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The New World of P2P Advertising
Katascope writes "Salon is running an article about targeted advertising on Napster and Gnotella. The worrysome part is the co-opting of P2P search databases to build profiles and advertise using instant messaging" I've always believed that targetted marketing might actually make advertising useful again (Any 24 year old who occasionally watches MTV and doesn't need zit cream knows this). This one is scary because people are sending you IMs based on the tunes in your napster share. Course I don't have IM, and use napster super infrequently, so I guess thats one way to not be annoyed. But frankly if I got junk mail about obscure Who stuff, I'd be happy. Much better then credit cards, viagra, and stock tips. As long as its opt-in. (michael: A number of people have written in with Cringely's comparison of Napster and subways. Good read.)
yeah, the DAT tax was at least somewhat valid. *Most* people do not use DAT for purposes other than recording music (although I don't see a lot of pirated music being stored on DAT).
:)
the CDR tax would be a definite annoyance, and it wouldn't really make the RIAA happy. They are still going to attempt to shut down Napster, and they are going to attempt to do whatever possible to stop the illegal copying of music. Bastards!
I say the hell w/the damn taxes, and the hell w/the RIAA. Let us have our cheap CDR's, and free music.
Just my worthless rambling.
You're not complaining.
Neither are many others.
That's the problem.
In Winn Schwartau's book, Information Warfare, he makes mention of over 50,000 databases where you might be so blessed as to find your name, placed there without your knowledge, much less your consent.
You become a commodity, traded and used instead of respected as a human being.
I don't like that.
And unless you believe that PRIVACY is a valid exchange for security, neither should you.
Ruling The World, One Moron At A Time(tm)
"As Kosher As A Bacon-Cheeseburger"(tmp)
I used to be someone else. Now I'm someone better.
Real life is underrated.
I would find it highly objectionable to have to pay a tax to subsidize an industry that has for the most part gone out of its way to strip me of my rights. Particularly since I'm not doing anything illegal (Fair use allows me to transfer content I paid for to other media.)
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The difference between data and audio CDRs is that data CDRs won't work in the stereo component CD burners. If you want to burn CDs using the cheaper "data" CDs you have to have access to a computer with a CD burner. Despite the levy that it enacted on these disks they are still quite cheap, or at least cheap enough for making a few mix disks once in a while. They would only start to seem kind of expensive if you were trying to support a major linux distro burning habit on them.
_____________
I don't want free as in beer. I just want free beer.
Ruling The World, One Moron At A Time(tm)
"As Kosher As A Bacon-Cheeseburger"(tmp)
I used to be someone else. Now I'm someone better.
Real life is underrated.
I'm not completely sure that Chopin is one of the exceptions: it's complex, sophisticated elevator music, to be sure, but still elevator music.
"I've always believed that targetted marketing might actually make advertising useful again..."
It's good!
"This one is scary because people are sending you IMs based on the tunes in your napster share."
And now it's bad!
"Course I don't have IM, and use napster super infrequently, so I guess thats one way to not be annoyed."
Still bad, but now not quite so!
"But frankly if I got junk mail about obscure Who stuff, I'd be happy."
Back to good! Incredible play folks--a full 360 in the course of 4 sentences--not just a "360" that's really a 180, but a literal 360.
--
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
(Hey Ryan! Here's your proof!)
Because the promary use of a blank audio tape is to put music on it. You can put other things on it, like PXL2000 videos and games for a ZX81, but for the most part it is for music. CD-RWs are only marginally musically related. If the RIAA is getting a cut of the tax, then so should software makers, especially game makers (for both PC and Playstation 1), and the movie industry. If we are talking about CD-RWs use for piracy, I'm willing to bet that software piracy beats MP3 piracy.
-no broken link
Oh no, targeted marketing, it's corporate rape!
Is that a Think Geek banner-ad I see?
But seriously, when you opened your HDD to the outside world what exactly did you think would happen?
"I've seen plays that were more exciting than this.
Honest to god... Plays!" Homer Simpson
I suppose the record companies would...but then we dont' really want to talk about helping them do we?
Rader
As far as I'm concerned, the RIAA can harass Napster out of business. I don't care. I'm not interested in subsidizing the RIAA OR Napster for the CDR media I purchase for totally unrelated purposes.
In other words, I'm not interested in paying a few extra pennies on CDR's to get the RIAA off yourback.
(IIRC, potassium benzoate (C7H5KO2) is a white, flakey powder used as a food preservative. guess it's not all that healthy, like good ol' Red Dye #4
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
What the hell is he thinking? Why should I want to subsidize record companies?
For the record, a few times a month I copy a commercially recorded CD on a CDR, but this is as an archival method. Almost all of the CDRs that I burn are for music that is allowed to be copied for no profit, ie. the Grateful Dead. If the artist who holds the copyright encourages me to make free copies, how would the RIAA get off in demanding that I pay them a tax?????????
If I want this kind of government intervention in my computer media, I'll move to Canada.
How bout we put a tax on cars because every bank robber uses them to illegally make his getaway?
Be ot or bot ne ot, taht is the nestquoi.
Every time I use Napster from now on I'll live in fear of receiving a message from Dr. Dre, informing me that "he still got love for the streets, but if the streets should fail to cease and decist, forthwith, from trading his intellectual property over Internet file-sharing media, he will be forced to pursue legal action in persuance of reparations, personal ownership of said intellectual property, notwithstanding."
There is a flaw in both articles.
/usr/local? What if instead of audio tracks, I was making an archive of DIVX movies?
With regard to the IM-spam described in the Salon article, it won't work if the Napster user isn't running IM or IRC. It is quite possible to run Napster without being able to receive IM's, and to ignore stuff happening in the IRC window.
With regard to Cringely's suggestion of a CD-R "tax," I'd like to point out that not every CD-R is being used to make copies of audio CD's, or even archives of MP3's. A CDROM can hold ANYTHING, including a backup of one or more partitions on your system. Why should ANY money of mine be paid to lazy record company execs just because I want to make a copy of
In all, I prefer the method mentioned in the Salon article, as there is an "opt-in" method, if you don't mind the spam.
The Cringely "tax" is regressive, and is as obnoxious as the "Microsoft tax" that people pay when they purchase PC's with Windows pre-installed on them, when they have no desire to run that operating system.
Interestingly, though, both articles show that more than one person is honestly thinking of how to make the Napster model work. Good try, Cringely. Better luck next time!
--
"May I have ten thousand marbles, please?"
To save their millions they are throwing away billions, because they want 100% of a small pie, rather than 10% of a fantastically huge pie.
reminds me of the old monkey traps.
For those who do not know:
you have a large heavy pot with a hole just large enough to except a fruit like an apple or an organge, etc. (whatever the monkey likes. The hole is also just large enought for you hand. But it is too small for you (or a monkey) to take the hand out while holding on to the fruit. You have to tip the jar over.
You as a human can figure this out. but a monkey can not. It grabs on to the fruit, and won't let go.
Voila! One monkey dinner
The record companies are like the trapped monkey. They won't let go, they can't let go, even if it kills them.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I don't think he's saying that they are. His proposal is that a tax should be levied on CD-R drives and media and the proceeds should be distributed by the RIAA according to the proportion in Napster's logs. His assumptions seem to be that Napster logs perfectly represent the illegal sharing of music and that saving said music files represents a constant fraction of everyone's CD-R use.
Why that is a fairer approach than requiring Napster to directly pay royalties is beyond me.
Most people only value things (privileges, objects, whatever) in proportion to their perceived cost of acquiring the thing.
My Mom used to be a social worker and anti-drug counselor. Initially, she gave her services free to those who couldn't pay. Relatively quickly, however, she was forced to change that policy; people would not show up for appointments, or expect unrealistic results in unrealistic timeframes, or even treat her badly. They didn't appreciate what they were getting for free. As soon as my Mom started charging a nominal fee ($5 I think it was), those problems went away. People valued her service more when they felt like they had invested in it.
Similarly, if the subways were "free", i.e., completely tax-supported, there would probably be positive side-effects not unlike those that Cringely mentioned. However, there would probably be more negative side-effects. The majority of people would start to think of the subways as having no value, or even worse, an entitlement. Vandalism would probably go up, and the amount of abuse on the system would jump exponentially.
Napster has the same problem. If the music were free, a lot of people would start to consider it an entitlement -- in fact, many already do. I predict that the amount of "abuse" of the artists would increase; people would expect new songs without appreciating the creative work it took to produce them. And even if the market for CD writers and such was temporarily greater than the market for music, the effect of what Cringely is proposing would be the crippling of *both* markets as soon as the market for elelctronic delivery and storage (the Cd-writers, etc) was saturated.
There are problems with my argument, just as there are problems with Cringely's. For instance, the evidence that CD sales go up because of Napster would seem to contradict my point. But that is only because having the CD adds value to the music -- lyrics, cover art, a physical medium, etc. However, if digital distribution of the *entire album* - including cover art, lyrics, etc - became the norm, there would be no additional value in buying the pressed CD.
Replies and rebuttals are welcome. I'm not saying that what Cringely proposes is bad; in fact, on some levels I support it. But the costs incurred by the tragedy of the commons must be addressed as well.
Want to make $$$$ really quick? It's easy:
1. Hold down the Shift key.
This is quite unlike the "group" which often signs away the publishing rights to the label just as they do the copyright on the recording itself.
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
This is the worst idea I have heard in a long time. Perhaps Linux should be taxed and the proceeds given to Microsoft, since Linux might hurt them?
This would basically turn the music business into a state supported industry in the worst traditions of communism.
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I don't get it either, this way the "consumer" is hit twice while napster, making the money, pays nothing. Nice.
The RIAA doesn't represent *all* artists, it just represents the big ones. You know, the ones in the Brotherhood which is already peeling away the big bucks.... So the little guys get screwed *again*, while the RIAA manages to find yet another revenue model.
I know I'm gonna get flamed for this, but it's kind of funny to see everyone up in arms about this. Lots of people are upset about THEM getting into YOUR stuff and giving it away(personal info), but you don't mind YOU getting THEIR stuff and giving it away. Anyone using Napster for sharing files that are in the public-domain (ie not copywritten) I apologize.
I don't know how it is in other cities, but here in Sodom-on-Hudson, fares pay a lot more than 15% of the operating cost of the subways.
Going to the MTA's web site, you can see budget figures for 1998. The New York City transit division's (that is, NYC subways, buses, paratransit, and the Staten Island railway) operating cost was $3.8 billion. There were just over 5 million paid rides on each weekday, and a subway fare is $1.50.
So let's do some back-of-the-envelope calculations. Assume that on weekends, ridership is 30% of what it is on weekdays. (I admit I have no basis for this assumption, but it seems reasonably conservative.) This works out to fare revenues of $2.2 billion for that year, or almost 60% of the operating cost.
The actual percentage for the subways is probably higher. That 60% includes the subsidized paratransit division, and the Staten Island railway. I have heard (but I don't recall where) that fares actually cover about 85% of the cost of running the subway.
Which is why they charge for it.
This seems to be a disturbing precident. I know that Napster directories are available to be read by everyone, but I really don't like the idea of being target-marketed based on what's on my hard drive ("According to our glance at your Quicken folder, you seem to cheat heavily on your taxes. Perhaps you'd care to make use of our legal services!"). Furthermore, I find it hard to believe that they hire human spammers to do all this dirty work. Dollars to doughnuts that they're running bots on Napster's valued no-bot network. Is Napster doing anything about this?
The amount of information you can glean about someone purely from his musical tastes is quite remarkable, and is bound to lead to more focused, relevant advertising for us all, which will be more bearable for us all. The person who listens to Chopin is clearly more intelligent and cultured that the person who listens to Nirvana. The advertising should reflect this. In some cases it may even be useful.
I just hope that they don't use IM too much, and instead use email or something easily filtered. IM is under the power of AOL, and email under the power of Microsoft. It is far easier to filter the latter for those reasons.
You know exactly what to do-
Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-
You know exactly what to do-
Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-
I think of little else but you.
I've already seen napster spam in the form of automated /msg sent by one of the java/web-based napster clients. Whenever someone using this service grabbed a file from my machine, I would get sent a /msg like "Hey, song such-and-such has been downloaded by a user of Java-Napster-Thingy. Check it out at url.com!" Very annoying.
Of course, it's easy enough to just ignore your chat log, but this is a muddying up of another potentially useful means of communication.
I have very ambivalent feelings about the targetted advertising over Napster. I received both the one sent if you had Depeche Mode, and the one if you had Toad the Wet Sprocket (and I own the albums, thank you very much). And I deleted the first, but the one for Glen Phillips made me actually very happy - I was so crushed when Toad split up and haven't been able to follow what's been happening with them.
.mp3, but to Glen's site, and I didn't even know he had his own album out. I've since dl'ed some of those tracks to check them out, and might well be buying the album. Sure, just what they want me to do, but along the same lines, it's also what I want to do.
.mp3 format (and once again, on CD also), and wanted to let me know about her coming in concert, or a new album, then I'd be very very happy.
The IM I received not only pointed to a free unreleased Toad
I don't want to be overloaded with constant "ads" at any rate, and the idea of that bugs me. But if someone saw that I had pretty much every Tori Amos song in
---
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
That's not going to change until enough artists bitch about it. Robert Fripp and Courtney Love and Prince and a few rappers here and there aren't enough...especially not with Metallica being the spokespeople for the RIAA and ASCAP's position.
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
The problem I have with this is that in all of my CD-Rs I have ever burned, only ONE (1) was used to burn music. And it was a collection of indy, non-signed artists. So, in essence, I would be paying a TAX to the MUSIC INDUSTRY (and not the artists) just because I'm using a file-storage mechanism that CAN record audio. That's fsck'ed up! I have burnt probably at least 150 CD-Rs and I don't feel the music industry should get a cent from me.
Now the movie industry, on the other hand.... well let's just say I don't use all of my CD-Rs for data storage....
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That's not what I meant.
less than 30 sorry.
Best Slashdot Co
Not everybody is covered under those organizations. Many smaller artists who's material is traded by napster users will never see income from the RIAA license. they're only chance for income is that the listeners like the material and purchase a cd directly from them later on.
ASCAP and BMI (and presumably, the RIAA would do the same for their cut) distribute income from site-licenses (such as public restaurants, bars, store p.a. systems, etc) based on one market value only: Radio Airplay. It doesn't matter that, e.g., Live365.com can log exactly what was played, and to how many listeners. It doesn't matter that a local pub is an Irish pub that never plays pop music.
Brittany Spears, her songwriters, and her producer will all get most of the money.
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
I was pissed about it the first time, and I'm not going to change my mind this time. I should not be forced to pay a tax to some organization unrelated to either myself or the maufacturer of the media.
There's no reason to let the second violation of some rule go unnoticed because of previous violations.
I would suggest France, Cuba, or China.
All your dangifiknow are belong to us.
How exactly do the record companies make money on PC sales? And how exactly do musicians make money on them?
And what's this supposed to mean?
So Napster, which cost almost nothing to create
Let's see, 800,0000 simultaneous users. 1.7 billion downloads. I think there might be a penny or two spent on infrastructure there, and maybe a coupla nickels for bandwidth.
People just don't seem to understand what kinda costs go into server architecture and bandwidth these days...