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Compressed Beyond Recognition: An MP3 Compendium
Point Of Order, Point of Clarification Justin Maurer writes:
"it's come to my attention that a lot of news organisations, and napster themselves, have been twisting words around in this whole napster case. if you'll bear with me for a second, i can try and clear up a little bit of it.everyone (including napster) keeps saying that the judge ordered napster to be shut down. this is not the case. the judge ordered them to make sure no one is trading copyrighted material, and the result is that napster is telling everyone they've been ordered to shut down. if you'd like, i can provide sources for this information, though i'm going to bed now :)"
[Note from timothy: Here is a link to the Preliminary Injunction Brief (pdf file) from the RIAA site; given the way Napster works, though, it does seem like its grant would have effect of shutting all but the chatroom, doesn't it?]
Are Bassists Smarter Than Drummers? JHancock17 reminds anyone who hasn't to read Courtney Love's speech as reprinted by Salon a while back, and res0 points to this ABC News interview with Chuck D. in which the P.E. frontman continues his eloquent tirade against the music industry as a whole. But Mr. D and Ms. Love have been famous outspoken in favor of Napster and electronic music exchange for a while: Now those stalwarts are joined by another big name. srcosmo writes "Radiohead have become the first British band to condemn the injunction against Napster. Their bassist, Colin Greenwood, showed enthusiasm for the availability of Napsterized live recordings, saying "We have just finished a tour, we played in Barcelona, the next day the entire performance was up on Napster and three weeks later when we got to play in Israel the audience knew the words to all the new songs and it was wonderful." An interesting change from the Metallica look at things- hopefully more artists will follow their lead."
Follow Your Conscience: What You Can Do cLn writes "Napster has been shut down and irc mp3 channels are being flooded by desperate mp3 junkies. What they don't know is that there are ways around this small problem. Napigator is a windows program that'll help the napster client connect to other servers other than the few it trys. Tripnosis works alot like napster, but you can download other files (zip, arj, rar, mov, avi, mpeg, jpg, gif, ect...), you can also search through online users files using the sites search engine."
And DrEldarion points to "http://www.kripto.org/blocks/, "an anonymous distributed file transfer system designed for people with permanent 'always on' Internet connections;" good explanation on the site itself of how it differs from other such systems.
Mad Ross (Ross McKillop) writes "Everyone now knows of the recent decision about napster's future. This is unfortunate and many still agree unreasonable but I am attempting to gather all the open source clients and alternative servers in one place and create an organised network of replacement napster servers... If anyone is interested in helping by...
- contributing a client
- helping as a server operator
- running a napster server
- etc...
What Else You Can Do: Alert The Media (Mavens) battery841 writes "In light of Napster getting an injunction against it by the courts, someone decided to register riaaboycott.org and setup a petition. You sign the petition, and once it's gotten enough signatures, it's going to be sent to numerous sources, including Napster and the RIAA." And as CmdrTaco posted the other day, there are boycotts in the air.
Another Angle On The Big Picture: Danse writes "Salon is running an article with reactions from all sorts of people connected to the music industry, Napster, Napster alternatives, etc. It's pretty interesting reading. Everything from the arrogance of Jack Valenti to the apparent cluelessness of Erwin Drake to the insightfulness of Glenn Reynolds to the amazingly short (obviously not written by Lars) comment by Metallica. To sum things up, the industry thinks this is a big win and that they now have a chance to offer consumers music downloads on their own terms. This displays their current lack of understanding of the real problems that users are seeking to remedy with Napster and the other music/file trading options. Napster supporters and alternatives feel that it's a loss for free speech, but that in the long run it will only hurt the record industry as people move to litigation-proof solutions."
Well, if you don't want to support major labels that presents a bit of a problem, since Nothing is a subsidiary of (or is it just distributed by?) Interscope Records.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Right on! You nailed the point precisely. What the RIAA is fighting for is not just for money, but for control. Because, ultimately, control will churn out more money, and easy money at that. And the way they're going to achieve that is to tell you what is good and tell you that they are the ones who sell the good stuff.
Why do they carry certain artists and not others? Because the ones they chose have potential of making money. They don't care nuts about whether the artist is good or not; all they care about is that they can be used to generate $$$. Unfortunately, money-making potential often does not equal talent. Quite honestly, the most-promoted music often is just crappy.
And I agree with you totally about writing music -- I write music too, and I don't do it 'cos I want to make money. I have a degree in something totally unrelated to music, and I can make a much better living than a musician. But I still write music, because I like it. But because I'm not interested in the money, and I'm not motivated because of the money, I probably will never get published by the major music publishers. And this is precisely the problem. There may be hundreds of talented artists out there whose music is much better than the "mainstream" stuff (and frankly, the so-called "mainstream" stuff is garbage in terms of musical content), but they will be despised by the music industry because they write music for the sake of music, and not for the money. And their works may never see daylight, and never appreciated.
All because the music industry claims that it's separating the chaff from the wheat, but in fact what they're doing is separating the money from the talent.
---
mikre he sophia he tou Mikrosophou.
http://www.gnu.org/philos ophy/reevaluating-copyright.html
Can your IM do this?
I agree that supporting Napster is a little hazy. On the one hand, it's just a distribution system. On the other hand, it's designed specifically to distribute files that are currently about 99% copyright infringing.
As some people have said, boycotting the RIAA may just be a very small drop in the bucket.
A more positive thing might be to go to MP3, and shell out $10 for a non-RIAA artist. If 10,000 people don't buy CDs at Tower, it'd be a pretty small blip.
If 10,000 people went to MP3.com and bought a CD there, it'd get noticed.
That'd be a way to say "Online music distribution is important" without saying "I want to steal my music."
This may be totally off the wall, but an idea just occurred to me...
The central reason why you can't hide your IP after establishing a connection is because the connection is directly from your machine to the other person's machine. The idea is this: why not drop the requirement of a direct connection? You can route your connection through another machine...
And who says this has to resemble anything like Napster's centralized topology? Any arbitrary client machine can act as a "router". In fact, you can even be simultaneously a "router" and serving files through another "router" to mask your identity. And this doesn't have to be just one level deep; you can have several "router" machines between you and the client. And you don't have to worry whether one of the "routers" in the chain will break; since the whole protocol is distributed anyway, I'm sure it's possible to come up with a self-correcting protocol that will allow alternative routes easily.
One way to implement this is for the protocol not to publish IP's of where files are, but just say, "123.123.123.123 is a machine that knows where file XXXX resides", so if you're looking for file XXXX, you connect to 123.123.123.123, which doesn't have the file but knows where it can get the file from (which, itself, may be another router).
I know network people will scream "INEFFICIENT!" but it's just the turn-around time that's slowed down. Once the file transfer begins, it's basically a pipeline between the source host and the destination client, so the throughput will still be reasonably fast. And since any participating machine can act as a "router", there won't be a problem of router congestion.
What do you network experts out there think of this idea? :-)
---
mikre he sophia he tou Mikrosophou.
Sadly, CuteMX (great software, stupid name) lockedd their users out yesterday. They have central servers and are could be sued. Besides, they had a lot of people trading movies. Well, corrrection: they had a lot of people talking about trading movies; the vast majority had connections too slow to succeed in actually getting any movies.
In spite of my respect for Justin Frankel, Gnutella is more interesting politically than as an actual program. None of the clients seemed to be easy to use, or very effective at searching. Also, Gnutella lacks chat and the ability to browse other users lists. The whole idea is to see what people with tastes similar to your taste like.
BTW, a nice looking Napster client will be released today: Naphoria's audioGnome. It has resumeing, the ability to view multiple servers at once, the ability to search across multiple servers. Joe Bob says check it out. No, no Linux client yet."How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb
Very apt. The head of Universal, Edgar Bronfman's grandfather made the family fortune by being the biggest bootlegger. Yeah, the son and grandson of a bootlegger is a just who I want to call me a pirate.
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb
I was reading the Globe and Mail from yesterday, July 28, 2000. Apparently napster would not be able to be sued in Canada because Canadians already pay a fee to record companies and artists through a charge on blank tapes and cds. Some one should look into this more but I think the only problem is that the CRTC (Canada's big brother - no american programming for you) would require licensing.
illenium.net - ultimate sk8 shop online
If you want to send them a message, go over to Give back the mp3's! and join in...
"Cause there's 40 different shades of black, so many fortresses and ways to attack, so why you complainin'?"
My friend Joey has not set up where you can buy his music yet...but for the artists that do have pay for play, or cd's available, I definately DO buy the music I like.
The equation is very simple for me: if I like an artist, I want him/her to continue making more music. The incentive/reward is to pay them for what I have already listened to, and enjoy.
And, as a quick plug of MY fav mp3.com artist, Magic Firesheep.
Check out Magic Firesheep!
Is it true that you have to publish your IP address before using the service? That's just what I need. The RIAA trying to make an example of me. Are there any services where you can remain anonymous, or at least give the appearance that you're anonymous?
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
First, let me state my position. I think, like most everyone else here, that the RIAA is a (typical) corporation, interested in pursuing the dollar. That is what corporations do. Less short-sighted corporations realize the benefits of good PR, good customer relations, and not biting the hand that feeds you, so to speak. But that is an issue for another time.
My problem comes from hearing everyone complain that the RIAA shouldn't be able to restrict my right to trade music with others.
First, let me be plain...No such right exists! The artists are due compensation (and contractually, the RIAA and it's members are the representatives of many of the music artists out there) for each person's being able to listen to the artist's music. If I want to make a copy for my own convenience (to listen in the car, or in the office, etc.) so be it. The law provides for this. What the law does NOT provide for is my providing a copy of the music to someone else and my still keeping my copy. Lend to a friend...sure. Give it away? Fine, as long as I don't retain a copy. But if I copy the material and give it to someone else, there are now two people receiving benefit from another's labor without the artist's consent.
And that is what this is about (yes, money, too, but I'm speaking about the intellectual issue at stake)...consent.
As the injunction points out, Napster may continue business provided they are not involved in the transmission of copyrighted material for which the owner has not provided express consent to transmit. (Actually, I'm not sure if the injunction deals with consent of the owner or not, but I can't imagine the court holding Napster liable for breaking the injunction if they had permission from the copyright owner) Had they started off with that premise in mind, there would be no legal issue (and probably no business case, as I imagine the vast majority of Napster users are swapping copyrighted songs).
But as it is, everyone complains about how they have the right to swap music, even copyrighted music, without the permission of the artist. Let me ask you this. In regard to your precious GPL, what if I made some modifications to a piece of GPL'd software and then distributed only the binary. The GPL, in spite of being called a 'copyleft', will basically be legally challenged (if ever) on the basis of copyright law. In effect, it is a form of copyright. Now, if I'm breaking the GPL, I'm breaking copyright law. And I guarantee that if I made profligate use of such software, in the manner I indicated above, the wrath of the Open Source community would come down on me like the Fire of God. Yet it is this same community that seems blinded to the fact that they are hypocritically defending a company that is putting into place just such a practice, only in the music industry rather than the software industry.
I like the idea of free (speech) software. But I won't go out and steal someone's work to try to 'liberate' it, if they don't want it to be freed. Likewise for music.
That's it. Over and out.
_lpp
Let's be real folks. This is not a ruling!
This is a prelimenary injunction. And it makes good sense. In the eyes of the judge, the RIAA has more to lose than Napster. And napster *IS* making a business off of facilitating piracy.
This is a judge trying to limit potential damages before the trial.
As for napster.. if simply being offline for a little while makes tons of other good software spring up, and people realize that napster was actually kind of crappy, and that much better could be done.. that's not a BAD thing.
If they had a real, valuable service/product, then they will still have one after they win their court case.
You know, Napster's real problem is that there is no way they can claim that they didn't know what was going on. In order to maintain the catalogue their servers had to know what songs were available. Even if you don't log what's going on, that means that you can easily be held accountable.
Now, I haven't been following the details of what's been going on on mp3.com, but I hear that they were actually hosting pirated music. Even if all they did was link to it, they have (from one point of view) even less excuse for not knowing what's going on. Then again, since napster developed napster (what a fun sentence) they should have had/did have some really slick reporting tools for finding out what was going on.
There are other sites which do what mp3.com was supposed to do, like IUMA which have been around, well, basically forever. Hell, when IUMA started it was all MPEG 1 Layer 2 files on their site. The only thing IUMA carries is unsigned or indie bands which need more publicity. It would be hard to bring any kind of lawsuit against them because they aren't actually doing anything wrong.
Mind you, I'll miss Napster. I got a lot of good mp3s from there. I even got some mp3s and then went out and bought albums. Whether I'm in the minority or not is another argument. I definitely didn't buy albums containing all the songs I want (Some of them I just can't locate, some I don't feel like buying an album for a song or two. I also wouldn't pay more than a buck for an individual song in online digital format under any circumstances.) But Napster pretty much got what it deserved, even if it only deserved it due to a lack of forethought. Can mp3.com be far behind?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I believe that if the RIAA wins this battle, the next subject will be other sharing communities such as Gnutella and scour exchange. The Scour Exchange community is already incredibly huge(last time I logged on there were 10.94 TB of data available) and even easier to use than Napster. The large amounts of porn and pirated movies on it doesn't help it's reputation either.
In closing, as far as music downloading is concerned, in the end it will/should be that only the smart shall prevail.
---------------------------------
I can only show you the door, you must be the one to walk through it.
Offtopic but I do not think they should call the client "GNU"tella unless they release the sources under GPL. Originally they said that they were going to but now it looks like they may not. If you're going to call yourself gnu software then you should release the source you have. Promising to do so at some future date is not enough. I know they probably had good intentions, but it still bugs me.
(from the gnutella faq)
Will The Source Code Be Released, and if so, when?
If all goes well and development of Gnutella continues you should see the source code during the 1.0 release. The source code has not been released yet and we are unsure at this time if it will ever be released, due to AOL locking it in a closet underneath a large pile of Time Warner's dirty laundry.
If Napster in indeed shut down today, there's going to be a huge wave of kiddies looking for a replacement - RIGHT NOW! And it's probably safe to say that a large number of them will be trying out Gnutella.
I've heard that Gnutella has setup/configuration/usibility issues - not suprising, in that most Free Software starts out with "it works!", moves to "it works well!", and finally arrives at "it's easy to use!" much later on.
If that truly is the case, then the Gnutella folks are about to be deluged with support requests from kiddies to lazy, too clueless, or too impatient to read and undertsand the app. After the, ohh, ten thousandth "plz h3lp m3 instal ur k001 program nootella" message, I think there will be a rash of code hacking to make the app easier to set up and use.
Which, incidently, removes what the RIAA calls the biggest deterrent to using Gnutella (ease of use).
The irony here is hillarious - by shutting down the for-profit Napster - which might have been extorted into paying royalties of some sort - the RIAA is going to provide the sudden surge in user base for Gnutella, which they won't be able to touch!
It's amazing that Jack Valenti and friends can still walk, with the way they keep shooting their own feet all the time.
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
Because within a week everyone would have Stripster, the automatic ad stripping software.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Maybe this will be good for us over all. Without the attention of the clueless newbies we can hold onto (at least for a moment) that feeling that we had when the internet was OURS. Before the great boom of 1995-1997.
*snort*
Listen, whippersnapper, those of us that were here before gopher, never mind the web, when commercial use was illegal, the entire Usenet feed was less than single groups are today, and we could know personally a measurable percentage of people with permanent mail addresses, might be able to say that with a straight face.
You, on the other hand, are a dilettante and poseur, and your ignorant twaddle borders between the amusing and annoying. It would definitely be amusing if it wasn't apparently in earnest...
[Moderators: This is damn well too on topic. It's people like him with no historical perspective who cause the problems with the Internet like the one we are discussing in this thread.]
I conceed that Napster is making money off of others. I also conceed, that most people on there are for copyrighted material. The point however is, that napster can and has been used to distribute non-RIAA (however unsuccesfully) material, mine included. Now with nothing more than corporate power and money, they have shut off an avenue of MY right to free speech. I am a napster user and an artist. Did I ever use napster to download copyrighted material? It matters not, as I also used it for non-copyrighted material.
I an analogy to FedEx in this thread or Katz's about if 90% of FedEx's business was transporting bootleg movies, FedEx would be in the clear because they are the courier.
Well, Napster is the courier here, people use it how they choose. Without Napster (or FedEx) people will still find ways of getting the good's because the roads (the internet) are still there.
www.mp3.com/Undocumented
www.mp3.com/Undocumented
I've been using the internet since the early 90's. When I first got my account on the Un*x box at the University. I had to call into the RS6000 with my 2400 baud modem to gopher, ftp and telnet.
You sound like one of those annoying cigar smokers who bitches because he got dirty looks from people 15 years ago before cigars were chic and now everyone is smoking cigars.
No, I wasn't here in the early days. The fact that I was born in the 70s made that impossible. Just because I haven't gone grey and and still have all of the hair on top of my head makes no difference.
I don't care whether or not you happen to like the fact that I'm saying it, but when everyone and their mother starting listing their web addresses at the bottom of TV commercials and when AOL adoped the flat rate fee for access is when the signal to noise ratio went in the crapper.
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Why the hell was a REDUNDANT post (above) moderated to FOUR? This IS on topic. No offense to the poster, but I call blatant cut-and-paste of someone's post "FISHING".
/. stories have a handful of 4, 5 scoring posts and that's it?
Why is it lately that all
I propose that when a moderator adds +1 to a 4-score post, they actually SPEND FIVE MODERATOR POINTS.
Why charge so many points? Because some moderators are lazy, or just want to enforce their ideology and bump up already high like-minded posts. Since these people do seem to value their moderator points, weighting the price of +1 would encourage deeper digging. Moderation is supposed to be a bell curve, and you can't get a feel for the community when you have a dozen posts ALL at 4 or 5 points when the curve looks like a "M".
I thought about posting this Anonymously, but I know only a minority of moderators would ever read a 0-score post.
The shutting down of napster effectively illustrates why your proposed scheme won't work effectively. Netnews like store and forward networks are very difficult to attack in this fashion.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Seriously, when it comes to minor things such as file-sharing shenanigans, we will regroup and fight back. If the music industry thinks that killing Napster will kill online file sharing, they have no idea how wrong they are and this is a Good Thing. The guy on the TV interview next to Colin (some VP of Virgin Records) clearly had no clue exactly what Napster was, over and above the Hetfield viewpoint, and although Colin wasn't overflowing with technical knowledge, he at least recognised the positive side of what it is capable of.
I really think that record companies are fighting a losing battle here, though they do not know it. One day they will be financially exhausted from trying to fight too many battles against the future, and although we are a long way from a Utopian situation here, I think we should realise this and focus on some more important issues for a while.
Sorry for rambling, just a drunk Englishman. I'll be on my way.
- "How do we do it? Volume!" - The Bursar of Unseen University.
Steve Magruder, Technopolist
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
To me, this is the crux of Napster's case: they should demonstrate that the RIAA, by refusing to embrace on-line distribution, is denying the Artists the legitimate opportunity to earn income from their work.
(Yes,I have purchased from both mp3.com and Emusic.com, as well as managed to "back-up" ~75% of my vinyl collection from Napster)
On a more technical note, when Gnutella first came out, I took a look at the protocol spec and was of the opinion that its flooding protocol generated way too much traffic for what it did. O(N^2) traffic is possible. One of the developers writes:
This is a fixable problem, but if a significant fraction of Napster users switch to Gnutella next week, we're going to see major network congestion. That O(N^2) has to come down to O(log N). It can, but some people need to get busy.
So there was only a market for 90% of the CDs that his label had produced. Someone would get sick of his music and sell it faster than new fans would want to buy it...
Doesn't sound like used CD stores were putting him out of business, sounds like pathetic music was putting him out of business.
My take on the whole Napster thing is that they should be shut down. Pirating music is, plain and simple, a form of stealing. No whining about the "future of music" and how "the RIAA can't shut us down" is going to change this fact.
Shutting down Napster is not about stopping piracy. Shutting down Napster is making a statement that piracy is wrong, and any company that bases their profit model on the stealing of other people's works will be shut down.
I don't mind piracy when people do it under the covers of IRC and underground programs like Gnutella. The underground nature of these programs gives the end user a reminder that they are doing something naughty. I do mind piracy when a comapny like Napster tries to tell us that piracy is OK, and a God-given right.
Just my two cents.
- Sam
The secret to enjoying Slashdot is to realize that it should not be taken too seriously.
How long will it be before we start hearing "You don't buy the music, you buy a license to use the music the way we say."
This was the exact argument made by the MPAA in the 2600 DeCSS case. Their argument at trial was that when you buy a DVD, you are only purchasing a license to play that DVD on an MPAA-authorized and licensed DVD player.
I was looking at yesterday's top downloads at Sourceforge and Freenet is now first. I seen never seen it above 5th. Open Source Napster Server is now 2nd, I have never seen it in the top 10.
Napster's current message:
We're getting a lot of questions about what people can do to help.
Here are three things you can do right away.
It's going to be impossible to prove anything either way. Up, down or sideways. This is about bullying and potential cooption. One of the major record labels will likely own Napster within the year.
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb
I'm a big Radiohead fan too, and I'll purchase whatever CDs I don't currently have of theirs once RIAA removes its head from its ass.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
"We have just finished a tour, we played in
Barcelona, the next day the entire performance was up on Napster and
three weeks later when we got to play in Israel the audience knew the
words to all the new songs and it was wonderful." An interesting change
from the Metallica look at things- hopefully more artists will follow their
lead."
Ok, so I'm a little tired of all this Metallica bashing.
I took the time to read the major press releases and watch the wonderful piece of pulitzer prize winning journalism that was the MTv news special.
Granted that Lars is not one of the great orators of the 21st/22nd century, so it takes a little digging to find out what he was saying.
Metallica does not object to bootlegging. In fact they greatly support it. So the comment above about Radiohead's view being different from Metallica's is not correct.
Metallica objects to having their studio recorded digital masters released on the internet without their permission. The straw that broke the camels back was being able to download their MI2 single from Napster before they had even finished recording it. (technically for this to happen someone first had to actually steal a copy of the song from the studio. This is not the "grey" area of mp3's but the black area of actual larceny)
Metallica went to Napster and asked them to restrict the trading of Metallica's studio mastered songs (*not* the bootlegged live concerts). Since Napster was designed to share live music, they should not have object to this.
Napster refused, essentially saying "ha ha prove it you morons". (Note: do not dare a rock star to do anything, especially when they survived a decade of chugging Jagermeister)
This lead to the media circus we all know and love. After the circus, Napster banned 300,000 users.
This ban is not what Metallica asked for, nor was it what they wanted. Lars has stated this publicly again and again. Metallica basically asked for a filter to be applied to Napster searches.
If they had done this comparatively simple task, Metallica and the people that Napster alienated would be on the side of Napster instead of against them.
Given Napsters actions to date, I am not surprised by their story of being shut down:
everyone (including napster) keeps saying that the judge ordered napster to be shut down. this is not the case. the judge ordered them to make sure no one is trading copyrighted material, and the result is that napster is telling everyone they've been ordered to shut down
Sig:
Barbeque is a noun. Not a verb.
True, but at least it's a lesser moral issue than the outright "theft" of property that has the industry all litigaseous.
;-)
It works both ways though. What's to stop an artist from applying DoS and/or viral techniques to line their pockets with hundreds of thousands of "requests" for their adver-bytten MP3s?
--The more you know, the less you know.
Blocks differs from other anonymous file transfer utilities in that the following ways...
All 'uploaded' files are split into small 64Kb blocks. 'File advertisements' are broadcast through out the network. Your Blocks application needs to be running to see them. When you do a 'search' you are actually searching the local list maintained by your Blocks application, searches are never broadcast.
The data blocks are routed from server to server rather than from point to point, with content being replicated through out the 'network'. IP addresses are not associated with uploads or downloads in any way.
Each Blocks application acts as a potential client, server, and caching proxy for data blocks.
Blocks uses a large disk bound cache (1-64Gb) that is protected by a 128bit block cipher using a random key based on a strong Pseudo Random Number Generator (entropy provided by user), and the cache is deleted and recreated each time the Blocks server is stopped or started. Therefore, even after a crash or abnormal termination, the disk cache cannot be used to ascertain what data has been downloaded or was being served.
All network connections are protected by a 128bit stream cipher using a session key created from a 512bit Diffie-Hellman key exchange. So, network logs cannot be used to identify what network passed through the system.
There is no need to get out panties in a bunch. Nobody gives a rip about Napster per se--all we care about is sharing MP3's. That has not ended. Furthermore there is nothing on the horizon that could possibly end it. There is MP3-sharing software other than Napster that doesn't share it's legal flaws (such as having a well-known operator). And even if there wasn't such software, FTP still works.
It's all over but the crying.
--
Give us our karma back! Punish Karma Whores through meta-mod!
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
Napster has loomed over my school's network for months. At some bad time, I access my hotmail account on a speed of 1.4k/sec through a multi-T1 outlink. It is really a relieve for all the people who use their bandwidth for legitimate and educational purposes. Besides, let's face it, most of the Napster users are shameless leeches who want to get the music for "free".
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Shine on, you crazy diamond.
The RIAA will NEVER succeed in stopping online music trading. Never. They're getting themselves bad press while doing NOTHING to get rid of the trade.
Now I don't really think that what Napster doing was completely legit, nor do I believe the "It's for trading uncopyrighted music" because we all know what it's for. Pirating music, plain and simple.
But as it's been noted countless times before there are at least half a dozen alternatives to Napster, including Gnutella, CuteMX, Freenet, OpenNAP, IRC #mp3z and #mp3s, etc. The RIAA won't touch many of those. They're just getting bad press, that's all.
Why not make the people happy? They'd be accomplishing the exact same thing!! And they'd also gain the general public's trust and liking, too.
Just a few thoughts.
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Tonight on Fox: Deadliest Executions Part XVII
Aside from the anonymous filesharing for always-on internet connections, and perhps freenet, I haven't seen any truly "Litigation-proof" solutions. How many here will continue to use napster-type software? Now, how many here will continue to use it once a few high profile cases come about where houses are raided, computers seized and private citizens being turned into common criminals over copyright infringement?
I say everyone burn all the mp3's you have to CD now, and we can all swp buddy to buddy in meatspace, it's going to be safer that way real soon now.
Fist Prost
"We're talking about a planet of helpdesks."
-Jaron Lanier
A quick search of my local news server turns up about 40 MP3 newsgroups covering most of the interesting genres. Why don't the napster users just move over there? There are lots of news grabbers that strip binaries out of a new stream, it's not centralized so there's no one to shut down, you can post anonymously fairly easily, and the only down side is the occasional live goat porn or make money fast file.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Ok, now this is my first ever post here(after about a year of reading), and i know that this is gonna be marked as flame bait..but here goes anyway. I am a musician, and i personaly would love to have my songs indexed on napster, its free publishing, and would benifit me greatly. However, and i know all of you realize, most ppl that use napster arent interested in finding indy artists, or their favorite local bands newest song done on thier home 4 track. they use it to get the newest pop single. and that, is stealing. you can justify it any way you want, but when it comes down to it you all know that it is. an artist ususualy sees about 12 cents off of every record sold, more after they pay back the lable. and you all have to know someone, if not yourself, who has not bought an album because they download the singls/whole album off of napster, or irc or wherever. i guess my point is, that i see the general attitude in here to be something allong the lines of a witch hunt...and i just wonder how many of you have thought about what you are actualy fighting for?? is it the the right of free speach, or is it the right to not have to take your self down to tower records and buy a cd?
The / in
Virtually all of the servers were split, except for a test group that my wife discovered last week. They had been planning to link all the servers before all this nonsense happened.
For those who are curious, the linked servers were:
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb
Oh my gosh, this song has been playing on my radio for weeks and I just realized that Nina Gordon is part of artist direct network! It is a really good song. In cast the rest of you have not heard about it I encourage everybody to check out the mjuice downloable music at Nina Gordon's website
Hasdi
I create different sorts of music because there are sounds I want to hear that I'm not hearing from anybody else. This can be as direct as having a little analog synthesizer with a resonant filter that I hacked so it can feed back and overload, and wanting to hear an album based on that sound ('Cirrus'), or wanting to hear synthesisers playing in rhythms you normally don't get to hear ('Dragons') or what a dog would sound like as music ('anima').
I could try to find somebody to sell me music like this, and in fact often I have (for instance, I have a big King Crimson record collection bought largely because of my fascination with the unusual time signatures Krimso often uses). But now I do have the capacity, often, to produce the sort of music I'd want to hear- myself. I've found that when I do that, some people simply don't like the result, but then some other people like it a whole lot- or fixate on some small element of what I do, and like that a whole lot.
I feel I'm better off sharing my music for free, and allowing people to show enthusiasm in a direct fashion by downloading more, or by picking up a $5.99 CD, because I am entirely unwilling to 'summarise' my musical interests into one clearly labelled category so people can know what they're buying. You _don't_ know what I'm going to release next. I might do a new age piano album (got new tech- Kurzweil Micropiano and Lexicon Reverb) or a deep reverby 'ambient' album or an album of very well-tuned drum 'n bass. If I need to be able to do that, people need to be able to audition what I'm doing for free so they can _be_ warned how different all the CDs are, and go listen to _everything_ in case they might really connect with some of it.
And of course they can, mp3.com/chrisj is for just that purpose. I just redesigned it to explain better what each of the albums are like, it's no longer necessary to sit there lo-fiing or downloading track after track just to get a sense of what the music is like- or to try just 4 tracks and mistakenly think the whole catalog is like that ;) And all of it is still free- my expectation is that _some_ people will want CDs too, and those that don't are at least giving it a listen. I swear, there is a 'business model' in that- it just doesn't include _guilt_ of giving out 'shareware' music. Imagine it like this- my mp3.com page is the ultimate radio, one I'm very proud of. By using it I can convey broadcast music anywhere in the world at any time of the day or night- anytime someone listens to one of the mp3s, that magic super radio is going 'bzzzzt' and broadcasting it out to be listened to, at no cost to me- in fact, I get a little bit of money for the initial download! It's not much- the total over all the months I've been doing it is about $300, but that's nearly enough to get a Yamaha DX7, and some music that I do would be much better if I got to program a whole Yamaha DX7- it's a six operator FM synth and the one I've got is only a two output 4 operator FM synth. So it does help me make better music, pretty directly...
Tell you the truth, I completely agree with you. I think MP3.com is far superior, and far more worthy of being supported. I have no problem with attacking the Napster corporation, which is probably making money without giving it back to artists. But Napster users are not the same as the Napster corporation.
Can your IM do this?
If napster stays shut down for long enough it would be interesting to see the impact on CD sales - or CD sales around universities, or whatever exactly it was all of those damning studies proved.
Of course given how subjective the studies were before it would be hard for an apparent further decrease in sales to "prove" that Napster was good for the recording industry.
Ad in classifieds: Pandora's Box (no box) $5
With all these Napster alternatives, isn't the collection pool being diluted? One of the reasons Napster was so successful was its large community and hence its large selection. The above links as well as Gnutella and the slew of other file sharing programs means that it will be just as hard to find what you are looking for as it was in the good 'ol days of web pages.
Wouldn't it be better to move to a single (or at least as few as possible) communites - possibly something which would have a harder time being shut down? Of course, there would probably be a whole bunch of flaming with respect to chosing those few communities...
Being with you, it's just one epiphany after another
The entertainment industry as a whole wakes up fom their weird unrealistic dream world they live in to see the real picture. Their method of tackling the problem (lawsuits, cease and disist, etc.) will not work on the internet generation. The internet genration is not happy. If they were happy with the way things are now, you wouldn't have this big problem.
If they keep this up, they might realise they'll run out of money when people start to realise how igorant they really are and start to seek other free methods of entertainment.
At the next eco-hypocrisy-meeting, count the private jets used to get to the meeting. Should be interesting to see that
To sum things up, the industry thinks this is a big win and that they now have a chance to offer consumers music downloads on their own terms. This displays their current lack of understanding of the real problems that users are seeking to remedy with Napster and the other music/file trading options.
I have said and always will maintain that my problem with the RIAA is by inability to purchase single songs at a reasonable price. If they want to offer me downloadable music on a song-by-song basis for about $1 a song I'd be happy to pay. Until then piracy is the only option if you cant afford the whole CD for 1 song. You don't need to shut Napster down to convince me to switch and sharing still has its legitmate uses for unsigned bands and concert bootlegs.
1) Napster is a service. Napster has a web site. The Internet is not the World Wide Web.
2) Mr. Valenti, Scour is not the most obvious example of copyright violation _anyone_ has seen in their life, let alone you.
-=Best Viewed Using [INLINE]=-
everyone (including napster) keeps saying that the judge ordered napster to be shut down. this is not the case. the judge ordered them to make sure no one is trading copyrighted material, and the result is that napster is telling everyone they've been ordered to shut down.e ()} won't cut it...
Reason being, Napster can't (won't) implement a sharing filter to remove copyrighted material.
if(song.matches("[Mm]etallica")==true){song.remov
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The CDs usually run you about half of what they'd cost from an RIAA affiliated band, too.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
There are exceptions. The ones that I know of are small, niche publishers. But then again being small, being in a niche, they have to do what they can to compete with "the big boys".
:-)
For instance in the Celtic category, Green Linnet makes it a policy to make available (unfortunately not in MP3 format though - their clues are limited) all of their songs.
Strangely enough, I buy the CDs anyways...
Cheers,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
Note: Alternative Tentacles is the music label owned by Jello Biafra of Dead Kennedy's fame. Jello, Alternative Tentacles, and the ex-members of the Dead Kennedy's have been embroiled in a vicious battle of late over the rights to and royalty payments from old releases. I personally don't know enough to pass any kind of judgement on this situation, but do feel that it is ridiculous to have these individuals violate the "punk rock" ethic" and use the sytem to bring down people who were once friends and who made muci with each other not out of the need for reprisal but out of the need for release.
"Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality." -- Dalai Lama
Put a piece of music in front of him.
I dont know if Napster is the battle we want to put all of our energy into fighting. As much as some of us use it, we DO know that it is being used for a lot of piracy that is beyond the terms of fair use.
BUT Napster also highlights the problems with the concepts of IP, fair use, and copyright, especially the model that is currently being forced down our throats by the RIAA.
Some of my very best friends are independent producers. Their music is up on MP3.com. MP3.com has ways for the artists to promote themselves, to link to other artists they like, runs contests and promotions to encourage the artists. I have found some great people whose music I would have never heard otherwise... because people whose music I already respected suggested them. This is a model that can, and does work. And a quick comparision of mp3.com to Napster leaves Napster very much lacking in these sorts of features, which ARE the features that link the artists directly to their listeners.
MP3.com has my full support. Napster... I have a hard time justifying it. Its VERY grey...and I think we all need to pick our battles carefully on this one.
just my thoughts.... *dons flameproof suit*
Check out Magic Firesheep!
This is exactly why smaller artists don't get a chance. You complain about how all the "mainstream" music is "garbage", and how they don't promote "real artists". I hate to break the news to you, but musical talent is not somethiung that can be measured. It's a tase. You don't like what's out now, so it's garbage and you are a "real artist" who will never get anywhere because people don't like what you are putting out. I don't like Christiana Agulara, but does that means that everything she puts out is crap? No, because some people think it's really good, and get a lot of meaning and enjoyment out of it, and THAT is what music is about. People think Napster is great because it opens up the world to smaller artists, and that is a benefit of Napster. But it also helps to close the door on emerging major label artist, but that's okay, because they aren't "real artists" anyway. Just because someone sells a million records doesn't make them great, but just because you don't like them doesn't make them "hacks" or "sellouts" or "crap". Popular music is called that because it is "popular". If you want to be a part of popular music, you have to be popular, and it's a shame most people think that as soon as you join the ranks of the "popular" bands, you automatically suck.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
Regardless of where you stand on the ethics of Napster, you have to admit some of the people quoted in the Salon article Just Don't Get It. My favorite (from Erwin Drake):
Napster is supplying burglar tools to a public that is not aware of the circumstances. That same public, if it can not afford a car or a home, knows it can not have them. They can not download that car or home. That would be theft if it were technically feasible.
That just makes my head hurt.
I was thinking about this whole napster thing. What if Napster went off and hosted in Havenco on the territory of Sealand? What forces would be able to bar them if they were based off Sealand? I feel this seems to be the only logical step Napster or a future derivative of that company could take to minimize all this legal fights with RIAA.
Havenco is also letting people who are proseucuted by their gov's host their sites free of charge. Very nice deal.
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What styles do these artists play?
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
Freenet, a new type of internet connection is anonymous for sharing and storing files. http://freenet.sourceforge.net/ From their website: "What is Freenet? 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. Freenet also employs intelligent routing and caching meaning that it learns to route requests more efficiently, automatically mirrors popular data, makes network flooding almost impossible, and moves data to where it is in greatest demand. All of this makes it much more efficient and scalable than systems such as Gnutella. "
~~~Please pass the salt, I hate unsalted MD5s
As I understand it, the orignal Gnutella project at Nullsoft is dead; AOL presumably didn't approve, particularly considering their impending merger with Time/Warner. There are now a number of independent Gnutella clones, most of them fully compatible with the Nullsoft Gnutella protocol, and I think they're all open-source. Consult the Gnutella site (not hosted by Nullsoft/AOL, nor operated by Nullsoft employees AFAIK) for details.
And we can only hope that the judge reaches your same, enlightened conclusion in his deliberations.
:-)
They do tip us tho- we get a fixed amount divvied up among us for downloads, and we get 50% of CD sales. That alone is way better than anything any RIAA label has ever offered... so I have to encourage mp3.com, just don't think they will support their own bands as in promote or fund, because they totally won't :) they aren't loan sharks like the majors- break-even point is 'the moment you sign up' and you have to bring people there yourself. Once you do, you and mp3.com peacefully divvy up the returns if any :) in a way, this is a much humbler and more sensible way of working in the music business.
They'd be happy to sell you songs individually, but those songs will be encrypted, digitially signed, and permanently linked to a particular player, (a closed source, obfuscated player program or hardware.) And you gotta give them you player's serial number.
Oh, and they'll also be licensed and not sold, and, because they're now selling songs, they'll claim that there's no reason for any player to play unencrypted music, so all THOSE players will be made illegal. Of course, like software, they won't accept returns.
And if the player they've licensed for goes sour, you'll be stuck with megabytes of useless crap. They'll never let you convert your music to a second player, as you might be lying about your origional one breaking and you might be a pirate. So you'll have to buy it all over again.
Need I continue?
Oh, and once they've made everything else illegal, they'll put on limits. You can only play the music so many times before it disables, or so many times a month, or a limited timeframe to play it in.
And of course, once people forget about free music and think 'public domain' is a dirty word, the price will go up. $5? $20? a track. The monopolies will screw you for as much as they [safetly] can. And then they'll work to make copyrights perpetual.
This is what the record companies want out of the digital future. This is what any 'copyright control' company wants. Music, lyrics, video, photography, software. This is what they all want.
Napster and any other way of letting the MASSES trade media that's unencrypted and not digitally linked (Masses != computer nerds who know FTP or IRC.) risks that bright future for record companies. It gives the heretical idea that people should question copyright. Something which they haven't seriously done in decades. Like the witches at the stake, Napster must be destroyed for that reason.
Computers don't necessarily make information free. They're good at processing information, duplicating it, checking it, debiting accounts... Thus, they allow control at a fine level that would have been impossible in the past.
The internet gives everyone a press. As a famous quote goes ``Freedom of the press is only for those who have one.'' The internet must be controlled to protect those who already have presses.
No -- it's not completely flawed because unlike napster, it does not completely bypass the artist's compensation. Sure, the RIAA are greedy f*cks, but so are the napster mob. Both sides want to take as much as possible and to hell with anyone who gets in their way.
They control (for the most part) the media that influnces what you buy (think radio
Don't know about you, but I suibscribe to member supported radio -- I support alternatives. These stations are not controlled by anyone. ueah, I know, someone has to pay to support them, and the napsterites don't want to pay for anything.
Now yes, I put my music up on places like mp3.com and napster for public exposure. Why? Because no matter how bad I suck, I want to hear other peoples opinions and critiques (sp?).
The fact that you aren't a professional musician doesn't mean that noone else should be.
The RIAA has spent millions, silencing ME an artist, by shutting down one of my distribution channels.
napster was primarily a glorified warez site. The fact that tere was the odd bnit of legit material here and there doesn't justify it.
Perhaps that wasn't the best choice of words on my part. In my defense, I was trying to be brief enough that the story would have some chance of being posted :)
I agree with what you're saying though. I've been saying the same thing. Regardless of whether they understand why people use Napster or not (and I'm not really sure whether they understand and are in denial, or if they just plain don't get it) they will do whatever they feel is necessary to retain control of the industry.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
The whole net took notice, and now with growing popularity, we have to fess up to our actions. I love music, can't get enough, and get a lot of MP3s, but well, it's illegal. I don't have to tell you guys that.
When, however, did the line get so blurred? I don't want to see Napster go, as I learned piracy from my father, but instead I want an underground I'm not going to hear about on Headline News.
Lets keep surfing this wave, and lets hear more from the OSI community. Gnutella is good, but we need to keep going.
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Used CD sales have already been targeted and already won their cases in court. From what I understand, this is due to what's known as the "first sale doctrine." It basically says that once you buy something, like a cd, it's yours and you can sell it to someone else if you want, as long as you're not keeping a copy for yourself.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
attack the MP3 format itself? I mean honestly now, why don't they just go ahead and sue the person who came up with the MP3 file format, and then sue Winamp, Real, Microsoft, and everyone else who publishes a player that is capable of using mp3's.
The RIAA has a problem with MP3's. It's not just they don't want people trading copyrighted material, they don't want them doing anything with a format they don't have any control over. I want to see the RIAA sue Microsoft to attempt to force Microsoft to remove support for MP3's from Windows Mediplayer. Obviously all MP3's contain illegally acquired copyrighted material (never mind all the songs I download because it's easire for me to download songs I have the CD for than for me to rip them myself), so of course an MP3 player should be illegal as well! Please. This is ludicrous to say it's the deathknell of whatever it is the RIAA thinks they're fighting.
Moller
Two comments on this one:
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Q. What is the difference between a drummer and a drum machine ?
A. You only need to punch the information into a drum machine the once
Q. Why does every band have a bassist ?
A. Cos some f***er has to drive the van
Stephen Hawking has written another book. It's about time as well.
No, they have made money, just not enough to offset their debt, which is why they are in the red.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
The real issue is:
We will always be able to share MP3's. Maybe not on the same scale that Napster permitted, or maybe so. but there will ALWAYS be a risk of getting caught, and going to jail, that's why the concern about Gnutella, and need for Freenet.
The way I see it, it all depends on the interpretation of "fair use". Like Orrin Hatch said. If fair use includes the non-commercial sharing of an MP3 with a friend (or x friends), then what users on Napster are doing is NOT illegal. Why has the argument focused on abusive contracts, price gouging, etc.? This is the real battle. Fair use. If we don't win the fair use argument, then the RIAA comes in and has congress right some nasty provisions - and the end result will be, you can download music from record company servers, at the price they want, probably won't be able to copy it or share it (SMDI), and possibly, they'll be able to limit your listening of the file so you pay a fee every listen. Plus, what will be available will be a subset of music that exists, probably current top 40's only. That is not a regime I would like to be a consumer in. I would probably just not listen to music anymore. The day the music died.
Screw all the other bogus arguments, about "how will the poor artists eat" and crap like that. Our rights are at stake here. Fair use is important, and that's what we need to be aware of. Artists will still make music, and still become fabulously wealthy, and there will still be record companies, and they'll still be able to charge for people to download music - even if you can get the same file free from your buddy over the internet, that does not destroy the market for sale of legitimate first-time intellectual property, or a physical CD with liner notes and cover art and other value-added features. But that is fighting a bullshit argument anyway - focus on fair use. It's our right, let's not lose sight of that.
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
CNN is reporting (as of July 28, 2000 05:48 p.m. EDT, 2148 GMT) that the injunction has been stayed. They are supposed to have more news soon.
He seems to honestly believe that he didn't tell Napster to shut down!
Telling Napster to prevent the unauthorized copying of copyrighted music is like telling a telephone to stop people from telling lies over the telephone (or, more topically, preventing people from playing copyrighted music over the telephone). Not only do they not have the resources to listen in on all of the communications, they don't have any sure way of knowing what is copyrighted (or not licenced for distribution).
They would need to listen to every file that was listed on Napter, as it was put up. You can't just go by the names. You certainly can't automate it, it would have to be people listening in.
But that wouldn't do it. How do you know who gave permission for what? How do you even tell obscure band XZY's promotional release from obscure band ZYX's CD track #7?
Sure, with some effort they could cut out a lot of really flagrant abuse, like the top 100 songs, and anything by the most popular few hundred musicians (who don't tell them otherwise), as long as people label them correctly, but the order wasn't "do the best you can without having to shut down" it was "do it perfectly, now! and I don't care about your customers".
This killed Napster. They are never going to turn a profit, whether they come back up or not. Now that it's down, people will share their music in other ways. They'll find better ways, and nobody will bother going back to Napster.
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Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
Yesterday my Grandmother mentioned to me the Napster case. She's by no means a techie and she didn't understand many of the details of the ruling, but it took me nearly 10 minutes to describe to her that Napster wasn't the only game in town.
People think that Napster is the only thing out there. Just like many users of a certain three initial ISP seem to think that there is no other way to get connected to the internet.
Maybe this will be good for us over all. Without the attention of the clueless newbies we can hold onto (at least for a moment) that feeling that we had when the internet was OURS. Before the great boom of 1995-1997.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Long ago, Roblimo , put the quote at the bottom on Slashdot. IMHO, the record companies have been ripping us o^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H enjoying high profits and FEAR the end of the gravy train, and having to subsist on the profit margins more common in other industries.
* **
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Re:Another victory for the forces of mediocrity. (Score:3, Insightful)
by roblimo (roblimo.nojunk@slashdot.org) on Monday March 27, @09:54AM
EDT (#77) (User Info)
More aptly, what if 95% of all popular music was controlled by only four or five record companies and those companies formed a trade association whose main purpose was to keep its members' products selling for high prices instead of allowing "the market" to determine what a given song was worth?
The end result would probably be wholesale music piracy using technology the record companies couldn't control.
Not that anything like this could ever happen in real life, mind you; this is just Monday morning speculation on Slashdot...
- Robin
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Now, if you really want to do this sort of thing right, you don't start a company and advertise what you're doing. That's dumb. You also don't have a centralized server whose operators can be sued. Instead, you set up a decentralized system where everyone is a client and a server. Gnutella is one possibility, but it still allows you to identify where the pirated files are located (on various servers, identifiable by their IP addresses, which may be dynamic but do have a specific meaning at any given moment). Freenet is better still; the files are distributed in such a way that you can't tell where they are, and in fact a given file may not be in any one place in its entirety. Now that's tricky to sue.
So I think it's pretty stupid for people to be talking about setting up new Napster servers. You want to get sued? Fine, go ahead. Your pockets are probably a lot less deep than Napster's, but the RIAA will be happy to take whatever you've got. In the meantime, those of us with clues will be working with Gnutella and Freenet, doing essentially the same thing you are, but not getting sued. Take your pick.
I am not saying all Napster users are pirates. I am saying that the very way that Napster is set up is VERY grey, and easily abused.
We are going to have to fight a battle over IP and copyright. But Napster in and of itself has enough greyness that makes it hard to defend. It has chinks, and problems that allow marketing machines and spin doctors to control public perception.
If we are going to fight this war, I would much rather fight it over a model that allows better circumvention of teh RIAA and already has artist support built in, and thats mp3.com. This is definately an IMHO, and to be honest I am rather surprised that my comment got modded up as high as it did...
Check out Magic Firesheep!
Note that this is just a suggestion; I believe that would be the moral thing to do, but you're ultimately responsible for making your own choices.
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The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
"The Source will be with you... Always."
If you look at just the title of Fraunhofer's patent, it says "Digital Encoding Process".
The "Process" detailed in the claims is general enough to cover all MP3 encoding and is necessary and irreplaceable for creating an MP3 bitstream. LAME infringes.
<O
( \
XGNOME vs. KDE: the game!
Will I retire or break 10K?
According to today's Albuquerque Journal, she player here last night. But she was an hour "late" so people had to kill time at the merchandise booths or tables or whatever they had. According to one mommy:
That's $220 in merchandise from 5 munchkins, not counting the tickets themselves. It was 12000 seats, so if you extrapolate, it's half a million dollars of merchandise per show.And Britney is selling out just about every gig on her world tour.
I used to think it was all pointless noise and a waste of time, but now I see the magnitude of the payoff, and all I can think is, "I want in." Who cares if Britney is intelligent? I just wanna marry her (no pre-nup!) and own stock in the megacorp that created her.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I dont think the music industry has any lack of understanding when it comes to the problems we "pirates" are trying to remedy. They know their distribution mechanism is severly flawed, but it is flawed entirely in their favor. They control (for the most part) the media that influnces what you buy (think radio and MTV). They countrol the distribution method so that they, make the most out of it (and of course the few artists that have mass appeal due to their help). Everyone else get the short end of the shaft.
Why would they want that to change? Even if things like napster caused people to go out and buy MORE music, it may not be the music they are promoting. Having that kind of power over the masses is something I dont think many individuals would give up, much less a corporation. I am not naive enough to think that this is for monetary reasons only. The music industry has power over poeple, power that is clearly illustrated by the fact that as sharaing technologies became more prevalent, the majority of what you see is MAINSTREAM music, Nsync, Brittany Spears, Eminem, ect. Most of the music is fun yes, but talented and emotional, probably not. However it is what is getting crammed down peoples nural pathways by radio and MTV at the cost of millions of dollars. That in and of itself show the gullibility of the masses, and that is what the RIAA and the MPAA exploit.
I myself am a musician. Not a very good one, but you know what my opinion of my music is? I do it for ME. It is a release of my creative energy, my emotion. If other people hear it and like it then great, but if not no loss because I did it for ME. Now yes, I put my music up on places like mp3.com and napster for public exposure. Why? Because no matter how bad I suck, I want to hear other peoples opinions and critiques (sp?).
I have mad all of about $10 from the mp3.com pay for play program, and also put my music out through napster, normally before releasing it on mp3.com. Now what? The RIAA has spent millions, silencing ME an artist, by shutting down one of my distribution channels. Even if I was good, I would never distribute or promote through corporations that behave like that.
I think the RIAA is fighting this battle more for the POWER than the MONEY. The fact that they are still breaking profit records I think proves that.
Ok... rant over.. return to your lives people...
www.mp3.com/Undocumented
www.mp3.com/Undocumented
Few people know this, but Will Smith turned down an acceptance to MIT to become a rap star. Now we see Chuck D. with an insightful comment about sharing, and we see an incredibly enlightened comment by the lead of the band "Moebius Dick", who in his spare time is a law professor.
For some reason, we tend not to associate rock/rap/pop music with sophisticated thinking. But to find out how many of these guys actually hold academic posts -- it is far higher than a lot of people think, and that surprises people.
--
Friends don't let friends misuse the subjunctive.
This has probably been mentioned earlier, but what the heck:
What if this goes through ? Who's next on the list ? Are they going to start shutting down newspaper because people are advertising "massage parlors" in the ads ?
Are they going to shutdown the phonebook because some of these business are unethical and/or may provide illegal service ?
Face it people, Napster is just one big phonebook, with the difference that it's citizen are band's name and songs name, and phone number get replaced by an IP.
Woudl RIAA go up against a phone co ? Nah. They'd get litigated to a pulp. So they hit on the smaller guy.
I personally listen to AM radio, and I dont give a rat's about MP3's. It just freaks me out that they could go after you just for HAVING a directory of some sort. We all know that Napster facilitates piracy, _BUT_ in theory it has other use. If it only represent 0.00000000000001% of whatever you could use it for, it still warrants fair defense.
Marriage is considered capital punishment for the theft of a goat in some third world countries...
I recently read an article about the association between Napster and Open Source. The author of that piece was pised that people use OSS philosophy to support Napster. Maybe they do but I have a slightly different view of the connection.
Napster is almost exclusively used by computer savvy music lovers. Right now a disturbingly large percentage of computer lovers are Linux users and most of those buy OSS philosophy, at least in part.
Just because the same set of people like something doesn't necessarily mean they are connected in the most obvious way. I.e. Geaks with Guns doesn't mean guns are part of OSS culture, the recent flapping on Linuxtoday over that testifies to this.
As for Napster itself. Sure Napster users buy more music. If they didn't like music they wouldn't be going to the hassle of installing Napster, WinAmp and CDeX. Both Napster and the RIAA are claiming something which is just not true. Listening to MP3s doesn't cause people to buy more music and downloading free MP3s is not a substitute for buying CDs.
Personally, I never buy the songs I download off the internet. However, I buy all my music locally ( No credit card or confidence in EComerse ). The songs I download simply are not on the shelfs here. Specifically, I don't see any Weird Al or other comedy music.
On the other hand, I don't download Buju Banton or Bounty Killer mp3s off the net. Maybe it's to support local music or because these goys consistently give me at least 12 1st rate songs per album. somebody else tends to love the few songs, I don't like so I chalk it up to subjective preferences, rather than objective crap peddling.
As for lost revenue. I buy 2 CDs per month. I used to buy 3 before the cost went up. I don't ever buy less but I will buy more again if for some reason I have more disposable income. I suspect most people are in a similar situation. Why else would people try to play with Autocad ( U$ 3,000 ) on a 486 ? If they could afford to pay for it they would also have bought a better computer.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
"What a waste it is to lose one's mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is"
Vidi, Vici, Veni
The only way to break the RIAA is to circumvent them. mp3.com has already started doing this. By supporting their own bands, mp3.com is bucking the RIAA. If mp3 swapping downloaders supported un-signed bands, or bands on labels that are amicable to mp3 swapping, or bands on labels that aren't part of the RIAA...it keeps the RIAA from trying to get file-sharing regulated.
True, this means that most current commercial music would be off-limits....I for one think that's a plus for pop culture as a whole.
TGL
--- this space intentionally left blank.
Following the injunction against Napster, 20,000,000 Napster fans worldwide flooded into the Slashdot website en masse, desperate for up-to-date information on alternative sources for thier free misic fixes. /.'s front man Commandante' Taco, "all you're really doing is swishing the water around."
"[the injunction against Napster] is like trying to smooth out lumps in a waterbed," said
Slashdot, a news forum for self-styled "geeks", is a leading advocate of free software (including many free Napster alternatives), Star Wars, and Hot Grits.
"People are realizing that only through free software can men be truly free, t'was always thus, and always thus will be." Said Slashdot's verbose Mr. Antonius Coward, "People understand that Gnutella (a Napster alternative) can never be blocked, sued or injuncted. It has been a great coup for our wicked underground agenda".
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
This is just another step in the record companies long slow suicide. If they really had a clue about the future, they would not have shut down the lyrics databases when they should have just bought them out. They wouldn't be trying to stop Napster, they would be pressing ahead with colateral merchandise and expanded experiences. They would be giving music videos away and using the web to create affinity groups of music types, collect ad revenue and build brands. They would recreate themselves as a modern business capable of dealing with changes in the marketplace.
What do you do when you have a song stuck in your head? Since there are no lyrics databases left to search openly, I go straight to a text search engine like Altavista or Google and find whatever fragment of a phrase I can scrape together. Most popular lyrics seem to be online somewhere, and I usually find the song in a few searches.
Since the record companies have done absolutely nothing to help find one song on an album, let alone make it possible to buy just that song, hello Napster. Custom CDs are not the answer. When blank CDRs are for sale at KMart, it's a little late to try and convince us that CDs are hard to make. If I want one song, I want it now, and I don't want to be forced into buying 10-15 other songs for $20 and having to wait a week for delivery.
Music has been digital for years, and that means that there are no originals. Everything is a copy, the only original is the music being recorded. Without copies, there is no music. There is absolutely no difference between the content on a CD I purchased today and 10,000 of the same album purchased anywhere around the world.
I'm glad Radiohead came forward, again they prove to be among the most forward thinking musicians out there. I'm also glad I own all their albums. And I'm going to go download their live shows right now...
Thomson Multimedia controls MP3 patent licensing. If the RIAA wants to stop MPEG Audio Layer 3, it could just work with Thomson to get the patent royalties upped. This will cause League for Programming Freedom to throw up a site called Burn All MP3s Day and everyone will go download Vorbis software from Xiph.org and re-rip their CDs.
<O
( \
XGNOME vs. KDE: the game!
Will I retire or break 10K?
It's a lost cause anyway. It's much harder to attack a file format, because it has so many uses. I've seen MP3 being used for so many legal uses that it's highly unlikely it would ever be judged illegal. It's just a compression format.
I guess that's when they said ``oh, fuck it.''
It's written in Perl, and works on Windows, Unix, and probably others. It establishes a proxy that you and others use, and it can pass requests on to other Crowds servers. This would still revolve around HTTP, I would guess.
Why don't the napster users just move over [to alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.*]?
Many ISPs don't subscribe to alt.binaries.* You generally have to pay to get binaries access from a third party.
it's not centralized so there's no one to shut down
But it makes it easy to shut down the news accounts of everybody who posts. Most news providers include tracing information in the headers, and this tracing information can be reported to the provider, shutting down the infringer's access to the binaries server.
<O
( \
XGNOME vs. KDE: the game!
Will I retire or break 10K?
If I own a song, and so does my friend, I can persumably give him a copy legally.
If he loses his CD, or scratches it to CD hell, does he still own the copyright? Can I give him a tape of the CD he bought leagally?
And what if he breaks his CD and then sells it? Does the buyer have the right to obtain from a mate the a copy of the working version? And does the seller have to destroy any copies he has made for himself? He certainly can't sell them on!
Can anyone see where I'm going here? If I go out and buy a bunch of fubarred CDs for a penny, I can legally download all the MP3 tracks from them.
What implications does this have?Well now I actually come to write it down, very few. But it does illustrate the gray area copyright is. But stealing is still stealing.
When it somes to it, 98% of Napster users were stealing. As pointed out in the body, the Judge didn't order the Napster service to stop, only that it isn't "abused" (although would you call illegal mp3 trading on Napser abuse?).
In light of this, how can we critisise the Judge's desision. The Law is the Law, and its a Judge's job to uphold it.
I mourn Napster's death, and will miss my 3-a-daydownloads. But I never let myself think it was anything other than stealing.
These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based on the order in which I joined. -- Homer Simpson
I dunno, Jack...Maybe because they're artists? Or because people like contributing to things society as a whole can enjoy? Maybe for recognition in one's field?
Not everything has to have a price tag.
--
The RIAA would go well to examine the saga of OLGA, the On-line Guitar Archive.
Years ago, people started posting guitar transcriptions on USENET. Someone started collecting them on an FTP site at, IIRC, the University of Arizona; later, this evoloved into a web site, olga.net.
The Powers That Be didn't like this very much - in their minds it meant that they were losing money since people weren't buying books of transcriptions anymore. (Never mind that there's a huge difference between not making money and losing money, that these books were overpriced and sucked, that people have been showing each other how to play songs since the beginning of time, and that composers were getting performance royalties when someone like me played stuff they'd learned off the net down at the local bar.) So they brought down their legal might and crushed OLGA.
Which led to dozens of new guitar tab sites springing up all over the web.
You can't stop people from sharing information. Gnapster has built-in support for OpenNAP. Need I say more?
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
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Couldn't we have a Napster topic on the preferences page? It's getting tedious avoiding the whinings of people with excessive bandwidth and shallow pockets - in other words cable modem users too tight to buy fucking CD's.
Chris
This is a classic example of a large monolithic institution trying to make an example so others will fall into line, the thing is, it is not going to work. Anyone with an IRC client can go to various channels to find MP3s they want, then there is Napigator, which can hook up your napster client to servers in no way affiliated with Napster, not to mention the Dozen or so more Napster clones such as OpenNap that are floating around out there. With CuteMX anyone can set up an FTP server to serve out MP3s. The options are effectively endless, and basically, all the RIAA is doing is swatting the biggest roach in the kitchen, not to mention that there are hundreds more lurking just under the refrdgerator that are going to dart out into the open if Napstwer Dies. The RIAA is just creating thier own monster that they will never have any hope of controlling.
You say you want a revolution....
But really, I tried using Gnutella and I couldn't make it work, so I'm not as worried about it as I was about Napster. I spoke to about 20 people who agreed. Of course, anybody who wants to steal music will do it; the diligent pirate will always succeed, but that doesn't mean we should allow it to become mainstream.
If the history of bleeding edge apps which serve a purpose has taught me anything, it's that rapid improvment comes quickest to those packages which are potentially the most useful. Mr Howard A. King doesn't know it yet, but he should be far more worried about Gnutella than he is now. Napster was easy to sue - public, high-profile, has management in suits etc. Gnutella (and other desperately subversive tools like IRC and ftp) will just take up the slack - untraceable and impervious to lawsuits.
--- Hot Shot City is particularly good.
We need to divide the world into two halves. One where all the penniless bastards who are too cheap to pay for anything go to not get paid for anything they do - and the other half where we don't mind paying for what we want. I'd like to see how that world would be - hmm.. maybe like the former Soviet Union.
What a spectacular example of not rebutting the original point.
People do things all of the time for free, beause they want to. If anything, current IP system hampers the progress of the arts because record labels convince people that:
a) The reason you want to be in a band is to make big money.
b) [more significantly] Your music is not worth producing if you can't make money off of it.
People used to own more musical instruments than they do now; families commonly had a piano in their house. Sure, we're not talking about the kind of performance you'd pay $20 for a CD of, but the important thing was people enjoyed creating music themselves.
(And for the record, your example is way off-base. Under communism, you didn't "not get paid for what you did" -- you just didn't get paid what your work was "worth". "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" and all that...)
Jay (=