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Napster Offers $1B For Music-Swapping Rights
An unnamed correspondent writes: "CNET is reporting that Napster has offered to pay the music industry $1 billion over 5 years for the rights to unlimited music swapping. That works out to $1.67/month/user with 50 million users." Here's coverage on FoxNews as well, which says: "Under the proposed settlement, $150 million would be paid each year for the first five years to the major record labels -- Sony, Warner, BMG, EMI and Universal -- with an additional $50 million alloted annually for independent labels."
MP3 isn't the only lossy audio encoding codec, they could use another.
--
Soma: because a gramme is better than a damn.
>> When Windows crashes, at least it lets you click OK first
And if you're lucky and careful, you can get an amazing amount of stuff done before you actually click that button.
High-speed Road Trip (18.000KPH)
Plus, there's now an mp3 encoder (LAME) that is open-source, meaning that anyone can compile it and use it; gone are the days of paying Fraunhofer IIS royalties for "their intellectual property".
Fraunhofer Group still owns patents in the United States and other countries on the process of "Overlapped cosine transform plus Fourier transform encoding, followed by psychoacoustic quantization and entropy coding" which is a necessary and irreplaceable part of MP3 encoding. This is why Ogg Vorbis doesn't use a Fourier transform but instead a finer cosine transform.
All your hallucinogen are belong to us.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I just don't see the RIAA undermining the CD selling business by doing a $1,$5, or even $10 per month unlimited deal.
because 1.5 million per year would just about match the money Britney Spears uses on het velvet toilet paper.
I find it interesting that the number 1 argument that artists have against napster is that it takes their control of how their art is propagated away from them. This is insane. The artist in the current system has essentially no control - Do I sell my soul or do I not? - Do I aquiesce to everything my label tells me to do or not?
I got into a heated argument with a movie director the other night who was vehemently anti-napster for that very reason. At the same time, he was sitting there, working on a low-budget $500k film and making squat.
The artist is not protected by current laws/standards.
I work as a scientist in (enter buzzword) primate genomics and I am disgusted by the commercialization of the whole thing. I could sell out tomorrow and sign up with a pharmaceutical company and live happily ever after (at least paycheck-wise), but I will not. I can be a loser (pay-wise) academically and live with myself. Artists are apparently incapable of making the same choices....
Gnutella being nobody, nobody pays nothing, and it's for unlimited swapping of any file, not just mp3.
-- javaDragon is an instance of JavaDragon.
If the system stays the same (sharing MP3s with other users), how the hell are they going to make this work? Intercept the data and add add copy protection? Automagically convert it to WMF?
If so, it looks like Napster will become nothing more than a fat client storefront for the record industry. Which means they will be able to push content (or withhold it) for the privledge of your subscription fee.
When I hear the word 'innovation', I reach for my pistol.
First, IANAL, yet.
Artists have never been entitled to say what happens to their works, at least in the USA. Now, they are granted the sole, assignable right to make commercial copies of said work. Similarly, they are granted by law royalties for public performance of their works. That is the extent of their entitlement, to my knowledge.
Copyright, based on the clause in the US Constitution investing Congress with the power to secure a limited monopoly for artists and inventors "to promote the useful arts and sciences", is not an absolute grant nor a property right. It is a limited monopoly, granted by Congress. This stands in contrast to legal systems in other countries (e.g. France) wherein the foundation of Copyright is a "natural right" - a non-assignable (IIRC) right of authors to dispose of their works as they see fit. This is why French directors and authors always get the final cut of their works, if I'm not mistaken.
Our system recognizes different "natural rights" (like freedom of speech, and the press), and the foundation of our copyright system is pragmatic - designed to promote progress and the creation of new works, not to ensure an artist has total control over a work they have created (there are good philosophical reasons for this I won't go into here, but for a start, consider that neither art nor invention exist in a vacuum). I would further argue that the philosophy behind the Constitutional basis for copyright would find the current copyright regime (which rather than encouraging new works, encourages an "everlasting gravy-train" mentality among copyright holders) abhorrent.
I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, blah blah blah.
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
Damn that 120 char limit!! It becomes:
When Windows crashes, at least it lets you click OK first. And if you're lucky and careful, you can get an a
I tried. :)
Free Online Woodworking Resources Directory
They will piss on this offer.
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
Instead of trying to make money following "what people want to hear" They'll make whatever they like.
Get it? Maybe Britney Spears doesn't wanna do pop anymore and wants to try classical or something.
But let's not forget that the economy has been booming and most of those record increases have been thanks to manufactured artists like britney spears and eminem. If napster survives and the economy keeps going down(or britney and eminem die at the same time), then record sales will start to go down.
1) Recording artists could distribute their music online in an encrypted format of some type (MP3 or some successor with better audio fidelity).
2) Joe and Josephine User download this music and pay for it using a truly useful micropayment system (now that would be an interesting Open Source project).
3) The bulk of the micropayment goes to the actual artist, not to the media conglomerate.
4) Joe and Josephine get the music they want.
Arguments against this concept:
A) People will still find a way to beat the encryption. Of course they will, just like people burn CD copies of their music now. The music companies still make hundreds of millions of dollars every year. At least this way the artists are getting their cut.
B) Peer-to-peer technology will kill this concept because people will just slide past the encryption and then post songs on (Napster, Gnutella, whatever). Not if you make the encryption tough enough that it becomes more trouble than it's worth to hack the encryption and then post the songs on a server somewhere.
The heart of the matter is that there are three principal actors in this drama: the record labels, the consumer, and the artists. The record labels have been getting fat on profits that are based on control of the means of production (sorry, Marx). The consumer has become greedy with Napster (hey, why not get ALL of my music for free?!). The folks getting screwed are still the artists.
Let's think about the people who give us all this great music, and let's come up with something that works for them. My guess is that if it works for the artists, it will work for consumers. As for the music companies, they can choke on their own greed.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
I guarantee you, no DJ worth anything would go anywhere nearMP3s, no matter what the selection is. Heck, half of them will slap you around if you suggest they use CD instead of vinyl!
Not that you would actually notice...
anyway, I for one want the sound quality of what I'm listening to to be limited by the equipment I'm listening to it on, not the format it's distributed in.
Glückwünsche, haben Sie Slashdot ermordet, indem Sie zum korporativen Druck beugten und Subskriptionen einlei
Banner ads are dead. My site has seen our banner ad revenue drop to 1/100th of what it was a few months ago. Not because clicks dropped, but because the payout from banner companies has fallen so much. They are all going to crumble soon.
This is crazy. Record labels get a billion dollars, and Napster does all the work of distributing their music? If a record label wants any money from me for music they own the rights to, they had better provide me with high bandwidth, high accessibility download sites that give me the music I want in a uniform, high-quality format. Something I don't like about Napster is that quality varies widely. Something else I don't like about it is that it's too damn hard to find music I like. The best thing going for it is that it's free, and the next best thing about it is that record labels don't get a penny. This is a deal that does nothing to improve Napster but makes users pay for it (either directly, or indirectly through advertising). The RIAA should jump at this deal, but Napster will lose its users to alternatives because Napster users won't.
---
Somehow, detached from my actual behavior, this innocence burdens me still.
The record companies are asking for $100,000 per copyright violation.
No, $100K per work violated, the maximum statutory damages under US law. There are likely less than 3 million unique RIAA songs available through Napster.
All your hallucinogen are belong to us.
Will I retire or break 10K?
If this happens, it wont be long before
isps will offer some sort of bundle...
adsl+unlimited access to napster+access
to usenet server+other stuff
60-70$ a month????
Um... It's kind of stupid to even reply to a troll like this, but FYI MP3s are by nature platform-independent. If it was possible to tie an MP3 to a specific machine and user account Napster never would have become a legal hotspot in the first place. Duh.
I think Napster has it all wrong. Napster is playing victim and is trying apease RIAA. All it has to do is turn the tables in the following manner. I have the customers. This is probably going to be your last chance to setup a system that works with all those people in one place, and with the exposure we have. More people have heard of the "Napster" brand name that any one label. The news mention it so often. We have more customer loyalty than any one label. So here is the deal, I leave it to you to come up with a working scheme. If you stuff it up, the customers will get burnt. In the advertising industry it is 100 times more expensive to get an upset customer back than it is to get him the first time. People will continue to want the "Napster experience TM", but they will never ever trust RIAA to do it right again. They emerging technologies will be RIAA proof. That is open source (or democracy if you may) for you.
I agree wholeheartedly with your message except for the following:
>This is the internet, we aren't going to pay for something that is already free.
I think this is a dangerous sentiment. Internet or not, you've got to be willing to pay an artist a fair price for a hard day's work. Unfortunately the RIAA cronies are so entrenched in protecting their monopoly that they refuse to sell me a song (unlimited license) for $1 a pop. Had they done so they would be trillionaires, but their minds are hard-wired to refuse anything that doesn't have a guaranteed increase in profit margin, regardless of revenue. People would gladly pay just for the sheer convenience. However the old, grey, small-minded monopolists decided to steal from us, and the internet community decided to steal back. Now they get nothing, and I'm happy. I know I've bought my last music until the system is changed. The RIAA will not get $20 per CD from me, nor will they even get my $1 a pop for an unlimited license. Am I wasting my time? I bet the first Napster subscriber thought the same...
---
Thats a lot of cash but if their charging 50million users 5 a month then it looks like napster wouldn't be going anywhere.
Somebody set us up the bomb
Napster works because it is easy to use-- no copyright protection stuff, passwords (beyond one you type once and forget), identity proof, etc. I can use it on all of my computers without any problem. Remember when computer games and software were like this? Right, before they became such huge business (software companies argue before piracy grew).
An on-line music service that is a major hassle is a no-go. I'd pay a lot of money for a Napster that gets me legal, high quality songs. I wouldn't pay if it is a pain in the ass to use. If I can't connect from home because I forgot to log out at home, that sucks. If I'm paying and it's using a peer-to-peer architecture, I expect some kind of credit for the disk space and upload bandwidth I'm losing (how cool would that be for both the consumer and company-- a product that gets cheaper the more you use it).
-m
Do all of this, and I will give you my piece of the billion dollars. Until then, back to Half.com for used CDs.
I'm guessing this story will play out about the same.
-A.P.
--
* CmdrTaco is an idiot.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
http://ink.e-quill.com/view/719591c07994ab70
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
What would get people to pay? Honor. Honesty. I know that some people wouldn't pay, and that is their business.. but I know for a fact that, if asked, I would be more then willing to pay like $50 a year to have full access to Napster.
------------
CitizenC
well, it sure is now. And boy can it encode! 647 megabytes of CD-quality WAV in eight minutes! Woo!
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
It's practically impossible to find the independent labels who, under this scheme, they would owe money to. Also, this assumes that the record labels ARE the law. If one small independent record label didn't want to participate in this deal, could they sue Napster and cause the same contraversy there is now?
Not a bad idea. Works for geeks, and gets greedy RIAA people money they claim to be losing. I don't see how they can disagree with it.
JoeLinux
It would be entirely impossible to pay all the right parties. This is a half assed attempt to make something kosher. That would be like me paying microsoft and adobe for the right to pirate commercial software. They say they'll pay 'independent labels', but how do they know EVERY ONE? If I burn cds of my [hypothetical] band and sell them at [equally hypotheical] shows, and then someone pirates my music on napster, will they pay ME? I don't think so. And in fact, the membership fees that people would be paying while pirating MY MUSIC would be going to the big record companies. So, this brilliant bussiness model we've waited so long for napster to tell us about gives the big record companies the better bargin. Fuck that.
___
The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason. --Ben Franklin
The most important part of the article...
"The $1 billion fee would be the equivalent for the industry of selling another $5.4 billion in CDs, since the labels would have no additional production and distribution costs associated with that fee, he noted. "
Something for nothing for life + 95 years, and the major labels are fighting this. Really, that's been a lot of people's argument since the beginning. Something for nothing. But who is paying for the protection? And who is getting it?
--
+&x
A buck 67 is still to much to give to the labels. I'd be happy w/ 10 dollars a month if 95% went to the artists.
Until then opennap it is.
Yep, I never spell check.
More incorrect spellings can be found he
My guess is that they can modify the Napster clients (which are also servers) so that they still publish MP3s, but the MP3s are converted to WMFs (or whatever) during the transfer. People can still publish MP3s, but no one can download one. People can also publish WMFs, but only those that are "Napster approved" - mean that you can't publish a WMF that has no copyprotection. Then, they need to change the Napster protocol so that only people using the new clients will see each other.
--
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
In a few years Napster will be synonymous with the term "record company". So, let's develop the NAP protocol. Let's develop new clients, improve P2P and gnutella. Let's create NEW protocols and software that helps us to trade MP3s. Just because Napster (the company) is dead doesn't mean that the idea is gone.
Scour was on the right track... come up with a searchable encrypted format. Even better make it ASCII based so it can be hidden inside of HTML or text files. Necessity is the mother of invention. And, since our "Napster mom" turned into a crack-whore.. we're just going to have to start inventing some new stuff!
maybe it's the same people that calculate how much Napster is destroying artists whist ignoring a rise in CD sales...
-rt-
-rt-
** Evil Canadians are taking over the world. Learn about the conspiracy
For those amongest us who know of Wal-Mart and the power of the buyer here's a lesson. Wal-Mart while early on prospered by use of its IT division to drive down costs has since then used its buying power muscle to squeeze its suppliers and keep prices down for the consumer. Is this bad? You tell me...I go there all the time because its the cheapest and people still willingly sell to them and there is jet service into Fayetteville full of sales reps trying to get into there stores. Point Im making is this. Wal-Mart accounts for 13% of the total record sales. The market for music was $14.4 billion dollars last year that means Wal-Mart kicked in about over a billion. The talk is Napster with its fee will kick in the equivalent of 5.4 billion dollars of CDs sold over those five years. This would make Napster the equivalent of Wal-Mart to the industry. Two entities controling over 20% of the distribution channel. Are bells and whistles going off yet? Not a good thing if the only thing you bring to the value chain is some promotional goodies and a bunch of CD presses. In the RIAA won't take the deal, but may be forced through public and political pressure to do so. Who knows maybe Wal-Mart buys Napster and I can find my Techno, Trance, and Progressive House mixes at Wal-Mart here in the buttass middle of Texas. FYI, I got into the stuff listening to Radio One Essential Mixes of older Paul Oakenfold stuff off Napster (thank you my fine British friends =) )and my musical tastes have come to encompass many forms of electronica since then. Thank you Napster and I have the bought Global Underground CDs (current fav Dave Seaman Buenos Aires) to prove it. If this seems scatterbrained, its because it is.
HT
I'm sure many DJ's would be willing to pay for access a high bandwidth distribution system to allow them to download hifi versions (CD quality at least) of whatever they want. Radio stations would use the same or a similar service.
And for the DJ that has the vinyl version....two thumbs up. The good DJ's can tell what a crowd wants in spite of requests. A good DJ is on top of the current music scene and knows the relations to the past. I doubt they would dislike access to a huge collection.
Y
no sig.
it has been done already :-)
http://opennap.sourceforge.net
It's the next napster
For the forseeable future at the very least. If the Buck-oh-five estimation of the price is on target, people will be scrambling to pay.
One reason will be the assuagement of conscience. Now you're use of Napster is ethical and untouchable, no more sting of guilt. I think this will actually be quite a compelling reason, even though it won't get much airplay. Most people don't like to feel like their having their fun at the expense of the folks who give it to them.
Plus let's not forget you're also getting the most convenient and efficient way on the planet to test if that new band's CD really is worth the 15 or so Shekels you're thinking of shelling out.
Sorry to be such a napster booster here (I don't work for them!) but let's also remember that for many people, a cheap way to legally get as many mp3s as they can swallow means the end of their cd collections. Why should I spend so much on CDs when I can get a mother of a hard drive for my mp3s? Not that $1.67 really bites into the CD budget anyway. A lot of people think that mp3 is good enough. And as the codecs make the music smaller, making digital more convenient, more are likely to think this way.
It'll just be ultra convenient. Gee, only 50 million? think it'll stop there when your potential clientele includes every online person on the planet? If the RIAA buys this deal, it will be ALL GOLD.
I understand that there's a certain animosity toward the RIAA in the online community as a whole: that's to be expected. What I don't understand why, with this current decision on Napster's part to distribute music legally, people are screaming outrage over artists' rights, acting as if the RIAA is muscling around and essentially enslaving their artists.
Contrary to popular belief, members of the RIAA don't send agents to the houses of talented artists and threaten to break their legs unless they agree to be represented through them. I also find it very hard to believe that any artist expects that most of the revenue from their music will come back to them: I'm certain those members of the RIAA that they CHOOSE to deal with make this very clear. This in fact is fair: The artists put in their talents, but as history has shown, the excessive marketting and management provided by the RIAA are most costly and more effective in such a lemming market as North America (thus we have such successful groups as the Backstreet Boys and N*SYNC). Artists are also VERY rarely locked in dark basements and forced to make music without food or water while chained to microphones and handcuffed to instruments. Simply put: The artists who work within the RIAA aren't forced into unequitable treatment or abusive circumstances without some say of their own, and while all the money doesn't go to them, I can't think of many artists under the RIAA's overseeing that've resorted to an impoverish lifestyle without some poor decisions of their own.
Realize, of course, that if prices for CDs weren't "artificially inflated" as the FTC suggests, artists would make even MORE money and marketting would be almost nill, with most of the actual revenue going toward paying for meager marketing and standard expenses.
Anyway, back on topic, selling the rights to the distribution of their music isn't abuse of the artists on the RIAA's part, as I'm certain that such issues are covered in initial contracts. Heck, if people're opposed to the RIAA allowing distribution of music across Napster, than why aren't these same people protesting the use of artists' music on radio stations? Most of the time they have no say in that either! What injustice! Sure the situations are different at heart, but aren't the principles essentially the same?
Anyway, I'm sick of people acting as if this is some huge controversy and injustice on the part of the RIAA, both toward consumers and artists. There's nothing new in this scenario that hasn't been going on for decades within the industry: the only difference are the players... or rather, one of the players.
If you're so intent on defending the rights of the artists, stop attacking those few that actually voice their own opinions, such as Metallica. Otherwise you're simply a biased hypocrite.
How will this literally work if the files never go over their servers? Through the client I guess? But how? This is a very imporant question. The idea I'm getting from your post is that I will have mp3s on my hard drive, which I myself made, are not encrypted because I don't know how to do it or don't like it or whatever. So someone sees my files on the nap network, tries to download it, and when it arrives on their hd, it's napsterized? Is this feasible?
You just dont get it do you!
People won't have to pay!
all it takes is one big isp somewere
in the world who decides to try to
bundle their service with legal
free access to music via napster..
and then raise their rates 2-3$ a month..
and the snowball is rolling.
Anyone else wondering why Shawn Fanning is still hanging on? because they are still paying him. a steady job is nice. they NEED him. they need him to keep from looking like the corporate entity that they are, and they need people to pretend that he is running the company, a "hip genX friendly company" in image alone. without him, they are RIAA, the sequel. odd, because of how little he has to do with Napster anymore, does he actually do anything for them? well, other than do interviews about how cool his company is... Chao
The two CDs are a better deal.
Napster is going to rig the whole system up so that you can do virtually nothing with the music you get. Can't move it to a different machine, can't burn it to mp3, etc. Basically they'll try to gut the entire mp3 standard.
With CDs at least you can do stuff.
I'll be damned if I use Napster 2.
-- 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.
Think about it - if everyone on Napster just stopped buying CD's it would send one hell of a message. Even better - if you could organize a large-scale boycott (say, everyone on the internet ;p) then the message would be even more clear. Even if it only lasted a month it would punch a mighty big hole in profits (plus it might be enough to starve away uber-pop groups), which seems to be about the only way to get their attention anyhow (after all, RIAA and others didn't start to notice Napster until profits began to "slip").
Any ideas? You can count me in :).
warble
===== Warble://VX
I wonder how much I'd actually pay for all-you-can-eat music. I suppose that I spend on the order of $250 a year on music (not a big music lover, but I like CD's.)
As such, for all-I-can-eat music like this, even $120/yr ($10/mo) would not be such a bad deal.
I pay a flat rate for my cable, my Internet service, my apartment rent, etc. This rate doesn't change no matter how much TV I watch, how much I'm online, how much time I spend at home, etc. Why doesn't my music or software work this way?
As an interesting side issue, what would you pay for the equivalent of a Microsoft MSDN Universal Subscription? I'd pay $100 a year for all the Office, Windows, SQL Server, and FrontPage I could eat...
Love ya, mean it. Come give old Neck a hug...
Neck_of_the_Woods
Neck_of_the_Woods
#/usr/local/surf/glassy/overhead
I have no problem paying $1-$3 per single if I can download and enjoy immediately. I would prefer 100% of the money go to the artist and none to RIAA.
Is it just me, or is giving Napster your credit card information a Very Bad Thing. Think about it...once they have your credit card information, they have everything about you. By They, of course, I mean the RIAA and company. Fork over your information, and Napster suddenly become a little less anonymous. Lets take it step by step:
*We know that the RIAA and musicians can track who is downloading what on Napster.
*You give Napster your financial information.
*We know that the RIAA and certain musicians can muster superlative legal power.
*Is it so impossible that they can get this information from Napster to "ensure that their requirements are being met"? Sure, there are probably laws about this kind of thing. Hell, there are alot of laws...millions. Has this stopped anyone with enough money yet? No!
*Lets say you download more of a certain album than the lawyers or tracking services would like you to.
*Suddenly "NapGuy986" becomes "Joe "Evil" Pirate of 123 Main Street, Your Town, USA. Phone Number 867-5309 Goes to F University, drives a Honda, penchant for very progressive magazines." and so on and so forth.
I don't know about you, but I'm not paying for this thing unless I can drop by CVS and have them cut a money order for $2 for the pleasure.
"These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based on the order in which I joined" --Homer re:
'cause both are going to be around. I think it would be an incredible experiment in *cough* communism vs capitalism. On the one hand you have the free (price and action) service. Open source clients and servers, run by volunteers, faith-based organizations, or governments (where aplicable). By their nature, profit and it's motive are forbidden.
One the other hand you have Napster II, a pay service, sanctioned and serviced by the major labels and major corporations. They have the benefit of being able to profit and will most likely have a better, easier-to-use service and the added benefit of tons and tons of existing capital.
Can the two systems co-exist? Given a totally free market, which one would prosper? A challenge, perhaps?
[don't read too much into the commie stuff, please]
--
+&x
This is going to fail for one reason best described by a cliche, "There is no honor among thieves."
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
Ok, so let's say everything works out as planned. They pay the record companies, et. al., $1 billion over the course of 5 years. What happens after that? Who get's all the money. Does that mean that the Napster people stand to make another $1 billion over the 6-10th year for themselves after that??
wouldn't it be cheaper than $150 million to just keep some good lawyers in court?
Whatever!
"I say consider this day seized!" -Hobbes
"Tomorrow we'll seize the day and throttle it!" -Calvin
Heh...I'd gladly pay less than $2/month to make it legal. It'll make me stop feeling like one of the slimy warez d00dz I'm so fond of launching triads against at every opportunity. If you're not paying for it, it's piracy, and that makes several tens of millions of people slimy warez d00dz! But it's ok, because I use it so that makes me a warez d00d, too!
I know I'm asking for it Karma-wise, but it had to be said!
"These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based on the order in which I joined" --Homer re:
With 50 million users i really dont think anyone is refering to doubleclick or linkexchange...more like Coke or Pepsi buying perm ad space. The reason why banner ads are dead is because there was no method to the maddness. Targeted advertising and sponsorships are the way that advertising can and will be successful on the web.
If Napster wants to go to a pay-per use method, then what's the point of peer to peer sharing? If I'm paying $2-$10 a month for this service, I expect *quality*. I don't want to have to try to download 10 different versions of the same song to get a download rate faster than 5KBytes/sec. I don't want to search through lists of poorly/incorrectly named song files. If I'm paying for it, I want 30KBytes/sec minimum. I want full 320kbps MP3 files. I want *every* song from *all* of the record labels participating. I don't want to see only what is on the hard drives of the other people who are on the same server as me. The reason Napster succeeds is that it is free, so everybody has a low expectation for the quality of service. If your cable TV only worked certain times of the day, and some of the channels were intermittent, you would not be happy. But for antenna channels? You just keep adjusting those rabbit ears as best as you can and grin and bear it. Why? Because you don't pay for it.
$1 billion / 5 years / 12 months / 50 million users = 33.3 cents. On the other hand, 50 million users is optimistic by about an order of magnitude, IMHO.
Heh, they couldnt patent it, usenet and irc have both been around longer.
Remove the Spam to email me.
You'd be amazed how many rich suburban kids use Napster for the convenience, not because they don't want to pay. If anything, paying would make them feel better about downloading the music.
Yet another reason the RIAA's artists should be releasing their albums in high-quality MP3 bundles, for a fair price (I'd say, $5-7 per album, with 50% or more going to the artists themselves would be fair to us and fair to the artists).
People will pay if it's CONVENIENT and UNENCUMBERED. If either of those two things fails to exist, they will STEAL. This is why Napster is successful. This is why other similar services will be successful in the future. The RIAA can get it's act together and profit, or keep losing control over their content as they have been.
"And like that
I rang, you rang, we all rang for orangutang!
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Napster can suck me, the fucking prostitutes. Napster - whore of the internet!
News for turds, shit that splatters
I, as well as many of my friends (all college age kids), would definitely pay $5 or even $10 for napster, especially if it was 100% legal.
Josh Sisk
Ok...this is what I think is going on.
Napster is offering One Billion Dollars. To the average human, that sounds like a hell of alot of money. Wow...A Whole Billion Dollars..Just Imagine!
To the RIAA (non-humans), that's a drop in their Bucket of Relentless Riches +2.
So Napster is saying "Here...we're going to give you a whole Billion Dollars if you leave us the hell alone".
The RIAA can say "Ha ha ha...we PISS on your measly billion...begone with you!!"
At which point, the RIAA looks like huge bastards.
Napster can then say "See? We tried to be nice...tried to appease them, but they shot us down"
Film at 11, and suddenly everyone in the world finally sees what greedy jerks the RIAA et al are!
Personally, I like that.
"These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based on the order in which I joined" --Homer re:
They could also supplement it with "click here to buy this cd on amazon.com" type affiliate money. Or even sell the cds themselves. If 50 million people use Napster, I could easily see it surpassing the other online cd stores.
Josh Sisk
Now the majors will get the increased sales because of the incredible promotion potential of Napster, plus a billion for spare change. Napster will get almost as rich by their newly acquired legitimity(i.e people won't bother the moral issue to use it, everyone will use it), with the possible monthly fee + all the advertising possibilities times 50 millions users you do the math. Oh by the way, from where will all this money come from? From you my friend, that's how capitalism works.
Je t'aime Stéphanie
In fact I think the artist will be worse off under an all you can eat plan. The pie is just going to end up being more thinly sliced leaving artists with the skinniest one.
Record labels have historically screwed the artists and this isn't going to change that.
Matt.
If you believe in compensating the artist use Fairtunes.
k.
--
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people
are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
Nobody cares about a hard day's work. Welcome to the internet version of the "me" generation. The internet's collective hatred of intellectual property has to do with the fact that we want everything, nay, are entitled to everything, free, now.
Indeed!
What would you be willing to pay for legal access to a huge database of music? Think about what highschool and college kids are currently spending on pagers and cellphones. Generally more than $5/month! Therefore it is a reasonable concept to assume that many people would be willing to spend $5-10/month to access large music databases legally. If Napster pulls this off with RIAA approval, the entire business will change. Napster will be able to checksum your downloads to be sure they are "certified versions" and eliminate the partial download problem that is a major problem with the existing system. They will probably make enough cash to host their own certified servers for access to the hottest titles, allowing tracking of bonus payments where appropriate and keeping the service useable. More importantly, companies will be able to market Napster enabled stereo systems that have phone and ethernet jacks and huge hard drives for collection storage (wireless on high end models). The song info database will be designed for easy search/access to that favorite tune. Imagine going up to the DJ at your local party/rave and not being limited to his/her personal collection.
And the best part of all of this...the record companies will have less power to force songs down the throat of the consumer as more users will just select the download songs similar to those in my collection (based on a song rating/review system) for my listening pleasure.
Think of the many ways that this could benefit the music lover. Payment based on download activity has the possibility of weakening the crushing grip that record companies have on "popular music". We might be able to spread the wealth a little and prevent me from having to switch channels every time Brittney or Eninem (sp?) or whoever is being pushed at me by the record biz, and instead allow me to create my own database and find similar music (sprinkled with new suggestions, thumbs up or down Tivo style) and enjoy it.
I want Napster to become mainstream. It will change everything! For the better!
no sig.
Did you even real the story? They are going to charge monthly fees.
Don't you usually go in to these settlement things with a lowball offer? How much is Napster _really_ prepared to pay?
Everyone will start to cheer when you put on your sailin' shoes.
Some quick math involving projected figures and such paints a scary picture of the future. With Napster charging $5 per month to 50 million users that works out to 3 BILLION revenue in 1 year. That is approximately 15% of the 20 billion dollar per year music industry, in other words Napster would be making about the same revenue as one of the big 5 labels would be making per year. Hell if the $1 billion for 5 years deal goes through artists would propably be able to negotiate better deals with Napster than with a label. Scary to thing that good old Napster might become the next record industry giant... perhaps bigger than any other to date...
Oh Well, Whatever, Nevermind...
I meant as far as using it to profit from the IP of others.
--
+&x
Yeah, well, you & I know that. The fatcats aren't that smart. What they'll do when they get whacked by a cluestick is another matter.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
News for turds, shit that splatters
It is a lot cleaner than the older versions!
:)
Get it for OpenNap servers!
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
And if I recall, it's "All your base," not "all your bases."
Actually, Napster did recently claim they could allow users to download songs that couldn't be copied or burned onto cd. So the above poster isn't a troll. Though I don't know how Napster plans to accomplish that.
Remember also that Bertelsmann holds a pretty big percentage of AOL Europe's shares, so there's business ties between AOL Time Warner and Bertelsmann already.
1- Napster does not have one billion dollars, and given the quality (Or lack thereof.) in their product, they will not get many people to pay for it.
2- If Napster were given free reign over swapping for five years, it would cost the record companies far more than a billion dollars in lost sales.
He's still hanging on because he spent less than a year in Northeastern's CS curriculum. When he dropped out of school to found Napster, the product was in its very early infancy. Read: it sucked. Transfers always timed out, half the time you couldn't even log in, etc. But he got noticed, the right people thought the idea was good, and they threw money at it.
I suspect that at this point his role in the company is mostly that of "poster boy." I doubt he's doing much if any of the actual programming because he's probably not very good at it. If he bailed, it's doubtful that he could move on to something else without coming back to school. I think he got lucky, he knows it, and he's milking it for all it's worth.
-- Have you ever noticed that at trade shows, Microsoft is always the company that is handing out stress balls?
yes AOL claims 27 million users, unfortunately this number includes a lot of previous users, but even assuming the 27 million, earthlink the second largest isp only has about 5 million users, and the average isp has less than 500 thousand users, the is probably total only a little more than 50 million people on the internet. napster is more likely to have around 5 million users, which would bring the cost up to about $16 per user, which is not a particularly unreasonable sum. of course the down side of all of this is that the artist won't see a dime unless they sue their label for their share, which of course means no more releases until their contract runs out and they can switch labels. also napster and the riaa will of course have to go after all the other sites providing a similar service, but with the napster precedent that shouldn't be much of a problem.
well, it's close enough.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
Just look at Network Solutions
At under $2/m, well under $50 a year, I'd be willing to subscribe for unlimited access. Considering thats still the price of only 2 cd's, and it's not gonna be so much that no one can afford it. $19.95/m (a decent isp price) would be rediculus, but this is progress...
I am !amused.
IMHO, they are going to have to do something like this.
Considering
- how absurdly simple what Napster does is
- that the new version will be significantly inferior (from a user's point
of view) to the old one (costs money, and will have copy protection which
implies that the files will be nonstandard)
- that there are alternatives
There is no way that Napster will be able to keep their large market share, unless they figure out some way to use force. (And IMHO, even that won't be enough.) That force will be exerted in courts as Napster attempts to suppress competing protocols (or products/servers that use compatable protocols). Look for Napster to become a major "bad guy" in the coming years, if RIAA accepts their billion-dollar proposal. They will have to, because monopolization is their only hope of getting anywhere near even a fraction of the revenue they'll need.---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Hey, ever been to Maine?
News for turds, shit that splatters
this reminds me of that song by reel big fish, what was it called? sellout?
I wonder how the major labels will divvy it up among all of their artists.
;)
Oh wait, they practically don't do that as it is when it comes to actual CD sales.
It would be nice if Napster came up with some kind of plan for independant artists and smaller labels. Something based on volume, maybe. And perhaps some kind of micropayment system, who knows.
I'm one of those people who buys more CDs because of Napster. I don't mind paying for music. I just wish more of it made it to the artists and not to the corporations.
Heh, maybe that's blasphemy around here
--
That works out to $1.67/month/user with 50 million users.
uh-huh.
Good luck getting a tenth of the userbase to cough up even a quarter...
This is great that the record labels get all that money. Do you *really* think that all the artists out there are going to get a nice fat raise after this? I think not. The RIAA lines their pockets, feels happy to have saved the world for democracy (and capitalism).
I'd be much happier paying my $5.00 (or whatever my piece of the $1B pie is) to a fund which then divides it up correctly between the artists on napster (by percentage or whatever) and then sends the $ directly to them (ie: straight to Courtney Love, NOT her label). I'd like to see how a suggestion like that flies to the record companies who are trying to "protect the artists".
Excuse me, but what is "music industry" ? If two guys buy guitar and drums, and create band - will Napster pay them? Who decide, that Britney Spears is more important to music world than this two guys?
I think we shouldn't pay music corporations, we shouldn't pay Napster, we should pay artists... Will it be ever possible?
I think that is great. I guess it sounds like the RIAA has won, but who cares? They are happy, and for less than the cost of a real CD, I'm happy. And when it goes legal I will be more inclined to open up my DIRs to my T3. Of course, economics 101 tells you of the 50 mil only a small fraction will stick around. Half are kids, a fourth will go elsewhere. That will bring it up to the advertised $5 which I think it still a good deal if the quality matches what they promise. Count me in.
--------
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It's OK to be social, just don't tell anyone about it.
Who do you think the movie industry will go to when compression gets good enough to push it over broadband?
It already is. Or hadn't you noticed?
---
Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
hahaha you are pathetic. Do you think you and the few dozens of people like you matter much? Nope. Bigger numbers buddy.
This stupid proposal by Napster is a calculated and insincere one, one designed to make the public "like" napster and "hate" the record labels more.
Think about it. What feaking idiotic record label is gonna take this raw deal? It's a trick, a very stupid one at that too. If they take it, it'll mean Napster stays alive and makes tons more money in the process. Would it be unreasonable to expect that Napster's gain at the end would be more than $1 billion? Otherwise why would they offer such a deal?
No. What the record companies do is this. They'll keep suing, and they WILL WIN. Then they will own Napster. Period!
---------
Did you just fart? Or do you always smell like that?
eTrade SUCKS
Where have you been the last year?
Today, you're lucky if you even get a single buck per 1,000 impressions. Some advertisers have even started to offer their ads for cents...
--------------------------------------
Remember also that Bertelsmann holds a pretty big percentage of AOL Europe's shares, so there's business ties between AOL Time Warner and Bertelsmann already.
And you of course also are thinking of the deal between BMG(Bertlesmann) and Napster. BMG already is on the side of Napster making deals and I would have to think an alliance with AOL-TW would put TW in a pro-Napster deal position. That is two of the five. Boy, I can't wait til all five of those companies do away with the formalities of being separate entities and merge. But, seriously do any of the Big 5 of the RIAA have significant stakes in competitors to AOL, which would make a Napster-AOL-RIAA deal bad for them?
Those servers are in the same network. Just like IRC, the servers are somewhat transparent minus delays in synchronisation. You will find very few differences between those servers.
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
is, how does Napster make money currently? They have been in court for quite a while, run 100+ directory servers for the service, must lease pretty fat pipes to connect it up, yet have no banners or membership fees. WTF? Does anyone know where they get money from and how they imagine they can pay another $1 billion to the labels in the next 5 years? Who would invest in a company with a 5 year plan like that?
Sean Fanning is a very cool guy who did a phenomenal thing that will go down in history. He and Napster will both be remembered a lot longer than Hillary Rosen and the faceless suits who probably think they have defeated file sharing. They haven't. What Ankarino Lara said a couple weeks ago on ZDNet is true. Napster users are not going to be fanatically loyal to Napster or Sean Fanning and go along with whatever kind of blackmail is arranged. Most of us won't be paying the RIAA one cent thru Napster fees. We will simply go somewhere else, and there will be plenty of places to go.
Thank you Sean. It would have been really cool if Napster had prevailed in court. It would have been really cool if Jimi Hendrix had lived another 20 years. We deal.
Because there still isn't any revenue. Gambling results in the house making money. Running a server directory results in ... ?
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Why not just stick banner ads in the windows and mac clients (wouldn't bother us linux users...)? I'm sure that would cover the $200 mil a year, and keep use users from having to pay a dime. Think of all the advertisers that would be chomping at the bit to get that kind of exposure...
- Hey Anthony, what's that tape on your nose for? - Exactly. Bottlerocket
It seems to me that Napster is suffering from an excess of lawyers and MBAs and seem to have lost touch with the demographics of their actual user base. Somehow I doubt that most of those 70M users are going to be willing to help Napster Inc. recoup that $1B. Free music, like free love, just isn't the same when you have to pay cash in advance.
Four words: Processor Specific MP3 Encryption.
That's right. The new Pentium processors will have built-in unique processor IDs. The Napster client will send the ID to the server, which will in turn encrypt the MP3 with that ID as the key. Then, the MP3 will be send back to you, and the Napster client decrypts it. In addition, if you create any method to circumvent this process, (like using an AMD processor) you are in violation of the DMCA. Even though nobody will do it, Napster will still be able to stay within the law. Woot.
One thing I don't see a lot of people mentioning is that the RIAA(like the MPAA and OPEC) is an industry cartel.
If you keep this in mind, their actions make a lot more sense.
Secondly, the RIAA is dead. Napster, too, is quite probably dead meat. OpenNap is the future. It's too late for them, they're trying to fight something they can't kill.
Paul Anderson
"I drank WHAT?!" -- Socrates
Americans have been thumbing their noses at Intellectual Property (tm) long before the Internet and the "me" generation came around. Think VCR's and Cassettes, prior to that think libraries. Intellectual Property isn't some "Age Old Tradition", it's a new way for a small subset of the population to get "Filthy Stinking Rich" on as little work as possible.
Sigs are awesome huh?
It will give other file sharing proggies the time necessary to mature to the point where they are better than Napster......
Unfortunately, this action, if approved by the Music companies, will mean that the RIAA will focus their attentions on the other file sharing apps on the 'net.....
Feed the need: Digitaladdiction.net
My guess: Powerman 5000? is that correct?
A Penny for my thoughts? Here's my two cents. I got ripped off!
I don't want people maxing my weak upstream bandwidth. So, what if I pay $9/month, and download all I can, but never share anything? Aren't others getting ripped off?
Personally, if Napster goes away, I will have no problem finding MP3. Its on FTP's, newsgroups, IRC... not to mention Napster clones.
when you could have...
...one million?
(pinky to mouth)
Ok - lame Dr. Evil impressions aside, where the heck is Napster going to get the cash for all this? Last I heard, nobody's really paying for the service just yet. Are there any VC-types in the game right now?
I wonder if the RIAA will bite. Anybody think that they stand to "lose" more than a billion to us? Er... I mean... the artists. Yeah. Will they be seeing this money?
You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.
Actually, nearly everyone I know would be willing to pay a small amount, provided they knew much of it was going to the artists.
:)
... oh, and pay money for it, none of which goes to the artist, and all of which could get you in legal trouble.
It really isn't that different than much of the open source/free software community. We dont mind paying programmers for their work; after all we like getting paid for ours. What we object to are the people who go out an borrow large sums of money to learn how to take a larger percentage of that money for doing little-to-nothing.
Sure, in days past, there was a larger place for these types pf people (commonly known as marketing, management, and corporate executives). That time is passing, and we must realize that.
In the past, it took large amounts of outlay to get your work (music, writing, etc.) exposed to a large audience. Now, with little expense, you can get your work exposed to hundreds of millions of people. At that point it becomes a numbers game.
I would prefer a 'market' of 100 million people, paying me 1 USD for my work than 10 million people paying me 10 USD. If for no other reason than the fact I can draw a larger crowd in concerts
This model should come as no suprise to anyone familiar with business demographics. There a a small number of very large businesses, but there is a much larger number of smaller business, that when combined, have more true economic might and influence.
So it seems to me that those arguing that nobody, or even a tiny minority would pay, do not understand the open source/free software phenomenon/movement.
I have a suspicion that many of these same people would argue that if drugs were legalize,d we would see a huge increase in the number of drug addicts and hence drug related crimes (numerically improbable). Why would this happen?
Their answer: "Because drugs would be cheap and legal".
Oh, so more people would pay smaller amounts of money to do something legal, than will pay higher amounts to do something illegal?
Hmm sounds reminiscient of:
"Many people will pay smaller amounts of money to legally download music, than will run the risk of doing the same thing illegally."
For those who don't grok that last phrase, there is, I am given to understand, quite a market for mp3 cd's. Don't have the bandwidth? Pick your songs and get a custom cd with your mp3s
Yeah, nobody will pay. just like nobody pays for their copy of Linux, or *BSD. Now go pull the other one.
My Suburban burns less gasoline than your Prius.
The Record Companies doing this main reason they will not benifit from an Unlimited Usage deal they would want to suck everything they can can out of people. Well I been wrong before we will see
They sort of have a Daffy Duck mentality when it comes to money (Mine! Mine! it's Mine! All Mine!)
Watch them shoot the goose that lays the golden eggs rather then give it up to anyone else. Even tho the goose was never theirs in the first place.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
1. Because of the outrageous copyright transfers from the artist to the record companies, the recording industry has complete legal control (read: stranglehold) over the distribution. Therefore emusic cannot sign any major artists, and can only sell music from less popular artists.
2. Last i checked, they only sell music as 128kbs mp3s. There's now way i'm going to pay money for anything under 192.
That's too bad, because if emusic sold the entire music catalog at good quality, i'd buy all my music from them. They'd be even better if one could download the booklets as pdf and print them at home.
Doesn't that seem a little bit too low? I mean, most users would have A few CDs worth of Music, and I bet the 'Industry' makes far more than $1.67 per buyer per month from CD sales. I don't think that the 'Industry' will accept this, IMO. They think that Napster is stealing CD sales away from them, and this may not be enough 'compensation' for them. And where did Napster get that money from anyway?
-- Michael Lee Martin
There are about 270 million people in the US. AOL has 27 million members paying $20/month.
2. What's going to stop people from sharing Napster accounts?
Napster might well cut a deal with AOL where all AOL users become Napster members. AOL would pay Napster around $50 million a month for this and would maybe raise its rates a dollar or two. Remember AOL is now AOL Time Warner one of the Big Five recording companies.
The logical extension of this once Napster does cut a deal with the RIAA similar to the one that Napster proposed for $1Billion, Napster becomes an attractive target for buyout/merger with AOL-Time Warner.
Imagine going up to the DJ at your local party/rave and not being limited to his/her personal collection.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
As you might have heard Napster was bought by Bertelsmann. You bet these guys can pay a Billion. But still i dont see why they should pay it for Napster? Napster isnt going to be legal anytime soon because even if people pay for the mp3s and even if the RIAA stops sueing them it will still be the community wich is uploading and compressing the files. So WHY should i pay for sth. that is basicly just a searchengine for mp3s? I could get the files t-e-c-h-n-i-c-a-l-l-y via E-Mail or FTP from a friend. So its all about ripping off the community because the labels dont have to pay ANYTHING but get something. On the other hand: isnt it legal to copy music to tapes or other analog media and share it with my friends? So how do you define friend? Will the Labels tell me who is a friend of mine and who is not?? I DONT THINK SO!!!
I'm left wondering something as I read these posts. Someone made the comment that people will not pay $9/mo to share music with others paying $9/mo; agreed. I guess I don't understand how the free-to-pay switch will take place. If at midnight on a given date, all free accounts are terminated and people are invited to go online and create their accounts (presumably with credit cards, which by the way most of the present Napster userbase probably doesn't have), then won't this mean that the first 20 people who sign up will only have 19 other people to share with? What if for the first month there's only 10,000 users? Most of them won't be on 24/7. Most people go on Napster now expecting to be able to search terabytes of music, which is a reality. They'll be in for a shock when they find less than a hundred gigabytes or so.
Another thing is this: What happens if you end your subscription? Does your rights to posess these MP3's remain, or do you lose rights to have those files and are then in possession of illegal music?
$5-10 a month for shitty mp3z? Yeah, dream on...
I wonder who will pay for this. It appears that napster hopes that paying customers will. This has not happened in the past. I have yet to see any succesful paid music download services. If anyone knows of any I would be interested in how they are doing. This is going to fail. All it takes is one record label to say no.
What good is a used up world, and how could it be worth having? --Sting
I feel the need to clarify this a bit...
There is no such thing as arresting small-time copyright violators here in Belgium.
(1) Indeed there *was* a threat from the IFPI (www.ifpi.org: "IFPI is the organisation representing the international recording industry")
(2) But that threat was only to a small number (100) of users, who had received a warning before
(3) Everyone and his brother says IFPI is not able to identify these users unless they violated the privacy legislation
(4) And, most importantly: Marc Verwilghen, our minister of justice, has declared that the prosecution of small-time piracy has the very lowest priority. This places it, I think, just above cannabis use.
So the whole thing is just some FUD from IFPI.
This sig under construction. Please check back later.
I think people are missing the point here: What's really at stake is not the future of Napster anymore, but the precedent they are setting in offering the record industry this kind of money.
This is perhaps the worst thing that could have happened for other businesses hoping to get into online music.
I've felt for a long time that Napster could have avoided this mess by muddying the waters a little, and morphing into an app the expressed purpose of which was not just to share mp3s but pother types of less-contentious files too. In such circumstances it could be claimed that while yes people were using the facility to pirate music, that was not its purpose and was in fact an abuse of the system.
A Napster client with an inbuilt XML-based IM system is something I'd have used (and am in fact trying to code right now), or perhaps an implementation of a gopher-like protocol for locating files worldwide... but I'm dreaming... diversification would probably not even be considered by the makers of a tool which was originally written to facilitate piracy.
Bzzzzzt..."AAAAaaaaarrrgh!!!" Thud.
How can Napster possibly hope to stay in buisness if they do this? Wait... where are they getting money from in the first place? They're all over the news, but I don't see any ads in the program or anything. I know there were several groups funding their legal fees, but where are they gonna raise a billion dollars?
-Jeff
-Jeff
I like to play with Shiny Objects and Yarn.
1. Is it likely that they're going to get 50 MILLION people to pay this? How many people are there in the US, like 400 million? Less? (yes, I know the Internet is global, just for perspective)
2. What's going to stop people from sharing Napster accounts?
3. Is subscribing to this new industry-sanctioned Napster going to mean that what was formerly called "pirated" mp3s are now legal to own? Ie, is this buying a license to own MP3s for CDs you didnt' buy because you bought a Napster subscription? Am I allowed to then trade those MP3s via a non-napster (freenet, gnutella, or something else) system?
4. What kind of crazy license/agreement am I gonna have to sign to subscribe? I can't wait to read this agreement. I have a feeling, knowing the RIAA, it will not exactly be equitable, and birthright forfeiture may be included.
W
-------------------
-------------------
This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Napster was and should stay a voice that shouts, we need to break the corporate mold, screw the DMCA and all the legislators, the hell with the copyright laws that were written in the 1700's. This is a new age, the myths of old, like the railroad track sizings are outdated and stale.
Napster should steer away from this direction and loop back to it's roots. LOOP LOOP LOOP!
They really need to not do this. If they do all their base inch fan and support are belonging to corporate america and not us!
More race stuff in one place,
than any one place on the net.
A tenth of a billion if you live anywhere else in the world, and define your numbers according to world standards...
Grumble grumble grumble
try to make ends meet, you're a slave to money, then you die
Looks like CNN.com has coverage on their front page as well. Enjoy!
this of course brings up another issue. if the figures are based on 50 million people, well, let's be honest here. of the 50 million people who use napster, there is a large number who, if required to pay a user fee, will simply pirate service. i know i'd be more than happy to spend up to about $50us per year for napster, since i save that much on CDs i dont buy since i only want 1 song. $1.67 per month comes out to about $20 per year or something. in essense, the fee would have to be raised to make up for what's lost to piracy.
.cig - what you do after winning a good flame war
What?! Where you get the number 10 thousand from? I just logged on before replying and had 8 thousand users on my server along. Given the number of servers they run (blue.napster, popfolk.napster, primus.napster and on and on) that adds up to a hell of a lot more than 1000 people total, given that are 8000 on each one.
Care about freedom?
I'd rather be lucky than good.
Mark, you suck
-Misao Little Weasel Girl
Most people here seem worried about quality if Napster becomes a subscription service. I really don't think there is any way of addressing that issue without rethinking how Napster operates.
How about this: instead of Joe Sixpack serving partial 96kbps Mp3s off a 56k modem, why can't just the artists run their own mp3 servers off of T3s? This has a few advantages:
1. Artists can publish high-quality (192kbps-320kbps) MP3s.
2. Indie artists can be compensated for their music (your account is automatically charged, say $.40 for each song, and that money goes to the artist's account)
3. Artists maintain control over their intellectual property.
4. Artists pay some percentage of their online sales-- 8% or something-- to Napster. (They're still making more money than with a record label)
Yes, the plan requires more thought, but I'd be much happier paying the indie artists directly for music rather than trusting Napster to pay them correctly.
Just my 2cents
Cam
I think that maybe, I may have an incorrect view but I'm willing to debate the issue.
... an established artist could place there music from live concerts, napster charges .25 for the download. artist / napster / record company make money. everyone wins. people will still go out and buy the cd because the want the studio version ( the record company and artist make money ) artist & record company & napster makes extra money from there live concert performance. Promotion and distibution is still covered and protected as a revenue source for the record company and artist.
I see record companies as venture capitalist. They invest their time and money for recording and promoting the artist. The artist in exchange gives up a percentage of his/her earnings. Napster doesn't give the artist the promotional value, It does provide the distribution value.
Now I would think that napster can not preview/review and promote as good as a record company. So there need is still there. How napster could play into the game is
ONEPOINT
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my web site artistcorner.tv hip-hop news
please help me make it better
if you see me, smile and say hello.
What will happen to all the little foreign music lables that have music shared on Napster and will want a piece of the action?
The Napster people have no serious intentions of paying a billion dollars for anything. They are just offering to make the RIAA look like the bad guy because they know the RIAA is going to refuse any deal.
Napster executed 3 billion (that's b-billion) song transfers in the month of January. The record companies are asking for $100,000 per copyright violation. Somehow, I don't think $16 million per month will satiate them.
(1)On the other hand: isnt it legal to copy music to tapes or other analog media and share it with my friends?
- Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but I didn't think it was... On the other hand, I am allowed to make backup copies for my personal use, so that I can store the originals in a safe place. Which is exactly why I have burned psx games, burned CD's, copied videotapes, DIVX's, MP3's, and all the rest... they're all just "backup copies" of my "originals". I've simply taken the originals and put them in a safe and hidden place, where they can't be damaged by fire, flood, or alien anal probes. In fact, this place is so well hidden, I can't even find them anymore!!! Good thing I have these handy "backups".
(2)I could get the files t-e-c-h-n-i-c-a-l-l-y via E-Mail or FTP from a friend
- Damn right you could, which is exactly what most of the people reading this will probably do. The RIAA isn't trying to kill Napster simply because it exists. They're trying to kill it because any idiot can use it. The sad truth is most people don't have much in the way of technical knowledge, computer skills, or whatever. Whether it's because of fear of breaking something, or some sort of widespread cranial-rectal inversion syndrome (aka having one's head up one's ass), I don't know. But anyways, the RIAA likes these people, because these people like doing things the easy way. I know most of you probably think using ftp is about as easy as Britney (saving herself for marriage, yeah right), but alot of people wouldn't know how to use it if their lives depended on it. As long as the community of people who rip MP3's and share them remains small and unobtrusive, we should all be fine. It's a shame that my mom and dad won't be able to figure out how to get free music via ftp once napster is gone, but them's the brakes.
sigs are for suckers
Since I pretty much listen to nothing from teh major labels, hwo about they actually pay record companies by how much stuff of their artists is downloaded? Also, what % goes to the users? it had better be pretty high.
What he/she is saying is that he would like people to see either way the artist is being ripped off, just one way you dont fund the recording industry. Why should I have to fund them to record someone talking? How do they know how I will use the tape? And think again if you think an artist gets anymoney from that, and if they do that they wouldnt starve from it.
Fight censors!
"Not my manner of thinking but the manner of thinking of others has been the source of my unhappiness." - M
this might work provided napster starts the membership only thing.. and provided it actually works... which it might.
Open source clients and servers, run by volunteers, faith-based organizations, or governments (where aplicable). By their nature, profit and it's motive are forbidden.
Er, no. Profit and its motive (greed) are encouraged under both. While many Open Source projects are produced for altruistic reasons, the recent explosion in Linux is aprtially profit driven. Programmers (and documentors, and managers and even marketers) shave to eat, buy mountain dew, and other things that require money, and are encouraged to do so.
Why on earth would you think otherwise?
If we were to just assume that Napster could somehow maintain 50 million users once they switch to a pay-only model, in order for them to survive, I'd be willing to imagine that they're going to charge a lot more than $1.67 per month ... as they are going to need some sort of mechanism to make profit from their venture.
But, I think it's safe to assume that part of the appeal of Napster is that it makes it free and easy to get something for free that users would traditionally find themselves paying for... I still have a hard time seeing people suddenly becoming interested in paying for a service, and doing so en masse. I'm sure there will be a definite user base, and I'm sure that they could eventually make money, assuming all other determinants were held constant, but it's just downright impossible to think that they're going to be able to have $1 billion in excess funds that they can give to the industry ... I don't think they'll rake in that much revenue in the next five years, even before costs.
However, all things aside, I think this points out an interesting business venture ... if you want to make money, start an independent record label now, and get in on this $50 million/year deal from Napster. Please, where do I sign to accept the proposal?
It keeps record companies flowing with $$ and the independents will be happy too.
First problem is that this will almost stop the whole notion that Napster is built upon a system where the middleman (record company) is removed. However, they no longer will be removed and will be very necessary for musicians to get any fianancial reward for putting their work online.
It's most likely that Napster will split the $50,000,000 a year for indie labels up in a manner where an indie label would have to register with Napster, and then Napster would be able to include them in the deal in which $50,000,000 is allocated accordingly. Unless Napster offers rewards for individuals who are keen to go around the middleman, the artists will have to sign up to a small indie label and eventually these labels are going to get large and no longer seen as an independent thus making Napster just an entry field in online music distribution/subscription without getting rid of the labels and all we would be left with is pretty much the same as before except you can download songs off the net at a cost from a source which is a record label not the artist themself.
As a musician I think that would suck.
and
why the hell he wants to buy me some mp3's with it.
If you people would just do as you're told, everything would be OK.
Oh, and if it's cracked, the record labels wouldn't go along, even if they initially acquiesce.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
I want my own record label so I can sue people and get a corporate welfare check from CD manufactures.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
I had written a diatribe about this very topic in response to coverage elsewhere, but somehow I feel Slashdot is the best place to post my writings. So here's an (edited) version of what I wrote:
This is essentially corporate welfare in action, people.
Napster currently acts as a clearing house for allowing end users to share their existing collections of MP3 files. In order for Napster to effect the changes they've proposed as part of their settlement, they'd have to do two things.
Number one, they'd have to create a centralized repository for all music. In other words, instead of facilitating peer-to-peer file sharing between users, they'd have a server farm containing all the music they were authorized to distribute. This allows record labels final say over what gets on the servers, what the quality level is going to be (hence the "lowered quality" part of the announcement, forcing people to go out and buy CDs), and most of all, where you are going to get your music from.
Number two, they'd have to shift their system away from MP3 files and towards files that support digital rights management. That's the only way they'd have a ghost of a chance of preventing end users from writing the music to blank CDs or copying it to their portable MP3 players. Either that, or they'd have to create a closed, proprietary application that stores downloaded music in an encrypted database so that users can't extract individual music files for their own use without paying a fee to do so. What will this do to third party Napster clone applications? It'll kill them off in the short term. And you can bet Napster and RIAA lawyers will go after anyone who tries to make a Napster-compatible client application, using the anti-circumvention clause of the DMCA to stomp the "offenders." This probably means you can say goodbye to Linux or Mac support.
It's time, my friends, to support MP3 and alternatives such as Ogg Vorbis. We also need better peer-to-peer file sharing technologies to stay one step ahead of these jack-booted thugs. Maybe when the RIAA and the MPAA and other organizations of their ilk realize that dictating terms to us in this manner doesn't work, they'll start trying to work with the technology sector to find a happy medium.
The sad thing is, I really have no problem with paying for what I use. I buy most of my music on CD and use MP3 for creating mixes and for archival purposes. I've never used Napster, although I've played with Gnutella. Most of the MP3 files I've downloaded (legitimately from places like mp3.com or illegitimately from other users), I've used to screen potential music purchases. But I can't see how turning Napster into a clone of FM radio is going to work. Actually, this isn't a clone of FM radio -- I can still record FM radio broadcasts using tape or MiniDisc or a computer hard drive.
why doesn't a company form outside of the U.S. with a napster type server, like one of those online gambling companies that evades U.S. and other countries laws. If someone did this then everyone could switch over to it and napster would be so screwed cause then no one would pay the X dollar amount a month for a subscription and everyone could enjoy the scalable architecture of a napster like system again. I know this sounds unfair to music artists, but that isn't the question, the question is: Since there is so much money to be made, then why hasn't this been down ?
http://www.vanillaafro.com - take me seriously and I will shoot you
What would get people to pay? Horror.
And I thought, my goodness, the facists are back! Pay up or die you communist scum!
Ok, wake up, it was just a bad dream ;)
"a powerful and unexpected ally..."
The 'suits' have had it their way for too long now, this grassroots acceptance of Napster means that in the long run, copyright is dead.
I can see a whole new vista of opportunities open to musicians now this case has been finally settled once and for all.
This leads to the question... If Napster gets this rubber stamped by the RIAA, anybody else who offers the ability to exchange MP3's other than Napster now becomes "Enemy number 1" to Napster. Is their next move to try and get some kind of patent on searching/trading MP3 files between individual users online, so they can use it as ammunition against potential rivals in order to recoup their $1B promise?
--
Unix is user friendly, it's just selective about who its friends are.
Hey, my first Slashdot post. :)
:) No, seriously: Napster is *really* about filesharing MP3's *easily*. I get 5 hits on Google for "NewYork,NewYork.mp3", but I've no idea if those sites are up, what the sample rate is, what the download speed is, etc. Napster answers these questions for me, all in one groovy app. If it didn't exist...I'd still get the file, just not as easily.
:) So what *I'd* pay for is knowing there's Akamai servers cache'ing the content. I'd pay for knowing the download would be as fast as possible and as reliable as possible.
My apologies if this consideration is old-hat, and has been discarded by greater minds than my own. I've read quite a bit about Napster, but haven't yet seen this solution presented. Thought I would pour it into the dish and see if the cat licks it up.
First, Napster isn't about filesharing MP3's. Gasp.
But would I pay for it? Maybe, if they could add one thing: reliability. If you got a slow connection, and you're downloading from someone shutting down for the night...suddenly you've wasted an hour. Grrr.
So...*how* would I pay for it. Here's what I think has been overlooked: I'd pay for it in "download credits". Online credits like a PayPal system, only *specific* to Napster (mp3-pence?). I'd get these credits the usual way sure (ie, credit-card), but I'd *also* get them for being a Good Consumer from the pov of RIAA. That is...when I buy a CD from Amazon, I'd get some credits. When I bought a ticket from ticketmaster, I'd get some. CDNOW could run a special on a new release, where you'd get 2x the credits this week and this week only! And gift-certificate credits, of course.
Anyhow, that's the angle. IMO, it's a helluva business model, and everyone wins, more or less.
cheers,
Scott (who could be wrong)
Given the nature of napster, a relatively high percentage of downloaded songs might (should?) be on independent labels. Especially considering that college students make up a huge chunk of napster users. Even accepting all other premises, are we sure that 99% of this hypothtical money should actually go to the big 5?
Does Napster really have 50 million users currently paying them $5 a month for their service? If it does, that would make them much bigger than some giant organisations - its like having 20% of all US consumers! I know they have users all over the world, but seriously the biggest group must be Americans, due to the cost of bandwidth in most of the rest of the world.
It certainly isn't common knowledge that Napster is such a profit power-house. So assuming that they don't have their users all signed up, who is going to give the $1billion to bribe the record companies not to take them down?
I don't use Napster myself, so please excuse me if I am a little out of touch with the Napster user experience.
The way I see it, though, is that the creator has the right, in this case the copyright, to the music he/she creates, and can sell copies of it everywhere. The creator also have the rights to give away the music for free, if that is what he/she wants.
I see it as an agreement between "users" (listeners) and the musician. If music costs money, then that is what the musician wants in exchange. It is like any kind of trade. There's no such thing as a free lunch (unfortunately...!), and I don't think that too many people who produces anything, wish to give it away for free. One of the main reasons to produce and create, is, I assume, money. If it is free for the user, it will still be a cost for the producer, and that can't work out well in the long run. Very simple but true.
I do however think that CDs today are way too expensive...
Will work for bandwidth
how is this settlement fair? only 50 million to indie labels? sure, plenty of users download popular music, but there are millions of users who are simply looking for stuff they can't find in their local record store or rare stuff that isn't being sold anymore. and the indie labels only get $50 million annually out of the $1 billion? besides the fact that record labels have nothing to do with this. if anyone should be getting money out of this, it's the artists.. it's bad enough that record labels steal money from them anyway. i'll be using all the opennap servers for quite some time. anything but pay napster to pay record labels that don't deserve it.
Instead of fighting for their rights and for their users, they go and beg for mercy. That's pathetic. It's a good thing I don't like music much, I haven't bough a CD nor downloaded one for at least 6 months now.
So napster stays open, and I have to pay five buckaroos a month for it.
So what if I am a musician without a contract or label, and I put my music into MP3 format, and share it on napster, somebody might download it.
That would mean that, GASP, the RIAA is getting paid so the people can get their music for free. The reason they are getting paid is that their logic is that nobody with any talent might, say, go under an indie label (or no label at all), so any artists with talent should be sold under RIAA CD's. Which means that if I were an unsigned artist, I'd be getting screwed by two companies at once. And to think that some people have this silly beleif that napster is the only one screwing people out of money!
Kris
botboy60@hotmail.com
Nerdnetwork.net
Kris
botboy60@hotmail.com
Nerdnetwork.net
Napster was never going to do this, it is a bluff. They know users will never pay, and they know the megacorps will never accept it. Its all in the PR, now they can say "look, we offered them a billion, and they told us to piss off!!! What more can we do??".
All women want is honesty, if you can fake that, you're in.
Well I stopped considering it Pink Floyd after Syd Barrett left, but there you go.
One album and a handful of singles? No much of a career, was it? ;)
Have you heard "his" tracks on Ummagumma? Aieieieie. Less, please.
You think that's bad, try listening to his solo stuff. The only thing worse is, um... Mason's solo stuff.
but it's probably getting too cruel already...
Not at all. Nothing is more entertaining than making fun of old, bloated, washed-up musicians who don't know when to throw in the towel.
If Napster controls transfer and playback (via their client), I would say that it can work.
However, if all MP3s that weren't created by yourself (read: downloaded over Napster) are encrypted, you will only be able to play them with Napster itself (or any Napster-enabled software). Apart from the fact that this will exclude any non-Windows users (I guess the industry couldn't care less about that), people will not be able to use their favourite player / jukebox (big minus because we know how much people love their skins and similar crap), they will not be able to use standalone MP3 player etc.
Since BMG bought into Napster, the main ploy of the RIAA and Sony (et al) has been to aquire the technology. They will NEVER settle, and plan to pick up the technology and user-base (of 50 million people) by driving Napster to bankruptcy through the fines and punitive damages. Then Sony and all the others will pick up the Napster infrastructure for next to nothing (if that).
"I might have made a tactical error in not going to a physician for 20 years." -- Warren Zevon
"...as many as 10,000 files per second by defendant's own admission."
Who, except the government and large corporations have this kind of bandwidth?
I can't even do one file per second.
It is probably the NSA and FBI swapping tunes.
Go figure.
________ semper ubi sub ubi
That is the leetest troll.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
Seems the next logical step ;)
W
-------------------
-------------------
This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
This won't change whether or not downloading copyrighted tunes suddenly becomes justified, since the copyright laws haven't change. Rather the question becomes WHICH songs are now legal.
Not all artists are part of record lables represented by RIAA.
Some artists want no part of the MafRIAA.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
What about Napsters profit? I'm sure they will charge a lot more than $1.67 per month!
---
Wroot
NAPSTER WILL BE 128KBPS or lower when commercial! SCREW THAT! Napster will be copy protected, the items may not be transferrable or usable on other computers OR portable devices OR burnt to CDROM . without an additional fee!! I told you so.
===sam=== free nessus vulnerability scan = www.vulnerabilities.org
So, Napster would expect me to pay $4.95-$9.95/month (as the news.com article says) to share the songs I have on my hard drive, using my bandwidth (which I also pay for)! Also, by paying for the service, I'm going to expect a certain quality from the service. I don't think that it is unreasonable for me to expect transfers to always complete (even if someone else wants to log off), for the service to only list complete songs (so I don't download a 4.3MB file to find out that the correct one is 5.2MB and I miss the last minute of the song) and for the service to have the songs I wish to hear.
Don't get me wrong, Napster is a good service, but I'm currently willing to put up with those limitations I listed above because the price is right. If they are not able to fix the service to protect my intrests, then I will find another solution.
Doh!
Napster will never be able to pay that amount of money without making significant changes to its service.
As it stands now, I often get transfer errors and partial song downloads. I will not pay money with no guarantee of a) getting the song I want, b) getting a high quality rip or c) getting the full song without joe123 shutting down.
All they would be selling is the opportunity to find a song you are looking for. Not the actual aquisition of the song. That is not a strong product.
They need to make it reliable before they can charge people for the service. Otherwise, the user base will drop significantly and the revenue estimates they gave are garbage.
I am very pessimistic about Napster, it will disappear as it is now.
Even if the offer is accepted by the record companies, which might be possible, I don't see how Napster is going to take money from their users.
This is not about good people sharing music for freedom, this is about people getting music for free (like in free beer) and this means that we don't want to pay a subscription for that.
Ok, maybe I would pay a subscription for that if it was really low enough, but then I want my music, which I have paid for, to be free like free software, I don't want copy protection on MY music; unacceptable to record companies views.
I think that the music companies are getting it all wrong, they have already lost, they are not going to be able to control the artists any more, they are not going to be able to charge ridiculous prices for CDs that cost some cents in production, the music bussiness is going to change and there will be two winners: musicians and music listeners. Unfortunatelly for them the record companies will be the big losers.
I see a future where musicians will base their careers mainly on playing music live and will use recorded music as a sort of publicity.
Let's face it, Napster is dead. Now let's find a good alternative.
I would pay $25-$50 a year for a service like this. Thats the equivalent of what... 4 cds? If I could download as many mp3s as I want, legally, from various record companies that sign up with napster. Screw peer to peer. Napster should just offer high quality mp3s from distributed catalog servers around the country, or around the world.
its illegal. But i KNOW for sure that it is legal to copy Music to tapes in Germany. And it is legal to share them with "friends" as long as you dont make any profi. Thats the situation over here, so i wonder if we could establish a "German only" Napsterclone wich would be legal?? Maybe if you kindly ask we could get you some accounts too...hehe! Lispy
The point here is a baseball. IMHO, this is a swing and miss. The RIAA wants money, sure... and they don't get it doesn't bother me too much one way or the other. What I would love to see (and I'm talking theory and philosophy here, not C.S.) is there to be a way for artists who, for whatever god forsaken reason, choose not to have thier music posted on Napster (and it's relatives) have that option. Sure, I see problems with this like Record labels trying to get artists to assert this right, and of course I see the complete lack of feasability at this point in the game. But if the good captian's suggestion actually came around, I don't think there would be quite so much whining and wrangling about this sort of stuff. Artists who chose to have their music shared freely would happily benefit from the exposure. Listeners would get a goodly amount of tunes. I would even think that there would be a certain ill stigma attached to opting out. Anyway, that's my little dream for the morning. Once again, I haven't the foggiest notion of how this would ever work, nor will I even have a clue until I get a cup of coffee. Signing Off, Cap'n Cal.
There are 60 months in 5 years, not 12. So it should be $0.33/month/user, right?
For whatever reason, RIAA won the court case, and Napster's business looked like it was going to be squashed.
Now, all of a sudden, sums of $1bn are being talked about and thrown around, and RIAA are acting like pussycats. Now, the last time I checked, accepting money in return for the protection of a business was called 'protection racketeering'. Granted, RIAA have a group of lawyers who can make this sound like the most legal protection racket you've ever heard of, but surely such a defender of principle as the RIAA shouldn't be adopting methodologies from organised crime?
I ranted on here a long time ago about RIAA being a cartel, moving towards a system of increasing profits by charging high prices for generic, manufactured material (cheaper than real artists, remember), thus trying to charge more money for 'product', which, as far as I'm concerned, is vastly inferior to 'music'. It looks like they've neutered the first wave of resistance to their plans.
Those of us who came to Napster via the cluetrain will move on. OpenNAP is still around, as is Gnutella (which needs a serious re-working, but is still viable). What saddens me is that for once, we had a chance to say to the mainstream that there was a better way than The Man's, that there was an alternative, that occasionally building a better mousetrap does work. I just hope we get another chance to say it soon.
PS. I know that RIAA's principle had to do with giving money to the artists, but I have a feeling that a large chunk of this $1bn will actually go to lawyers.
- "How do we do it? Volume!" - The Bursar of Unseen University.
Loops are BAAaaad.
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
The servers are not threaded. Different users are on the different servers. Thats why connecting to a different one (either by using napigator to choose which server you connect to or by disconnecting and reconnecting with the standard napster software) will give you different results when you search. Also, the statistics at the bottom are only for the server your on. I don't know how irc works, so I can't make a comparison.
Care about freedom?
I'd rather be lucky than good.
You misunderstand what Napster will become: it will mutate into a vast pockmarked pimp for crypto-protected ''product'' that will only play the places you paid for. They don't want to ''change everything for the better'', they just want to be allowed to live so they can shovel cash at the bloated cold-eyed Lords of Contracts and dream of their exit strategy of selling out to sleek deadfaced shinybeetle chequestrokers.
The Forces of Darkness have embraced crypto as a means to extend enforcement of arbitrary limitations for profit (moving it into Windows for example, with driver signing: DRM content will not play unless all your drivers have the crypto to prove they are ''legit''; Intel are pushing a design to encrypt the actual video data between the PC and the display unit) and things will get plenty worse and more restricted before they get better.
The only upside is that so far pushing the crypto into the eyes and ears of the users is not currently economically feasible, otherwise they'd be looking at that too; that means that ultimately the content can always be hijacked if a modest loss of quality is acceptable.
$1 billion over 5 years is $200 million per year
.)
That's $4.00 per person per year, figuring 50 million users (sure there are . .
That's $0.33 per month.
But they'll still never get it.
...otherwise the swapping will just go on as it has and the labels wont get a dime. I don't think the labels lose money from napster anyway. I defiantly purchase more CD's now that I sample tons of music from MP3's.
I wonder what Metallica will say about their wanting 'control of distribution' argument now...
They'd apparently be in the $50 mil going to independent artists (the ones who own their own music).
All your hallucinogen are belong to us.
Will I retire or break 10K?
or perhaps more accurately .. removing its sheep costume.
i could live a little longer in this prison
1) Napster doesn't have 50 million users. It's the same thing as the ICQ/AIM or MSN or Yahoo or just about anyone on the web's numbers. Multiple accounts, forgotten accounts, abandoned accounts all take their toll on the real number. Sure, Napster has a lot of users, but no where near 50 million. I myself have 4 from testing the Napster module for perl. I forget the actual numbers, but ICQ has something like only 5-6 million real users for the tens of millions of accounts.
.agrippa.
2) Charging people for what they previously got for free on the internet won't work. It's been proven time and time again. Napster might be able to make this model work to some extent, but not in the sheer quantity needed to even approach payment on their settlement. At $9, they need a little under 2 million monthly subscriptions. At $5, they need a little under 4 million subscriptions. Those are big numbers for an internet subscription service.
3) There are free Napster alternatives. 'Nuff said.
4) Quality of content. If you're going to pay, you expect your download not to time out or mrHaX0r01 to not cut you off in the middle of the download because he's rebooting his machine. We put up with these inconviences now because it's free. If my phone company started disconnecting my calls in the middle of conversations I wouldn't be too happy. There is a level of service expected when you pay for something, and I don't believe they have that level of service to attain the subscriptions necessary.
Enjoy your Napster while you can. This settlement offer shows that Napster knows it lost and knows its royally screwed. There is very little chance that Napster can raise over $200 million a year profit to pay for this, and the record companies know that.
Who would have guessed that piracy would cost so much?
Beware TPB
advertising with banners is proving to be a model that does not return a decent revenue. look at the free isp's; they are starting to limit users. a banner ad model might work, but with the hatred for banners how soon before a crack is out and the banners go away for free. with alternatives that are based on napster (winmx etc) napster will not be bale to recover the money they would like to. why pay when you can napigate? napster as a business model for profit will not work.
If out of that 50 billion over 5 years at least half of it goes to the artists. If that can't be worked out then no. I wont.. And I will continue to give the RIAA the finger. This isn't about napster, because I use it so infrequently (had to find the girl from ipanema) that its not even funny. What I want is the good artists to get paid so I don't have to listen to this same rap and hiphop, britney spears, nsync shit. So unless AT LEAST 25 billion goes to the artist; no go. Napster was what music needed, Now its time to get rid of the RIAA all together. Leech sucking bastards.
Music is opensource. If I like it.. i'll pay to support the artist.. If it sucks I'll try singing it but since I have no vocal talent.. I'll leave that to the original artist and throw him/her/them a couple of bucks to keep singing.
They should offer the first options to Lars ... :-)
chongo (was here)
You think the only thing they are going to do is bank on subscriber base? Are we all so short sighted that we can't see that they are going to use this to push advertisments on us while we use it? That is more money! 50 million eyes commands a large sum of greenbacks. I think we are all being a little short sighted about what napster is about to do. They will have a virtual strangle hold on mp3/aac propogation on the net, at least legal.
They will attack those that are not napster, and the music company will do so as well. With that kind of subscriber base they are laying the foundation for music videos, movies, etc...Who do you think the movie industry will go to when compression gets good enough to push it over broadband? I would think they would goto napster, the guys that have the 50 million base allready in their backpocket.
If they get this they will become the next AOL of the internet, pushing it with the newest killer app to hit the market and sucking up the others as they go. This is only the start if they side this over on the music community.
Listen to your music, but what them become and empire.
Neck_of_the_Woods
Neck_of_the_Woods
#/usr/local/surf/glassy/overhead
BLURR
Easy does it!
This comment has been submitted already, 276865 hours , 59 minutes ago. No need to try again.
There is no way they're going to make that much money off subscriptions. If they make it a pay service they'll keep a very small fraction of their existing customer base. That happens over and over again online -- you'd think by now they'd have figured this out.
And electronic file sharing is probably an ASSET to the record companies, not a 'theft' as they insist so fervently it is. People are musical by nature. The more we are exposed to, the more we tend to want. Nearly all of us would buy albums from groups we liked, even if we had the music free -- if for no other reason than to save time downloading and burning CDs.
So in essence they are promising money they will never make to be the best publicity vehicle those record labels could ask for.
Is it just me, or are they out of their bloody minds?
What's really disgusting here is that Napster could be a nicely profitable company and drive up music sales in the bargain. But the strain of meeting this kind of payment schedule will bankrupt them. Idiots.
And the record companies are still balking at the sweetheart deal to end all sweetheart deals. If Napster is dumb, I don't even want to think about the average IQ of the RIAA.
They deserve extinction.
Hey, Does thi grant copying rights to users ? (i) If it doesn't RIAA could still sue individuals. (ii) If it does, then that could give the green light for anyone to burn their own CDs and perhaps sell them on ? Cheers, Winton
Lets go over this. Who is going to pay the $1B? The users? yup. What users? Well the users who decide to pay the $9/month so they can download mp3's off other people who pay $9/month! Stupid. Wait? I thought the new napster server will be a central server that you can leech off of unlimited? No thats emusic.com , soon to be another casaulty dot bomb. Whose going to pay? Those that are stupid. You can still use napster without a napster server. Napster is a frickin IRC server, The server software is available. Napigator and others will let you use your favourite "pir8" napster-based server for free still. These servers will run in countries where they can exist legally. So whose going to pay this $1B? Well if they are lucky and get 10% of the subscriber base, that would be just fine and dandy. Wait emusic already is trying to do this? They are failing. So why would napster succeed? They won't. Are you going to pay $9/month to leech off others who pay $9/month? Hell no. Better come up with a new business plan , napster. It's not realistic, it's not going to succeed. This is the internet, we aren't going to pay for something that is already free. Why not start charging to read and post at slashdot? Cause it would be out of business in a month.
===sam=== free nessus vulnerability scan = www.vulnerabilities.org
to charge users....But what about ads (preferably blocked via junkbuster)? I know quite a few people who'd choose opennap or gnutella over a subscription-based napster, so those who pay will end up paying more. Not to mention this is a perfect chance to profit off napster...
MonkeyExtreme.com
1. Advertising on napster.com
2. Royalties on napster shirts (at least some money)
That cant amount to much tho... So if napster pays 200 million to the RIAA this year, they'll be down 200 million and they arent even charging anything. Besides, it isn't like they will get 200 million instantaniously. Well it does look like napster will stop itself from bankrupcy with this offer.
If you are going to quote put them in a logical order, not just any order you like. Zero Wing is a powerful force to be recond with, so dont abuse it, or else all your base are belong to me.
Nobody pays attention to adds via the internet anymore! The media these days is so advertising saturated that ads have very little value. Don't tell me that you haven't learned to mentall block all the web ads! Quick, without looking, what is being advertised at the top of this page? Also, advertising seems barely enough to support an ISP, much less support a music business.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Well, by their actions I believe they have admitted the need to reach some kind of agreement with the record companies. That basically gives the power to the record companies. If I was the record companies, I'd simply hold out for as much money as I could squeeze from Napster.
I bet it ends up being a LOT more than 1.67 per.
...but at the end of the day, something like this will be worked out. Why? Because the Napster money entirely bypasses the artists, which is exactly what they want.
It is just so deliciously devious and hypocritical that the RIAA will find it impossible to pass up.
I think this is a very good idea. I don't buy much music now, because I like to dabble and don't listen to a particular song for more than a few weeks. For access to a huge library of music like Napster, I know dozens of people (including me) that would pay up to $10. That's a lot more than many people spend on CDs now, and in the end, something like this might allow the record business to make *more* money.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
To effectively stop music sharing, the RIAA would have to take down the entire Internet. In the future, it probably won't be some hacker attacking servers; it will be Big Brother.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
That is a big promise Napster is making to the corporations. In high technology, industry dominance is never certain, especially five years down the road. Even as we type, radical p2p cells are consolidating their power...
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Wise man say, choose your enemies carefully, for you will become like them...
--
Top Most Bizarre/Disturbing Error Messages
Who's their lawyer, Dr. Evil?
NAPSTER COUNCIL:
You will allow us to trade songs... (beat) (cue dramatic music swell)
One Bill-ion dollars!
E.
www.randomdrivel.com -- All that is NOT fit to link to
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
Napster currently is run mostly off of adds. Does anyone know how much they make off of this? COuld this money go to labels?
The same arguments were made when FM was new. "Who is gong to buy music when you can hear & record it for free?" Well, it turns out that people still buy music. Most people I know find music they like on Napster or Gnapster and then go buy the CD. This is just silly that Napster would have to pay for a networking product. What if they just advertised it as file sharing, and not specific to music?
Republicans are Nazis. LetsRiot!
If you're giving it away for free you compete.
If you're selling you're making money that doesn't belong to you.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
If one small independent record label didn't want to participate in this deal, could they sue Napster and cause the same controversy there is now?
That's a good one. Really. Let me catch my breath.
Okay, now, let me see if I have that right. "Can a tiny label that works out of a garage or on borrowed studio time make as big a media stink as the Sony conglomerate, AOL/Time-Warner, and other major media corporations?"
Do you think news outlets like CNN would have top stories about Napster, if they weren't in fact owned and operated by the massive media companies who are "attacked" by technologies like Napster? It is precisely the fact that it affects the big boys' bottom lines, that Napster is even newsworthy in the mass cultural sense.
Americans are spoon-fed from cradle to grave now, and the rest of the world is in danger of the same trap. We eat commercial interests at mealtimes, we breathe consumerism all day, and we sleep with dreams of capitalism all night. If it doesn't have the word "billion" in it, Corporate America doesn't care about it.
[
I LOVE this plan. Napster gets the recording companies to go for this.
1. Napster then buys 1 copy of every album.
2. Put it online for legal trading.
3. Cancel the plans for the subscription service
4. Advertise it as free and legal.
5. Don't make any revenue, and declare bancrupcy.
BANG, the record companies lose an ENTIRE YEAR of revenue, and it would be legal.
PS: 6. Everyone switch to Slapster, which buys out the assets of Napster at auction, and does it again!
This is, of course, the result that Napster has wanted all along. The pursuit of licensing deals is the one, and only, way that Napster business model worked. Napsters response to the findings in the lawsuits against them has been, repeatedly, for the courts to effectuate a pay per play service. This is the end game for Napster, and the content companies know it. My guess is that this current offer will be refused... and Napster will be left hanging in the wind.
For an industry reporting revenues of $15b a year in the U.S. alone and deathly fearful of the internet it seems that $1b over 5 years is small potatos compared to the perceived loss of control.
Somehow, I don't think the Luddites will accept...
I wonder what's going to happen when artists become like American sports figures and demand more money, what is Napster going to do then.
An easier solution for Napster would have been to somehow figure out a method to include artists who don't mind their music being shared, and create their own servers WITH the music allowed stored on them in which users could download songs which Napster would have the rights to.
Take a look at the contract 150mill for each label none of which is likely to go to any artist, now with this 250mill spread out to say 250 artist who would have allowed their music to be shared, they each would receive the fair value, leaving less room to complain about.
Under this new agreement (scheme), the only real winners are the record labels who are profiting not the artists who complained. So for Metallica, you just got shafted and your music will now be allowed whether you like it or not to be shared.
Chicks need Napster too
"When I was a Buddhist, it drove my parents and friends crazy, but when I am buddha, nobody is upset at all"
If the music industry is losing sooooo much money to people pirating music, then why do all the big newspapers GIVE AWAY their news stories on their websites?
Ever heard of:
The Detroit News (My hometown rag)
The London Times
The New York Times
USA Today
The L.A. Times
The Boston Globe
The list goes on and on.
It's obvious to me that these newspapers are generating their own revenue by advertising themselves. Music artists have it easy because the LISTENERS do most of the promotions when they rip/encode to MP3!!!
IMHO, this whole napster thing looks like one ingenious publicity stunt to sell MORE records.
If it can be heard it can be cracked, right? I'm pretty sure I've seen utilities out there that intercepted what was being sent to the sound card, so this can be capturred in it's decrypted digital form and re-encoded into standard mp3.