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Shawn Fanning's Account Of Napster
ttol writes "Take a look at this speech Shawn Fanning did to the Congressional Committee on October 9th. He explains how Napster came about, what his visions of the digital future will be, and how everyone can be involved. It's a good read."
WTF are Shawn Fannings opinions being given importance? He is simply the cute mascot of Napster.
He owns very little of the company. His uncle owns a huge chunk of the company. CEO Hank Barry (a "suit" just like the music industry execs he is supposedly battling on the people's behalf) owns a huge chunk. Shawn Fanning doesn't even have a role to play in the day-to-day running of the company. 1 He doesn't set long-term policies for the company.
Extract from Businessweek: John got 70%; Shawn got 30%. ''We all knew from the beginning that this would be huge,'' recalls John Fanning. While Shawn is the public face of Napster, today he owns less than 10% of the upstart and is not involved in the company's business decisions. Shawn Fanning has no senior management position and isn't on the board. Mostly, he works on developing the company's software.
the Businessweek article
WTF is he trotted out all the time (with his trademark baseball cap)?
They are using SF simply to portray the impression that the big bad music industry execs are trying to squash the "innovative" company run by a 19-year old. And remember there is not a single article which doesn't mention SF's age.
Give me a break. This company Napster is run by suits (I'm sure they have more lawyers than programmers there) backed by huge sums of venture capital.
Note to Napster suit reading this: Stop pimping SF to win sympathy from the geeks.
Hopefully by Shawn speaking to Congress on this issue, people will realize that it's not Napster that's the *real* problem, but the recording companies/RIAA that have a stranglehold on the US music industry. Do you honestly believe that Napster would be as big a deal if the recording industry monopoly had priced CD's half-ass reasonably to begin with? Or instead of the industry going into a fuss over the use of mp3 technology, simply embraced it. They can't maintain their monopoly and cd price fixing forever.
I wasn't lucky enough to be able to see Shawn speak where I live, Salt Lake City, Utah. But a few friends of mine were. They said he presented himself very professionally, and made a good speech. Everyone listened to him and seemed to respect his ideas.
If you read about what Napster is, it sort of brings the whole thing into perspective. This isn't a giant plot to put the music industry out of business, nor is it going to make Ulrich's kids go hungry.
It's a well designed program for sharing information, specifically music of all kinds.
Good job Shawn
i go to northeastern university. I knew Shawn, somewhat. Trust me, he was smart. bored, not stupid.
-mark
Imagine a app thats a cross between Ask Jeeves and Gnutella. You ask a questoin, other people see it, if they know the answer they might answer you with it.
Yeah, that would be cool. It would be like people would suddenly start Useing the Network at last. In fact, hey, let's call it Usenet. I'm amazed nobody has thought of this before!
Welp, I'm the first to admit that I have ALOT of MP3's, and I'm also absolutely willing to admit that a good, if not overwhelming portion of them are indeed illegal. However, I think that any attempt to *JUSTIFY* things like Napster is foolish. Having MP3's of copyrighted material that you haven't purchased, irregardless of what your ultimate intentions are, is illegal. Unfortunately, Napster has turned a pretty minor issue into an all-out witch-hunt, with the music industry and various recording artists declaring Jihad against MP3, programs that facilitate trading of MP3's, and people who have MP3's. I think we've passed any point where the music industry and the illegal music scene can ever find any "common ground." There is no "solution" to how Napster has affected the music industry. Sure the record companies are dirty price-gougers, and sure a huge number of people end up purchasing the albums of MP3's they have, and sure lots of artists support MP3, but in the end, all there is to do is accept the fact, if we're playing the illegal music game, that we *ARE* breaking the law in most cases, and stop trying to justify our actions.
"Cut word lines. Cut music lines. Smash the control images. Smash the control machine." - William S. Burroughs
Shawn made Business Week's E-Biz 25, and he had some Q&A with ZDNET.au not too long ago. It's fun to watch his public discourse over only a couple months when he himself is only a handful of dozens of months old himself.
-- Anne Marie
They can just use the standard dot-com business model:
Ok.
In reply to everyone who is looking down the end of their noses at Shawn due to his age:
SHUT UP.
Shawn Fanning is young, sure. But at the same time I know hundreds of adults--including professors at this institution--who would not and could not handle themselves with the same control and poise as he has.
I'm not supporting his ideas (thats for other posts), but I am going to defend attacks on his ability through his age. Senators seem to be taking him seriously--can't you too? Instead of making snide remarks about how 'kids like him' need to go out and play, think about how, despite the handicap of being a 'teenager' in a society conditioned to look down on young people, he has managed to become on of the most influential people in two spheres of computing.
-s
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Don't worry, being eaten by a crocodile is just like going to sleep in a giant blender.
can be found her e. It was an excellent hearing, and Shawn did a good job of explaining his position.
When Napster is able to implement a business model, there will be other benefits for artists as well, including payments to rightsholders.
This is vague, at best. At worst, its a good reason for Napster to be shut down until the business model is a reality.
What kind of business model could be implemented here? Royalty payment to the copyright owner for each instance of a song being downloaded? Ambiguous filenames could be a big problem there. What if the file is the song name, and happens to be the same as a song by another artist? Who gets paid?
Anyone know a better way?