http://music.lycos.com/mp3/
Lycos' MP3 search engine.
http://www.cutemx.com/
CuteMX - From the website: "CuteMX is your own personal file server and a powerful search engine rolled into one. CuteMX eliminates the hassle of setting up FTP and web servers and its real-time search provides successful results." Website also features a free music download section.
http://www.shoutcast.com/
Not exactly downloadable music, but hey, I like it. Tune into hundreds, if not thousands, of online radio stations featuring every genre you could think of.
audiofind.com - no information
Information on the shutdown7 407,2608120,00.html
---------------------------
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/newsbursts/0,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20 000726/aponline200558_000. htm
http://www.msnbc.com/news/437532.asp?cp1=1
What some artists think of the RIAAv e/index.html 5 7235&cid=191
-----------------------------------
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/06/14/lo
Courtney Love does the math
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=00/07/26/23
Chris Johnson on slashdot.org
Distribution of this e-mail is encouraged. Feel free to add more links to this if you decide to forward this on, I'm sure I missed a few. :)
As Jenkins points out in his article, if Shakespeare, Lewis Carroll and the authors of the Bible were covered by the DMCA, none of their works would have received a fraction of the attention or influence they've generated.
That's because during those times, you couldn't copy their entire work to your Zip Disk, take it to the office, and transfer it to Taiwan over your 100 Mbit/s LAN connection to the company T-3.
Why do you think DMCA and similar protective coverage originated? Why is Napster all of the sudden there when we've been taping songs off the radio for years? Because MP3 and CD burners are the printing press of digital music.
It's only when we've lost everything, that we are free to do anything...
I'm considering designing a simple one-page flyer that can inform people about the issue. Something along the lines of, "This isn't a solicitation for you to vote for anyone. Just a reminder that democracy is a responsibility, and you have to watch what's going on in Washington." It can address various related issues, such as facts about the Napster lawsuit and about the Copyright Law being amended, extending the length of copyrights.
Does anyone think that such a thing is worthwhile? If I released a PDF of it, would anyone print it out and hand it out to people? Am I crazy?
--
We believe this is one answer to the MP3 situation and have started a website at www.fairtunes.com that allows you to do exactly that. It is the Stephen King model implemented for music. We allow you to securely send any amount of money using your credit to ANY artist.
But do we live in a society that can adjust to a voluntary system when we've lived so long in a system that has always set the price for us? Can we handle the freedom that Napster gives us? Can we be trusted to use Napster responsibly? Young kids will always pirate music, and we accept that, but is voluntary payment an option for everyone else?
Matt.
It's a political year. If 10 million Napster users got seriously active and organized, there's actually a real possibility of pressuring congress into 'clarifying' the current Copyright rules to make it clear that things like napster are OK.
Push for an amendment to the copyright rules. Keep track of which reps are for it and which ones try and sabotage it. Make it real public. Be blunt.
Take back congress.
If properly managed, this could be a watershed moment for geekdom.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
It is too bad that Big Corportation won this battle. As for the war, that is yet to be determined. I personally never bought many CD's because of their cost, and now I will not buy any any that are not blank (just got the new Plextor 12/10/32x). I think it's a tragedy that an ignorant judge has set such a precedent that can cause a tidal wave of harm and hurt the consumer, while aiding the already greedy recording industry. Such is the price we pay for democracy, I guess. Oh well. You can kill napster, but there is still IRC, Gnutella, etc. - and if they are shut down or hindered., undoubtedly more services will come along. How long does it take people to figure out that you will not be able to stop the trading of data? It WILL happen. This is not the beginning of the end.
Moon Macrosystems. Sun's biggest competitor.
If you've taken a course in economics, it's not hard to see that a popularly created culture is not the only thing at stake. Entities like Napster create VAST quantities of previously untappable consumer surplus WITHOUT seriously damaging (and even possibly enhancing) producer surplus. Therefore, even IF the record labels are a little worse off due to Napster, society as a whole is FAR better off.
I was very upset when BlockBuster Music in Indianapolis (and most probably elsewhere) stopped their practice of playing any CD a customer wanted to hear. It allowed me to pick the CD's that I wanted and not for just one hit single of an entire album. I also could test out unknown artists.
I did buy some CD's from being able to hear it first.
The cat's out of the bag and the floodgates to Pandora's box have been opened. Humans will never stop using cliches, and they will never stop freely sharing music. It doesn't matter whether Napster or any other single entity is put out of business. (But it DOES suck to watch the lawyers suck up more money over this).
No fan has "lost" anything they have a legitimate right to. They can still go out and buy music, or trade with all their friends they made on napster, or grab one of the other services.
The RIAA / artists obviously haven't lost anything.
The indie musicians were getting questionable value from Napster from anyone's viewpoint, so they really haven't lost anything.
Signed artists who want their MP3s distributed... well, they can get a website!
The only people who are "real losers" are Napster stockholders and employees. They're losing their gravy train, becasue they haven't fixed the problem (no way to stop piracy yet) or expanded into a more legitimate market (general file-swapping?)
They can throw hundreds of lawyers. Millions of dollars, tons of resources against napster, etc. We can throw hundereds, of thousands of people at the problem. Start you own servers. If everybody started a server they would have to shut down everybody. Look at it like speeding. Yes its illegal, however it generally accepted because it would be absolutely impossible to enforce it 100%. So some speeding is tollerated. You are allowed to go by a cop at maybe 5mph over, do 10mph over though and you're pushing it.
If there we so many servers out there that it became absolutely impossible for the RIAA to stop every single one then they might just give up. Kinda the reverse of what they're doing. "We'll spend millions of $$$ because they can't compete with us and afford all the legal fees." Fine you want to play that way... We will set up millions of servers and see if you can keep up with it.
-cpd
One thing that I found about Naptser is it really REALLY sucked if you were looking for anything Indie or on a minor label. Unfortunally after checking out GNUtella & Freenet I don't see things getting any better for indies.
Maybe if someone policed napster and kept the major label copyright crap off it would still be open. But who am I to say? I put up free MP3's of my (C) artists. If I didn't people wouldn't buy.
www.cdtoad.com
when they ban enctryption only criminals wi$21*J *#JF$%!@#$':
My god this was bitter! the sad part is that is true. It appears that the 'music underground' won't go away with napster though... there are a ton on clones out there already like napigator.
----------
while (alive) { Work(); PayTaxes(); Eat(); Sleep(); }
Bool
I can't wait until they ban any file transfering because it could be used for pirating software. I can't stand administering ftpd! :)
_______
2B1ASK1
Go ahead and flame me, but I think Napster is a bad idea! Yes it's great to be able to find and listen to music over the Internet. But what is the next step?
Would everyone think it's OK to pull a football game off the TV, rebroadcast is over the Internet, and substitute your own commercials? It's hard to do that now, but in a few years broadband will become easier to get. The Napster ruling isn't about "fan's rights" (whatever that means), it's about who decides how data (in whatever form) is distributed.
Now, the DMCA does not address this issue well at all. But I think there should be some limit to what and how data can be distributed by whom.
Just my $0.02 USD
Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're not after you!
this isn't a complete victory for riaa yet. they won a temporary injuction, not the entire case. as an example, sony got a temp injunction against connectix in mid-1999 blocking virtual game station; sony lost that case and vgs is now selling.
-- the opinions stated above aren't those of my employer. in fact, they're probably not even my own. you know what, ju
Number of CDs I've purchased in three years prior to downloading Napster: 12
Number of CDs I've purchased since downloading Napster 6 months ago: 23
Number of CDs I'll purchase in the next three years: 0
The Music industry should set up a method of buying individual songs and you can then download them on the net in MP3 format at a cos of $2 song (average of 8 songs per CD = $16 per CD = $2 per song). This just seems logical to me.
That money goes direct to the artist and kills the middleman (ie: RIAA, MPAA, etc).
Or maybe a method devised such that you can download all the music for free you want, but after a certain time (30 days) the MP3 becomes corrupted and if you want it you need to pay for it and get a pristine copy from the author's web site or some such thing. This is the ultimate in shareware phylosophy. Try before you buy. it's that simple people.
-- DuckWing
This says *nothing* of the individuals right to "home copy" or bootleg for pleasure (not profit).
Thad
Thad
here's a good way that bands could handle MP3's:
Arena homepage
Now isn't that a nice and shiny example of how you *could* handle things?
Here is a band that puts the MP3's from it's latest album on the web as MP3's, including te lyrics (and very good music too, if you're into sympho! Just listen to ' The butterfly man').
How to make a sig
without having an idea
"political vulnerability" of us net people? Why, because our legal system is evolving a bit to put an end to this widespread theft?
Napster is the White man's form of looting. It doesn't bother me that people steal the music, in fact, I do it myself. What gets my goat is when people try to rationalize it, defend it, criticize Metallica, etc.
I've heard a lot of people whine about CD prices and how the record industry "rips" off artists. Well cousin, nobody forces bands to sign these contracts. And the way our free capitalist market works, if there was a cheaper way to produce, distribute and sell music, someone would start doing it and sell you cheaper cd's. Last time I checked, there are quite a few companies doing the same thing. Competition.
Jon Katz, you're so enlightened, aren't you. The lawyers are the winners, music lovers and Net users the losers, etc, blah blah blah.. The record companies had the option to team up with Napster (who already had an asset of 75mil users with no real marketing), but they decided to press on and shut it down. Why? Maybe because they are coming up with their own plan to distribute music safely (or safer, I should say).
Just because stealing music is so convenient and easy, that doesn't mean the concept of intellectual property is bogus. It is, as the name implies, property.. and that's the law of the land.
The one question I have for one of you legal scholars is if people like Napster can run a business that our courts have found illegal overseas, immune from our countries prosecution?
True.
Calling out bogus battery capacity claims.
Thomas Jefferson's original draft of the declaration of independence said "life, liberty and property." This was changed to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" to further expand what was implied by property. The artists who create music have the right to distribute that music however they want. If they make more money using companies represented by the RIAA, it makes sense for them to use it. So they will.
We, as consumers, have the right not to buy a product that we do not think it worth it. We do not have the right to steal that product to protest the price or the ethics of those who sell it. People who steal music in this way are committing an illlegal and unethical crime. If you don't like the music industry, don't buy from them. Otherwise deal.
The reasoning that songs you own should be allowed to be traded online is also ridiculus. If you own it, download some of the free software out there and rip it yourself. Even with the fastest bandwidth ripping is probably as fast as downloading.
People need to grow up and realized they don't have the right to have everything handed to them for free just because they happen to be American or believe in freedom. Freedom doesn't mean free in any sense of the word! There is a price for everything.
Look, people, it's a simple system. If something has value (be it economic or emotional), you arrange a contract to obtain it if you want it. If you want someone's music, you enter into a contract to pay a certain amount of money to a record store, who has a contract with the record companies, who have contracts with the artists. That's the only way to preserve order. We have explicit terms of contract, and if you violate those terms, then you upset the system. The system is there to insure that if you receive something of value, you give something of value in return, like paying money for music you enjoy.
There's No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.
I'd really love to see it- I am always in the market for new grassroots propaganda to pass around :)
--Perianwyr Stormcrow
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
There are many, many evil things about Napster, but I'm only going to note a few:
1. It goes without saying that trading music without paying for it is wrong, but people who have said this before have only been marked down as trolls, so I'll leave that to others
2. Napster does not allow you any control over what music is available. For people who are producing music and want to give it away, this is a good utility, however, some rules should be in place
No music by Gay bands/singers etc.
No music advocating sex or masturbation of any kind
No music advocating the use of, or recorded under the influence of, drugs
3. Napster allows you to create an accout without being completely certain who you are. All websites should have full details of all their users, so that if an offenc is committed, they can be found and prosecuted
Visit my site for my opinion on ponography
I think that the Record Companies may be winning the battles but loosing the war. They can shut down a company, but can they stop a Movement ? They are scared, no doubt about it - don't believe their hype. See Scott Rosenberg in Salon and the discussion on Buzzwaves for a longer view.
This injunction is not permanent until after the Napster trial has concluded. A TRO (reporary restraining order) is very short term. A restraining order could last the length of the trial, but if Napster wins, then the restraining order would be disolved.
I would hope that Napster would win, and then the judge would be required to award large damages from the effect of the restraining order.
I have not bought any Music CDs or DVDs in quite a while. When in the stores, I have advised others that they should not buy them because of these lawsuits.
Fight Spammers!
Go to your nearest cd reseller (CD Warehouse type place) buy a used cd. Take it home, rip it. Take it back to the reseller and sell it to him. Metallica will not see a penny from the transaction.
Or wake up and start using IRC.
Man!
I tend to agree to a point. Maybe not as violently, but I agree. I've submitted some stories I thought would provoke some real conversation, only to be rejected. Then I see a Cartoon Network anime story posted, and I wonder if my time @ /. is drawing to a close...
It's only when we've lost everything, that we are free to do anything...
I can see it all already...
This years "Penguin Party National Convention" announces William Shatner as a Presidential Candidate and CmdrTaco as his running mate. Millions of geeks and trek fans reshape the American and worldwide political landscape for the powers of good.
..is the one that will destroy our rights in the "digital millenium."
You see, no one cared. "We'll go to Usenet." "This is crap." "They can't stop it everywhere."
Why not?
The very beginnings of censorship have started in countries that *I* personally would never have thought they would have started in. The U. S. especially is becoming more and more frightening every day, with myself shaking my head in amazement at the court rulings! If only the Supreme Court heard every case, we *might* stand a chance. But judges like the judge over the DeCSS case ruin any chance that freedom to innovate will continue. (Pun for those who caught it, intended.)
When we move from Napster to Usenet, will not the RIAA turn their guns to the news servers? Even though they are "service providers" these service providers might be found guilt of collusion for providing access to the newsgroups (alt.binaries.warez.whatever you love) because they have the *easy* ability to discontinue access to them - stop carrying the group.
Indeed, in the case of alt.young.* and alt.binaries.warez.* newsgroups, my ISP does not carry them. I do not care about alt.young.* - rather, the point is that it's not available. Because the ISP says so.
We cannot control the web, true. But ISPs can be forced to control where their users go, in some regards. And national and international efforts can lead to another "committee" whose sole goal is to produce web sites, newsgroups, and other areas of the web that we might create, that destroy these "poor corporations multi billion dollar industries." All it takes is some money and some political power.
Yet, we don't care.
Carnivore is accepted. The new law in the U. K. is accepted. Oh, we bitch, we whine, but we have given our rights up on a continuous basis. Maybe it would have been better if the Internet stayed non commercial - the information would still be free.
I'm in charge of a network of roughly 500 people and systems. I'm in charge of ensuring they do not access questionable content while they are working. That is my job. (No, I do *not* use filters. I use hand assembled URLs, and generally add them AFTER they've been visited. Not as effective, but I am not the Gestapo, and I will not be accused of mistaken filtering.) If the order came, from my government, to block access to nntp, or to port XXXX, I would do it.
I would have to, because I have a home, a wife, and a son that I must take care of.
I'd like to never see that day come.
--Talonius
My reality check bounced.
The facts are simple: many of the people who used Napster were either doing so with the intent to break the law, or believed that fair use would protect their use of the software. The courts seem to have ruled that this is not the case.
Now, I don't like large music companies. I don't like RIAA asking people to spend $20 or more for music that isn't particularly good. But no one is putting a gun to anyone's head. No one is forcing anyone to buy RIAA-sponsored music. We have lost no fundamental rights here, and it is ridiculous to suppose that we have.
Granted, Napster was a potential channel for independent artists everywhere, a distribution means that was not controlled by RIAA, was not horrifically expensive, and ensured that your music would get out to a wider audience. Guess what? So is a common web page. So is IRC. So are plenty of other distribution channels (not all of them Internet-based) that were completely untouched by this ruling.
I don't like RIAA. I think that they're a powerful force working for the cheapening of society for a few extra dollars. Spawn of hell that it is, though, they did have a point: many of the people who used this software were doing so to break the law. And while it pains me that it is that much harder for an independent to have a widely-heard voice, consider this: most of the music traded on Napster was from RIAA-sponsored bands.
Let's not be hypocritical, ladies and gentlemen. Let's realize that RIAA may be pandering to the lowest common denominator, but many people who cry out against RIAA were listening to music that they'd not have heard without it.
If you really want things to change, then you'll have to start with yourself. Eschew all RIAA products, whether you bought them or stole them or borrowed them. The more you give your minds over to them, the harder they will be to beat in the long run.
Fight the Power.
www.alarmist.org
Sig11 sometimes spouts shit, but that was interesting, informative, and relevent. Theres nothing wrong with preperation. Preperation for the enivitable in this case.
Thad
Thad
Mass media music and videos are not part of "the tech culture". They're associated with it, possibly, but not part of it. If we want media that's part of "the tech culture" we have to create it ourselves and make it available under a licensing model that's suitable to "the tech culture". Trying to assimilate media that belongs to mega-corporations whose only interest is how many of our hard-earned dollars they can take is not going to work. They have too much money and, consequently, political backing.
The political vulnerability of tech culture? Sorry, but I don't think breaking copyright laws qualifies as "culture".
John Katz, what if your editors stopped paying you for writing? Would that be an expression of publishing culture?
The monitary transaction at the heart of copyright law is necessesary, even if copyright laws need modification.
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
I agree that corporations have perverted copyright in legal cases to their own end, and bolstered their claims with DMCA.
However, that has nothing to do with Napster. Napster, in my mind, is not about copyright protection. It's about the independence of transport method. Let's say that 90% of all pirate videos were shipped fedex, and accounted for 90% of fedex's business (haha). Would fedex be a pirate courier service? No.
The same goes for Napster. It may be USED for a lot of piracy, but that doesn't make it responsible. It has the same policy as any ISP: they don't patrol their users, but they'll take action when it is reported to them. As shown with the Metallica/Dre lawsuit.
For me, nothing was more telling that this slashdot comment. The artist complains, "So- the judge is taking away a _major_ distribution channel from me, at the request of... my competition." Marilyn Hall Patel should have heard HIM in court.
Frankly, I'm getting tired of all the anime and Star Wars bullshit. I don't give a damn about that crap.
Frankly, i'm tired of whiny trolls like you. If you don't want to see it, get an account, go into your settings, and check the topics you DON'T WANT TO SEE. That's why Rob created the StarWars and Anime topics, so fools like you would have no reason to bitch about him adding them. If you don't like Jon Katz, he's there too. Go check him, and you'll never see his articles again. So stop whining, get an account, and SHUT UP.
Anonymous Cowards have no right to complain about the subjects, and people with accounts have no reason to.
I assume that if Napster wins the battle, the RIAA will have to pay them their lost revenue. Napster doesn't make revenue...so will this be the first case of...
Paying someone to sue you if you won?
Just a thought.
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Tonight on Fox: Deadliest Executions Part XVII
as some karma whore said in another story, the record industry doesn't care about metallica, or most of the other bands that are traded on napster. The record industry makes most of their money on top ten hits, which mostly include such mindless drivel (although popular drivel) as britney, christina, and the boy bands (tm). How many people who are using napster are downloading these songs? What portion of the people who listen to top 10 music are using napster?
Never mind that this ruling makes no difference. There are so many alternatives to Napster, no one could stop this, even if they wanted to. Those poor fools...
One thing I've been thinking about when I see how they're trying to crush 'net music is that it seems they're trying to avoid competition. It's a proven fact that anything thats pooped onto MTV and the airwaves is bought in massive quantities (limp bizkit, korn, bsb, britney, all have the same ad company... all of which are all over MTV and suddenly popular.. hmm). It just seems to me that the big bands and companies realize people on the internet don't eat music thats shoved down their throat because we don't have to, and won't. bah.. Underground bands are better anyways.. www.dentmachine.com www.deroot.com ......... don't buy the music.. no matter how much you love the backsync girls.. refuse and resist
Get paid to code OSS
So, Jon, does this mean you wouldn't mind if I bought a copy of one of your books, scanned it, and published it on my web site? I mean, DAMN, amazon is charging $16 for your recent book. Nobody should have to pay that much for a book, right?
I mean, are you really just out to make a buck or are you doing it for your fans?
Music doesn't have to be free, but the recording industry is useless and stupid (and takes too much money). A better distribution system would be a site where people can buy MP3s for .50$, or some low cost. Then artists wouldn't have to make 15 songs for a full release; they could just release them as they are made, and with a low(er) operating cost for the site, most of the money would go to them. This way we wouldn't ahve to pay 20$ for a CD with 2 good songs, we could just download and pay for those 2 songs, and the artist would probably get more money than from us buying a copy of the CD.
They that quote Benjamin Franklin on liberty and safety deserve neither.
First, we should immediately set up a link where users can send messages directly to congress. Last month Congress threatened to write formal legislation defining "Fair Use". Lets get them working on this. If even 10% of Napsters 20 million users send email to their Congressmen there is little doubt that somthing will happen. Get rid of the ambiguity in "Fair Use". Corporte America shouldn't be allowed to limit what information is exchanged between Americans. At best the onus should be on Corporate America to clearly identify specific Copyright infringments. Not wholesale trampling on peoples free-speech and assiciation rights. Just because a medium makes violating the law easier doesn't give them the right to abuse the legal system and harm the medium providers. Cars aren't governed to stay below 75mph.
Second, maybe the time is right to make more information free. With the economy of scale available to corporate america there is a strong argument that they don't need as much protection from IP theft and monopoly control over their IP product. Things have been swinging in corporate america's favor for far too long. There is an imbalance in the power structure. Let's not forget, companies exist as entities because we, the people allow them to. Corporations achieve an artificial status as citizens because we allow them to. For far too long corporations, as citizens have benefitted from the rights citizens inherit, withour taking of the full responsibilities that citizens inherit. They have too much voice, too much power and take very little responsibility. Its time to take corporate america to task and make them take responsibility. If they want to continue to profit from our work they will have to start giving back. "Special rights" given to corporations providing monopolistic power need to be reigned in.
This is probably the most important statement to be made regarding these proceedings. Is an Operating System vendor now liable for having a copy command? Seems absurd, but it may be the final result if similar ill-advised judgements on technical issues continue. I believe the judge made a statement to the effect of "Napster wrote the software, it's up to them to write software that will remove from users the ability to copy copyrighted material" http://www.theregister.co.uk/cont ent/1/12195.html
Does this mean that the entire notion of a three-tier computing architecture will be held back by points of law reagarding Intellectual Property distribution?
Sounds perverse, but I'm inclined to believe that the Napster decision is a Good Thing (TM), and a classic case of the RIAA shooting themselves in the foot (and in the head).
:-).
If the injunction stays then it will force everyone looking for music onto systems which are much more in keeping with Open Source/ GNU philosophy, such as GnuTella. In addition such distributed systems are going to be almost impossible to shutdown - it looks like its going to be DeCSS 'whack a mole' all over again
Let the good times roll!
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Many years ago when Xerox brought out it's first copy machines the book publishing community tried to have them banned or severly controlled.
The reason? Secretaries of the day, which were predominantly female, copied recipes from cookbooks for one another in the offices.
When Sony brought out the Betamax for home use the television media cried foul and tried to have them severely restricted.
When digital audio tape (DAT) first appeared, the recording industries tried to have copy protection built into them.
I find it highly ironic that in many cases the ones that benefit from the technologies are the ones that initially fought to keep them from seeing the light of day.
Trolling is a art,
Would your neighbor care if you just magically made a copy of his big-screen TV? Cause that's what's going on. A better analogy would be "copying" a TV from the warehouse, who may not like it, but they're not really losing anything. Stop using worthless analogies that DON'T APPLY.
The fan does have one recourse. Don't buy crap. Unfortunately, the majority of us here have been doing that for years. We don't listen to the RIAA or the Top 40 chart or the MegaSuperUltraHitsHour on the radio. We're not the ones the RIAA cares about. Its the teens, the ones who have grown up brainwashed by the constant churning of the crap engine that has produced such talentless, brainless stars as Britney Spears and NSync. They have the money, they buy the albums, because they want to be cool. This trial has sent waves through the general public though. People who have never heard of Napster are now downloading and experimenting with alternatives, such as Scour and Gnutella. The issue is out in the open, and because of the fall of Napster people will begin to see the light, and reject the monopolistic practices of the RIAA.
:p I bet they weren't prepared for the massive flood after the injunction was announced!
By the way, Scour was down last night. I couldn't even register
"I live in a world of make-believe, with faeries and leprechauns and tiny little frogs with funny hats."
The point is, Free Beer is NOT the same as Free Speech, no matter HOW often Jon Katz chooses to rant. Napster offers the same freedoms as a pair of concrete shoes. Swimming in such freedom is not advisable.
Napster uses proprietary technology, trades (without authorisation) proprietary data, in a proprietary (and lossy) format, for the benefit of who, exactly?
For the benefit of the artists? But the artists are the ones most upset!
For the benefit of the music industry? Don't make me laugh. This may be the beginning of the end of an organised music industry.
For the benefit of diversity? Napster is doing a Microsoft, and killing all competitors with no regard to ethics, the law, or anything else.
For the benefit of the consumers? HOW??? If the only music you can get is music you've got, and the only way to play it is via a sound card, then consumers are quite capable of making their own music available over the Internet, to download at their leisure. Sure, it takes disk space, but HD's are cheap, so there's no longer any benefit in having a central store.
For the benefit of Napster? Being a de-facto monopoly, with absolute power and control over all large-scale music transfers (and potentially ALL music transfers, in total) is certainly a sizable benefit.
Herr Frankenstein, you have created a monster! And it's eating my CD collection!
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
With the Napster ruling, maybe Metallica can not start paying for their bills. (article clipped from Chicag Tribune).
... that's no excuse for walking out on a $300 bar tab here.
Freeloaders
Could the rock band Metallica be that hard up for cash?
We know the band is embroiled in a lawsuit with Napster over copyright infringement but
Ed Suqi, a VIP host at Chicago's Glow nightclub, tells Inc. that the band left without paying the bill. And they stiffed Suqi on the tip too.
Suqi, 24, said the band ranked among the worst celebrities he has waited on. "They don't want people downloading their music for free," but they never even asked for the bill before they vamoosed, he said.
Nonetheless, at last report, the Metallica CD was still playing in Glow's jukebox.
Mouths for Metallica could not be reached for comment.
You know what, you're absolutly right -- this is news for Rob Malda.
Why?
Because Slashdor is Rob's invention! Guess what, if you watch his bio on TheSync, you clearly hear him say something along the lines of "to post stuff about things I like".
This is Mr. Taco's place, and he has every right to post the stories he wants too because he made nearly everything you see here.
Deal with it. Just fricking deal.
Hilary Rosen's speech was about her love of money and her desire to roll around naked in a pile of money.
>Why can't Rob let us vote on the story submissions?
It's even better than voting. we submit them in the first place.
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
Let's apply the Napster argument to the written word...
"By putting your books online, you encourage people to go buy $20 for the dead tree version to have it in a more convenient format, along with cover art."
Nope, doesn't make any sense when applied to this product either.
He who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned my contempt. - "Big Al" Einstein
One of the reasons Napster was so successful was that there was a large user base, hence a larger selection of files. By having so many alternatives to Napster, aren't you diluting the music pool? I'm not saying this is your fault, but I think fewer (hence larger) communites should be engouraged to have a larger collection of resources. I'm not going to have 5-6 different clients open, and I'm sure others won't as well.
Being with you, it's just one epiphany after another
I can't stand it when people try to justify trading illegal mp3s or warez by saying "I'm just doing it because the prices are unreasonable. They're trampling on my rights." Then they download a picture of Che, start listening to RATM (without paying for it of course), and feel like activists.
It's bullshit plain and simple. There's tonnes of free music at reasonable prices. Go see a local band. Go to mp3.com.
I've read about some boycotts of the RIAA and the message (from the ones I've read about anyway) is "don't buy the CDs but keep downloading the music." By listening to their music you're supporting them. You're saying that their music is the only music worth listening to. A true boycott of the RIAA would involve not buying, downloading, and even listening.
Ok, so the RIAAssholes got to napster. Somwhere further down this article, Signal 11 posted about 50 links to MP3 related software/sites.
Now let us look at the alternatives:
1. Other MP3 software (for arguments sake, let us say there are only 5 other programs, though any idiot can figure out that's a crock)
2. FTP
3. HTTP
4. IRC
5. (gasp, so sad) AOL
6. Email
7. Snail Mail (burn a cd and send it.. oh well)
So, RIAA attacks #1, gets a few shut down. Then people move to #2. Tag and move and tag and move, even if RIAA somehow limits all of the above (which any idiot knows is next to impossible) then people go down the list. Once you get to #7, more programs are coming out, move back to #1. Endless cycle.
This will be an endless cycle until RIAA stops fighting us, forcing us to "extend and make them embrace" our middle finger. There are more resources out there than ever before, and in case they didn't realize, we can always go back to ole tape and radio (although we won't).
Perhaps the only thing that can stop us is if JonKatz starts posting his entire text to his articles on each of these methods. If that happens, well, there are a lot more things that we have to worry about.
We don't need no Net Explorer We don't need no Thought control
People have rights.
Not the government, not corporations.
You're simply wrong.
Britney Spears, N'sync, and other pop bands are popular culture. How many
Just yesterday I bought 12 vinyl records (I DJ)...all of them having nothing to do with the RIAA, or the mainstream music culture. Comments like yours are almost hypocritical in the sense that you want this music given to you on a silver platter, and complain when you have to do a little footwork.
If you want to bring down the RIAA, you needn't give up music (or in the case of the MPAA, movies), you just need to get out of the local Virgin Megastore, and wheel your ass over to a local independant music store (or one of the many on the web).
Q: What do you think about American Culture?
A: I think it's a good idea.
Q: What do you think about American Culture?
A: I think it's a good idea.
(adapted from Gandhi)
Fry [talking to Beastie Boys as heads-in-jars]: Wow! Back in the 90s, I had all 5 of your albums. ... Can I borrow the new ones? ... And a couple of blank tapes?
band Member: That was over a thousand years ago! We've got seven now!
Fry: Cool!
Ya see, even the industry itself expects stuff like this to happen.
The net does not excuse protection of copyrights, nor is it excuse just because its difficult or it upsets someone. Your pathetic in your argument, basically stating that "because of the net" it must be so. Sorry, people deride Bible thumpers using that logic and you should suffer a similar fate. Napster is engaged in wholesale for profitable of their CORPORATION, copyright holders be damned. You fell into the same trap as the millions of net-heads who believe this is some David versus Goliath fight. It isn't, its about a greedy corporation using its customers, the very customers you claim are slighted by the RIAA, to its advantage. Napster doesn't give a DAMN about anyone except themselves. So get a clue will you. If Napster was being used to distribute copyrighted software what would you say then? What if they decided to distribute your works for free?! After all your own silly argument your making here would support their "Right" to trample your copyrights and your right to compensation. Chris (sorry for the anon post - forgot my password)
Lets see..
..DING!
"Media corporations"...DING!
"Popular Culture"...DING!
"Copyright issue:...DING!
"Betrayl"..DING!
"Political Vulnerability"...DING!
"Tech Culture"...DING!
"Alienation"...DING!
"Information in culture"..DING!
"Shared culture"..DING!
"Lives and culture"...DING!
"Open media" DING**DING!!!
"Corporatist perversion" DING!
"New Reality" DING!
"Hijacking Culture"
"Media Companies" (twice!) DING!
As Katz points out, the media corporations control popular culture with political vulnerable Columbine issues, and copyright betrayls. Then again, the political corporations control popular media culture with vulnerable Columbine issues. Some might argue that Columbine political controls make corporate media culture issue betrayls as well.
I could write better drivel with a Perl script that randomly assembled blocks of text from Katz's buzzword-bingo writing style. Spare me.
Bowie J. Poag
Bowie J. Poag
is exactly why I am minoring in computer science before entering law school. By the time my schooling is done, cyberlaw will be in full force and a legitimate speciality(a-la international law, business law, criminal law, etc, etc). Right now, however, since there are no actual established laws that make any sense(legal or otherwise)..there are few lawyers specializing in that niche....and even fewer cluefull judges. And lord knows the grassroots organizations striving to survive on the net could use em.
Then go start your own fucking site.
The copper bosses killed you, Joe. 'I never died', said he.
The RIAA doesn't give a hoot about controlling the culture of our society, unless it promotes fattening their wallets. The real reason they are so active in controlling intellectual property in music is because they are afraid of losing their huge profits that they currently enjoy!
Attention all planets of the Solar Federation! We have assumed control! - Neil Peart
Several music stores in Canada have 'listening stations' where you can bring your CD up to the employee and (s)he puts it in the machine for you.
Smaller music stores have little listening stations with maybe 3 CDs that you can pick from. If you ask nicely, they'll probably put one in there for you.
Other small music stores don't have listening stations, but will probably play something on the store stereo for you.
Steve Magruder, Technopolist
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
Oh My God! This article does not contain the word Columbine! What's happening to you, Katz? You're slipping!
But know what pisses me off? That I go to the store, and look at the shelves for Black Tape for a Blue Girl, and instead, find an empty marker and 40 copies of Black Sabbath right next to it.
And the guy behind the counter says "We dont have the shelf room to have a copy of everything." Maybe thats because they only stock what the RIAA tells them should be "popular".
I want to know how exactly it is that it's 'fair use' to make a copy in whole of any work.
As far as Napster goes the RIAA is barking up the wrong tree. It's like taking Ford to court because someone used a Ford vehicle in a bank robbery. What they should do is find out who the people are that are downloading and making available the protected works and sending them all invoices, or take them all to court, but it's easier to sue one entity rather than thousands.
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
4) No Homophobic, moral straitjacket applying, narrow-minded granny bands.
So, if we applied the first rule. If a band's lead singer is bisexual, does that mean only half the band's songs can be posted? What if a person took drugs while recording one album but not another? Should we send cops into the studios to check this out, without warrants.
Come on everyone!!! This is an important moral issue!!!
Sarcasm, naw, not me.
He who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned my contempt. - "Big Al" Einstein
I have setup a page in protest of the RIAA at www.riaaboycott.org please visit the site and if you agree with what's there, sign the petiton! Oh, and I'm not making any money off this or anything (actually I'm spending $15 a month), I'm just trying to get something done instead of bitching for a change. Thanks :)
-colin
-Colin
This goes beyond just the music industry. The problem is that other industries can't keep up with the web generation. They remind me of the old businessmen of a age long past in dusty rooms with little light. As the saying goes, "they are stuck in the dark ages".
You not going to here me say " wants to be free" that may be true (or not true), but we are going to start seeing 1 source for content. For example, take a look at the Olympics. Here in the US, only 1 station can broudcast the Olympics because they bought the exclusive rights to it! What happens? We get cheesy commentator talking about 1 type of sport instead of seeing all the different sports. We fall victim to their ideas. We know what you want to se, so we'll show you this one sport. Are we having fun yet? No.
What does the olympics have to with Napster? A lot in the general sense. The Olypics is an example of what happens when the "big people" control all the sources of a particular medium. In this case it's the Olympics, and in Napsters case its music. The "big people" of the music industry don't want you to know what you are buying when you buy music. They want you to buy it and have it whether you like it or not. They don't want you to be able to easily list to your music on devices that are small and easily carried around in a shirt pocket. When was the last time you carried around a cd play in your shirt pocket? They want to control the distribution of the medium.
As for artists, like a cetain drumer of a has been band, they just want money and more money. Their limited intelligence has not grasp the potential of this new medium. They could release MP3s of songs they have just recorded for an album on the internet before they leave the studio. What will this do? For one, wet the appetite of a fan or new fan for the new album. Two, they could get feed back from fans on the song. They could fine tune it because the song may not live up to what the artist(s) is capable of producing.
These are just 2 idea of what is an unlimited horizen that coul be blocked if Napster loses. I am sick of the entertainment industry as a whole. Face it they have warped view of reality in general. They cry about making on a few million dollars per episode of a tv show or per album. Well, we could fight back. A lot of us work for companies in which we don't really see any more income from the product once we are done programming (or what ever). how about we start doing the same thing. Let's make cost of cathedral software sky rocket. It would make the consumers turn to open source.
Here's what I have to say to the entertainment industry: "Grow up, and come out of that little world you live in! Get a clue. You're taking the wrong approach to internet! You can't stop it. You can redirect it's course."
At the next eco-hypocrisy-meeting, count the private jets used to get to the meeting. Should be interesting to see that
it's just not widespread. Look for .shn files. I use them all the time to trade recordings of live concerts. (hey, as long as I'm trading something that's legally questionable, might as well do it on the Internet)
----------------------------
I would post the following corrections, however. First off, there has been no ruling against Napster. The case hasn't even gone to trial, folks. This is a preliminary injunction, thich admittedly sets a bad tone for the trial to come, but doesn't mean ANYTHING legally, except that Napster has to stop running until the trial.
Secondly, even if Napster DOES die (god frobid), it won't be the end of the world. Anyone who wants to pirate MP3s will still be able to, just not with Napster. You can use the quasi-napster servers (what are they called, OpenNap?) or a whole different tool, like Gnutella. The courts can't take away thi technology -- it's just plain impossible. They could make it illegal, which would be a terrible shame, but they'll never be able to enforce that illegality.
So everyone take a deep breath, don't panic, and then do the responsible thing: write letters. Participate in protests. Let people know how you want this trial to end before it does end! We all need to do our part to let these empty-headed judicial types know the Truth!
(Speaking of truth: offtopic here's a great Gnutella ad / Matrix parody)
Kid: Only try to realize the Truth. Neo: The Truth? Kid: There is no server.
Well, I thought it was funny. :P
Its really not that big of a deal that Napster got shut down. One..Napster was basically crap. Two..there are plenty of other ways to screw over the RIAA without using a centralized server architecture. Three..we, as 'net monkeys, have ALWAYS been able to transfer whatever we want no matter what, note the continued existance of warez sites all over the place. How many times have they been "shut down" only to reopen a day or so later on a different address. What I propose is that we continue as we will..but make sure that the fact of our continuation get rubbed in every shit faced politician and corporatist. Bring the war on...they cannot possibly keep up with millions of people unless they decide to turn their "Carnivore" systems to the suspected use of shutting down the internet. And we all know that if that happens there'll be a lot of soccer moms freakin out because they can no longer trade recipes over the net. VIVA LA REVOLUCION!!!!!!!!!
An MP3 has a playback quality that rivals radio.
Radio stations play music for free.
People have listened to radio for the duration of the recorded music sales market.
People will continue to buy what they can get for free.
The real issue that I see in the Napster case is that the big record companies have lost control over what listeners hear for free. It used to be that these record companies could control the content of free music outlets(Radio, MTV, VH1, etc.) that's why crappy songs are hyped so much. Since people are cattle/lemming like in nature they buy what the media tells them is cool regardless of the artistic work's actual merit. Listeners are told music is good and are so insecure on their own tastes that they decide to conform to the corporate image of coolness/sophistication.
Napster came along and essentially allowed the individual to make his/her own programming decisions. They can listen to inferior to CD quality music and make a decision as to whether they want to buy it. Napster is essentially a listener programmed radio station without the adds.
What the record corporations are losing is the power to promote specific songs. This is why people buy CDs with only one good song for $16.95. That's also the reason why singles cost $7.95 or so. With Napster people are able to preview entire albums before they buy and that's going to ruin that nice little scam that record companies have been playing.
Don't think that this is about piracy. If that were the case they would have gone after radio stations a long time ago. If these guys win I could see them creating their own Napster with inferior MP3s of only the songs that they want to promote, geared solely to get you to buy those one-hit-wonder CDs.
--Purple lightning. That's always a good sign.
So, basically, what you are saying, is that the "consumers" (read: thiefs) have some important legal rights here. WHAT RIGHTS? the right to rip off someone who spent many thousands of dollars to create music? the right to steal a film that cost Lucas 40 MILLION dollars to make, without having to pay a royalty fee?
.pdf format for people to download and print, and hey, even bind into hard copy. Is the person who wrote that book going to get their knickers in a knot? yeah. is the book company that is using that 70% cut of the retail price going to suffer directly? Probably not. However, when it comes time for the advances for the next book, or for the company to dump some money on a very good, but as-yet-unknown author with no portfolio, are they going to? Probably not.
I can see the arguments about having your own backup copy of music you own.. and I dont think there should be a distinction between digital or analog reproduction FOR YOUR OWN USE. But the main fact of the matter is that IF ITS COPYRIGHTED MUSIC ITS BEING STOLEN. period. End of discussion.
Heres a frinstance: I find a book by a long winded, boring, windbag, that usually sells for about 30 bucks on the open market, and I scan it into
This is a retail society.. you get what you pay for, and you pay for what you get. I'm sorry if people seem to feel that just because it is on the net it is free. But, then again, I'm sure they would change their mind if I found their address and then stole their car, and then in my defense claimed that "its on the net, and anyay, car companys charge *WAAAY* too much for automobiles, so I'm justified".
Please.. theft is theft, and until the laws change, it WILL be theft.
this isnt civil disobedience, this is people who dont want to pay for what they get.
Maeryk
Feminine Protection? What is that? A chartreuse flame thrower?
Excuse me for using the word "pirate" in the previous post. I understand it rings harshly in some people's ears (terminals?). It's just the first word that came to mind, having gone through my own "script kiddie" phase in the 80's.
Ok, i have read some of hte posts from people on here, and one quick thing,
IF YOU DON'T WANT TO READ IT KEEP SCROLLING
holy geezus is it that hard to do? yes, i am a bit fed up with all the hype and media on everything, but damnit it affects my culture as much as it affects yours, and so what if your sick of hearing about it, well guess what, your in an inadvertant way adding to the problem, because if enough people band together, shit gets done, end of story, hell, if we all went to the RIAA and pissed on theri lawn becasue of this, they might thing second nature abotu it, i know that because of napster i went out and bought a few more CD's then i normally do, if i enjoy the music, why not support it? and i think that is the general consesus of the people, or at least it should be somethign along those lines, becasue if people and major labels keep flaming shit like this down, we are all gunna take a beating on it one day, and then guess what, we'll all be learnign to write songsheets and fax it out to 100 people so everyone can read the music, not just the people who wrote it, i mean, this is outta hand with shut this down, scrap this, Etc., hell, if someone charged me figure 100 bux to use napster for a year, i would pay, and if it all got divided up amoing artists, names, etc, who the hell cares what you download, but personally i think it should all be kept free, heck, some kid in Etheopis might just download a metallica song, learn to play the guitar, and be the next elvis, and without the Napster tool, he may never have the ambition to bring the world closer, so they (the big record labels) could in essence be screwing themselves over becasue of this
well, basically, that is my $.02, sorry so long,
_TheJester_
court_jester98@hotmail.com
The box said windows 95 or better....so do i buy Linux or mac? damn tough choice.....
So Thomas Jefferson invented the internet and not Al Gore? My world collapses!
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
I noticed something earlier, according to Harry Bank (ceo of napster) the judges ruling will encompass the following:
The Judge's ruling is essentially this: that one-to-one non-commercial file sharing violates the law.
However, source code has already been deemed free speech - and is thus covered under the first amendment. In this case Mp3's are binary, however both are files. Does this mean that free software repositories such as amug, freesoftware.com, and kernel.org are breaking the law? Or can this case be appealed just on the basis of an extremely clueless ruling? Or is this simply hype by Harry Bank. -- If the judge does rule this way then private ftp, http, the GPL, and networks in general can be challenged in the US.
Any ideas on this?
Hey, if you don't like it go elsewhere. And if you're going to bitch, stand up and bitch like a man, Anonymous Coward. :0
A sufficiently advanced culture would leave almost no trace of it's existence when it was gone.....
Folks, Let's look at this whole situation from a purely economic standpoint. The big labels formulated the techonology behind the CD's and further started releasing albums some time back(20 years?, I may be wrong on that). We are all aware of the marginal cost of production which has come down considerably over the last few years, thus now the profits being generated are economic and monopoly rents(the question of how the monopoly was sustained and maintained is another rant of mine). But it is a well known economic fact that, eventually a firm/cartel DOES loose its death grip and the profits generated start coming down unless they start innovating and offer additional value to the end user. Obviously the arrogance, hubris and sheer complacency of the industry has caught up to them and they are loosing out now. Yes, they have won this battle but the genie is out of the bottle and there is not much that they can do. Have faith, techonology is here and here to stay, these guys will eventually buckle down.
1) When I took a "history of jazz" class the professor defined music as "a dynamic aspect of culture" so how can you copyright an aspect of culture.
2) Maybe what we need for the singers/songwriters without record companies and don't want to use them is a MGPL
What's the problem? Why doesn't Napster just set up in a different (more liberal) country than the States. That'll be very had to block.
Tapster
And this one goes up to eleven!!!
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
go suk on your moms nipple baby!
Isn't part of the idea behind being a middleman like those organizations represented by the RIAA to create value for the folks that would want to work with you? It seems that the RIAA is acting less like a shrewd trader than Conan the Barbarian defending a hill-fort.
What a shame, when the RIAA's members still hold all the keys to making a real music filesharing system without shitting on *anyone*.
The most valuable thing on the Internet is information- but since there's so much of it (and so much of it is of such abysmal quality,) the second most valuable thing is the ability to know what is crap and what isn't.
There's a lot of music on Napster/Gnutella/etc. But a lot of it is damaged or truncated- or just of really low quality (in the case of Gnutella there's no way to tell this before you download it.) Even if it's high quality, the situation is "here today, gone tomorrow". A person who has a particular thing has to be online and connected to a distributed file sharing service for his files to exist at all, and even for us with DSL or cable, it's not the best idea for us to leave it on all the time! Even if someone has a file, they could be on a 56k modem, so a DSL user would end up very frustrated indeed! Furthermore, certain things are extremely difficult to find in any case. Once you leave the mid-80s to present day pop spectrum, pickings get really thin.
The music industry could cure all of these woes. They could create a subscription-based service that offers digital copies of music files of any quality you desire, out of their entire holdings of music. Anything a label puts out could be up there to sample. At any time, not just when jesus99 or whoever happens to log in and have Napster up. And once you're downloading, you could be linked directly to purchase information. Information about the bands' history, related bands in the same genre, and even the ability to watch for concerts and other appearances would be offered.
Let's say, for example, I downloaded Apoptygma Berzerk's "Non Stop Violence", from their "7" album. The service would mention to me that they have a recent album, called "Welcome to Earth", and perhaps I would like to hear that, too? And look, their tour will be in my city in a month! And right on the banner for their tour is a mention that VNV Nation is touring with them. Let's check them out...
Even if everyone just gets their files from this service and, say, trades them on Napster afterwards, the inherent disadvantages of client to client distributed file sharing will make the official service a clear winner.
This is the kind of connectivity that seems to be floating off in the future somewhere, that no one can really get together for some reason I can't guess.
But it's all here already. This service is like MP3.com, the Winamp minibrowser, Amazon.com, and Ticketmaster all rolled into one. And guess what, all these individual companies would be in on this scheme, and life would be happier for them, too. They would finally have the Internet presence that everyone is questioning them about. And guess what? They wouldn't have to fuck with SDMI or other pointless copy protection pipe dreams- they would simply out-service the competition! And isn't that what real business is about?
Or so I was lead to believe by all I'd ever read in any book. So I was lead to believe by my experiences in business.
But the RIAA seems to believe that its members would not best be served by organizing for good business- instead, it thinks that the way to do business in the information age is standing on top of a tower, wearing studded leather and carrying a two-handed sword.
--Perianwyr Stormcrow
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
In response to your question, NO. If the lead singer is bisexual then none of their songs can be posted. How hard is this to comprehend? If a person took drugs while recording an album, then we shouldn't have to listen to the second album, as they should have been in JAIL or EXECUTED if they were drug dealing. Yes the police should have been sent in, and as I don't believe that the police should ever have to use warrants, that would be fine too.
I apologise for the bad formatting, spelling and grammar of this post, I felt these points should be made quickly, and rather rushed this reply.
Visit my site for my opinion on ponography
That should be a good battle cry....
Unfortunately, it doesn't look good - it's guilt by association, and if the blunt tool of the law has to bludgeon a few innocents in the name of protecting the property of the wealthy they'll do it. Since copyright protection is mostly by the honor system, and if people have the freedom to 'do the right thing' and some don't and it's impossible to enforce, then we ALL lose a freedom - which is what CSS is about, taking away some control over content (like on what we can play it) - all it takes is ONE person to abuse a freedom and the authorities use that as an excuse to lock us all down.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
He was bitching about articles. Tough. He neither works there, owns it, hell, he doesn't even have as little as an account.
If you don't like it, see if they'll hire you. THEN if things don't work out you can complain.
tilts the copyright issue dramatically in favor of media corporations, who now virtually own popular culture
Wait just a second here. Corporations *created* popular culture. You can't go back now and claim that we want corporate-created popular culture but without the corporations.
In any town, you'll find many great bands, for example, that make you wonder why you don't hear them on the radio. And nobody's ever heard of those bands, except locals, and the locals often put them down for being, well, local. They play for half empty coffeehouses and provide background noise in clubs. But if one of these bands was promoted and hyped as being underground and pushed into rotation on MTV, then it would enter pop culture and people would be clamoring to hear them. And those same people want to be able to nab MP3s of that band's music. So now, after Moby, for example, has hit is big, you can't act like "screw the record company, screw the ticket agents, screw the suits," because they provided Moby to the masses.
If you want to be anti-corporate, then you need to walk the talk. Go local. Don't watch TV. Stop drinking Coke. Don't waste time armchair second-guessing what Apple or RedHat or Microsoft do.
It's not the consumer that is paying the piper for the garbage that the music industry foists upon us. It's the music industry that is paying for their mistakes.
Collectively, the music industry is breathing a sigh of relief that mp3's are not CD quality. They are also relieved that so few people have computers with good enough speakers (relatively) to bother listening to music purely on their computer. But they know what is around the corner. Sire/Reprise, Time Warner, BMG, you better start saving your pennies now, because the consumer is no longer going to tolerate your abuse.
I know a number of dedicated Napster users, and I can guarantee you that none of them were thinking "hey, this program will help me flout corporatization of media while encouraging beneficial freedom of information." I can guarantee you that most of them thought "wow, neat, I can get music and not pay for it". Easy theft-- cool, eh?
One of my housemates is an independent musician who makes a modest living off of her work. I don't think she would have a problem with people trading a few of her songs over Napster-- it would bring her more publicity. I do think she would be unhappy with people trading her entire CDs. After all, they would be stealing her work-- not from a big corporation, but from her, personally.
---- I'm going to lead you kicking and screaming, giggling and laughing into the future.
Hmmmmm, how bout if their Jewish, or Black, or Catholic, or Irish, or Arab, or Latino(a)? I've heard your rhetoric before, out of the mouths of some the most evil men the world has ever produced. As far as comprehending your statements, I understand them just fine, and I chose to make fun of them, how hard is that to comprehend?
He who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned my contempt. - "Big Al" Einstein
Theft and Stealing are based on the premise that you take someone elses property and in doing so, deny them the ability to use their property. There is NO denying of property use in napster. Therefore, it is NOT stealing. Saying someone commited murder, even though their victim is alive and well in the courtroom is like equating Napster to "stealing". It doesnt fit the definition.
Economically, the music industry is trying to create a scarcity of a good (music) in an environment where there is really no scarcity, and making incredibly high, abusive profits from it. If you want another example of an industry creating a false Scarcity, look at DeBeers and the whole diamond industry.
I dont understand how people can rationalize this with statements like "its the law, and the law must be followed" and "if you dont like their product, dont buy it - thats your right". It is also my right to hear and enjoy music of MY choice, not one of a companies.
Do not underestimate the impact of this case and fight on free speech and free press. This is banning mass distribution of media (communication) because some of it, even if a large portion of it has questionable legality. Its a horrible precedent, and far reaching.
Imagine if you could only print newspapers or flyers at corporate owned presses? Well, consider music distribution the same thing, and you quickly realize that we are talking about serious violations of freedom of speech and freedom of the press.
tagline
... hi bingo
One: Napster wins.
Two: Napster loses Ramifications of Two: Clone programs will be hunted and destroyed like the buffalo. They will be slaughtered for the simple pleasure of watching them go. Code and underground groups will release more, but there won't be much left of them after a few years of legal action and barriers set up all over the internet. The internet will be a parental-advisory-censored haven for 'the good' of the people, and we are on the receiving end of it. The days of trading music will be a memory, and covert operations will trade music with hundreds of clone programs, available for days at the most, before the links are lost forever, thanks to some suits with big paychecks in their pockets.This is it folks. Columbine was nothing. THIS is what will shape the internet. "It's just music," some say. That's bullshit. That's like saying the bill of rights is "just a piece of paper." I remember going from 1200 baud BBS' to T3's. Those were good days. Happy days. Days soon to be gone, only left to be revered in textbooks and propoganda films about how all those evil "hackers" were stealing and taking as much as they could, until the good, righteous RIAA and MPAA shut them down for good.
And there was much rejoicing.
And there was much rejoicing.
I mean he tends to harp on several themes excessively (alienation being the one that comes most readily to mind), but honestly, I've learned more from reading his articles than I have from some of the other articles on slashdot. There's always a kneejerk reaction "oh, another Katz article". What is it about him that really sets people off?
Katz is certainly correct that the implications of this type of ruling are quite widespread. The notion that owners of copyrights (people who have created some peice of intellectual property, or who have bought the rights to that property) should not be able to profit from their creations is a dangerous slippery slope. I think it is necessary to give creators some control of their intellectual property not only to motivate them to continue to create but to have the ability to continue to create.
Unfortunately, producing quality music is expensive: time in a recording studio can be hundreds or thousands of dollars per hour. And getting the word about your music out so it can be appreciated (one of the goals of any artist) can be even more expensive, even with sites like mp3.com and napster. Record labels offer artists both of these things, in return (usually) for the artist's signing over at least part of his coprights. Of course the record labels usually make absurd profits off artists works, while the artists themselves are left by the wayside.
Perhaps what is needed is some way for artists themselves to profit from their music without the overhead of major record labels, by selling individual songs over the internet, choosing their own prices in accordance with how much they value their music and how much the market is willing to pay for it. That way they would be able (hopefully) to afford to continue going to the studio to make music. So that we could all enjoy it (for as much as we value it). I don't know if there's anything like this out there yet but this would certainly fit with the way internet commerce seems to be moving: sites like e-trade becoming the low cost direct agents/brokers for people rather than large separate corperations like stock brokerage firms, and perhaps eventually record labels.
credo quia absurdum
95% of the time a VHS tape is used to record copyrighted material that TV networks are paying their money to produce. Sony, JVC, and all other similar companies that produce VHS tapes are promoting the of storage and transfer of copyrighted material. Shut them down!
This whole matter is absurd. Video tapes are doing the same thing Napster does. Sure, 5% of the use may be completely legal, but Napster is just like a tape. Its up to the discretion of the user to decide the best manner of using a product. And when the courts decide that they do not like the moral decisions of many million people, they shut Napster down? Napster is providing a service that people are misusing. Its not Napster's fault.
If you buy a car, speed, and then get into an accident can you sue the car company? It was their fault; by making a car that goes so fast they endagered your life!
This whole matter is utterly rediculous.
Sterolab and LDP are not obscure AT ALL. I couldn't think of anything much more mainstream that isn't Britney Spears and such. Napster only lists these types of artists with massive followings. Show me a listing for Lemzo Diamono and I'll be impressed. And even THAT I can get at the neighborhood CD store.
Very good Katz
Forget Microsoft, which by and large has been beneficial to developers and consumers alike over the long term.
/ index.html
The RIAA rips off artists and it rips off consumers to pad their own pockets.
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/06/14/love
This is an article by Courtney Love where she explains the way a publisher net $6.5 million on $10 million in album sales and the band will gross $2 million and net $170,000 (split between 4 or 5 band members) on a record. How, even though the band supposedly gets 20% of the gross receipts of album sales, almost all of that money gets "recouped" by the record label to pay for CD manufacturing, album production, video production, and marketing efforts. How record labels choose which bands to push not by the quality or potential appeal of the music, but by the margin of profit guaranteed to the label if they push Band A or Band B.
Most people are using napster to steal music. Theft is wrong.
However, as Eve 6 said in a radio broadcast, (and I quote), "The people downloading our music are stealing it, but our true fans will maybe steal it, but will still go to the store and by the CD, buy the t-shirts, the concert tickets. The people just stealing one or two songs would never have bought the CD anyway..."
Ok, so I perhaps paraphrased the ending, but you get the idea. Stealing music is wrong, but I do it anyway. I still buy CDs, I still buy the T-shirts, I still go to the concerts. And I do more so now than before Napster.
Dear Riaa, When are the CD sales going to start plumetting due to the increase in the pirating of music?
Oh, but it did accomplish something. Why wasn't piracy as rampant before Napster? Because IRC and usenet aren't as user-friendly. If my idiot roommate can't get a song by openning a program and typing in the name, he's not going to bother trying to figure out IRC. So this won't stop piracy, but if the RIAA can make piracy more difficult, they can stop a large part of the problem.
It's easy to think that people using Napster to fetch the latest Brittany Spears aren't really hurting anyone when you think of Best Buy, FYE, Media Play, etc as the corporate music retailers. Remember the small stores, though. A good friend of mine owns a small independant music store in south east Michigan. Time and time again people (generally 15 - 25 year old) will come in bragging about how they aren't going to buy album X because they just got it off of Napster. Sure, that's good and all for them, but that's a good $3 - $4 straight out of the pocket of the store.
I personally don't see anything wrong with trading music on the internet if it is going to promote the sales of CDs, but remember that more than half of a small store's revenue is generated by the sale of the Billboard top 100 albums. When you look at it this way, it's stupid for them not to sell such mainstream titles in order to help stay in buisness. These are the very same stores where you go to find the independant artists that we all love.
And what about small artists who are involuntarily traided on Napster? They still deserve to get paid. No matter how much an artist loves making music they still have to recoup at least the cost of manufacturing and distributing their albums, which they usually cover themselves. Napster helps keep people from taking the time to order the album from the artist or a smaller distributor because they already have the music. It's often only collectors who will take the time then. And no, mp3.com isn't always a viable alternative. Yes, it's nice and convient because mp3.com allows almost anyone to get their work out there, but face it, MOST groups on mp3.com aren't very good. There are many good groups on mp3.com, but the time it takes to sort through the absolute crap almost makes it feel worthless.
I've heard a bunch of complaints over the course of this whole napster fiasco that have basically said that CD's cost too much. So what is a fair price for music? I found a place that lets me download unlimited LEGAL mp3's for $9.99 a month. They don't have all of the major artists, but that's fine with me.
When Stephen King decides to try a new distribution format and charges a low price people complain about that too. Heck his first ebook release was being pirated within hours and it only cost $2.50.
I think it's time for all of the people out there saying things are too expensive to put up or shut up. When you see something released that is a fair price you should pay the money if you want the product.
"Signal 11 posts a lot of dull uninterested uninspired crap, []" --Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda
Read the rest of the quote in context at the link in my sig (worth a chuckle)
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
--
I was looking through napster's MOTD file, when I tried to log in this morning, and I noticed that it had some information on how to do something about what's going on. http://www.napster.com/labels.html All the email addresses of all the record labels, I personally wrote to the RIAA telling them my views. They also have a "buycott" day going on, the link is on the page above. Support supporting artists! :)
I was in my local Blockbuster Video last night and was appauled at the lack of selection. Even though most of their revenue is still from video tape rentals, they've converted half their store to DVD. Not just that, but there was no foreign section, and a very limited "Special Interests Section".
What does this have to do with Napster? Well, like the MPAA, the RIAA does not care what we, the public want, they only want to control what we're exposed to. When new distribution models and technology spring up, these two organizations either wish to make them proprietary (DVD) and take away the consumers' rights, or destroy them (Napster, VCR). This is why the RIAA doesn't care about the money-making potential of Napster (a centralized, controlable exchange medium, as opposed to client-to-client piracy), and why the MPAA thought DVD was so hot, but blew their top when De-CSS hit the scene.
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
I've said this before, and really received no meaningful response:
Where the hell has the RIAA been all these years?
My kid has had a two-well tape deck since she was five years old.
What the hell do ya do with a two-well tape deck?
Make copies!
Period!
The RIAA has looked the other way for several decades regarding the issue of copying.
Now, suddenly, when it's possible to make lots of good copies, fast, they want to make a big deal out of it.
They're a bunch of rich hypocrites!
t_t_b
--
I'm on PJ's "enemies" list! Are you?
Heck, let's even say they have developed a super encryption scheme that only allows me to listen to the music that I've downloaded (since we are talking fiction, lets go whole hog).
Now I can download AC/DC's "I've Got Big Balls" and listen to it to my heart's content. I can sample the latest Hanson tunes and rock out to classic Britney Spears. In downloading these songs, I am paying RIAApster afair amount of money they have established for each song. Heck, since this is fantasy, we'll even say I'm paying $3 as has been recommended by the industry.
How much of that $3 would the artist see?
I think it is interesting how the trade group has gottent the artists all hyped up, but really, how much of that money would the artist get. I think the label would consider this free money. Remember, it isn't the artist who owns the copyright of a recording it is the label.
This is not the way to build a lasting empire.
...my weaselometer needle has jammed in the little red wedge on the right hand side of the dial.
The point about copyright is that it, and the other intellectual property rights, made modern life possible.
Copyright started as a response to the printing press, that made large-scale copying (hundreds of accurate copies per worker in the time it took a monastic scribe to do one innacurate one) possible.
Suddenly, there was a reason why ideas had value over and above their intrinsic value, and a mechanism to make the authors and the printers rich sort of evolved from there. Suddenly it was possible to get rich by having and developing ideas; it was no coincidence that copyright and patents were developed at or around the start of the industrial revolution (which begat the technological infrastructure that you're reading this on, via a number of intermediary steps). The one makes the other possible - simple as that, and the whole thing is powered by the inexhaustibel resource of human greed. Would Watt have bothered if he and Boulton couldn't have got as rich as Croesus?
Katz tells us that "artists themselves have important rights", but it's a weasel qualifier. I suspect he's uncomfortable with the argument he's deploying, because he hasn't thought it through. The important right of the artist - of any creative individual - is to sell his or her work for a price he or she deems appropriate (zero in a lot of cases, but that's not mandatory).
That price, plus cost of sales and middleman's fees, gets paid by the people who get the benefit of the artist's work. And it should be paid: commercial work is not a gift, nor should it be.
The only justifiable objection to be raised to the RIAA/Metallica action is that the middlemen involved - RIAA's members, who Metallica chose to use in the ordinary course of their business - appear to overcharge mightily. There are two options here: cut out the middleman (for which Stephen King is to be applauded in showing a very plausible way forward) or use a cheaper middleman. Is that possible? It may be that the promotion and marketing that RIAA members supply justifies the high cost to the end-user, and their massive profits arise from a small take on each of billions of units. Maybe not, in which case there's room to undercut them. If there is, eventually the market will produce such an undercutter, but don't hold your breath. It's more profitable to join 'em than beat 'em, mostly.
Be all that as it may, no-one can, without hypocrisy, complain about the ordinary operation of capitalism unless and until they're prepared to stick up for the other possibilities. I ain't, simply because I enjoy the idea of living off the back of sweated third-world labour (we all are, or at least everyone with the technical and fiscal wherewithal to read slashdot is).
If Katz is sincere - and he may be - his argument is, roughly, equivalent to suggesting that you should have a right to go steal ripe crops from fields in protest at the mark-up applied by the commodities exchanges, wholesalers, distributors, bakeries and supermarkets on the price of bread.
-- AndrewD
A Maze of Twisty Little Laws, All Different.
When did they not? In the 1950's there was a famous vocal group called the Drifters ("Under the Boardwalk", etc.). They had many hits, first on the R&B charts, later crossing over into the pop charts. The Drifters embodied the spirit of Doo-Wop -- a spontaneous expression of street-corner culture.
One day in the late 50's, the Drifters' producers FIRED THE ENTIRE GROUP. They had the right to do this because they owned the name -- the members were just employees. A new group of singers was brought in and, still known as the Drifters, they had some more hit records. The public didn't know or didn't care.
Corporate/Popular culture is voracious. William Gibson pointed out somewhere that the lead time is shortening -- that "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was a spontaneous phenomenon for about 2 weeks before being captured, before it was being played on the runway at Paris fashion shows.
For once, Katz is starting to speak some sense. What essentially we see here is the the gradual reduction of the power in the individual. The individual isn't important any more. As long as Corporations continue to get their revenue/profits from the generally ignorant buying public, what do they care ? I view Ultra Capitalism (which is the stage we are soon approaching - most markets now have a limited amount of major players) to be as harmful as Communism. The individual loses choice. I cannot choose who gets my money... and the choices are starting to become harder now. It's a matter of picking the lesser of evils. I suspect in under 5 years that we shall start to get total monopolies in most sectors. Governments will be seen as minor inconveniences - a multinational will just up-sticks and go somewhere else. This will probably proliferate through to the 'net. Corporations and Governments will endeavour to place further legislation on net users, effectively regulating it and removing the free spirit. Katz actually gets something right for once - the walls will come up. The only way to crush this is to effectively group together and destroy what we've created - whilst looking at an alternative media for free expression. The problem is, I don't think that enough people have the balls to group together like that and protest. The others don't understand what's going on. Yes, this is a really pessimistic attitude to take of the future for the 21st Century, but I think it's inevitable. M.
The abouve words were misspelled. The grammar and sentence structure was so horrible that Word kept choking on lengthy, grammar-fucked paragraphs. Reading ease was 41%, and grade level was 13 on Flesch-Kincaid and 17.1 on Coleman-Liau. 15 percent of the document was written with passive verbs. Is this writing for the web? I'd have to say no.
Lowmag.net
We have the right to complain about anything we want, after all, this is what we are doing with the RIAA. Its like saying "don't buy cd's" when that's really the only option if I want music that I can take anywhere. Sure, you say "burn your own" yeah, not everybody has a CD burner. Besides, those burned CD's don't work in 100% of the cd players. Complaining is everyone's god given right. I believe it's also the first amendment of the constitution if you care to look it up. Even if you don't agree with what he says, you must respect it.
witty sig goes here
I never once thought about e-mailing Rob and telling him to stop posting about these topics. I figure that out of the 12 - 15 Slashdot stories posted per day, on average, I should be happy if 8 - 10 of them interest me personally.
"...You can't please everyone,
so you got to please yourself"
(R. Nelson)
- Robin
Monday I heard of this great band because I accidentally downloaded a tune from napster: Nickleback. So I downloaded a couple of tunes and man, this is good shit!
I seriously considered getting the CD. As a teacher, my pockets are lined with cash to spend on CD's that have only 1 or 2 good songs on it. I believe in encouraging good artists, and from what I heard, Nickleback have more than two good songs on the CD.
If it weren't for Napster, I would have never heard of Nickleback, so they would have never gotten my money. Unfortunately it is a canadian band, and I am going to buy the CD just to encourage canadian kick-ass bands, but knowing that a lot of money goes to the RIAA makes me sick. So here's my money, RIAA, enjoy it while it lasts, cuz now that napster won't exist anymore, you won't see me buy any new CD's!
But...
I want to write a program called "Katzster", wherein, I take every work by Jon Katz, scan it in via OCR, and "share" it with everyone on the 'net. Who's with me?
I'm tired of paying the big buisness, coporatist, publishing companies that publish books, Besides, this is the digital age where all media should be free.
Of course, Jon Katz should have no objection.. he's fine with Musicians losing the right to enforce their copyrights.
-------- "All I want in life's a little bit of love to take the pain away" --Spiritualized
Pop culture is basically whatever is popular. Popularity comes from hype, which comes from the media. Big corporations own all that. They spend lots of money to generate this content. So of course, "corporations control pop culture". They produce it. Complaining about what they produce is like saying "I wish my bread maker spewed Dr. Pepper". This is America. We are bland and simple minded sheep. Let's just sit in our trailer and watch wrestling while we listen to N-Sync, and then complain about our teachers. If you don't like it, move to Canada. "If the music is good, there's no need to label it" -- commercial for Living in the 90's compilation, Razor and Tie records.
Intellectual property has a long history. Back in the middle ages, patents on inventions would be granted by a local lord, king or emperor.
Johannes Gutenberg (inventor of the printing press) was repeatedly pressured by friends and business partners to get his invention protected by a patent.
He always refused on moral grounds, saying that his invention was for all humanity, used amongst others to break the information monopoly of the clergy.
The printing press is often been called the starting point of the information age, but the Gutenberg spirit seems to have got lost along the way.
"Lead has changed the face of the world more than gold ever did. And the lead in the printing press changed it more than the lead in the rifle"
(Lichtenberg)
A042
Not confused enough? http://translate.google.com/translate?u=www.slashdot.jp&hl=en&ie=UTF8&sl=ja&tl=en
Have you ever been involved in the making of a CD? Doesn't seem like it. Lets assume there is an unsigned band called Kepano Green. They have 12 songs they want to record, so they head over to a recording studio. Guess what? They have to pay the studio *before* they sell any CDs. So all those "other workers" have already been paid. Janitors, security guards? What are you talking about?? They are paid already, too (and what kind of place has "security" unless it's some big shot label?) And they pay up front for the 5000 CDs they have made. They go to local record stores/bookstores and try to work out a distribution deal. The record label comes in and says "Ohh, let us take care of all those expenses for you". But in the end, it's a deal with the devil because they milk you dry for all youre worth. No, I would rather my money go directly to the artist and let THEM decide how to use it, than have the RIAA leech and suck the musician dry.
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"Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief."
That's Katz's motto apparently. Corporations don't own popular culture. Anybody can easily make their music available for free on the Internet. Lots of people do it already. But Katz doesn't want that -- he needs his free Brittney Spears MP3s.
Just like CmdrTaco and others bitching about Open Source and then firing up DiabloII on their Windoze machines.
Ok, that works as a good short-sighted perspective.
In a broader view, technology is again changing society. We treat ideas and expressions like they are physical commodities? We won't anymore: technological evolution will force us not to.
There will always be musicians and writers and idea people. They just won't make money the way they do today.
So we have a choice: we can either try to uninvent the technology, or we can begin to cope with the changes it forces.
I, for one, welcome our new Antichrist overlord.
I am a libertarian and I strongly believe in not having government involvement.
Everyone continues to ignore the fact that amongst this HUGE time of change that we have been undergoing in the last 20 years, that the natural order of many things will change. The fact is that the day of the multi-million dollar artist is gone... what we have seen in the past is an artificially high demand for music merely because of the fact that certain conduits could deliver it... namely big name record companies through slave record stores.
Now, when the economic dynamics of things change and allow the supply chain to flow freely, we are now seeing the true value of the musicians that we steal MP3s from. The record companies are afraid of this because they took a risk! They are the ones that were stupid enough to offer michael jackson a 40 million dollar + contract and now they are stuck with it. They are scared becuause they bought stock that they thought would be worth something and now things changed and they are whining about it.
The truth is that musicians deserve compensation for their music... from now on, the great musicians will earn a few million dollars from high priced concert tours that everyone is willing to pay for. The day of the 10+ million dollar musician is over... and for GOOD REASON!!! Dont be sad though... these great musicians will still be rich... and famous... and being a millionaire is far beyond the dreams of most people... those musicians should be happy and the record companies SHOULD be out of business for being stupid enough to wrestle with Napster.
Please respond to this message... i am dying for a good argument against my opinion.
-- Betting on the survival of the media industry is a serious risk. I advise investing elsewhere.
It may seem like it takes awhile, but I think that it's actually much faster than the alternatives. Before I got into MP3.com finding new music consisted of two options for me. The first was listening to the radio. Considering that radio stations invariably play the same stuff over and over and over again, I found maybe one or two new songs a week that I liked this way. The other method of finding new music that I used was going to the CD store and buying a bunch of CDs from artists that I read about or heard about and I thought I might like. This was slightly more productive than listening to the radio as it might turn up 6 or 7 songs I liked (with a typical purchase of 5 cds), but it was far more expensive.
I propose that using MP3.com is far more efficeint than either using the radio or buying CDs of potentially likeable material. In my first 3 days of using MP3.com this year I discovered nearly 3 hours of music that I really liked. That is much more than I could ever hope to find using the radio and much quicker than wading through a huge pile of CDs. One of the beauties about finding music on MP3.com is that if you don't like something you can skip it and move on to something else, unlike the radio and somewhat unlike purchased CDs where I usually feel compelled to listen to what I've paid for even if I don't like it. I guess having DSL helps a lot with the skipping - it's much harder to skip around when you're connecting via modem. I used to feel the same way as you about MP3.com before I got my DSL.
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Free P2P Backup, Windows & Linux
This history also points out that what are now known as copyrights were used long ago to limit who could and could not print almost anything. Once again the privilege (and money) generally went to the rich and well-connected.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
even with all the problems we see, people still don't get it that copyrights are inherently evil. And copyrights in any form that restricts an individual from openly copying and relling and redistributing what they please is coercive and unethical. it is us, who still grasp onto little fractions of the copyright idea that are the true sorrce of the problem.
This really drives me nuts. Every Napster/mp3 article Katz posts mentions how people are now accustomed and have grown up with free music online and now it's too late to turn back.
Where does he get this from?
The mp3 format has only been around for 3, 4 years at best! Every single one of us remembers when we didn't have it! And what's more, lots of us don't have high-speed connections, making downloading mp3s kind of a pain in the ass.
The only people who _might_ be really accustomed to mp3s would have to be 8-to-10 years old, the youngest ages that people could be to not really remember internet-less life. But I doubt these are the people Katz is talking about.
No, I think Katz is talking about the college kids who have downloaded music so long that it's easy for them to deny that they're stealing. But they're certainly damn well intelligent enough to know that it's still stealing.
Now I'm not slamming all college kids; I can't because I am one. But surfing the local dorm network yields gigs and gigs of full albums on the HDs of students who think that risk-free stealing is somewhat less bad than other forms of stealing. It kinda pisses me off.
So, I really want to know. What is Katz' reasoning? Does he think that the college kids don't know that they're stealing from the artists they adore? I doubt it. Denial or selfish rationalization is more the case.
[Disclaimer: Yes, I do hate the RIAA. I am not defending them. But mp3 piracy steals from both the RIAA and the artists, and hurting one does not negate hurting the other.]
-JimTheta, jimtheta@beer.com
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My stupid web site
This sort of thing just goes to prove the benefit of mp3s.
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
Even then, people like Thomas Jefferson preached radical notions of open media. He feared the ownership of ideas: "that ideas should freely spread from one to another all over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man .."
Get it right man, ideas are not implementations. You are free to share any idea you want: mathematics, science, politics, even your own anarchist drivel. You are not free to share the product of someone's labors without their consent.
Free Ideas == Free Speech
Free Works == Free Music
Copyright and trademarks are now deemed legal "rights" granted to property owners
What's so insidious about this? Who should the right belong to?
As Jenkins points out in his article, if Shakespeare, Lewis Carroll and the authors of the Bible were covered by the DMCA, none of their works would have received a fraction of the attention or influence they've generated.
Bah, that's just rhetoric. If Will, Louie, or Moses were looking to make a buck on their hard work, they had a real opportunity to do so without some kid in his basement republishing it for free. Besides, the works didn't achieve their broad audience til well after a reasonable period of copyright protection passed and they fell into the public domain -- after the authors were dead. If you want to argue something, argue with Disney how long this period should be.
Fair use is the right to use copyrighted material, regardless of the wishes of the creator or owner of the material. A copyright gives the owner certain rights; fair use limits them. Under the right of fair use, you can quote from this column to criticize it, quote sections from it, and reproduce them to attack, support me, or disseminate my views.
Fair use has been applied in 2 ways: to give critics the ability to dissect, discuss, or parody a work in part or as a whole (as part of free speech), and to grant the consumer the right to transfer a work from one media to another (for his own enjoyment and convenience). It does not and should not allow you to take something purchased for private use and broadcast it to the world. That's nowhere close to original intent.
Fair use doesn't ignore or abuse the rights of the author, it just extends the consumer's rights for practical considerations. It's the people that abuse this clause that are forcing the law to crack down and formalize exactly what it entails.
Rather than seek some new legal middle-ground -- sites that offer some free as well as paid music, for example, or experiment with new ways to provide artists with revenue -- the music industry has sought and won the most extreme legal remedies, ones that will continue to be undermined by new technologies and the evolution of new music-sharing sites, some legal and above-ground, some not.
Most people wonder the same thing, but how can they expect artists to start publishing music online for "a reasonable price" when there are numerous ways to get the music for free? It won't be a viable economic model until there is some reason for people to actually pay the owner for the product.
Yes, music and television are routinely broadcast over the airwaves, books are borrowed from libraries -- but this is the first time in history where duplication costs are so minimal and the fidelity of n-generation copies is so good. When it becomes easy enough to build a high quality library of works with just an anonymous click of a button, then copyright is in serious trouble.
Rolled over by this ruling are the fans who've experienced years of extraordinary access to a shared culture, and have experienced access to music as an ingrained part of their lives and culture.
I suppose that's what it comes down to... "I've always pirated music, and now they wanna take it away from me!" When does the ease and popularity of an action suffice to make it legal? Should we have started cracking down on it when it was a couple people exchanging lyrics over the ARPAnet? How about the first public FTP server with software on it? How about we just give up? Or maybe, just maybe, when some company starts making money simply by trafficking works that are almost copyrighted by someone else. When is the right time for an author to stand up for his rights?
We are a nation that must learn how to respect intellectual property, so that artists are duly rewarded and consumers continue to enjoy a rich cultural experience. Previous generations didn't have to contend with these issues, so they are poorly equipped to teach the current generations -- we have to figure it out for ourselves!
I stand by my assertion that the people who expect to get all of their music, movies, and software for free simply haven't produced anything of value yet. If they had, and it was stolen, they'd be screaming bloody murder as well. Don't blame the RIAA, they are fighting for the very rights that you may want someday. Trust me, a few free CDs are not worth selling out for.
Matt Slot / Bitwise Operator / Ambrosia Software, Inc.
Far from the RIAA hobbling consumers' use of such services, citizens may end up rewriting copyright law, said Jennifer Granick, a high-tech criminal defense attorney based in San Francisco who has represented Kevin Poulsen and other hackers in court.
/. crowd is how many of you have written your Senators and Congressmen about this? If this is the groundswell everyone makes it to be, lawmakers will learn real quick that they can either amend copyright laws in the public--not corporate--interest or they can expect to find other employment at re-election time.
"The popularity of Napster shows that copyright law has to evolve," she said. "This ruling may be technically right, but there will be a time when you look back on this as The Early Days."
--From ZDNews
So, the real question for the
Liberty or Death -- Don't Tread on Me
> The Napster finding also highlights the political vulnerability of the tech culture.
This only highlights the vulnerability of tech culture for those people who can't fend for themselves in this brave new world. I'm sure that the more tech savvy online population, and it doesn't take much to be more tech savvy than you, Jon, will only be effected by this for the very short term. Once they discover Gnutella, or go back to the old MP3-trading FTP sites (did you even know that they existed before this?) the culture will move back underground and out of the reach of monolithic authority organizations as well as the mainstream users.
And right about now that sounds fine by me.
Slashdot is a free information and discussion resource, except for the banner ads. When you start paying for content then you have the right to complain. But for now, it is their site and you are visiting.
John S. Rhodes
WebWord.com -- Usability Vortal
How to Download YouTube Videos
Everybody's be-atching about how this hurts the music fan, but I disagree. This is a good thing for the music fan. And I'll tell you why: 1. by doing this, the RIAA shows their ignorance. if they never get with the times, then we stand a good chance of changing things for the better. If they were on their toes, we'd be screwed because no matter what we threw at them they'd be able to handle it. 2.We are going to see a polarity among musicians. people are taking sides, and it's not the kind of thing you can't pick a side on. We'll have a number of big-name musicians step up and speak their minds (radiohead, chuck-d, courtney love...) and this will spread the word to the MASSES who didn't know crap about it before. 3. basically this is a question of freedom and rights, and it's gonna compell a lot of people who don't know much about music/technology to get into the fray. (but we have to be sure they are INFORMED correctly) All of this spells CHANGE. and any change is good change coming from the back-ass-wards system the RIAA has set up to pull money out of every body else's pockets. I think that this decision is exactly what is needed to polarize, motivate, and agitate people. Obviously the RIAA is going to lose, in the end, because they are ignorant. :)
"What thou shalt not, I shalt did!" -Bart Simpson
Stop right there.
Of course, we know that as soon as a musician picks up an instrument for the first time, they become filthy rich drug-addled perverts. So enjoy the fruits of their labor, guilt-free.
Kong
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Shoot, a fella' could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff.
Napster shuts down (Venture Cap's lose investment)
Napster employees shrug, get jobs elsewhere
Users shrug, DL Napigator/Gnutella/Freenet etc... MP3 sharing continues.
Winners: Lawyers
Neutral: Users, Employees
Losers: RIAA, VCs
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Anyone surprised by the ruling is a fool. This is America, land of the fee and home of the depraved, of course pinciples of freedom are not going to be applied. When a group of people can not even organize their own religion on a piece of land they legally habitate out in the boonies, without having federal agents show up to burn everyone to death, what makes you think you have a right to peer to peer networking? Those in power have so divided us, the people, that we are truly conquered. Like the boneheads we Americans have come to be, we embrace the labels which our applied to ourselves and others. We see people who those in power attach a label to, and then we look the other way(many actually cheer and watch) as those in power violate numerous laws(not to mention the constitutional right of due process) and burn people alive, with no trial. Just a condemnation at the whim of a jack-booted thug and boom, the death sentence is applied. And we expect that while we look away from such inhuman barbaric acts, that these same people in power are going to respect your rights as a consumer? Bah, quit playing the part of a fool. You lie down with dogs, you wake up with fleas. It is saddening, very sad and depressing, that people can look the other way and not have moral outcry when their fellow man is burned alive in the so-called 'land of the free' because their fellow man(whom they do not know personally) is labeled "fanatic" by the government. Then, when a court rules that a popular service, which is used extensively to break the laws of said government, be shut down, then the "moral"(SIC) outcry begins. The shock and the outrage come pouring out in torrents. Stupid is as stupid does.
Show me an effect without cause and then I'll believe in chaos.
Well stated. Personal responsibility isn't one of the strong points of Katz-ites.
It is interesting that wide spread sharing of the written word on the internet hasn't been adopted. Quite possible it is just because it isn't that interesting or there really is too much already available for free. At least in that case the individual author would own the copyright and not the publishing house.
This is not the way to build a lasting empire.
It also seems logical that people who can download new CD's for free won't pay $16 for them, and perhaps shouldn't have to.
Perhaps the MPAA should sue every person who thinks a 128kbps MP3 sounds equal to the CD audio it was encoded from. The majority of people who listen to MP3's (and whom don't encode MP3's) don't seem to be very picky.
Bottom line - compiling an album's tracks by collecting a set of MP3's (even higher bitrate ones) is not an exact substitution for a published, mainstream CD.
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---- Politics: Kissing ass and pointing blames.
If that judge is up for reelection it would
be possible to help said judge into early
retirement, assuming people would bother
showing up on election day.
You go write that script. Then I'll write one that will assemble blocks from the even more numerous Katz-bashing posts so that we can handle all the Katz-posting and Katz-bashing automatically.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Napster asked the RIAA to provide a list of acts the RIAA didn't want distributed on Napster. That way, any artist could opt out of Napster but the artists who liked the idea could stay. The RIAA said they were "unable" to do so.
How hard is it to open up your database of artists you own and hit Print?!
This ain't about piracy.
grep -ri 'should work'
*sees a troll* *trolls the troll*
An insightful troll.. my oh my...
So Im a Karma Whore because I follow the most recent napster clones and keep the links stored somewhere? And when I see the opportunity to share this information its Karma Whoring? No Signal11's post was fine thank you.
It was presented cleany the links were not even ones you could click on...
A good comment is one that provokes discussion which this one does so it should get moderated up since it is neither troll nor a quick link. Signal, has at least proven that he went to each of those sites and explained what they were which makes this interesting at worst and informative at best.. I dont.. think.. sig's gotta Karma Whore anymore.. heh
Jeremy
If you think education is expensive, try ignornace
"this is a short-sighted betrayal for millions of mostly younger people who've learned to love music online, and who spend billions of dollars on it."
That's a nicely constructed sentence, implying that people have spent billions of dollars on online music -- when in fact the whole point of Napster is that people have spent exactly zero dollars on the music.
Or this one:
"The ruling will definitely set the tone for how intellectual property is defined on the Internet"
You mean set the tone that artists actually have some right not to have their work ripped off for free?
The argument that Napster helps sales is a big red herring. Maybe it does -- but artists should have a right to decide if they want to use Napster as a loss leader or not. If you tell me that smacking me in the head will make me feel better, well maybe it will, but can I decide if I want you to?
The thing that really peeves me about Napster is that it is being presented as a halfway step towards real secure digital content. Yeah right. Napster may be a cool hack, but all it really is is a database and a file transfer protocol -- woohoo, weren't those problems solved about 25 years ago? Napster conveniently avoids any hard issues involved. If secure digital content is solved, it will be through combined efforts of content producers, hardware companies, software companies, etc. Napster's only effect will be to spur the process along; in no way does it deserve a seat at the table.
- adam
I sent this to everybody listed on the napster site atw ww.napster.com/labels.html</a>
<br>
<a href="http://www.napster.com/labels.html">http://
<br>
<p>
Basically, the issue of piracy is still being linked to the use of Napster and this is absurd. THE PEOPLE USING THE TECHNOLOGY CAN MISUSE IT OR CHOOSE TO USE IT APPROPRIATELY. BLAME THE PEOPLE NOT NAPSTER!
<p>
By conspiring to shut down a file sharing program due to unconfirmed charges of piracy, you have demonstrated your greed and unwillingness to change. The thinking exemplified by companies such as yourself in accusing customers of being "pirates" when you regularly expand your already considerable profits at the expense of those same customers demonstrates that you are neither in line with the needs of your customers nor dedicated to establishing a more reasonable economic system. You are further attacking technologies when it is unquestionable that it is the persons involved in the use of the technologies [rather than the technologies themselves] who are the "pirates" if any such "pirates" exist.
<p>
In response to your attack, I would like you to know that I will no longer purchase CD based music unless that music is published by companies which are independent of the auspices of the RIAA and similar organizations. By attacking a file sharing program you have begun a war which you will not win and you have lost at least one customer <b>for life.</b>
<p>
I hope you will re-consider attacks of this nature and engage in open debate with your customers as to the future of your industry because if you are truly unwilling to do so, then you will soon find a substantial decline your CD sales. This decline will not be accompanied by any web sites toward which you can point your finger. It will come because you yourselves have raised public consciousness on this issue to the point where real questions are now being asked about your industry's role in the future of music and those questions will be answered by consumers who now know that their freedoms are limited by your narrow perspectives.
<br>
<br>
James Richards<br>
Former buyer of RIAA CDs
With 800+ karma points.. you better believe it! :)
Everybody reading this knows who the real losers are -- the Net, music-lovers and sharers, artists not under contract to large conglomerates, individual consumers, and the notion of the Internet as a free and unrestricted space that connects individuals to information in culture in new and powerful ways
OK Jon, I'll bite... I'm an avid user of the net, I'm a music lover, I'm an artist not under contract to anyone, and I'm an individual consumer. I don't feel I've lost anything (yet). If the internet ends up restricted to the point where all filesharing is eliminated, then I'll have lost something. Sharing files containing something that other have created and hold rights to without compensating those other people IS WRONG. Maybe Napster shouldn't be the one sued, but I'm sick of your anti-IP rantings. IP is valid property - if I don't own my thoughts, then what do I own?
Addlepated - punk & metal
Theres a big difference between a single taped copy of a friends tape...or even 25 copies....To a service that serves a copy to several tens of thousand...even hundreds of thousands...even dare I say...a million people. There is an obvious scale issue here.
As Low Pass Industries' polytheist chaplain, it is my daunting and unhappy task to write a fitting eulogy for the much-loved MP3 trading software Napster. In a controversial ruling this Wednesday, Napster was ordered to shut down by judge Marilyn Patel, much to the dismay of music-loving blue-collar criminals worldwide.
How does one summarize the world's feelings of loss for a service almost as cherished as it was morally ambiguous? How does one express the grief that each user must now be experiencing having been denied access to the precious Menudo, Ah-Ha and Jeff Foxworthy MP3s they have not yet downloaded? How does one communicate a loss unlike anything the world's wealthy have had to endure before?
If we are to believe countless tiresome and depressing eulogies: we must do it through remembrance.
Always remember how wonderful it felt downloading those first few songs knowing that you hadn't paid a dime for them. Remember the incredible thrill of committing misdemeanors in your underwear without the slightest threat of legal repercussion or exposure to the elements. Remember how relieving it was to finally be able to voice your latent hatred of Metallica without just seeming obsessive and crazy. Remember overcoming your guilt by using the Napster Forgiveness Machine. And remember how freeing it was to be able to get a copy of Eye of the Tiger whenever you needed it without having to endure the judgmental glare of the record store check-out clerk.
But most of all, always remember how exciting it felt to struggle for a worthy cause: that people shouldn't have to pay for anything that's really easy to steal.
Yes, friends, on this sad occasion it is certainly important that we mourn the tragic loss of the Napster company, a bold and fearless new breed of company that for once put the facilitation of theft ahead of having a solid business model, but it is important also to remember those suffering the most from this loss - the countless users that relied on Napster to supply them with copyrighted material free of charge.
They weren't, as the media so often portrayed them, faceless sociopathic monsters - they had lives, they had stories to tell, and they had names. Names like joebooty455 and tittylikr9449. And who could forget good old sirfuksal0t99 and his penchant for swearing at the ladies? Their suffering, along with the suffering of countless others affected by this tragedy, should not be forgotten.
But do not despair, friends. Humanity has always shown great resilience in the face of adversity -- and I believe this instance will be no different. It has been demonstrated throughout history, from the rejection of prohibition to our profound disregard for all modern anti-drug laws: we will continue, whenever it pleases us, to reject these ridiculous and inhuman laws that only serve to delay our true destiny of gouging each other's eyes out with shrimp forks.
Be brave, ladies and gentlemen, be brave. And remember, as Benjamin Franklin once almost said: "Where there is a will to not pay for copyrighted music, there is a way to not pay for copyrighted music."
Thank you and good night,
http://www.lowpass.net
THE CHILDREN!! THE CHILDREN !! WON'T SOMEBODY PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN ??
The article commenting on the Napster situation is in error. The author continually used words like "ruling" and "finding" when nothing of the sort took place this week. A SF Judge essentially agreed to place an injunction on Napster's service at the request of the RIAA. There was no "ruling" or "finding" for or against anyone. It was an injunction pending the outcome of the RIAA's copyright infringement suit. Please do not muddy up the issue by declaring that the Judge in SF has made a definitive, precedent-setting ruling. It just creates more misinformation.
Corporations created popular culture? Wrong. Corporations took advantage of artists and manipulated popular culture to their advantage. They didn't create it themselves, they just used it. Being anti-corporate doesn't mean one has to stop using things one gets legitimate pleasure from. Drinking Diet Dr. Pepper ice-cold gives me slack. Why fight it? That doesn't mean that I can't dis the corporate structure for being uber alles. Gain pleasure from whatever will give it to you. If you don't want your bucks profiting corporations you don't like, then find a way to gain the same pleasure without it. p.
You're right. There's no such thing as a free lunch.
I've never heard of Copyright described in terms of a contract, but the definition actually fits quite nicely.
The first party to the contract is the artists.
The second party to the contract is the public.
The artists agree to make their work available, and commit it to the public domain. This is embodied in the "limited times" language of the constitution. The work is consideration.
The public, as represented by the government, agrees to, in exchange, grant a limited commercial monopoly over the work. The monopoly is limited both in the sense that the copyright must expire, and also by various doctrines, such as first sale, and fair use.
Both sides benefit from this arrangement. The artists gain a commercial monopoly over their work, and the public receives the work into the public domain, creating the national heritage.
The RIAA and MPAA are attempting, through a combination of technical measures and new laws, to eliminate both the first sale and fair use provisions. They have already effectively eliminated the concept of copyright expiration by the simple expedience of bribing Congress to extend the copyright terms 20 years at a time. They also bought the DMCA, and are fighting tooth and nail to secure their purchase -- they have purchased the elimination of fair use.
Quite simply, the RIAA and MPAA want to change the copyright system from an exchange of consideration -- a contract -- between artists and the public, into a public subsidy, where copyright owners acrue all the benefits perpetually, and the public acrues only the "benefit" of being subject to the complete control of the media industry.
That is the "free lunch" that the MPAA and RIAA want. Napster is the public saying, "NO."
Napster just posted on their website advocating a "buy-cott". That is very smart. They want Napster users to go out this weekend and BUY(as opposed to the ranting idiots here who suggest boycotting) RIAA CD's to support the artists, and write to RIAA stating that they are Napster users who just bought a bunch of RIAA CD's. Apparently Shawn Fanning is a lot smarter than most of you here. This is THE way to get the public on your side. I was against Napster's continued operation until this. Now I think that they deserve to survive, for this brilliant strategy and good-willed gesture.
Hey, I think this is a great idea. In fact, I think I might send money to some of the artists whose mp3s I have that I've grown fond of.
I think this service greatly decreases the gap they feel between themselves and the artist of preference. I have a suggestion though. You could close the gap even further by providing the opportunity to include the payer's name and/or a short text message saying how much they enjoy their music. Perhaps be able to include an email address with the hope they might get contacted by their artist. Not likely to happen, but don't underestimate the market of hope (lottery).
I think the musicians will be delighted to know that they have fans that pay for their music with no hardcopy distribution costs on their part.
------
wildmage
Memoirs of a Mad Scientist
WHAT? You think that corporations created popular culture? Thanks what Nike, Coke & the rest want you to think.
"Popular culture" originally was an academic term used to describe the art, music, and traditions of "the masses" in contrast to "high culture," the arts, music and traditions of the aristocracy.
Eventually, corporations realized that there was plenty of profit in exploiting and creating popular culture, so they learned how to become part of it. But it doesn't have to be that way.
Music is a great example of this. Even though the major labels essentially own the airwaves, no one holds a patent on the blues. Or rock music. Or any other genre you care to name. Not yet anyways. But Napster threatened to return us back to the old days when pop culture wasn't mediated by corporate culture.
As Philip Kennicott has said in this great Washington Post article on Napster and popular culture:
A century ago, music that was shared by millions of listeners, that seemed an inseparable part of daily life, that could be used to immediately establish a bond of familiarity between strangers, would have been called folk music. Music of the people, its origins dim or forgotten. The very notion of possessing it, of controlling who could hear it and exchange it, of making a profit from it, would have been ridiculous.
The demise of Napster--if that's the effect of Wednesday's preliminary injunction shutting down access to the Internet music-exchange site as of midnight tonight--has arrested the evolution of popular music into a new kind of folk music. Temporarily, that is.
But with Gnutella, OpenNap, & FreeNet, we can return control of popular music to the people. And since labels are still selling millions of CDs, I don't think they'll be hurt--unless the RIAA boycott hits them hard. Here's hoping....
--
"Deep in the ocean are treasures beyond compare,
Deep in the ocean are treasures beyond compare; but if you seek safety, it is on the shore.
Corporations created popular culture? Wrong. Corporations took advantage of artists and manipulated popular culture to their advantage.
Not so. Pick most any band, and you'll find they were slingshotted into fame by distribution and marketing. For example, right *now* you'll find bands in Seattle that are better than the well-known Seattle bands of the 1990s. They may be amazing. They may have local fans. But are they pop culture? Not in the least. You don't see them on MTV. You don't have hundreds of wannabe bands trying to imitate them. You won't find their CDs on the desks of engineers and stockbrokers. But if Big Record Company X pushed money behind them and put them on MTV and promoted them in a way to make people think they were hip and underground, then they'd move into pop culture. This doesn't happen in today's world without corporate muscle.
Ferchrissake... It's not about the record companies screwing the little guys... It never has been, and I've definitely had enough of this bloody topic!
Napster, is for people to illegally download pirated music. That's all it is. Anybody who's lookning for music they're allowed to download will do it much quicker and faster in google or at mp3.com.
All this "fight the power" bullshit is bogus. I love mp3, and I've used napster to steal some music from artists like eminem. However I like his stuff and will buy the albums. I've also ripped a whole shitload of my own albums.
It's good to fight the power when you're in the right, but this time we're not. This time the (comparitively) good guys one. It's not like any of this makes it impossible to steal music, it just makes it harder, and now nobody's got a chance of getting rich from it.
</rant>
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
You've got to be kidding 'Corporations *created* popular culture'? Coporations hype and exploit popular culture. And they do so with one purpose in mind. To make a buck. (which is not wrong in and of itself IMHO). The problem with Crops is that many times they don't care how they make that buck. Bottom line baby.
Open Source, better than C++ for code reuse.
Hey guys, I was thinking about this...everyones bitching about anti-corporate this and anti-corporate that....Well, they was I see it...corporations are the natural result of a free market economy like we have in the United States. You can't have a functioning, profitable, and developing free market economy that doesn't result in large business oriented organization being created. Sure they can be A-holes sometimes but really, the free market economy is what has led America to have the strongest economy in the world. Besides....If you're Anti-Corporate what are you then? Communist???? Anarchist??? You either enjoy the comforts Corporations and the freemarket economy provide you along with all its bad aspects or you are a Communist or an Anarchist. You can't walk the wire.
More importantly, however, you still have a choice in the media you consume. Nobody is forcing you to become a consumer to the products of a large, commercialized media conglomerate. Don't buy commercial music, don't read big commercial newspapers, don't watch TV, etc. Most of those media are increasingly laden with advertising, harmful social messages, violence, and psychological trickery. We can help build an alternative media culture, both by contributing and by consuming outside the corporate media wasteland.
This is one of the reasons that RIAA and midia corporations are in no danger at all. Our society is used to have a "midia father" that tell us what we suposed to like or not. (please don't think I am talking about you, I am talking generaly about average person that linstens to what ever is on MTV or something)
The artists benefit from this? Yes and no, the few that get contracts and fame shurely does. But thosands of other don't get so lucky, but they dream about it every noght. :-)
Does the fans benefit from this? I don't know, but if you would ask my opinion I would have to say no. The artists that are choosen for sucess, except in rare ocasions, are not selected by merit but by marketability, and with the possibility of digitaly tune a voice they don't even need to know how to sing. :-/
MP3 and internet are here to change all that? Wait and see. There must thousands of unknown musicians that are making their songs available, but I never heard of a single one that could make himself visible. Downloading a MP3 takes a lot of time for most people, and many people would not download something that they don't know.
--
"take the red pill and you stay in wonderland and I'll show you how deep the rabitt hole goes"
[]'s Victor Bogado da Silva Lins
^[:wq
PReach it brother....Right on!
So he asked me what I thought of his company, to which I replied "I think you are ripping the artist off". He said smugly "We just don't have copyrighted work, we are a way for independent artists to distribute thier work". Ever try to search napster for a band or song whose name you haven't heard of? What a crock! Then he tried to tell me "what the artist wants". I informed him that many artists signed with a label...many well known new artists in fact are currently in debt to their contracts (not that this is fair) and it's not just the record company that gets screwed if they don't have as many of thier records sold as possible and can't get out of that debt. Look at a band like TLC. They declared bankruptcy after their biggest hit album.
It's a hard life for these bands (outside of the glory of being on stage and the screaming fans). Many working musicians under contract have to spend thier lives on tour working much harder than any programmer. It must be nice hustle a stupid greedy VC, get advertisers for your site and be able to buy all that stuff and still claim you are doing the artist a favor.
It became very apparent that he really had no clue as to the life of the typical working musician. So then I wanted to hear him play that guitar that he just bought. He can barely play!
Now I'm no big fan of the RIAA, and philosophically I believe there is a need change the paradigm of music distribution. Frankly I think that OpenNap and Freenet are a good thing...because they are free and open...and only the fans gain. But I have a hard time when some 19 punk profits as much as a record company exec and then tries to sell me and the rest of the world on his virtuous arguments that he had to scramble to come up with because he's all of a sudden feeling the heat.
from a functionality standpoint, at least. Audio Galaxy Satellite is very well done, it'll be easy for them to shut down when they get around to it though.
I bet after you use their service for a while, you'll wonder why Napster was so backwards =)
Go ahead, those kids in China need their $1/day pay.
Why don't you buy some DVDs? Send some donations to the MPAA and RIAA legal funds too?
Fight Spammers!
The framers of the Constitution were seeking to protect artists and authors when they enacted copyright laws. Their notion was that without some protection against copying and theft, writers would have no incentive to create new works. Copying books was difficult, and it was simple to enforce and prosecution laws against it. The Net is another story -- it's the biggest Xerox machine in the world, and it's almost impossible to completely shut down the copyrighting of intellectual property. Common sense would dictate that new ways of protecting artists and corporations be found that recognized the new reality of the Net.
So the copyright protections were created to protect content back when it was expensive and difficult to copy the works. Now it's cheap and easy to copy IP, and it's somehow less necessary for protections. Typically when an unwanted behavior becomes less difficult to do, the protections against it would deserve strengthening not weakening.
No such campaign has been launched on behalf of music fans, who were literally bled dry for decades not just for artistic compensation but for fat corporate profits.
They were willingly bled dry. I think it would be very difficult to prove that anyone was in a position where not spending money on music would have injured them in any significant way.
Fans are more than consumers. They are entitled to have some rights, just as artists and corporations are. They pay the freight, especially in cyberspace...
None of which flows to the people creating the art that is being freely distributed. Just like paying a fence for something does not suddenly make the purchase legitimate "but officer I paid someone for the car, and it was a hell of a deal too!"
They are constituents in their own folklore and have rights of access to their own culture.
And all they have to do is pay what the person that has a legal right of ownership to that work wants, and they are free to use a copy for their own personal use.
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
Why does Slashdot have to support Napster? It's marginally ethical, as well as fractionally legal. One corporation keeps a database of all it's users, as well as the songs they're sharing, and seems to be rather keen on divulging that information to whoever asks for it.
It's not open source.
I have never bought a CD I've heard anything from through Napster, and Napster, to me, is just a cool way to download free music. I doubt that I'm the only one who thinks so. Hell, when I visit www.gamecopyworld.com I don't do it to backup my legally owned games. Why should we treat Napster in any way other than software pirates?
All right, Napster may be a cool way for aspiring artists to get their sounds heard, and a cool way to trade concert bootlegs (which, btw, Metallica is all for), but the centralized database thing annoys me. As well as the internet startup hype they're receiving.
And please, stop this 'loyal fans being oppressed by band-turned-corporate' bullcrap. If the bloody fan base is so bloody loyal, they can bloody well buy their CD's. There are legally accepted ways to hear the music first, such as radio stations and Shoutcast.
Even though Offspring and Limp Bizkit got their breaks through internet mp3 sharing, surely the artist should be able to choose whether their music should be freely available or not?
Nice article. Interresting views. But all this doesn't change the fact that the original Napster goal was and always has been to help people copy MP3 files whether they are illegal copies or song authorized by the artists, even tough Napster will never admit it.
Sure, I believe that the company behind Napster wanted to be able one day to control the transfers so artist would be compensated and receive the money for the songs downloaded, BUT they should have never released Napster the way it works right now.
Sure, sites like www.google.com or mp3.lycos.com may help users to find MP3 files on the web, but they don't have the scope and efficiency of Napster.
I like Napster, and use it often to try CD's before buying them, but I won't be mad when it is closed for good, and I will go back to radio to listen to music before buying an album, or will consider other alternatives like Gnutella.
People just can't be trusted enough to allow them to use such software.
There are recording engineers that need to be paid. And everyone at the studio, including the janitors, managers, and security guards, need to be paid.
These people are paid, by the record company, with a flat fee for services rendered. The janitor doesn't get per-CD royalties, bugg...
That includes the company who delivers the CDs, the company that presses the CDs, the record store
But with music downloaded over the internet, none of those companies provide any service at all, and should be paid accordingly.
It's not as if the head of the RIAA pockets $11 with every purchase, you know.
Right; the janitor gets per-CD royalties, but the record company doesn't?
Much of the discussion I've seen over various IP issues have centered on fans vs. mega corps, but IP is also valuble to the little guys too. Either way people argue the future should go the small time artist stands to lose. Without IP small time artist will be shamelessly exploited, but under a tighter system they'd have to jump through legal hoops to protect their rights.
In the past month I've been hit both ways, I had to sign over ALL rights to a piece of "fan art" to enter a contest by a gaming company, and I had a someone open up a art gallery stocked w. my art without my permission(which had the copyright marks systematically removed from them) the curent system may not be perfect but it's a far cry better for me than a world w.o. IP or one where the megacorps control all the content.
Decentralized and anonymous file sharing may be wonderful for spreading ideas and culture, but it leaves the artist feeling exploited when his work is tossed around the net without so much as a "May I?" or "Thank You". As for Napster, they played with fire and got burned, the DCMA provides safe harbor provisions, if they had followed those they wouldn't have gotten hit the way they did. To argue otherwise is to evade their moral and legal responsibilities.
If looked at the websites for napster and gnutella and it seems they prominently advertise the use of their technology for pirating music.
While gnutella can get away with this, because in their case each user is responsible for what gnutella does, this is not an option for napster. Napster is profiting from the mp3 stored illegaly on their server.
Don't come with the argument you only want to hear legal music. Even on this forum users expressed their interest to hear works of labelled artists.
If at all, stuff like napster should receive protection similar to that granted under Safe Harbour Statues, and have similar duties, like a way to file which files should be killed.
Another way might be to store the music in encrypted format, making it the responsibility of the key distributor that reading the file is legal.
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
A cranky judge doesn't like Napster. We've yet to see what David Boise will do. Fair or not, it's somewhat traditional to ask perceived offenders to desist until their case can be heard. And, of course: 20 MILLION PEOPLE ARE INTERESTED? Well, SOMEONE in the "Establishment" is gonna be looking, if only at those numbers.
Why rabbit on at such length until more happens? This is just pontification for the sake of it.
The Federal Government has been pandering to the interests of massive corporations for years. Here's in example of what the most recent extension to the Copyright laws have done: The Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, which adds 20 years to both terms of protection, giving individual authors protection for life plus 70 years and corporate authors protection for 95 years. As an attempt to illustrate how ridiculous this actually is, here is a simple example: The song "Happy Birthday" was composed is 1893 by sisters Mildred J. Hill and Patty Smith Hill. The exact time of their deaths is unknown, but it IS known that in 1935 they performed the song for Rockline WNEW NY 3-88. Had they been tragically killed leaving the station, Happy Birthday would still not be in the public domain until 2005. I did some research, and I included this information in letters I sent to my congressman and senators. I urge you all to do the same.
If Napster is found guilty, which seems to be the way it is heading, then everyone who has had a car stolen should use this case as a precedent to sue their state Department of Transportation!
Napster provides no copyrighted material themselves (as apposed to MP3.com). All they supply is a connection... the transportation medium.
In a similar way, the DOT doesn't steal cars, but they do provide the roads upon which car theives transport a stolen car.
The actual lawbreaker in this Napster case is not Napster itself, but every single user who downloads a copyrighted song from an album they do not own. Just like when your car is stolen - the car theif is the lawbreaker... not the DOT.
People who say "money does not buy happiness" are just people without money trying to make themselves feel better.
The most interesting part of this whole thing is gonna be to see whether or not artists will be able to bypass major labels and still thrive. The rights of the artist trickle down to the fan. Those of us who know anything about major labels are seeing right through their "We're fighting for the artists" stance. It's plain bs. For great info on this go to the Future of Music
Sig this.
i'm surprised nobody's mentioned hotline -- it's been around for a while now, longer than napster, and it's still very much the seedy underbelly of the net...probably 90% of the servers are warez/pr0n/mp3. the official software is mac/win, but there's some excellent unix clients available. it's not distributed like gnutella, you have to run server software, but it's rock-stable and very fast.
official site
the hx site
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
Big money has little savvy.
.avi's, it's not DeCSS -- but it's about the thing that enables all that good shit to be available.
Really. That's absolutely true. The more money you have, the less savvy you have.
Don't get me wrong. Big money folks -- individuals and corporations alike -- are smart. But smarts aren't what I'm talking about here.
'Savvy' is something that's earned -- something that takes a significant amount of time to acquire.
What I see in all these 'music wars' is an absolute lack of savvy on the part of the big money RIAA.
Yeah, they got the big bucks. And, yeah, they got the big money lawyers who can stand in a courtroom and be heard -- but I have to wonder if the execs that are driving this thing -- the Porsche driving, weekend-in-the-Hamptons, "Bri, did you see the way Sony dropped 3 points last week?", "Gotta have my cell phone. Where's my cell phone? For fuck's sake, Lois, where the fuck did you put my cell phone?", Armani wearing, frat-boy laughing, lite beer drinking, Gucci shoe and matching sock wearing exectives -- if the execs driving this thing have any 'savvy' at all.
Maybe savvy is the same thing as 'moxy?' I don't know. But whatever it is -- moxy, savvy -- it's lacking.
Fanning isn't lacking it, Boies isn't lacking it, and, truth be told, the judge ain't lacking it either: she seems like one iron-clad, dammit it's all common sense, black robe wearing, "Counsel, can you get the point?", finger waving member of the judiciary.
And that's fine. I don't fault the judge. I fault the RIAA for their brute-force, savvy-less attacks on technology.
The issue isn't about Napster. It's not even about music per se. It's about how music is represented in a modern age. It's all about the medium, baby. That's the message.
If you honestly think the problem is Lars and Metallica and their shrill little whiny voices, then you've completely misunderstood the message here. Lars can go rip his shirt off, droop his tongue, and bang the fuck out of his drums for all I care. The little sweaty weasel. But he's right about one thing: it's not about money. It's about control. Who controls the media? And who controls the access to the media? Because why is that important, class? Because who controls the 'media' isn't controlling the *thing* -- the music, the video -- they are controlling the 'medium'.
That's right. And that's fucking scary. Think about it.
It's all McLuhan, all the way. Medium, baby. That's what this means.
Napster is dead. It sucks, but get over it. Napster may be the martyr for the second coming of the New Age of Mimesis. (Katz, are you reading this? Are you here? Anybody home? Read Auerbach's Mimesis. That's my advice to you, pal. You're a smart guy. You got the two loving canines drooling at your feet as you write your columns. For fuck's sake, stop looking at technology so closely. It's not about the thing itself -- it's about the The Thing that Enables the Thing. It's the medium, Katz. Write a column about how digital culture is the great enabler -- not for democracy, but for 'mimisis' --- for representations of reality as they're filtered through our collective consciousnesses. It's Husserl's 'lifeworld' -- the idea that the medium is the intersection between our Being (Heidegger's 'Dasein?') and those things Outside-Being (the lifeworld -- the not-Being -- the not-Dasein))
Once everybody understands that, we can dispense with the assinine little 'IANAL' posts and get down to what really matters: it's not the music, it's not the DivX
Katz, are you listening? Do you read Slashdot? Write a column about this. This is the key issue. Technology Enablement in the New Age of Mimesis.
There. I've got your title for you. You'll win a goddamn Pulitzer if you can write that. That's what all this about it. Don't go talking to your snivelling technology experts or looking at 'applications' like Napster and CuteMx and whatever else you're studying: take a long, broad view and take a look at what the 'eurocentric' West has been talking about for centuries.
I've heard a number of people state that person to person sharing of copyrighted materials is legal as long as it's not done for profit--that you can make copies for family members, friends, etc. One of the arguments I've heard in favor of Napster is that it's person to person sharing so it's legal, and one of the arguments against is that you're sharing with people you don't know, so it's not legal.
My question is, is there a U.S. statute or judicial ruling stating that person to person sharing is legal? I've looked around a little, and all I can find is the section of the copyright law describing "fair use", which is pretty vague, but in my opinion, would be impossible to interpret as allowing this kind of person to person sharing. Could someone tell me a URL pointing to a statute or judicial ruling to the contrary?
Thanks.
Convert RSS to HTML - integrate webfeeds into your website
Did I mention anything regarding the future of TV distribution in that example? No I don't think I did. I'm sick of people using the same old thinking like *you* who don't realize there's no going back now. So the current distribution model for digital works no longer applies? MAKE A NEW ONE. One that offers consumers something that they can't get by just copying it for free.
No shit I'll go and download tracks for free by a new artist, rather than buying an overpriced CD, when I have no clue whether the content is good or not. You think the Recording Industry is suddenly going to go out of business, cause they'll sell one CD and that person will pass it along to everyone else on the internet? Not likely anytime soon. But since our economy is now changing, the RIAA better adjust pretty damn fast, and if they can't keep up, they'll be left behind.
If the courts consider Napster's primary purpose to be pirating, then by that arguement, guns should be outlawed too. After all, Their only purpose is to shoot people.
Actually I'm glad that Napster is illegal. Things are only 'cool' then they're illegal.
And you are an excellent Troll =)
i don't think a pay-per-song distribution model would ever fly, much like pay-per-view tv is kind of a niche market--it's there, it's marketed, but no one really uses it as much as blockbuster.
a much better model, IMHO, would be for the riaa to buy napster, purge the usernames, and re-open it as a monthly subscription service--$20/mo for, oh, say, 200MB of mp3's a month, with a 50c surcharge for every MB over that limit. i would buy into this scheme, i know plenty of others who would as well, and everybody gets paid. new artists using napster to release music would likely benefit, as the napster mk2 audience is far more hard-core about music--enough so to pay a monthly fee for access to it. additionally, if you were smart and more sonically tolerant, you could stretch that 200MB by choosing lower bitrate mp3's.
on a side note, i think the napster case will mark a watershed moment in tech history--when internet politics become important. everybody i know, from my cheerleader friends who still don't know what i mean when i say "minimize that window" to my CS prof, is interested in napster. they use it--what's more, they'll pay to use it. hell, i have friends at school who bought computers to use napster. the riaa is blowing this opportunity and creating nothing but bad pr.
and i thought they knew how to work the media.
london is drowning and i live by river
It's true that we don't place a high value on things we obtain for free. Why should I feel good about buying a CD from the store? Somebody else got it for free by downloading it. CDs are just a medium and with MP3 you don't need to feel any emotional attachment. But there is a solution! Vinyl! You can't copy the look and feel! Buy vinyl and play with your music.
People should be aware that the upcoming Presidential election is likely to have a very great effect on the Supreme Court: 2-3 justices are likely to retire in the next four years, and many important cases recently have been decided by 5-4 votes. If you're not going to vote because you think that it won't matter to you which candidate gets elected, think of the secondary consequences like this. Ask yourself which candidate is more likely to appoint judges that will defend 1st amendment (and other) freedoms against corporate power grabs.
We need fewer justices like Scalia and Thomas, and more like Breyer and Souter.
Could it be that the RIAA is only setting up legal precedent by attacking an easy to find and easy to target adversary? If it is found that the sharing of music is not protected, wouldn't if be easier to seek criminal and civil actions against individuals involved in the alternative systems, like Freent and Gnutella?
How easy would it be for law enforcement to determine who each user is and arrest/charge that person? Do these alternatives provide any sort of anonymity? If I'm hosting files on my cable modem, which anyone can access, how hard am I to identify? Not too hard.
If the RIAA pushes hard enough, wouldn't the authorities have to get involved. This is illegal after all.
Finally, how many of you folks would step to the plate for a file sharing system which focused on the dissemination of child pornography or individual private information?
I use Napster. I download music that I do not own.. I admit it. I'm guilty. I use Napster to preview albums before I buy them, because I am sick of getting RAPED by the recording industry to buy an album for $20 just to find out that I only like the ONE song that was released as a single, and have ZERO recourse. I can't take the CD back, I can't say THIS REALLY BLOWS and get a refund.. I'm stuck with it, period, end of sentence.
Thanks to Napster, I can download every song from a new CD, listen to them all, and make a decision as an EDUCATED consumer about whether to buy the CD or not. Most record stores around here don't let you listen to the album first.. either you buy it or you don't. I can try out a TV before i buy it.. or a mattress.. or a car... or an appliance... or a car stereo. And if I don't like any one of them, I've got around 30 days to return them. Try doing that with a CD sometime. Even if the darned thing is defective, you can't return it.. you have to exchange it for another CRAPPY CD just like it.
So sure, I illegally download music. I do it all the time.
--cyphergirl
--Insert catchy
Napster is far from over. Anyone who wants to can set up their own napster server on their own home computer. So if someone from taiwan (there are no copyright laws there) or similar country set up a napster server, the RIAA couldn't do anything or at least not anything significant to them. All it takes are a few servers beyond the jurisdiction of copyright laws and then you have napster back. And what about that principality of sealand thing.. you know the artificial island off of Britain that is its own country where they are going to host any "illegal" material that can't be hosted elsewhere. Sounds like the perfect place for napster to me. The RIAA is only hurting themsleves, because napster will live, and they have 10 million+ people who hate them now.
-psyk()
<place sig here>
-psyk()3333
Scroll down a bit to 'Authors'
Check 'JonKatz' from the list.
Click 'savehome'.
He was interesting the first couple of times I read his stories. Now I just think he's an alarmist troll.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
This article at MSN talks about how Gnutella won't succeed because--in order to make money--they'll have to introduce some 'friction', thus replacing the record companies as the middle man. Just think, GNU making money?
Msn article
Checkout taccom my worl war II simulator
You've got to be kidding 'Corporations *created* popular culture'? Coporations hype and exploit popular culture. And they do so with one purpose in mind. To make a buck. (which is not wrong in and of itself IMHO). The problem with Crops is that many times they don't care how they make that buck. Bottom line baby.
Yes, corporations push pop culture and people want the result. If you took corporations out of the loop, what is popular and what is now would be much different than it is now.
What happens today is that one band or musician is singled out to receive a big promotional budget, then they sell copies like crazy. If you go over to Amazon.com, you're not seeing the little guy rising to the top, as many people expected on the web. You're seeing big name bands selling like crazy. It's not that they're always better than the lesser known bands, it's that their names and music have been made familiar to you via marketing. Lots of people don't want to admit this. They want to think they discover Chemical Brothers--or whoever--in a smoky, underground club.
they've taken our rights to fan sites for our favourite TV series (Star Trek anybody?). They've taken our rights to sites dedicated to song lyrics (anybody remember www.lyrics.ch?). They've taking our rights to guitar tabs (www.olga.net?). And now, they're about to take our rights to... ahem, sharing music with the citizens of the internet whom we love, albeit we don't know personally... DeCSS is still under observation... hope the Judge doesn't scew this one up... Everytime we stepped back, dismantled the sites, and went underground. Isn't it about time that we all did something to fight for the few remaining rights that we still have left to us? -- I love America, but I hate Corporate America!
We all knew from day one that this mumbo-jumbo wasn't gonna fly.
It's the goddamn economics. Get it straight.
First off CD prices are up and unit sales are up about 8%.In all of the chazzerei about Napster I have never seen an artist nor the RIAA demonstrate, actually demonstrate how an artist is harmed by Napster when compared to no Napster. The simple fact is that the record industry pushes all of the risk to the artist in the form of advanced money to produce albums and videos which is then recoverable from the artist to the record company as money taken from the artists' take of the revenue. A second dip. To say nothing of the fact that most recording artists are extremely lucky to get 10% of each sale. The average is about half that or 5%. So the record company gets at least 90% of the dollars that come back to them from gross sales minus distribution costs, which in this case is whatever profit the retailer networks take out. From that 10% remaining artists typically give up another third or half in givebacks to the record company.
So look at it this way (and take an extreme postion): The sum total of all Napster has increased sales 8% of which translates to about $0.13/unit per artist from which they give back between 6 and 9 cents, leaving them with 4 to 7 cents/unit more money. Without Napster they would be no better off than before.
Now now I know all of you statisticians out there will say that Napster is not the sole reason unit sales are up 8%. OK pick some positive number less than 8. On the other hand you are arguing that sales otherwise would be 10 or 11 or 12% higher instead of 8 then the RIAA has to demonstrate that. How does one do that with a straight face?
"well we at the RIAA projected our sales to be 120% higher than the previous year therefore Napster ows us 2.2 times of the total revenue for all record companies in 1999"
"well we at the RIAA demand that all living souls purchase 15 CD's/year and anyone who doesn't is obviously a criminal"
...ya see it's pretty hard to make a case for that. It's one thing to demand to be treated as a monopoly, or more correctly, an oligopoly. IT's quite another to demand legal remedy to punish consumers who don't happen to believe that. And by the way if you want to be an oligopoly then by all means go to the Federal gov't and DEMAND restrictive regulation be placed on yourselves as any other protected utility. They will regulate things like your ROI, what you can invest in, how much you charge, etc.
What can we expect next? An RIAA surcharge on only the cheap seats at concerts because 'obviously' those people are avoiding their sacred duty to enrich the the record companies?
Guess what, I dont download too many MP3's cause I got a cool minidisc recorder... For portable use, its better than an MP3....and it seems to be ok with the music industry.. I dont see anyone cracking down on CD burners and minidisc recorders, while these are able to give you an exact digital replica of the original; piracy at its best. I am building a nice music collection for 2$ a blank minidisc. I guess it shows that big corporations think they can get into our homes through the web....
Much of what Katz sees as "corporatist" domination of copyright rulings is based more in basic copyright law than in some neo-fascist conspiracy which he sees as threatening the lifestyles of millions of Americans. Katz seems to be overwhelmed by the idea that someone might want to have distribution control over their own original material. This surprises me most in the sense that Katz, as a journalist, certainly values his own right to produce content and have control over how it is viewed and distributed. If I were to copy the text of this very article and print it in a newspaper column as my own work, its author would be inclined to take steps to gain control of how and when his writing is printed. In the same manner, any musician wants to be compensated for the work he or she is doing. Whether or not these artists/companies are making more or less money due to the proliferation of free online music is irrelevant (Katz himself pointed out that any viewpoint can find a study to back up its argument). The fact remains that the artist has the right to sell, give away, or even not sell his or her own material. This right to decide predates copyright law, and is fundamental in any economic/social system. Individuals, groups, and corporations are free to decide to produce and distribute music, just as individuals are free to pay a price for that music. If someone doesn't wish to pay the price for an item, they are free not to buy it, but they are not free to use alternative methods of gaining possession of that item free. The notion that end users are somehow entitled to recieve free music is ludicrous.
I think I'm gonna be sad, I think it's today, yeh.
I don't buy music because it is too expensive, way too expensive. I choose not to steal either. I think it is pathetic how many people rant and rave with their little justifications about fighting the man, liberating the music and/or culture, and being the social Robin Hoods that are just acting for the betterment of society and life throughout the planet. Use those brains you are so proud of and THINK, stop making decisions based on emotion, then analyzing them with some form of pseudo-logic. If you can't afford it and want to change it, then educate your fellow man, person, or whatever. Remember, it is "Right to life, liberty, and PURSUIT of happiness," I have no right to force you to do anything against your will, unless you are interferring with the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness of someone else. Theft is theft, and is defined by taking what is not yours without the consent of the person you are taking it too. All economies work on this principle, by counting the buying as an exchange on not just goods, but an agreement between the two parties, you and the owner, thus changing ownership.
Now, why is it that people then take what is not theirs, without the owners' consent, and actually against it, but throw a string of irrellevant justifications out... are these justifications to really convince everyone else, or convince yourself?
Music, cars, beer, even sex is not a right... it is a priviledge. If I came and "liberated" your wife's oppressed sexuality, your dog and cat, your car, lived in your house, drank all your beer, and did this every few days, you would be plenty mad I'm sure. I could use the very same childish excuses as you do with mp3's, software, and so on.
On the subject of justifications, a little clarification. When some l33t idiot starts raging about this, his/her newest "movement", and sticks up a couple of bands that say they like the free distribution of their stuff, that is NEVER an argument for the same practice for music that is by bands that DO NOT like it. That is merely a good start. Indeed you should praise these bands, and if they have a manager that supports it, then praise and reward the manager as well. Speak out all you want, but remember to educate others in WHY you think this is better, and WHY you think this will benefit the band, management, and consumer alike. If you force yourself on anyone, you are a Fascist Pig that deserves the same fate that was handed down at Nuremberg.
I seek not only to follow in the footsteps of the men of old, I seek the things they sought.
It amazes me that some people think this is a new 21st century problem. Do you really think Joe Schmo could walk up to the Capitol and meet with their congressman in the 1800's?
Actually I have to disagree with you a bit on this. Until the last 100 years or so, many of the folks who were representatives were also people who were in the community on the regular basis. A full time Congress really did not start to emerge until late in the 1800's to the early 1900's IIRC. Therefore, you had a much better cahance to talk to your rep because he was usally in the community.
There also use to be more diversity in the folks who represented us. I may be wrong; but I think it is safe to say that a majority of the reps are now lawyers. In the beginning, you had an equal chance of have a tradesman, craftsman or statesman representing. For better or for worse, the government has evolved away from the people. I would say the latter.
I disagree with this. napster is not about attacking the MPAA, it is primarily about looting and freeloading. It's true that the RIAA are trying to load contracts in their direction, but I don't think that this is the reason why we have napster. I think it's just an excuse. The greedy napsterites and the greedy RIAA scum are pointing their fingers at each other and screaming "you're a greedy f*ck". And guess what ? They're both right. ( And when they both say "I am not", they're both wrong. )
An open-source replacement for Napster(R)(TM).
It's free. It's leet (comes with a command line interface). It's cool. Get your mp3, mpeg, avi, au, ra, nearly all audio/video formats.
download now!!!
ftp://ftp.wupster.shop (we even got one of those cool new tlds!)
Yeah, that's right, you have to use ftp to download it. Which, I guess, makes sense, since really it's just a wrapper for wu_ftp and archie.
I'm going to start a web site for venting hatred of John Katz. I'll build a database of links to his articles, and have scripts build even more. Scripts will also be used to select news stories submitted by readers. Then readers will be able to post comments in user moderated forums. It will be a great hit, and all of those eyeballs will be sold.
I'm going to be rich, socially secure! Yessss! I can bite people and...
Never mind.
The napster thieves of sucky corporate music suck. They don't understand music. They don't understand law. The real music exists legally and free at http://www.mp3.com and http://www.iuma.com
Don't think that this is about piracy. If that were the case they would have gone after radio stations a long time ago.
If the radio stations weren't paying royalties, the record companies would go after them, too. Don't think that radio is "free" music by any means -- every time your local station plays "The Real Slim Shady," Eminem and his record company get a nice juicy cut of it.
Furthermore, MP3s let you hear music on demand -- which is a big difference from radio, where you might have to listen for hours to hear your favorite song. Record companies are willing to go along with this because it gives them a chance to get you hooked on new music while you're listening for your favorites. And radio stations like it, because they get to play ads. Take these aspects away, plus the royalties, and you've got something that no sane record company would support. And since they own the copyright, like it or not, that should be the final word.
Cheers,
IT
Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
Napster/Corporate Music Fans are evil GREEDY Democratic/Green petty stupid thieves (capitalist would be way too nice). Cheers for the free people, artists, corporate America, and intellectual property rights!
Artists should be paid for the music that they create. That is really the only beef that I have with Napster. Should a record company be reimbursed for online 'sales' of MP3s? After all, record contracts give exclusive publishing rights to the record company (Most major record labels own their own publishing company). So regardless of whether or not the record company publishes the music, some sort of royalty or agreement still has to be paid to them. Once an artist is somehow freed from the record label's monopoly, all the label would be is a distribution company for CDs. See why they would be so afraid of internet distribution?
A radical is someone who tries to get at the root of things. That's what I try to do. -Noam Chomsky
You're example is damn hell true. For the ongoing war, they seems not to get that information is going to be free, rather if they put up against it or not. I mean we're tracked everyday and we "steal" (in their words) singer's music everyday. The death of Napster would not matter because they cannot shut down all the other sources. C'mon people, accept the fact that there's no way to prevent anyone from sharing music! Also some legal bullshit, you cannot save lyrics on your computer! If anyone know lyrics.ch, they used to be a searchable server that gives lyrics in plain text and now they're with that java BS that scrolls way too fast and prevents you from saving it on computer. I mean, what the hell is the media trying to do? To so call protect the artists (BTW many didn't make up their songs anyways, so technically they should be called singers IMO)? If they want to do it like that, then I'll just not buy any CDs. It would be great if all the napster users stop buying CDs for these blood sucking money hogging media companies and artists.
If you gained any amount of 'bragging' there you were just wishing you had it because he stated a fact. :-) Post more informative posts and you too can have loads of karma :)
If you think education is expensive, try ignornace
(for which Stephen King is to be applauded in showing a very plausible way forward)
There is no way in Hell that Stephen King's "honor system" is going to work. I'm willing to bet that at least half of the people who read the story don't pay up. They might intend to pay up, they may swear to themselves that they'll do it--tomorrow. But if I've already read the story for free, I'm not going to pay you for it. There's simply no reason to.
Looting? Are you out of your mind?
Do you see any difference, the slightest difference at all between, for instance,
Walking into a museum, grabbing a painting and running out the door (looting)
and
Walking into a museum, snapping a picture of a painting, and walking out the door? (infringing)
That is the difference between looting and infringing. If you can't understand the difference, or if you think that there's no difference, then don't expect a lot of people to take your ethical arguments very seriously.
What we need is a totally distributed database, with no central point to shut down. Sort of like usenet. Every client keeps a local copy of a part of the master database, with routing rules to other hosts that keep copies of all their files as well as files on several other hosts close to them. In order to connect to the network you need only to find a friend who is already connected with another friend, and so on. I'd really like to see something like that :). Have someone try and shut that beast down! Oh yeah, also include a dynamic protocol so that it would be impossible for packet filtering routers to block it.
CD's might cost more than cassettes because there is greater demand for CD's than cassettes.. res ipsa loquitor, bitch.
Sorry to blow your paranoid alarmist cartel-conspiracy theories.
Calling out bogus battery capacity claims.
Oh, please. By what logic does someone have the right to the product of another person's labor without compensation? This is right up there with the 'right to health care' and the 'right to cable TV'. Further, though you may not agree with some artists' decision not to allow people to trade their music for free, it is their decision to make, not yours. To use your disagreement as an excuse to steal from them is pure rationalization. If I don't like the price an auto dealer is selling a car at, I am not allowed to steal the car and mail him what I think it is worth. Eric Christian Berg
Although I am proud of my purchased CD collection I believe in order to make a difference in this fight for the rights of information and against the needless corporate overhead created by those who love money above all else. I now vow to not buy another CD until this insanity is stopped. There are those who think this will not do anthing by my action alone, but if you follow this lead and join against the price gouging aparent in the information business which has little overhead, especially when you can duplicate your own files, you asume all the manufacturing costs.
Matt.
IMO, comments like this sort of miss the point of the whole debate. Sure, we know that copyright violation is illegal. But now that "everybody" does it, should it remain illegal? And does the fact that it is illegal make it morally wrong?
Used to be that homosexuality was illegal. Adultery was against the law. Interracial marriage could land you in the pokey. Even fellatio was technically a crime. In some jurisdictions, some of these things are still in the criminal statutes. But the civilized world (for the most part) decided that we really didn't want to punish people for these things. And part of the reason is because so many people did them on a regular basis, which enabled us to come to the realization that these "crimes" didn't injure society.
Copyright violation is at a similar point where society is trying to work out whether or not it should be vigorously enforced. I think that everyone would agree that the copyright laws we have now are imperfect. Is it morally wrong to disobey these imperfect laws? And doesn't the answer to that partially depend on the degree of the violation? Most people don't find anything wrong with those who smoke a joint every so often in the privacy of their own homes/dorms. But a lot more people have problems with street corner/campus pushers. Perhaps Napster's on shakier ground because it's the equivalent of an mp3 dealer.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
Well I've been to MP3.com and the one problem I have with it is that all MP3 players on the market do not allow me to turn up the talent. 99% of the MP3's on that site are absolute shite. The only channels I ever check are the Eletronic Experimental and the Bizzard space jazz. However, as a whole I am a high brow music dick with very exacting tastes. In other words I'm a big critic. Since I run my own Indie label I get a deluge of terrible demos on a daily basis... going to MP3.com to me is working over time.
when they ban enctryption only criminals wi$21*J *#JF$%!@#$':
Why is it that every single damned time that Katz writes something, a select group - a disappointingly large, select group - have to kick in with the Katz quips?
If you don't like the man's writing, topics or attitude, don't [bleepin'] read him. I mean, do you want some cheese with that wine?
Jesus.
.02
My
Quux26
My
Quux26
www.crashspace.net
How so? Quoting part of an article or making a personal copy of a tape is not analogous at all to making copies of songs for someone else. If you want to argue that copying music for your friends is fine, that's great, but you're not going to be able to hide behind fair use as precedent.
If you want precedent, I think you ought to look at the fact that copyrights have been extended again and again, until they're much more powerful than they were a century ago. In the other article, they have somebody saying that they make their money from songs they wrote 50 years ago. Now, doesn't that seem a little silly to everyone? If copyrights on music expired after, say, 5 or 10 years, there would be plenty of music in the public domain, and artists would have to keep creating music.
It seems that a large part of the problem is that there isn't any entertainment material in the public domain. Does anyone else think that reverting to sane copyright laws might help eliminate some of these problems?
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
Hello siggy. Well, old boy. You've been to the library then. That's nice. Pick up much trade? Oh, of course you wouldn't tell *me* that. Looks like you've got some admirers, too. That's nice.
But you know that what you're doing isn't allowed. Now, don't create a disturbance, but I've got to take you downtown. Some of these boys don't know your past {move along now, nothing to see...} and you dont want me telling them about you, do you? I will if I have to. Just come along quietly and you'll be out in no time.
Folks,
:-) ), think of what this might do to older recordings. The cost of converting old master tapes in the record company vaults to digital format is quite low, and it quickly opens up a new avenue for people to buy out of print music at extremely low cost. Take for example popular Hawaiian music of the 1930's to 1940's, a niche market if there ever was one. Instead of having to scrounge through used record bins like crazy or wait for the record company to release the music on CD, the record company can have these old Hawaiian music stored on computer servers and you can buy them at the rate I mentioned above.
I think this whole arguement boils down to the fact it is a classic case of how to control the means to delivery of music -without violating Federal copyright laws-.
I mean, some people say that FM radio is delivering music for "free," but people conveniently forget a music radio station pays many, many thousands of dollars per year in copyright clearance fees to the American Society of Composers And Producers (ASCAP) and Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI) so they could broadcast music over radio. In order for the radio station to continue existing in light of these hefty fees, they have to sell advertising time in order to cover the costs. For cable TV station like MTV, VH-1, CMT, GAC and BET, that could amount to -millions- of dollars per year in these fees to ASCAP and BMI. Besides, the music you hear on the air are often not perfect copies, since the radio station may use fader effects to overlap between songs and the radio announcers may be speaking at the beginning or end of song.
While Napster in theory is a great idea, the problem is that there is too much of a sizeable fraction of users that have effectively said "Why should pay for a CD when I can get the songs for free over Napster?" This group is most likely in the minority, but that still is a -big- minority of Napster users considering how popular Napster is.
By the way, I'm sure some people here would mention about the tape swapping of live recordings from Grateful Dead concerts. I have news for you: the people who engage in these activities have an unwritten rule that the tape swapping has to be done for at most the cost of shipment -and no additional costs-. This crowd knows very well to go beyond that is an instant violation of current copyright laws.
Anyway, what everyone is waiting for is a means to deliver music in CD-quality digital form over the Internet to a customer without violating copyright laws. That day may be coming soon: there are newer and better audio compression techniques now available, and the technology is just about in place to insert various forms of anti-piracy coding into the digital music file so only a very small number of "authorized" players can play back the file.
What I envision seeing is that by 2003-2004 the ability of people to buy individual songs from music company websites at a cost of five to six US cents per 30 second of music, which means a full album can be bought for the cost of US$6.00 to US$7.20 per hour. This pricing is more than enough to cover the cost of producing the song in the first place, since we skip on the often considerable expense in pressing an actual CD and the packaging for the CD, not to mention the shipping costs from CD manufacturing site to record store!
Now, before you flame me (and moderate me down to troll status
In short, we are now in a period of transition in the means of selling music to the public. I think 15 years from now buying new music is no longer going to be just going to the record store to buy it, it'll be more like going to an online music site, select the music you want to buy, and with a few menu commands you'll buy the songs and have it automatically downloaded to your local computer in a secure fashion.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
Everyone's behaviour in this whole Napster incident disgusts me. I don't care if you think Napster helps bands, I don't care if you believe it is "your right" to take whatever you want.
The bands (ie Metallica, Dr Dre etc.) worked to produce their music, and it is their right to see that it is distributed as they see fit, even if you think they are greedy for wanting payment, or that supporting Napster would help them. IT IS THEIR MUSIC AND THEIR DECISION!
Don't just disregard the wishes of people who go to trouble to create things, and then accuse them of being evil because they won't let you have it for free! Really, I lost what little respect remained in me for Napster users when they threatened boycotts when the RIAA tried to support the rights of artists to control their own work.
Believe I am a troll if you wish, but if you are a Napster user, claiming to advocate "free expression", don't persecute me simply for telling an honest, and (I believe) justified, opinion.
Copyright, in england, started as a way for censorship. All books and literature had to be owned by the crown where it would license out the ability to publish to the printer cartel. One had to have a license to publish a particular literature, or one would get the axe.
.sig?
Later it was used by the printer cartel to preserve their monopoly against 'pirates', or printers who were not a member of the cartel but printed stuff anyways.
In the US constitution, copyright was given for a limited term to encourage the growth of useful arts and scences. Tell me, how does THAT requirement square with my
- The only real winners, of course, are the lawyers, as usual, and the handful of companies rich enough to pay and benefit them.
- But there's no evidence that the entities copyright laws were meant to protect were billion dollar media corporatations with a distinctly unfair unadvantage over individuals when it comes to defining and enforcing copyright conventions.
- No civil-liberties organization has offered money or other support to fans who are denied access to their culture by corporate lawyers.
- Most people caught in copyright battles, or on the receiving end of hundreds of thousands of warning letters being issues in response to the DMCA lack the financial resources or the political acumen to take on vast entertainment conglomerates in court.
to quote his most recent article.I'm sure that Kanz-san is infurring it, but never says it. But can it be true? One is only as free as one's layer can make you?
Now, I don't know about the normal, everyday citizen, but I certainly can't afford a stinking layer. If some corporation didn't like what I wrote on my home page, their legal department could threaten me, and I'd probably ignore them, standing behind my beliefs. I wouldn't write what I do if I didn't believe it. Yet, even though I'd be completely innocent of wrong doing, am I really at a corporation's mercy in the eye of the law? I was under the impression that an individual is "innocent until proven guilty." Has American society degressed to the point that one is innocent only if one can afford to convince a judge and jury of one's innocence?
A lot of aspects of American society have been bothering me since my high school years. Living on a U.S. military base in Japan during those development years can have a strong impression on one. And when CNN is all you really see about U.S. society for three years, it doesn't make for a very good impression. Needless to say, I was labeled an expatriot by my class mates. (And since I carried my laptop computer around everywhere I went for two years - an NEC PC-8201 - I think they made a U.S. version for Tandy - I'd have probably been misprofiled by many of those profiling systems Kanz-san is often ranting about.)
Nonetheless, my classmates would often tell me to "love it or leave it" when I expressed my views of the U.S., so I left it. My parents often try to entice me back, saying that I could be making 4 times what I do here. After my sister tried to convince me that the U.S. isn't as bad as I make it out, I asked her how she could accept all that is going on and not say anything about it. Not want to change it, to make a difference. My arguements must have struck a bad nerve with her, because I haven't gotten a reply to my questions. I think she just tries to put that sort of stuff out of her mind, and dislikes me bringing it up.
I'm convinced that if I still lived in the U.S. that I'd be dead by now. I'd ask somebody to turn down his Walkman because his idea of music and mind don't match, and that's the end. While I like the expression, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it," I also feel compelled to follow through on the opposite, "if it is broken, fix it yourself." I can't stand idolly by while something isn't right that I have the ability to do something about. If I do just turn the other cheek and walk away, I get knots in my stomach the size of softballs.
Back to the topic, though. Has the legal system gotten to the point where guilt and innocence are a commodity, not a right? Is there no way to fix it short of a revolution (to invalidate all of the precidents to date)? Is there really no better reason to return to the U.S. other than "hazzard pay" (pay for living in a 3rd world, dangerous country)?
If it's not a remix, Moby's new tracks fucking suck. Give me any mix of Go, Voodoo Child, Next is the E, or I Feel It over the songs on Play. I wish they hadn't provided Moby to the masses, because every time I turn on CNN, I hear some shitty Moby track on a commercial. I love my "underground" music, seems like when I find something good, it gets watered down years later, hyped as underground (thus cool), and the cattle go into a frenzy. While they've started killing trance, I don't see them getting to Happy (or normal) Hardcore any time soon though. Thank GOD.
Have you read the text of the Audio Home Recording Act?
Back in 1992, the record companies went to Congress to try and obtain royalty payments on blank digital audio media.
Congress made them compromise. Both sides got something.
The record companies have, for the last 8 years, received a payment for each and every digital audio tape and blank audio CDR sold. This was to compensate the record industry for lost sales due to non-commercial, home copying.
However, Congress does not like to pass laws in which people are taxed on one hand, and the activity they are being taxed on is made illegal on the other hand, so they added this provision:
USC Title 17, Chapter 10, Paragraph 1008:
No action may be brought under this title [Title 17 == the copyright code] alleging infringement of copyright based on the manufacture, importation, or distribution of a digital audio recording device, a digital audio recording medium, an analog recording device, or an analog recording medium, or based on the noncommercial use by a consumer of such a device or medium for making digital musical recordings or analog musical recordings.
In short, Congress said that if the Recording industry wanted Congress to tax home recording media, then that home recording would have to be legalized.
They did just that. Paragraph 1008 defines all non-commercial copying of copyrighted music as non-infringing. It isn't illegal!
The Napster judge tried to ignore this law, but the Court of Appeals basically told the judge that her reasoning was completely wrong:
The court below ignored, however, that 17 U.S.C. 1008 permits non-commercial copying by consumers using either analog or digital audio recording devices or "such a device"; that the legislative history makes clear that Congress intended by that language to immunize all non-commercial copying of music by consumers;
When Congress passed the AHRA, the music industry was not up in arms. Instead, the industry was quite happy, because they were to begin to receive, and have received continuously for 8 years, a stream of "royalties" from the sale of blank digital audio recording media. At the time, I, and many others, thought that this law was extremely unfair, because it created a royalty on ALL media, not just those media used to copy other people's copyrighted works. In other words, if a garage band bought blank CDRs to press their album on, they paid royalties to the RIAA, which distributed the royalties based on their own sales figures.
In retrospect, if the courts can be bothered to uphold paragraph 1008, this law will show itself to be the biggest bargain ever struck between the people and the Recording industry, because it completely and unambiguously legalized all Napster-like activity!
If the recording industry no longer feel that the royalties they are receiving are adaquate, they have every right to go to Congress and ask that the royalty rate be increased. However, Napster is NOT stealing, because they record industry IS receiving payment, in the form of a tax on recording media.
The mere fact that this consumer right has been mostly dormant for 8 years (while record industry profits from blank digital audio media have HARDLY been dormant) is no reason to assert that it no longer exists now that the technology has matured that allows users to exercise that consumer right.
One of Big Music's chief fears is Napster's unfettered distribution of music by unsigned artists, and start-up labels. This turns traditional music sales and broadcasting patterns inside out. Especially now that the states are suing Big Music for price fixing of CD's. In addition, countless unsigned bands upload their songs onto Napster to be sampled by music fans worldwide. They hope this will boost turnout at live shows, a primary profit center for most unsigned bands. Most bands also sell CD's at such performances. Members of Snake Oil Medicine Show, (http://www.snakeoilmedicineshow.com/) a regional band with a strong following in the southeastern U.S., were pleased to see their tune "Cajun Lipbalm" from their album "High Speed Highway Parade " downloaded by web surfers from New Zealand to Germany to California through Napster. Snake Oil Medicine Show plays a unique blend of jazz, funk, bluegrass and rock that is not easily categorized. This is seldom greeted favorably by major labels or commercial radio stations. Big Music normally requires simplified labels for marketing and music research. Napster also threatens commercial conglomerate-owned radio stations, which rely on a small community of consultants to define their formats and develop playlists. This is often accomplished by gathering members of demographic groups into high school auditoriums after-hours and playing hooks from a limited repertoire of pre-selected playlists. For example, a consultant for an Adult Contemporary format station might select a group of housewives, aged 21 to 39 to listen to music samples and vote on their favorites. This has led to a narrowing of music playlists and the complaint by many public interest groups that claim commercial radio has fallen prey to "McDonald's syndrome": You can order whatever you like, as long as it is a burger and fries. The musical burgers and fries happen to be produced by a handful of large music companies that form primary support for the RIAA. Bands which produce more exotic fare such as Snake Oil Medicine Show; are seldom, if ever included on research playlists by consulting firms such as Coleman Research (http://www.colemanresearch.com). The group program director for a string of Adult-Contemporary format radio stations in the upper Midwest, (who wished to remain unnamed) estimated consultants such as Coleman affect as much as 80% of the music now played on commercial radio. Dissatisfaction with cookie-cutter programming provided by radio station chains has also led to an upsurge of pirate "micro-radio stations". The FCC has also decided to allow the licensing of low-power radio stations nationwide. But Napster and similar programs such as Gnutella( http://www.gnutella.wego.com/) and The Free Network Project (http://freenet.sourceforge.net/) are opening the flood gates for distribution of music completely outside the Big Music axis. Given that large corporations now control major labels and most radio stations in the U.S., a very large ox has been gored, and is fighting for its life. This aspect of the RIAA's (http://www.riaa.org/) problem with Napster (http://www.napster.com/) is not often publicized. Emphasis by Big Media of Big Music and Big Radio's tight control of the average citizen's access to tunes is not likely anytime soon. Such coverage might tip the scale in the ultimate court of public opinion. Related Links: The Committee On Democratic Communications http://www.nlgcdc.org/ Memorandum of Law on behalf of Steal This Radio: http://www.nlgcdc.org/briefs/str/071398prelim_inju nc_brief.html Americans for Radio Diversity http://www.radiodiversity.com/ FCC Investigating Whether Nation's Largest Radio Chains are skirting Payola Laws: http://www.tennessean.com/sii/99/03/21/payola21.sh tml Wired Magazine: June, 2000 Radio Active: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.06/radio.html