Slashdot Mirror
Freenet Music Venture; Napster-like ROM Swapping
artg writes "The Guardian is
reporting) that Ian Clarke and others are creating a company called Uprizer to provide a legal Napster replacement. It apparently relies on voluntary contributions from users, but full details are secret until December." In other news, we've had a number of submissions concerning a Napster-like program called RomNet. The main difference is the swapping of ROMs -- looks cool.
Lost its battle? My understanding was that the trial won't actually begin for another six months; the RIAA got a prelimminary injunction and Napster was granted their appeal. Exactly what battle are they talking about?
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$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Burris
No. The philosophy behind the GPL is that people should be allowed to use their data however they want (including sharing with others).
Good God! Maybe you actually read what Gnu is about, instead of making unbelievably wrong assumptions about it.
The philosophy of GPL is NOT "that people should be allowed to use their data however they want". There are very specific restrictions on what people are allowed to do with GPL code, including 1) Source code must be distributed, 2) Source code which isn't GPL'd becomes GPL'd when GPL code is used within it (the "viral" aspect of the GPL).
If there were no IP laws, the GPL would be impossible.
If anything, you're thinking of BSD-style licenses, which are almost unrestricted.
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Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
uprizer won't work. they are talking about helping the smalltime and unsigned bands - and those are not the MP3s most people want. They want Britney Spears.* And neither Britney Spears nor her label are interested in micropayments.
Besides, if I want unsigned artists, I can go to mp3.com.
wishus
* I probably misspelled Britney. I am sure to get flamed for this.
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The market for peer to peer file sharing is already diluted, with most (Napster, Scour, etc.) concentrating on multimedia files. I do not want a program that only targets a specific niche, as I will then need XX different programs just to share all of my files over a network. FreeNet will probably only capture a small user base because of its complexity and the implications of storing portions of other people's potentially illegal information on your computer.
Instead of integrating micropayments or encouraging users to pay for downloaded songs, I would like to see a content-neutral *efficient* file sharing system. It should be both like Microsoft File Sharing/FServes, where you find the name of friends computer and download his files, if you have the right password, and Napster, where you can search the entire network for unprotected files. It should not require a central server but, unlike Gnutella, which is incredibly inefficient, it should immediately query the "server" that it connects to for all IP addresses that it is connected to, cache ALL hosts, and immediately announce itself to the network. It should not respond to search requests unless it has a hit--all file system information should be cached in memory.
I want flexibility and performance, not a program designed to handle only a certain type of file that the developer allows. The web has evolved into what it is today because it is a trivial task to extend HTML to embed new multimedia enhancements, and it can link to files of all types. Why should we accept file-sharing programs that are unneccesarily restrictive?
ByteMyCode.com: A Web 2.0 code sharing community.
You just don't get it, do you? No one ever said IP laws are bad/wrong. The purpose is not to abolish them. Copyright, patent, trademark, they all are very useful concepts and are needed. Without them, the global economy would collapse, and even if you're anti WMF, WTO (as I am) you can't really think that would be a Good Thing.
/.ers who rant and rave over GPL violations but see nothing wrong with pirating anything and everything under the sun, claiming it's free speech.
.
But on the other hand, free speech is just as important. The post you are replying to points out hypocrisy of
What Napster is doing is illegal. They are (or are hoping they will be) profiting from piracy. Gnutella isn't and is therefore probably fine. The users of Gnutella may be breaking the letter of the law, but it is too hard to track them and too costly to prosecute them.
The GPL isn't using the system against itself, as you claim. The GPL is using the system for just the purpose the system was created. The purpose of the GPL is to protect property and limit it's use. The RIAA is, at this point, using the system against itself. By resisting electronic distribution and charging too much, they are encouraging the their own (and the system's) destruction.
<RANT>IMHO information does not want to be free. It wants to be created and used.</RANT>
The RIAA is trying to halt the use of information. They killed the single as a medium and charge too much for records. As a result they are being hit hard by mp3 piracy. If the RIAA wanted to solve this problem once and for all, they could adapt their pricing schemes to reflect the new and drastically lower cost of duplication and distribution and LET US LISTEN TO THE MUSIC WE'D GLADLY PAY FOR
There comes a time in every man's life when he must say, "No mother! I do not want any more Jell-O!"
I think the reason that these stories are getting posted is because not everyone thinks that sharing music should be CONSIDERED piracy. There are a number of reasons why one would hold such a belief, ranging from music being an art form that should be shared, to the sharing of music actually ENCOURAGES people to buy albums/go to live shows. Most importantly we have seen that time and time again, artists have stepped forward and said "It is not us that hates [insert your favorite music sharing program here], it is the RIAA; They see it as cutting into their profits." Well, Lars aside anyway. :)
I think that you are really simplifing the issue by just saying "software that promotes rampant piracy". The fact that this topic poses so many interesting questions, and is such an IMPORTANT issue to talk about in a global network environment, demands its continual mention.
-- leppi
Many would define freedom as "The ability to do anything I want with the this piece of code", as you implied in your original post. [ ... ] In other words, I am not allowed to do what I want with the code, even if I make my own changes to it. People are NOT allowed to "use their data however they want", as you asserted.
Are you being deliberately obtuse?
Currently, copyright law allows something that the FSF and others consider to be wrong, namely allowing someone to put computer code under lock and key and claim ownership of it, depriving all others of any right to make use of, modify, or in many cases even look at the code in question.
The FSF's goal is to counter this. Unfortunately, because the law as it stands favors those who would restrict information, specifically source code to software, the FSF had to write guarantees into its license to protect the freedom of the code from those who would alter it and then hide their changes behind existing copyright laws.
The FSF's goal and philosophy call for a world in which all information is available to everybody under what amounts to BSD style conditions, but the current state of the law fosters and encourages a form of intellectual vulturism and predition that has forced their hand, namely to write specific protections into the license requiring others to behave in an ethical manner. The law should do this, but it doesn't, so the license must.
The BSD license, unfortunately, has no such protections.
I for one won't consider releasing my material under the FreeBSD license given the current legal climage. All software I write is under the GPL because it achieves what I want, the guarantee that anyone can use my code for whatever purpose they want, as long as they share it with the rest of us.
I have written a Free Media License which does the same thing for other media (photographs, movies, movie scripts, music, etc.). Anyone can use my material, as long as they release the derivative product under the same, emmenently fair, conditions. What I do not want is some hollywood mogul using my stuff to make a movie, then turning around and suing me when I use DeCSS to decrypt the resulting DVD and watch it on my Linux box. As the GPL does for software, so my license does for media: namely protects the rights of everyone, at the expense of not permitting predators to take our work and make it their own, with the full force of government regulation and the gun to back them up.
FreeBSD is appropriate for some things, but there are a whole hell of a lot of projects for which it is singularly inappropriate (ditto for any other license you can name, including the GPL).
To summarize: the BSD license represents an ideal of where most of us want to be one day, but as long as the law is stacked so heavilly against freedom of information, the GPL is what is needed to get there.
The GPL is a means to an end, not the end itself.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
This new "file-sharing" bent among young people perfectly mirrors the start of the Drug Revolution. Many people thought then, as they do now, that if enough people do it, how can they make it illegal? Well, last I checked, Marijuana is still illegal, despite how many people have used it.
You're creating another War on Drugs, except this is the War on Swapping. It'll be moderately successful and waste huge amounts of govt. resources. Do you want to see file swapping where drugs are today - where you can be fired if you've ever been known to swap a file? Please stop drawing so much attention to it, and maybe we can avoid a lengthly and costly War on Swapping. By flaunting your illegal activities, you create the next War on Drugs.
Free BeOS, runs from a Linux partition
Whatcha think, Slashdot? Does it "sound cool"?
-- the most controversial site on the Web
"Flaunting" illegal activities is used by the masses as a way of voting with our actions, stating rather loudly that the law is wrong. Why is the law wrong?
Music: MP3's do indeed promote sales of music, as many audiophiles demand far greater quality to their music than MP3 can provide. Thus, they download a song, if it sounds interesting, they pay for the better version. Also, there is an element of 'you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours' in that any band supporting MP3's and sharing of them will likely see their fan base and therefore revenue grow as a result.
ROMs: Ok, N64 ROMs are blatently illegal, but old, no longer published titles are simply rotting away. Many folks still love the original Final Fantasy. There's a certain crispness to Super Mario Bros. If Nintendo et al would publish some compilation of the golden oldies, then they would have a case. As it stands, they just want to keep the old stuff away from us so we are forced to buy the new stuff if we want our 'fix'.
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"Darkness beyond Twilight"
RomNet. Oy.
A few years back I tried to convince Boston College to stop carrying the alt.binaries.warez.* groups on their Usenet server because there is simply no legitimate purpose for those groups. I still think I was in the right, even though some criticized me for it and the BC legal department wimped out because of an alleged free-speech issue.
I don't know if I'd do the same thing today, since Gnutella and FreeNet have rendered the piracy issue moot. But if RomNet is really Napster for video game ROMs, it's illegal as all hell.
Good or bad, I can't say. There is a case to be made for a myMP3.com-type model, but the console companies will never let it happen (just ask Sony and Nintendo, who truly despise the emulator market even though their hardware is probably loss-leadered).
/Brian