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Napster Cuts Deal With BMG
n8willis writes: "According to a Reuters story I caught on Excite this morning, Bertelsmann AG (owners of BMG among others) has agreed to drop its lawsuit against Napster in exchange for equity in a new 'membership'-based music service to be jointly 'developed' by the two. This 'service' will allegedly be 'secure.' Anybody smell membership 'dues?'" Probably inevitable for Napster to cut deals a la MP3.com -- but the implementation of this joint project will be the thing to watch.
The music industry has been looking for a way to produce "pay per play" music for a while now.
Looks like BMG is teaming up with Napster to "catch the hype" and lead the way to a system that will allow music lovers to get only the music that they want (instead of a CD with one good song and 15 pieces of crap). This will be good for the music industry because listeners will be more inclined to pay more for the songs they want.
I think the whole "Napster problem" that the RIAA has been having is simply that Napster beat them to the punch. Now they are suing Napster with the covert goal of using the Napster audience to make a bigger profit.
THis was so planned. It is the oldest plan in the book. You prve something is valuble and get a fan base and then you get rights to do it after getting sued and striking a deal. Good job to the buz planners at Napster. Though I am interested to see if people pay or they just go to other sites that are popping up all over the place.
If I'm paying to join the Napster service, I shouldn't have to let someone download songs off of my PC. In the "free" community I don't have a problem with sharing... but I'm not going to pay Napster for the "right" to communicate with another music lover. BTW, Scour was up and running as late as last night (Nov8)...
BMG wants X amount from users, then Columbia House will want the same, Interscope, Warner, Maverick (you can pay twice once for the vanity label (in this case Madonnna's) and the parent company. And on and on and on. Soon It will be $50 a month for dues or every D/L (completed or not) will be charged.
No they don't do that at all ...
...Or do they?
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
I don't understand how these morons can't find a middle ground. The music industry idiots should know better. They need to realize that Napster is not something you can stop by flipping a switch. The revolution has begun, and it's being followed. They'll cause more damage if they stop it.
WHat they should do is start kissing Napster's ass and beg them for a chunk of the advertising banner programs' money that Napster should start. Just like NetZero. It's still free, but you have to put up with banners. Everybody wins!
I would have never thought that this case would go this far...
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$_='hfflbwfsbhfzp vs';s/(^.{4})(.{7 })(.+$)/$3 $2 $1/
See, Napster was never about "fair use" or consumer's rights, or "information wants to be free" - none of that. It's always been about extortion.
"Let's scare the record companies shitless". yeah, they probably knew they'd get sued, yeah, maybe they thought they could skank around it with "fair use", (which had nothing to do with Napster making ad banner revenue off of other people's content), but in the end, they knew that the music companies didn't have any technology for this high-demand market, and knew that in the process of the lawsuits, they'd end up being the subcontractors for that technology. I'm betting there's already allowances in Napster's architecture for future versions that provide "secure content". Maybe nothing functional, but I bet it was provided for as a feature down the road.
y'all have been sold like a sheik's harem.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I know I'm not the first to point this out, but doesn't this seem more than a little bit ludicrous? How can they make a pay service off of people who are sharing their individual song libraries? Is BMG they going to guarantee than satan666 is not going to cut off my download of Run Like Hell before it's finished?
The only way they can make this work is by replacing the current model with something else--seems doubtful that they'll be successful (especially if the music they offer is some SDMI compliant variant)...
-- Shamus
Insert pithy saying here
don't pay the the RIAA by buying CDs, support the artists!
An OC-12 is 622.08 megabits a second. divide that by 8 and you get 77.76 megabytes a second. Though this seems fast look at the amount of users there are(approx. 20 million). As a college student i get approx 200-300k on a lot of my downloads. if napster tried to support all of us college students. we would saturate there supposed blazing fast OC-12 connection with only 300 to 400(259 at 300k/sec) downloads. Now take into acount protocol overhead and the other 2-3 million users downloading also. Your OC-12 is slowed to a crawl.
They would be foolish to get rid of there P2P(peer to peer) system. It would cost a ton more to purchase the bandwidth necassary for 20 million users.
Time is Change.
Radios pay fees for music broadcast, usually proportional to their listenership (same numbers used to determine advertising revenue, so there is some reason to be honest.)
That is the first thing that you have to remember this is a business. They need to look into every possible way of help there company grow.
I always liked their shows.. Good going!! :)
"In short: just say NO TO DRUGS, and maybe you won't end up like the Hurd people." --Linus Torvalds
mindwire.org - /. with fewer spelling errors, better science stories, nicer commentary, and no JonKatz!
Shhhh, Signal11'll hear you. He's already posted a story on kuro5hin.
Somehow I see the death of MP3's on Napster. I'll have to go elsewhere to feed my RIO and in car unit.
The truth shall set you free!
You stupid twit.
--
And how about the Offspring? Those guys crmbled to the will of Sony faster than you can say countersuit.
If I recall correctly, The Offspring weren't backing down which is when Sony threatened to sue. At that point the Offspring were still going to go through with it and there was the possibility of them suing Sony, but they then worked out a compromise to avoid everyone suing everyone.
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*** Facts are the enemy of Truth ***
...it says as much in the article.
Hey, good thing for Napster. They wanted to wake up the music distribution business I think, and if that's the case this is their first major success.
Bad thing for the freebies,eh? Yeah, I guess. But if it results in a system whereby I can pay less for a song or two than for a whole CD, I'd use it.
-- "In order to have power, I must be taken seriously." -Mojo Jojo
what are the best alternatives?
pezpunk
Internet killed the video star,
i could live a little longer in this prison
http://biz.yahoo.com/rf/001031/n31270103.html
-- "In order to have power, I must be taken seriously." -Mojo Jojo
Using napster, gnutella, or any other p2p tool that comes along in the future will not solve this problem. Stealing the works using napster does not help the TRUE Musicians in any way -- instead of getting a paltry royalty, they get NO ROYALTY at all. It is easier for the record companies to absorb the loss of their big piece of the pie than the majority of artists to absorb the loss of their little piece. Tell me again how this helps the TRUE Musicians?
Hmmm. That will be just like the junk email I get from mp3.com.
On the business/legal aspects of this move, what they (BMG) have done is actually forego the lawsuit. This partnership appears to involve a great deal of Napster equity being allotted to BMG (whether this is strictly as a security on the loan or whether this is in perpetuity is unclear). I would suspect that the other four major label corporations will somehow join the partnership (i.e. they will also be bribed with an equity position), or that BMG is sufficiently equipped to fight a quick battle about royalties with those companies.
What I don't see is any mention of the following much more difficult questions: who is going to scan the music (currently done by an army of volunteer rippers), what format will the files be (if not mp3, how do they plan to implement this, unlike the switch from vinyl to CD or VHS to DVD, the industry does not have any control over the mp3 format, nor the majority of the tools used to make and play mp3s), how do they expect to store files (these files require serious bandwidth-- will they be continuing to use peer to peer?), if they continue p2p who will the hosting peers be (I certainly wouldn't host files for them without compensation-- at least the current honor system seems to work fairly well), if the files and hosting are done as now who will verify quality and accuracy (if I'm paying for Napster, why would I tolerate incomplete or falsely labeled files), and finally, how do they plan to change any single aspect of their current service without beginning to erode their user base significantly (most of these questions have very possible answers that I suspect will drive away users, and in combination will have an exponential impact-- that is one change drives away one user, but two changes drives away four, etc etc)?
I do not have a signature
so much for me using napster.. it'll probably once again be US only.. maybe canada.. bad news all around..
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
Check out http://www.dealinfo.com/BeCG-Napster/ for a streaming audio broadcast of the conference call along with the press release.
It has begun.
So is everyone going to buy a subscription and let the RIAA profit off of their bandwith? Unless, of course, they give rebates for our bandwith usage....
These are also great reasons, but I would prefer to add them to my reasons for not paying for Napster rather than in place of.
Refrag
I have a website. It's about Macs.
... we have gnutella and scour...
.sigs??
-- Don't you hate it when people comment on other people's
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't BMG one of the CD clubs that you purchase a dozen CDs for some price and you don't have any further financial commitments (as compared to some others where you have to purchase a certain number of full-price CDs within a certain time frame)? They might keep it free and load you up on ads or make money selling demographic information about you instead.
All right, I realize that it's unpopular to hold any opinions other than that record companies are scheming, evil bastards... But it seems to me that this is a step in the right direction.
I, for one, use napster. I admit it. However, I do feel bad about it. For better or worse, most of the stuff on here is not legal, and the artists aren't being paid for it. I use it because I want to have a copy of the music, but I have no intention of paying $15 for a CD. If they can come up with a method so that I can get the music I want at a reasonable price, I would be the first to pay, rather than simply taking it. And if that solution involves Napster, so what?
It's fine to talk about how "information wants to be free," but we really shouldn't whine becuase our free music is being taken away. Do the honest thing and support the artists, even if it does mean giving record companies a piece of the cut. It's the right thing to do.
Information doesn't want to be anthropomorphized. -AC
Broken links suck, sorry. You can find kuro5hin here.
with that many quotes, its readily apparent how rampany cynicism is in America. i'd hate to see this sentence gesticulated with quotation fingers.
Napster controls what goes through their servers, xerox can't control a machine that they do not own.
Got it?
--
What will happen next is that Napster will sign a deal that will give Bertelsmann AG veto powers in deciding future services (business model) but there will be no interest from Bertelsmann AG in doing anything further at all, after all they have gotten what everyboy wanted "shutting Napster down for good".
And after two years when you all will have just distant memories of a service called "Napster", just remember this: "I told you so!".
--
Why pay for drugs when you can get Linux for free ?
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
Secure, eh? This will be cracked wide open in about a day.
Does anyone expect technical proficiency from the people that brought us Napster, possibly the most poorly written very popular software since Windows? Not a bright move by Bertelsmann...
Do they realy pay? I think here they just pay a anual fee for the air wave... maybe it includes for broadcast rights. I allways saw a symbiotic relation between radios and record companys, because if one provided music the other provided free advertisement. So why not think the internet music as free advertisement?
Long live TUX!
And supposedly, that's how web sites make money too. Right...
On a more serious note I do have a question. Is there any reason at all that I should pay for my Bill Hicks MP3s. Since he has no direct decendants the record label is making all of the money off of him and they didn't contribute a single fucking thing to his career. So there is no good reason I should pay them for someone elses work. Ahh yes. I think I will pop in my burned copy of Arizona Bay right now and laugh my ass off and go abot my day.
Pithy, yet ultimately meaningless, phrase expressed with gusto!
"no one who rips off a musician by ordering their CD through a CD club"
Please tell me this statment isn't serious. I'm so sure that people that order CD's from a club are doing it with the express purpose of ripping off musicians .
According to this article BMG will not drop their claims against Napster. Does anybody have more information on this? Sounds not very logical to me ...
Ok, yes, I am pissed as well. But let's look at the reasoning behind this. Money. Napster has just been bullied into this. Naptser is going to go up against the entire music industry? Come on. Now yes, sitting in our dorms and cubes we want Napster to be idealistic and keep fighting, but how many of us really would when it comes down to financial security?
Now, I would also like to point out that the record companies have been demonized quite a bit during this whole discussion. GOOD. The thing that really bugs me about these guys is that since the institution of MP3's and RIO players and all of that, guess what, their sales have still gone up! And this starving artist bit is really getting on my nerves as well. The only artists that would be hurt by Napster and MP3's are the ones who have the big names, and their not. When was the last time you traded a Ray Stevens MP3? It is only the multimillionaire artists who are effected at ALL. This is just another way for government to restrict information on the Internet.
actually xerox can't even control former employees from going through their offices with a gun and shooting people
I believe sex is highly over rated... unless it involves me
The Wall Street Journal had an article (here - but you need to subscribe) on this, where Bertelsmann said: "its newly formed e-commerce group and Napster have developed a new business model that "preserves the Napster experience" while providing payments to copyright holders, including recording artists, songwriters, recording companies and music publishers."
Perserve the Napster experience? Yay - we get to keep our console! Our interface MIGHT remain unchanged! Wow! What a concession!
What else can they preserve if they take away the 'free' part? As I see it, that WAS the quintessential Napster experience.
"O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!" She chortled in her joy.
So someone writes some crappy but somewhat useful to the computer uneducated software (napster), it becomes amazingly popular, even though the software sucks....
THen they get sued by every major label out there.
THEN they somehow cut a deal to develop state of the art music subscription systems?
Egads.. that's fucked up.
It'll never happen. Where's the talent?
Nobody is ever going to crack down your door and raid your Hard Drive just for having mp3's available on Napster. That University case were they raided his computer would never happen in someone's private home. Anyway, unless you have the stolen MS code, you're probably safe forever.
While it is possible to do that, that means stiffing your previous investors. If you do that, then it's going to be hard to find new investors.
Don't hold your breath. I'm still waiting for 12 inch laser disk movies to be cheaper than videotape (it was promised at one time). Translation.. not in my lifetime.
The truth shall set you free!
Oh, great.
Now I'll get the mp3 of the month and get charged an exhorbiant fee unless I mail in my decision not to receive it.
bullshit man, you are just a fraud. Just another of those people who never want to pay shit. With the typical argument, I download games and warez for free to test them before I buy them, etc. Why is it that people no longer want to pay for anything today? If Napster does form a partnership, that will change it from been illegal to legal, so why will you not pay for it? If Napster is about sampling CDs, then why can't people just put up only samples, 30 seconds of tracks instead of full tracks?
------ Curiosity killed the cat. {satisfaction brought it back | it didn't die ignorant | lack of it is killing mankind
secondly, I'm not siggy, I am Anne Marie.
Haven't you been paying attention you putrid crusty split tail?
--
...I was told to share and share I did. Now it seems if people want to share they have to do it in the underground.
What happened to society? People used to care for eachother and now that only happens in small towns if that! And now corps. are starting to slap our hands for sharing.
This disturbs me. It distrubs me very much because the trends seems going that way. And gaining way too much momentum!
For example that International Treaty that will make legal hacking illegal. That is the field I want to get into and once I get a job doing it I don't want my hands to be tied.
Canada probably won't sign it...but it still scares me. At least for my future colleages.
These things may not seem to be linked on the surface but the underlying principles are the same.
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If you truly love the memory, you must set it free()!
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If you truly love the memory, you must set it free()!
+ $25/month thereafter until you cancel.
The truth shall set you free!
how else could they make money? Ads?
:o)
Yeah you're right... that's probably not the way TV and radio stations make money. Who said advertisment was profitable anyway.
"When I was a little kid my mother told me not to stare into the sun...
"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear"
Please tell me this statment isn't serious. I'm so sure that people that order CD's from a club are doing it with the express purpose of ripping off musicians .
That was the point of the statement--few people realize they're ripping off the artist when they buy from a CD club, but everyone has been "educated" into feeling guilty for downloading from Napster. But the reality of things is ironically quite the opposite--Napster costs the musician nothing and ends up selling more of his CDs, whereas CD clubs cost the musician a lot and sell very few of his CDs if any.
One is excellent free publicity, the other terrible publicity that the artist pays a lot for and the labels profit from sleazily. I wasn't accusing people who use CD clubs of being immoral--I used to use them before I knew the business model involved--just uninformed.
An excellent point, and a well written post. If I had moderator points, they'd be going to you.. :-)
However, I'm just wondering where TRUE peer-to-peer programs such as FreeNet, MojoNation, Gnutella, etc. fit in? While it's convenient and easy to download music files through Napster, it is just as convenient and easy to get the same files through one of these programs.
Furthermore, there is very little chance of the authors of these programs 'cutting a deal' with any record agency, for two reasons:
(1) The programs don't rely on a central server - there is no one to sue.
(2) The programs aren't restricted to music - any type of file can be swapped. The authors of the program have no real interest in music, as such.
Now imagine that people have to start paying for Napster downloads. Undoubtably, a significant proportion of Napster uses will do so.
However, because of the simple fact that the other p2p networks are (and will always be) free, can't we expect that a large number of Napster users will simply start using a different service?
In other words, could Napster be killing itself by making this type of deal?
The most interesting thing about all this, though, is that the true p2p networks are - even to an anti-capitalist like me - scary! There is _no_ restriction on the material that can appear on these networks. This doesn't worry me significantly - we're all old enough to make our own decisions about what to view - but it does raise unresolvable issues.
Take, for instance, child pornography. Certain adult members of the population have decided that they enjoy looking at the bodies of young children. Society has (and rightly so, in this case) decided that this is wrong - it constitutes a violation of the child's rights, and furthermore it may lead to more intrusive violations.
Yet p2p networks allow the unrestricted trading of such material.
On the other hand, though, p2p may be the only medium through which citizens of various countries can establish their basic right of unrestricted communication. How do you reconcile these two issues?
Sorry - this got way offtopic, but it's an interesting question nontheless.
-Shane Stephens
C'mon guys (and gals), why bother with napster, gnutella, or any of that other p2p crap? Just walk into your local music store and pocket the CDs that you want. No worrys about low quality copies, bandwidth, or disk space. You're in, you're out.
None of you reading this really thought that Hummer Winblad VP invested $10 million in Napster just so you could get music for free, did you? Not only did they leverage music piracy to gain leverage with the industry, but they also leveraged the public's "stick it to the man" attitude as well. I especially enjoyed the "write your Congressional Representative and tell them about the evil music industry" bit they had on their website a while back.
Well, the Napster people are laughing all the way to the bank. I honestly applaud them for a well executed plan.
But for some odd reason, I get the feeling that independent artists and labels won't be receiving any royalty payments for music traded through BMG Napster.
So, what's next? The internet backbone companies will make a deal with the RIAA to pay 2 cents per megabyte transfered?
Okay, that's sounds like a bit of a stretch, nobody would go for that. But let's say an author writes a program and doesn't intend it to be used primarily for copyright infringement, but it ends up being used widely for pirating MS Windows (eg. Hotline). Would it be right for the author to be forced to pay MS for every copy that's pirated over his/her service? No. Will they anyway? Probably.
So, what's the difference? Intention of the author? Perhaps, but that's still not much. If an author writes a tool and intends it to be used for evil purposes, but only 1% of its use is for piracy, will the offended party go after the author for forced payments? No. Will this settlement mean that companies will apply more indescriminate and random rules in deciding who to go after, because the public thinks that P2P's have bad vibes? Yes.
--
Napster's fatal flaw was that the programmers and producers didn't understand the music industry fully. I'm not saying that cd prices aren't obscene or that 90% of the industry isn't corrupt, but from a buisness stand point Napster should have at least talked with and industry consultant. Radio's have to pay for a broadcasting license, cd manufactures if not part of the publisher or subletted by the publisher have to pay for a mechanical license to distribute. Video's and films have to pay for both mechanical licenses to distrubute it on a media and a synchronization license to use it in the film or video.
So where does that leave Napster. Napster will probably have to negotiate some type of mechanical license. I also wonder why the RIAA is so caught up in this because they don't have much at all to do with licensing and royalties. Most royalties are collected by ASCAP, BMI, and/or SESCA. I think they just want to get their hand in the cookie jar again.
I agree. Napster has been trading in illegal goods. We have absolutely no right to do steal artists music under the current system.
What is important to note here is that the Peer 2 Peer philosophy is out of the bag. I think it would be really funny to pay for Napster. I'm going to pay so someone else can download BMG's music off of my computer?
Its also important to note the precedence that is being set here. Napster is used for illegal stuff, true, but it does have legitimate applications.
Things like this, (and to a much greater extent, the DMCA) are encroaching on our freedoms. If we don't fight them now, it will be even harder to fight later when more serious violations of our consumer rights are proposed. This is why we are all "whining" here on slashdot.
Captain_Frisk
Okay, everyone who has been on /. calling Metallica sellouts had better jump on this and start calling Napster sellouts. And how about the Offspring? Those guys crumbled to the will of Sony faster than you can say countersuit.
Napster had to come to this move. It was a matter of time. And of course, now all we get are people bitching about having to pay for Napster now. Folks, Napster sold out because they didn't have a choice, and were probably planning to do it all along. If you didn't see this coming, I'm sorry for you.
Go ahead, mod me down. I've got Karma to burn.
then it comes to be that the soothing light at the end of your tunnel is just a freight train coming your way
IMO, a membership model that is reasonably priced [*] will be the ideal way for Napster to go. Pay $10 a month to access anyone else that has subscribed as well as possibly the major studio's 'Napster' areas. It'll generate profits for the studios, and would help to boost CD sales, so that's only more money for RIAA and others. It would also benefit the users, as now the trading of digital music would be legitamized, and you can get the latest tunes with minimal fees.
There are definitely security issues; needless to say is the issue of SDMI-like protocols to prevent music that may be distributed by official channels which is only meant to registered users of the Napster client from getting to non-members, without infringing on user's fair use. If Napster does go to the member-based system, you then need to secure the central server, to make sure only registered clients may connect, and this means that new versions of the Napster client would have to be written and hopefully blessed by the RIAA for all OSes (This may require them to distribute a specialized MP3 player that is the only one that will play those MP3s from the membership Napster, which is a very bad solution, but quite possible in the RIAA's eyes). The RIAA may also want to have accountability in the various transfers -- adding a bit of info to each MP3 as it's distributed by this new client so they can tell the history of any MP3 from any server, which is very dangerous in terms of privacy. While some of these issues are definitely for the protection of RIAA's profits, I think the fact that BMG is working out a deal indicates that they may be willing to cooperate to some extent for the end user.
[*] There ought to be a few levels of monthly payments, depending on bandwidth type and expected usage; those with dialups aren't going to want to pay the same price as those with broadband connections, and some will only want maybe a half-dozen songs a month, while others might leech. Prices ought to range from $5 to $20/month to make this fair on all sides.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
Hold on ... you actually thought Napster had a "cause" other than making money? Wow.
Go back and read the slash article on Mojo - its utterly convoluted and without the necessary userbase to make it worth the hassle.
WHAT KIND OF WORLD DO WE LIVE IN?!?!
If you didn't see this coming, you are very, very, stupid.
---
I am the dot in slashdot.org
Now you,
oh oh oh but we have gnutella and freenet and blah blah blah my pussy hurts
You stupid tit, don't you see it's shit like this that makes the lawmakers pass more and more restrictive laws?
There was never a need for a law against murder until someone commited one.
You got it asshole?
--
Excuse me while I "share" some Windows source code with my Russian friends.
George Lee
The indie side of Napster may be strengthened here, actually. If a subscription service is developed, then indies (a la MP3.com) will have more incentive to participate. Perhaps they should do that first, so the indies can side with Napster in the inevitable format wars...
sulli
RTFJ.
Some people feel that "fair use" involves all non-commercial distribution. I'm personally teetering on this one and haven't made up my mind which way to go.
This is irrelevant in the case of Napster, since it is commercial use; i.e. people are using it as a substitute for buying CD's (and if you need proof of THAT just look at all of the junior high school students on Slashdot who produly proclaim that they haven't bought a CD since they discovered Napster). There are several legal precedents in the past couple of decades which support this. There has NEVER in the history of copyright law, been an instance where somebody has been granted use of the ENTIRE work (as is transmitted currently via Napster - the whole song) as 'fair use'.
When they have a subscription on, where is the incentive to help the record companies make money? If the model doesnt allow for people who provide their bandwidth and time to receive some compensation, its totally unfair. All the record companies have to do now is check the mailbox once a week to get their paycheck. I think MojoNation might win out in the end.
-- Cheer, Cheer, The Red and the White.
I think the most interesting aspect of this is that the RIAA members are no longer united. Now instead of all the majors against each other, we have BMG fighting on one side. It's going to be hard for the RIAA as a legal entity to attack Napster if Napster is partly owned by BMG.
[TMB]
That would be precisly the problem. I'd be willing to pay a reasonable fee per song, but with napster I never know about the quality of the song, whether it's complete, or even if it's what i want. Napster would have to be able to guaratee I got what I payed for before I'd consider using the service.
treke
I was thinking about this whole deal with BMG and what I'm sure is more Record companies to follow. What if Napster goes way of the old BBS style upload/download system. I remember during the BBS days where you typically got only so much down load cabapbility per month/week. What if Napster started doing something like that. Instead of having it be an upload download ratio the charge everyone a flat fee per month to use the service. Then if your machine has a lot of MP3s that people are getting your service fee is subsidized. Basically if you start handling a lot of "HOT" MP3s then you could in all possibility get your Napster service for free. Ken kenbw@yahoo.com
So what will the result of Napster become after this? Will it become like the (once great) Lyrics.ch archive http://www.lyrics.ch? A service with flimsy security mechanism that crashes, that allows you to only "view" the songs when you are connected to the net, and only post songs that the artist has explicitly given permission to?
Just a though.
------------------------------
hairymonster@distortreality.com
Then you're a pussy. And a rich one at that.
You are willing to give up your rights so that the mean man doesn't come bother you.
But everyone is entitled to their own opinion, (and I am entitled to call them a pussy).
I however would rather fight for what is legally and morally right. I will move over to opennap and be done with what started out as a good, simple idea, and turned into a very interesting test of peoples beliefs, and moral fortitude.
- I like pudding.
Doesn't anyone see the good side to this? Record companies are starting to open their eyes and recognize the internet as a real medium. We have here an example of a record label breaking lines with the RIAA and saying to the world, "we can see that things are changing." They may not like the change, but at least they are accepting it instead of blocking change at all costs. People who want everything to be free are deluding themselves. It costs money to make music. Whether you are talking about paying the musicians for their talent or paying the label for recording and publicity costs, these things cost money. Now you can argue all you want about how trading songs on Napster is really helping these artists sell records, however, that is only temporary. In all likelyhood, as bandwidth increases and hard drives get bigger and access becomes more widespread, people will be able to dispense with CDs entirely and then that's the end of that. Record companies must do for Napster what networks are having to do for TiVo: adapt, or perish.
Did anyone here really believe that napster was in it for the consumer and would never impose a means of revenue upon them?
I mean, they've only been talking about "eventrually" makign money for a long time now...
Membership dues are a lot more concrete than banner advertisments, in terms of revenuie.
I don't think the "new Napster" is going to be Gnutella or Scour et al. I find the Napster method of file transfer to be much more usable than the alternatives. I think the OpenNap project will be where people end up going. There's a list of opennap servers here. If the numbers can be believed, some of these servers have populations rivaling the Napster servers themselves. Personally, I'm going to begin preparing myself for Napster's demise or transmogrification by getting myself an opennap client and trying out some of the other servers.
Anybody else notice that after a year, Napster is still in public beta? I sure have.
Their software is really a very low quality and it doesn't appear as though they are making any improvements for it. Either due to a business decision to focus on something else, or because the programmers don't know what they're doing. Trying doing a search, and then cancel it before it's done. Plan on restarting Napster.
Based on what has currently been released, I don't think they have the capabilities of making something that is secure and effecient. At least to the level of something you would pay for.
You just know they are going to charge for the Napster service and then for the songs on top of that.
What's the chances that instead of paying, the new Napster/BMG deal will allow the music to be paid for by advertising?
It'd probably be that once you dl the music you couldn't take it out of napster/BMG client, but if they make the program right it should matter.
Wiwi
"I trust in my abilities,
Wiwi
"I trust in my abilities,
but I want more then they offer"
--
> bullshit man, you are just a fraud.
How exactly do you know this? It amazes me (yes, even after all this time), how people will say things like this on the net. Do you accuse random people you meet in the street of being a liar and a thief? Presumably only if they say that they use Napster...
Mike
Tales from behind the Lagom Curtain
Isn't sharing with some unknown stranger around the world.
Real Peer to Peer (forgive me mother internet) is sharing going on between your friends and your friend's friends. This is how its always been on the net and how it will continue to be. Sure it takes longer to get stuff and you might not always find whatever it is you are looking for. But this is the form of sharing they can never really take from away...
Why? because even though my slashdotters forget it, there are real people working in all those companies and even the nastiest, scariest CEO of Conglomo v14.9 still shares stuff with his friends. You can't fight overall good human nature for the long term and expect to win.
--- I do not moderate.
This partnership sounds like an excellent idea. The record companies get their cuts and hopefully the membership cost will be at a level where downloading a single song will be in the less-than-a-dollar range.
If Napster and BMG are smart, they'll build the security around the authentication mechanisms to join the Napster community rather than using digital encoding a la SDMI.
Cheers!
Ehttp://eugeneciurana.com | http://ciurana.eu
OK. I can see paying for a service where the record companies make their songs available over multiple T3-S...Or a service similar to MP3.com (good bandwidth and well laid out HTML to guide the user)...But Napster is like fishing in the dark. Where one would be just as likely to throw their pole into cement than into the water.
Would I pay for a service where I "could have a chance" to download a poor quality rip from someones old cassette collection that he is sharing over his FAT 28.8 baud connection? NOT
Would I pay for a service like Mp3.com that had all of the established artists, plus artists from the past (who may have been big in the 80's but are now shouting "would you like fries with that") whose music was great, but can not be found in your local music store? YES
Bottom line -- the only reason Napster is big is not because of the Ease of Use, Quality Of Service....It is because of VOLUME.
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
After reading these posts for a few months it seems there are two major issues with mp3 sharing. 1. Some people feel that "fair use" involves all non-commercial distribution. I'm personally teetering on this one and haven't made up my mind which way to go. 2. The justice to the artist and distributors. This is what this article is about. I and many others I know, would love to "buy" high quality, non-truncated mp3's for legal use if the price were right and the service was good. I will not pay "per use", but I would pay per song or flat rate per month to use the service. What I'd like to see is high quality, standard mp3 files that can be played anywhere (not locked to a certian device or certain number of plays). I'd pay between 25 cents and 1 dollar per song depending on the song and how new/hot it was. I think this is fair. It lets me get high quality music for my use at a price that's fair while compensating the artists/distribution channel for their efforts. The prices would be set by the artists, or there could be come kind of AI logic that would determine pricing for a particular song based a number of variables. Just my $.02 "Win32 aint done until WinOS/2 won't run" - MS Developement team.
I'm too much of a physical medium kind of guy, I like my CD's and my Vinyl (about a thousand of each). The only time I ever go after mp3's from the net was for (a) good rips of some of my 12" vinyl or (b) impossible to find tracks - like the KLF bootlegs. in the case of A I already had a copy (or two in some cases - DJ's always need backup copies), and in B... nobody was losing out... except the original artists who the record companies had sued into submission... or something like that. I work at an internet music site where I have access to Terabytes of music, instantly, for testing purposes of course ;-).
It doesn't appeal to me.
Napster isn't really a good example of true p2p filesharing (like gnutella, freenet, etc).
Keep in mind that napster requires a central server to function, and that it is completly controled by a corporation. I don't think this has any real implications for p2p.
Finkployd
I guess I'll just have to use napigator more often.
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Technoli
I think here they just pay a anual fee for the air wave...
Where is here?
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
This is nice - id be willing to pay say $1 (+/- $0.25) per month to use the Napster Membership service - only if the files were of guaranteed quality (highest MP3 bit/freq) and were maintained by the record companies so I dont waste bandwidth downloading incomplete/incorrectly labeled songs. And oh yeah - and if the RIAA was dissolved in the process. (or atleast the top 5 record companies disappeared and gave copyrights back to their respective owners!
Face it - the gig is up, the RIAA is flatly unnecessary in its current capacity, the internet has simply made the cost of distribution/manufacture of music virtually $0. They will no longer be able to extort control of the public (via promotion/radio (what you hear)) and the artists via the collusion and monopoly making the contracts identically oppressive/restrictive/majorscrewing.
RIAA: Try as you may, try as you might, your days are up. Maybe now you will have to work for a living instead of sucking the blood from artists and patrons alike. You reap what you sow. NOTE: MPAA -> YOUR NEXT.
I'm going to get an annoying call from BMG AND an e-mail from Napster every day asking if I want to enjoy 12 music downloads for the price of 1 with nothing more to buy ever?
Isn't that one of the signs of the apocolypse?
Are you lonely? Hate having to make decisons? Meetings, the practical alternitive to work.
Here is another story which talks of Musicbank, a net startup, which signed up with Sony Music allowing users to stream Sony music that is part of their personal collection over the Internet as long as they can prove they own the CDs.
There's always sufficient, but not always at the right place nor for the right folks.
O P E N___S O U R C E___H U M O R
great comedy company.
niceFire.com - Humor and Lego's or Lego's and Humor or Some Combination of
Believe it or not, I'd rather pay $20 a month (hypothetical number) then have to worry about the RIAA police (aka FBI) bust down my door for trafficking mp3's. $20 a month is as high as I would be willing to pay btw
IMO it's a better alternative the dark ages of mp3 collecting; surfing web page after web page of mp3 containing broken link after broken link.
BOSTON SUCKS!
I agree with you completely, an album is a work of art and I only buy an album if I am satisfied with it as a whole. I not only pay for the music I like, but actually take joy in it. It allows the artists I enjoy to continue producing great music.
But sadly the majority of people I know have a "sweet, free music" mentality. Clearly musicians cannot allow the population to self-regulate itself. I don't have any solutions, but I think there need to be some changes to the current system.
My biggest gripe is that most of the cash raised by album sales do not go to the artist, but rather to the record label. I hope this changes in the current shakeup.
I must agree, what idiot did the math on most comments here? "We will steal the music so the record company doesnt get our money, the artist will not suffer" Where does the artist get payed from??????? Most artist get payed a basic wage AND royalties, they need the record companies to survive bad years. I have performed for more than 4 years now, made 2 albums and got payed for making the second. Please know what you are talking about. Ps: my songs are (hopefully) not on napster.
Make a man a fire and he will be warm for a day, set a man on fire and he will be warm for the rest of his life
Does this mean the only 'sharing' will be by the great and beneficial BMG(and anyone else that comes along for the ride)? I would hope we still have NapsterClassic for independent distribution, and NapsterPay for the rest, i.e. the Music I have little or no interest in.
The cost of a napster subscription isn't the issue here - what interests BMG is the buying information they can gather.
First, making a deal with napster and requiring membership fees makes the whole deal look legit : it's then legally OK for BMG to be involved, because they can claim they're getting royalties. Without this, they daren't touch napster for fear of being called hypocrites.
Second, the information from napster of musical preferences is very valuable: by searching napster, BMG can determine the likes and dislikes of the users. This is paydirt for e-commerce, as we all know.
Third, the membership requirement ensures that the preferences determined in 2) can be tied to a membership account and a real person with real money. This isn't available by simply scanning napster in it's current form and is, I would say, the whole reason for the deal - it's not important whether the subscription funds the music industries' groupy bills, only that there is a tieup between napster shares and real-world people.
Yes, this is sad, but it was inevitable. You can't have a small commercial enterprise both making money and fighting the massive record companies -- it is hard to do one, much less both, at the same time. And for a company with no profit model, it makes even less sense.
So we wait, and we hope, and perhaps Napster will turn out both legal and better. Somehow, though, I doubt it.
The article didn't say what is going to happen to Napster as we know it. A new jointly-developed project will arise, but what happens to good ol' Napster?
Anyone?
This is supposed to be great art. So why does it look like a bunch of decapitated naked people? -- Calvin
Now, I'm thinking that I wasn't very clear with my original posting. I'm not here to discuss if "sharing" mp3's is legal or not. I'm triing to get across some other more important points.
1) It always happens that the small company will get trampled by the big corp. In the end this will hurt the end comsumer(user fees in this case).
2) People seem to more and more just going with the fold and not questioning if what they are following makes any sense! (ie hungarian notation)
3) Corporations are gaining *way* too much power in the US legal system. There it doesn't matter if you are innocent or not. Victory goes to the one with the most money(better lawer) and/or the one with the most politicians under their thumbs.
4) With all of this society seems to be falling apart. People aren't helping eachother anymore and are turning a blind eye to to many things, all in the name of greed.
This is what I think about society in general and that land of the "free". If you want to discuss this further I'd apreciate a more civil tone. Remember that with these email and slashdot there is a backspace key. Something that too many people forget to use before they press send.
If you wish to discuss this privatly then just say so and I'll send you a mail.
Yes, my spelling sucks, please don't comment on that (not that you would, I've had it happen before).
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If you truly love the memory, you must set it free()!
If it only applies to BMG music, the RIAA doesn't really have anything to do with it.
Does it bother anyone else that the concept of peer-to-peer file transfer just settled out of court? Yeah, I know, a settlement doesn't set a legally binding precedent. But something tells me we can all thank Napster for selling our rights down the drain.
Of course, it's hard to deny that a settlement probably is in Napster's best interests. Maybe this just means that we can't let corporations fight for our civil rights; they are not citizens, and thus will almost always have little to lose by giving up.
Yes, we're still free to fight on our own, but this is going to take a lot of momentum away. With P2P fragmented amongst a dozen different networks, it's going to be hard to be able to point to something and say, look, if 35 million people engage in a behavior, then by any concept of a social contract based government it cannot possibly be illegal. What are the chances David Boies is going to work pro-bono for Gnutella?
Ugh. Well maybe the rest of the big 5 will be typically shortsided and this will all fall through, and we'll finally get this decaying mess of an anachronistic copyright system hauled in front of the Supreme Court. Or maybe this is better; maybe it's best that it doesn't get that far until the costs of letting media conglomerates rewrite the copyright laws becomes abundantly clear to everyone.
What's going to happen? There's going to be another P2P file sharing network built. Gnutella is a start, but it's flooded and impossible to get any information from. Scour never returns any viable results for me, so that's out.
Other posters have mentioned that mojonation is having a problem because of a small user base. OF COURSE they have a small user base; they are competing with Napster, who gets all the publicity, so people think "oh, that's the only one out there".
Once Napster sells out to the big corporations, then another file sharing network will step up and take its place. If that one falls, we'll hack out another program, using a different protocol. Saying (free) music sharing is dead is like saying that because George Washington is dead and buried, the presidency is no longer worth anything. Somebody else WILL step up to the plate and take over.
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Just select seven FREE* music selections. Then just download one music selection within a year at our special Low Member Price (usually $9.95-$15.95 per track). Then take four FREE* more music selections!
That's like twelve downloads for the price of one!
* A handling charge of $4.95 will be charged for each "FREE" music selection purchased.
For more information, click here.
I hate that bitch, but i'm still not buying CDs. Why? I don't like giving money to talentless twits like yourself that do nothing to earn their money. Hey all you WS guys, that includes you too!
Hey fuckstick, Napster DOESNT control what goes thru thier servers. People can rename files easily. Do you think they should scan the fils to make sure the sound isn't copywrited? If you say yes, then Xerox should also scan whatever its copying and check to make sure its not copyrighted. Got it?
Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't BMG one of the CD clubs that you purchase a dozen CDs for some price and you don't have any further financial commitments (as compared to some others where you have to purchase a certain number of full-price CDs within a certain time frame)? They might keep it free and load you up on ads or make money selling demographic information about you instead.
BMG is a major record label. They run the BMG CD club, just like Columbia, another major label, runs Columbia House.
Ironically, it is these CD clubs, not Napster, which are stealing from artists. When you get your 12 CDs for 1 penny, those CDs don't just come free from the sky--they come directly out of the artist's pockets.
Yes, that's right. Not only is the artist not making any money (like Napster), they are actually losing it when you order their CD from a CD club. All those CDs are chocked up as "marketing costs", and billed to the artist--along with recording costs, studio time, tour costs, and other promotional costs. (The musician pays every last cent of the cost of recording and selling their album, but the label, not the artist, owns the copyright on their work.) Meanwhile, the label--not the artist, mind you--makes a huge profit by tricking people into paying for all those extra CDs that come along with membership. (For those who don't know, you don't have to pay for anything you don't order; just send it back.)
And finally, unlike Napster, no one who rips off a musician by ordering their CD through a CD club ever goes out and pays for it, because they already have the real thing. A disgusting practice, all in all--one which Napster was helping to end.
Napster controls what goes through their servers,...
If you paid any attention to the issue during the past several months, you'd know that MP3s do not go through their servers. Their servers merely store a list of songs on subscribers' PCs.
Portugal, EU
Well, the air wave fee is where they spend their big bucks.
Long live TUX!
30 second samples would be good. Samples like the one Bare Naked Ladies put up of their song "Pinch Me" are also fine by me.
However, to me the album is the artform. A song from that album is just a brief sample of the album. If I can get 3 samples that I like from an album I feel that I can purchase the album in confidence that I will enjoy the entire thing.
This is why I am entirely uninterested in obtaining full albums from Napster unless it is something like the Smashing Pumpkins' Machina II: Friends and Enemies of Modern Music of which only 25 physical copies exist and the band themselves have expressed that they want everyone to share the music.
Oh, and if I am "just another of those people who never want to pay shit" then explain how I have around 300 CDs in my collection along with over 50 DVDs.
Refrag
I have a website. It's about Macs.
I wouldnt pay for napster either, but for very different reasons.
There is no quality gaurentee AT ALL. People can rename files, cut mp3s short, and all the other clever shit.
If they want to charge me for mp3 files, thats fine.. just make it a giant ftp I can leech from. Id pay 9.95$ a month for access to an mp3 archive of all of BMG or some other record companies "intellectual property."
But charging for p2p, cmon.. there is very little burden for the record companies.. they dont have to pay for storage space OR BANDWIDTH. it comes with no quality gaurentee.. basically napster would be a pay-search engine. Gimme a break. If you want to charge me, you should gaurentee quality in some way.
no
:) Wish i had mod points today, i`d mod you up!!
As if `membership` in the story above needed quotes.
Are the knapster et.al. people going to try to clone this new "membership" based version (assuming it materializes)? Will they get sued under the DMCA for reverse-engineering?
Or is BMG just trying to possibly get on the side of the geeks (and failing at it?)
Thus sprach DrQu+xum, SID=218745.
DrQu+xum: Proof that the lameness filter doesn't work.
of 90% of the songs out there. I shure as hell would do it. Files could be hosted on a extreamly fast OC-12 or something and download the songs faster then you can play it!!!
Sanchi
"They said we couldn't do it [Athlon]... but we built it, we shipped it... and we didn't have to recall it." Rich Heye
Some one once said that we should save all the web because it was similiar to the first TV broadcast.
Now, why radio stations are allowed to broadcast music and a site can not?
What is the diference from a kid that records radio emissions, and a kid that gets mp3 files from the net?
Long live TUX!
I really am not interested in paying membership fees to Napster so that I can now "legally" do something that will now definately be considered illegal.
I'd much rather Napster fight the good fight -- but it's probably naive to assume that they will.
I use Napster to check out songs off of CDs that I want to buy or from bands I've heard of but never heard.
Refrag
I have a website. It's about Macs.
IIRC, Mojo Nation allows one to Either pay for service, or share a lot of files. This satisfies both.
If Napster could move to this sort of model, where I can continue to use it for free, as long as I share files, I would not be upset. Napster is a business, and is out to make money. This is not a bad way to go about it, and make the music companies happy at the same time
--
This message brought to you by Colin Davis
Colin Davis
Isn't Napster still facing a potentially multibillion dollar judgement from the RIAA case? Could the finance guys somehow file bankrupcy for the current company we know as Napster and start a new company to parter with BMG? Also, I would think that this would hurt the RIAA case because it somewhat acknowledges that what they are doing for free is illegal. I have always thought that the Napster business plan was horrible and couldn't believe anyone put money into it. Well now instead of getting "11 CDs for 1 cent" envelopes in my mailbox every week, I can start getting "110 downloads for 1 cent" emails every week.
-B
You make acouple very good points but I do think that Canada still does have fairly good values. At least with the people that I hang with.
I would definitely be in for that discussion. As soon as I get my computer at home working I'll check out pp.fishpool.fi.
Thanks, I'm always open for intellectual talks. So few of my friends are into it anymore.
As a last off topic post if you could reply if you are going to do this that would be great. Hopefully others will be interested and join as well.
later
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If you truly love the memory, you must set it free()!
What's the 'game'? 'park' the 'winabego' in the 'garage' ...some one help you
a/s/l here. Sorry, adding domain tags to your s
The problem as I see it is we have no reason to pay large penalties for being distributed to. We pay for record companies to make CDs, to distribute them to Tower type record stores, promote them on the radio and through ad promotions, and to make known that types of music are vital to our lives. N'Sync is a great example of this. The record companies make more money due to the royalties for publishing. N'Sync does not write its songs and does not make as much money due on CD sales and shows, but since the record companies convince enough people that they are great artists, we will buy it and it makes more money for them than Metallica who owns its material outright. The record companies only make money on services distributing and promoting Metallica, they do not get money from, publishing, royalties on performances, etc...
The real value of Napster is, is direct distribution, not having to go to a store and buy an album. If bands and their managers do not need the record companies, they will once and for all make all the money. They do not pay BMG, Tower, song-writers (I fear artists that do not make their own music - N'Sync, Britany, etc... - They are talking heads only, not artists) and Album promoters.
Direct disttribution should happen sometime soon. Us geeks can make a device where we can play any song anytime, wireless on the road or off our computers. Imagine a wireless device where we make songlists and play them without storing them locally. It should not be that hard to do (I am a software engineer, so I know it would be hard and expensive at first). With direct distribution, where one says "I want to listen to Dr. Dre / Blink 182 / Britany" record companies, Tower Records, CD Manufacturers, and others lose their cut. We get the music from the source. Of course we would pay somehow (monthly fee / per download out of our e-accounts), but we would ONLY PAY THE ARTIST (and his manager). This means that we demolish the industry that distributes CDs that we don't need. BMG is embracing Napster, I believe to restore their influence. If they can get to the distribution techniques before someone else, we are hooked. If they make the devices and set up the fees we will continue paying them for a fee that is technologically unecessary. E-mail me if you want to discuss this idea gametoken_2000@yahoo.com. We are slaves to the hype of Britany (those who bought the album), who does not make her music and keeps money in the pocket of her Record Contractor.
Slightly Off Topic
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Artist sign contracts with bands, so technically they are contractors, and bands are sub-contractors. This seems contrary to a direct contract with an Artist. For example my mother is an Artist (painter), and she charges for her work (jilllogan.com). She makes 50% of sales in a Gallery, she makes 100% in her gallery. The gallery does promotion and has a room to show the art. My mother pays 50% for a service that is simple. They hang a bunch of paintings and invite some hob-nobbers to drink wine around the art. I do not like paying hob-nobbers to drink wine. I would also not like to pay royaltes to record executives to buy imported cars, drugs, hookers, and houses in the Hollywood hills. We pay this money to record execs and their companies in order to get a service that we could do for ourselves using direct distribution.
- Kill Yourself, spare us all! -
Does anyone know what happens to artists not associated with BMG? Will Napster pay me for downloads on my own music? Not that this will translate into any money (only a few hundred people per month), but I certainly do not want peoples subscriptions going to BMG when it is my shit they are downloading. The long and the short of it is, I want my music to be free, and fuck Napster if they can no longer provide that...
It could also be used to isolate the artist even more, and direct cashflow back into the RIAA. Napster; Like DeCSS, a crowbar, and a kitchen knife, is just a tool and can be used for good things or bad things.
no
I think Napster should sell napster-client ads to BMI. Napster would benefit from the extra cash, and BMI would generate a significant presence in the minds of the millions of napster users all over!
It's a win-win situation!
you need oxygen to breathe but it also causes cancer (free radicals and all that stuff). how do you reconcile these two?
those who give up...
erik
...all excited, don't know why...
In any event, nothing will stop people from trading the music on free networks.
Record companies are still focused on the way they made money in the old days: controlling distribution and charging for every copy made. They seriously do not understand that they have lost control over distribution forever. Instead of expending so much time and energy trying unsuccessfully to control the flow of data throughout the 'Net (impossible), they should concentrate on making it as easy as possible for people to compensate the artists after they download music, no matter where they get it from. Directly compensate the artist/publisher for music you like. If your friend e-mails you an MP3 and you hate it, should you have to pay anyone for it? Hell no! You took nothing from them.
If it were as easy clicking a button on your MP3 player to send a 'tip' to the artist/publisher, people would do it. After all, everyone knows that artists have to make some money to keep producing art. People trading MP3's want to give money to their favorite artists, the problem right now is they cannot! About as close as you can get right now is to go buy the physical album or go see a concert and/or buy t-shirts and whatever. What if you live in Abu-Dabi and can't buy the album or go see a concert? Centuries of experience with busking and recent tipping experiments on the net (such as Steven King's _The Plant_) show that people will compensate artists if they like what they hear.
Let's face it, the 'Net provides the opportunity for more music from more artists to reach more people than ever before, for almost no cost to the artist/publisher. Instead of capitalizing on the inexpensive and efficient flow of data on the 'Net, the RIAA is trying to restrict it. It won't ever work and they will loose out as a result of it.
Setting up compensation systems for artists/publishers will be a long and political process, but people are working hard on the solutions.
Burris
Napster will not be replaced by another p2p system if the deal Napster cuts with BMG satisfies the majority of current Napster users, users who are not committed to Napster for ideology but for convenience.
During Prohibition, as today, it was illegal to do something the public wanted to do badly enough to be willing to break the law. Furthermore, the process the Government wanted to forbid (fermentation then; file copying now) was something that individual citizens could do in the privacy of their own homes.
Ultimately, the failure of Prohibition spoke to the fact that all the law in the world won't help if enforcing it requires targeting tens of millions of otherwise law abiding citizens for intrusive examination and possible arrest.
The flip side of the Prohibition argument, though, works in the music industry's favor. Despite the fact that it is still possible to make gin in your bathtub, no one does it anymore, because alcohol is now available at a price and with restrictions the population generally approves of. To take a more recent example, the civil disobedience against the 55 mph speed limit did not mean that drivers wanted no speed limits, it simply meant they wanted a speed limit they could live with.
Techno-anarchists have often imagined a future where the state vanishes as people flock to anonymous digital cash and impregnable fortresses of data, and Napster is seen in some quarters as an anti-authoritarian move in just this direction.
But the lesson of Prohibition and 55 mph is that when a population rebels against a particular regulation, they are not agitating to throw off the chains of government interference, they are merely agitating for more comfortable chains.
Napster is not a revolution against the commercial music industry, it is a revolution within it.
-cla
Do you really think so? Really? We'd tip the artist, certainly. But exactly what useful service is the publisher providing in this scenario? Hmm.
The historical functions of publishers have centred around promotion and distribution. Distribution is no longer a relevant issue. Are we really going to be happy about paying for the privilege of receiving advertising?
As I see it, once broadband hits everywhere, music publishers will have no useful role to play any more. They don't like this, because as things stand they're still making money. What do you expect them to do, file for bankruptcy while the shekels are still rolling in?
The whole point of napster was free music. If they try to charge you'd have like five total people left in the userbase and everyone else will have switched over to opennap servers in scandinavia. If they try to pull another lockout like metallica and dr dre and disable the clients of nonsubscribers just watch how fast they port gnapster over to windows which is far superior. Shawn, you had a killer idea (remember me? used to chat w/you about coding in vc++/win api?) but it was your first real project and the coding wasnt the greatest. You'll go down in history for this though.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/cixel
Bitching about "now my music isn't free" isn't just selfish, it's ignorant, since there are probably a dozen other protocols and services you can use which ARE free and manifestly will remain so unless current law changes substantially. The only questions in my mind are what's a fair price for N/BMG to charge and what will they offer to justify it? Besides not having to switch download clients.
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It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
Everyone knows that ' is for a char, and " is for a string, anyway - unless you use a scripting "language".
Anyway, to get back on topic, should we ban photocopiers? Or at least prosecute Xerox et al, cos they've been trading in illegal goods.
Oh no. That was us. You and me, buddy.
--I liked the old Sig 11 better.
Read the subject.
Legalities aside, Napster is a valuable service both to consumers and, potentially, to artists. If done correctly, this can be an excellent way to unite the two, cut out the middle-men, and make music-making more profitable while helping consumers avoid the expense of preprinted CD's.
Web pages pay for content with advertizing. Napster has no such model; if they were to attempt to create a browser-like interface that included advertizing space, consumers would insist on an open-source version, then alter it to remove said ads.
Is the open-source movement still about avoiding control by a megacorporation, or is it unethical to bring in revenues to pay your bills altogether?
I would suppose that BMG has been careful as to the structure of the new joint venture: Although the other music industry giants have been on the same team in fighting MP3's and other technical advances, they are also fierce competitors. Unless the legal firewall to the new service is built properly, BMG could find themselves on the hook for damages for copyright violations committed against their competitors by Napster. That would be some pretty sweet irony!