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Courts Gives Napster 72-Hour Deadline
Several folks have submitted a variety of stories proclaiming that Napster has been given 72 hours to remove copyrighted materials from its servers. Meanwhile, websites are cropping up everywhere to encode filenames to simple things like Pig Latin, as well as more complicated stuff. No doubt open-source Napster clones will have that built in within a few days.
Thanks goodness! If it had said they have to block all copyrighted songs they would be in trouble. Now, they just have to block two and they will be ok. My nominations are "REM - Shiny Happy People" and any of the songs by Souxie(sp?) and the Banshees.
Mas vale cholo, que mal acompañado.
Follow my logic. The legal system is all about suing who has the money. Even those who have a passive role in the commission of a crime are obliged to pay damages. Who has money and facilitates the commission of these crimes? ISPs. With the advent of "technologies" like Carniwhore or POS-2000 or whatever its name is, those who are in court will realize (mistakenly) that ISPs can filter information passing through them. Thereby, injunctions will be slapped on the big ISPs like @Home, etc. (but not AOL, for some mysterious reason). The ISPs will then start filtering for known patterns of bytes of Freenet, Hotline, etc. traffic and block them in either direction. Of course, this solution is ridiculuous to think of, but then again, judgements of law are often unencumbered by the thought process.
Of course, there are obvious ways around this. They will be implemented until the ultimate work-around (use of encrypted packets) at which point entire ranges of ports will be banned. Probably, even worse--everything but port 80 from a list of "registered web servers".
If you think this is absurb, try this on for size. Broadcast something for 24 hours at about 100MHz. Yep, that's right, the FCC will be on you in a heartbeat to shut you down.
To think that these cannot be shutdown is absurd. To think that the government will not try to regulate the Internet in an absurd fashion is hubris. They have done it before (from the sinking of the Titanic onward, the US has regulated airwaves) and they WILL do it again.
The fact that we have licensed radio stations is proof enough for me.
PerES Encryption
Um, it should be easy for them to see what you're sharing, BECAUSE YOU'RE SHARING IT. If you don't want other people to see it, don't share it on something like Napster where you know anyone else can get to it.
And people shouldn't feel sorry for the poor old record companies. They make billions every year, of which only a tiny percentage goes to the artist. They'd just rather use lawsuits to protect their cartel rather than riding the wave themselves. If they sold songs online for 50 cents a download from a reliable server then no one would even bother with the likes of Napster.
Why am I the only one to see what would happen if this were the case. You buy a CD and what is the first thing you do? You rip it and share it on Napster. Why would it be different if you downloaded it for 50 cents? You are going to put it with all your other MP3s, in the big folder that is shared by Napster. Then everyone else goes and gets it from Napster and saves 50 cents.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
If Napster is somehow at fault for facilitating the sharing of copyrighted music, shouldn't Dell also bear some responsibility for manufacturing the computer I use to download? Shouldn't Microsoft bear some responsibility for providing the operating system I use to download? Shouldn't all the people that download the music bear some responsibility? Shouldn't all the people that actually SHARE their music bear some responsibility? We can go forever.
The issue is that even though Napster doesn't store any files on its servers, it is an easy target. Hence the RIAA goes after Napster. Napster doesn't do anything but say, "Hey, you want this file, well he has it". You then go there and download it. Shutting Napster down, in my opinion, is therefore a violation of its rights to free speech. Everyone knows this but somehow, the powerful RIAA has gotten the judicial system to buckle.
The funny thing is that they will be unsuccessful if they think that they can curb the flow of information. What in the entire Universe is easier to share than information? They are also very wrong if they think that somehow they will make more money by doing this.
In a democracy, it really is true that 50,000,000 people can't be wrong. The music industry has two choices: give people what they want, or get screwed. People will do what they want to do. The law is not an abstract entity; it is a formal codification of the will of the people. When the formal code disagrees with the will of the people, guess what has to change.
Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.
But it's (©) copyrighted so don't even think of trying to share with with your budz.
--
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Aren't they already done? Since Napster doesn't store anything on it's servers...
----
Dave
MicrosoftME®? No, Microsoft YOU, buddy! - my boss
- Dave
How do you maintain that "approved" list when you're not checking the content of the files? My "Parody of Metallica" could just as easily be a pirated copy of a Metallica album as not, regardless of whether I'm part of the "registered" system or not. An "approved" list like that is effectively what's already in place (and being largely ignored). When you create a Napster account you're agreeing to their Terms of Service, which _explicitly_ state that trading pirated mp3s is not allowed. Your "approved" list doesn't do anything to prevent illegal mp3 trading, and is simply another barrier in the path freely and easily exchanging _legal_ mp3s online. Sure, you get their ip address and username, but they _already_ have that information. That's how Metallica was capable of dumping thousands of Napster users in the first place.
Also note that MD5 sums are useless in the mp3 world. Adding a fraction of a second's worth of dead air onto the end of the mp3 changes the MD5 sum. So does changing the ID3 tag information. MD5 sums are very, very easy to get around, and are only useful for verifying that the file you're looking really is, in fact, the file the person sending it claims it should be. The contents of the file are completely unknown.
The real problem here is not Napster's service. The problem here is that the recording industry is going after the people with money, rather than the people actually comitting the crime. I hope this gets appealed to Supreme Court, as it would be a very interesting and very pivotal case for the coming years in regards to Internet freedom.
Sure, why not? I would truly, truly, truly love to see the RIAA attempt to sue every individual Napster user who has ever posted or downloaded a piece of copyrighted music.
me too, but what would actually happen is this: the riaa might sue a couple people. the rest of the people would see this and back down-being that they are willing to stand on the civil disobedience pedestal until it becomes inconvenient. this is typical of the apathetic populous here in the us.
alternatively the riaa might threaten the isp's who will cut the cords of their users. reguardless of wether or not the riaa has a legal leg to stand on is irelevent. many of the ips would cut the users so that they dont have to go through the legal hassels. not to mention the aol/tw connection. the folks at time warner call over to aol and say: "hey cut the user who had this ip address at this time. he's a violator".
the us legal system can take alot. look at the "war" on drugs. in the last decade the number of people in the us prision system has increased dramatically. many of these folks are in for minor drug charges and come out alot worse than they went in.
in my opinion the us has become a subsidiary of corporations and the population is happy to be told how to live by watching mtv/suvivor/etc. anything that might be worth the time will infringe on their convenience and we cannot have that.
give me convenience or give me death.
use LaTeX? want an online reference manager that
-- john
"Once all the free online music services for the masses have been eliminated the RIAA can step in to fix the MP3 cravings with an online service that charges a mere $10 - $20 a month. "
:). You get mis-titled songs, you get poor sample rates, you get songs cut off half way through, and you get the limited selection of people who happen to be online when you're online, and happen to like what you like. That's why I'll never pay for Napster. It's a novelty, at best. I have used it to find nostalgic 80s singles, to grab TV theme songs, and to grab 1-hit wonders (instead of taping them off the radio) who sit on my hard drive for about as long as they last on the radio. Would I pay $100 a year for that novelty? Never.
All hatred of the industry aside, I might be willing to pay a subscription fee for unlimited high quality downloads of a huge database.
I would _never_ pay for Napster. It relies on the lowest common denominator; a bunch of kids, more or less
Would I pay 100$ a year for a legal substitute for buying CDs? Perhaps.
Not representing or approved by my company or anybody else.
Not really. Practically every single significant record label is in the RIAA. There are only 5 majors, but there are several hundred labels in the RIAA. The only ones who aren't are the type of labels where the operation consists of some guy in his garage pressing a couple dozen seven inches of each title.
If Napster can't list music that RIAA owns, it's pointless for them to list music that it doesn't. Indy labels in Napster are like the little CD in the bin next to the 500 copies of something popular. You might grab the little CD because it looks interesting, but you never would've come to the store if the 500 copies of something popular weren't there.
Besides, it's pointless. Copyright is dead. If Napster doesn't survive, something else will. It's like making laws against picking your nose or spitting on the sidewalk. You can scream like howler monkeys every time someone does it and maybe even try to arrest people for it, but you'll never actually make any significant dent in the number of people doing it.
The only solution is to realized that copyright based models for paying artists are dead and think of something better. Here are some links to a couple I've seen:
None of those guarantee money to an artist for every person who gets a copy of a work. My suggestion as to how to deal with this is to get over it. I think many of them will work well enough that decent artists will make a good living. All of them significantly diminish the role of the middleman.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
I used to use a program that very recently instituted a policy very similar to what you describe. The program is called Peer Genius and was really a more robust version of Napster. It did auto resuming, multiplexing of downloads from diff hosts. It made for some slammin transfer rates, and best of all, searches by checksums (they call it eDNA) so searches are REALLY fast. I'm extolling Peer Genius but I thought of it as 'Napster Done Right'.
At any rate, it was a good source for every media format in existence and now the whitelist is enabled there's nothing to download anymore. I would call it nothing more then a better version of FilePlanet but it depends on the hosts hosting all those files, not servers. My point is that in effect the PG network is now a POS not only because I cant d/l music through them but cuz it's only a source of shareware/freeware which I can get off the web (which I'd rather do) instead of using a custom app that has no guarentee that someone will host the file I want and (more importantly) give me a decent transfer rate.
"Me Ted"
BOSTON SUCKS!
So Napster's effectively gone away. If Mr. Berry's figures are to beleived, this means that the RIAA doesn't have a few ingenious crackers and hackers on their hands trading MP3z on undergound IRC and Usenet channels. They have 30 MILLION FRUSTRATED, ANGRY, PISSED OFF users from all classes and races! Worse, they have a veritable legion of crackers and hackers who want to support these people's dirty MP3 habits in order to make money/points/karma/etc...
Your analysis would be correct if the RIAA had no plans to create an online music distribution system similar to Napster. But we all know that various RIAA members have expressed interests in online music delivery including Sony, BMG and EMI. The reason the RIAA has cleared the scene of Scour.net and Napster is so that people stop getting used to the idea that online music should be free. Once all the free online music services for the masses have been eliminated the RIAA can step in to fix the MP3 cravings with an online service that charges a mere $10 - $20 a month.
As for hackers creating a rival service, as long as the RIAA owns the copyrights on the music that people want to hear the law will be on their side. This means that any hacker(s) who create(s) a popular online music distribution system must be ready to contend with lawsuits and harassments from law enforcement and RIAA lawyers. Since most hackers already know where to get MP3's without the common tools (Gnutella, Napster, Scour, etc) it is unlikely that any hacker will put himself through the RIAA wringer just to enable other people to be able to download free music. Corporate investors will also tread warily with regards to facing the RIAA after what has happened to Scour and Napster.
Quite frankly, the RIAA is about to prove that "He with the most lawyers wins".
And if the judges have a brain in their head, that's exactly what will happen - once the RIAA demonstrates what a farce this "filtering technology" is.
This whole thing is funny. All the Napster users that expect free music are doing so for various reasons, but I've seen many complaints about the RIAA's unfair pricing/payment practices. Yet, these same people insist on slaying this dragon with the equivalent pea shooters. Everyone's so busy shooting the dragon with peas, they fail to see (or use) the arsenal of rocket launchers right at their feet. There's a word for this arsenal - BOYCOTT. Yes, it may take the cooperation of more people to get the desired results, but it CAN be effective. If the RIAA doesn't HAVE to change, why should it? It seems like the only effective solution would be to create an environment that makes this so. Otherwise, stock up on the peas - it's going to be a long ride.
3 Napster related articles on /. within 9 hours of each other. There's something fundamentally wrong with the universe today.
Yeah. The RIAA is what's fundamentally wrong with the universe today...
~ radiographite: art by john shepard
Very good point you made here.
The scary thing is, using agent and downloading all your mp3's from newsservers is a piece of cake, and MUCH less frustrating than using napster ever was. Of course, you sometimes have to be patient, because you can't get everything all at once, but given a short length of time, everything eventually becomes available.
However, as easy as using usenet is, its way beyond most of the the internet users who were bred on AOL and still think that Internet Explorer IS the internet. The entire concept of usenet probably escapes them and even if they decided to investigate it, they would be initially overwelmed and forget about it, rather to spend hours a day desparately searching on webpages, sifting through numerous porn banners and such.
Thats why napster was such a hit. Just type in the name of the song you want and keep clicking on the name until one of them downloads. It saves the users the trouble of thinking too much.
This is no big loss. Frankly, I'm tired of hearing about it. But there probably WILL be a backlash. The public as a whole has gotten a taste of what the internet CAN offer, and its going to be very hard for them to be pacified. Even the whole Pig Latin thing probably won't take off. Thats more complex than they want to deal with. They're going to want it to be as easy as it was before. And if market forces have their way, they may actually succeed.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
Regarding the motives of Napster use? Well, that's always a tough call. I do know that all of the people that I helped with Napster were interested in previewing albums before buying. These folks are still in the CD age. They still like their music in CD-Audio format. The wouldn't have a clue how to convert an MP3 back to CD-Audio. (Even though it's easy.) Crap, I'd say it's a fair estimate based off my own observations that most of those 30 million napster users don't even own a CD writer.
I guess I should wrap up my rambling... I never thought about Napster being a martyr, but the commenter is right. Napster will make a wonderful martyr. The RIAA (and the MPAA for that matter) is outdated. The time is up. I believe they are fighting this to delay the inevitable. Why delay? Because they are still making money the old way. If it costs $100 million in lawyers to keep them making $1 billion, then they do it. The problem is that such a large percentage of the profits go into the pockets of a very few. And those very few don't want it to stop. Their time is up.
Shawn Pack
For those who fight for it, life has a flavor the sheltered will never know.
BTW, I don't think that everyone is going to go through so much inconvenience. Only the hardened Napster-criminals will do so, the average Napster-luser will not bother. Then they have a convenient way of identifying the hardcore thugs, and they can lock 'em up and throw away the key.
Likewise, if they move off shore, the thing to do is go after the users. If napster appear to be making good faith efforts to make their service legit, it's not really fair to blame them for the actions of their users.
Actually it's not YOUR responsibility not to share copyrighted material. It's Napster's responsibility to make it unavailable to the other users. Which mean they won't block what you share, they'll block what users are searching by filtering the different queries in accordance to a database of song titles.
"When I was a little kid my mother told me not to stare into the sun...
"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear"
Actually, as a consultant, I would use a variation on the streetperformer protocol. In fact, most consultants already do. Very rarely does a consultant impose any distribution or copying restrictions on what they produce for their client.
That is NOT a 'panhandling' style protocol. The closest an artist has come so far has been Stephen King with "The Plant", but he didn't follow it precisely. The streetperformer protocol tends not to let you reap as many rewards from popularity as some other ideas, and apparently either Stephen King didn't know about the streetperformer protocol, or he wished popularity to still figure strongly into how much money he got, so he used a variation that was less likely to succeed, but more likely to reap rewards proportionate to popularity.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
No, the government rules with the consent of the majority of the people. Your not consenting to copyright does not make you any more free to violate it than my not consenting to anti-murder laws makes me free to kill you.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I've talked to a knowledgeable person who works in the record industry and they tell me that the feeling there is that music sharing has already won. The music industry may be able to shut down Napster, but they've lost the war. There are hundreds of ways to share music files now and more are on their way. There is not just an entire generation of music fans who have begun to think differently about intellectual property laws, there is now Joe and Jane six-pack who want to share Led Zeppelin MP3s.
Those of you who whine about musicians being ripped off by online music sharing are still missing the bigger point. This controversy is about music *distribution*. Napster and others like it are a new, easy-to-use technology which removes the middleman from between artist and fan. Nobody is crying over the record companies and the profits they are missing out on. More and more people are beginning to understand that music distribution is controlled by 5 to 6 companies and perhaps a few more retail outlets (i.e. WalMart). If anybody has been ripping off artists it's been record companies and their monopoly. If a small band lose its contract, it is destined for oblivion because the alternatives are few. We all know who bland FM radio is with its limited playlists that are designed to sell us a select few artists. Never mind the fact that most of the FM dial is owned by 4 or 5 major companies.
What can you do? Keep sharing music. Buy CDs from small labels and distros. Go to a concert and pay to see a band. If you are a programmer, help develop open source P2P software. Set up a server to host MP3s and movies. Turn off that corporate radio station and start your own pirate station. Several years ago there were hundreds of pirate stations on the air in the U.S. It takes less than $1000 to start a station with your friends.
Finally, don't get depressed about this because our side is winning!
While the court proceedings are going on, I tell you about how the company screwed me over. You say, "the bastards! I'm going to steal from the evil company and keep the pilfered items for myself."
How does this help me?
If you want to attack record companies by violation of copyright--regardless of whether or not they're abusing copyright--I won't stop you. Just don't pretend that you're somehow helping the artists by this action.
If record companies are screwing over musicians, then it's up to musicians to lead the revolt.
Never take moderation advice from sigs, including this one.
Have one system (Napster) that you can control easily, rather than one which is distributed and you cannot control at all.
If I may give a terrible example, if I want to stop a bicycle from moving easily, should I remove the wheels or the pedals? Well, let's say killing Napster is like removing the pedals. It is still possible to (somewhat comfortably, albiet at a greater inconvenience) ride the bike around by pushing it with your feet.
Even if you remove the wheels (which are a bad metaphor for the Internet as a whole), one could still carry the bike on their back.
That's not to say I think Napster is good. The legality of their business is mired in an endless gray area ("How gray?" "Charcoal." -- Fletch) but the RIAA needs to understand that they are going to lose out (not legally, tho) anyways. When you can't beat em, join em. But the RIAA has gone too far, too long to turn back now (which, IMHO, is why Metallica got on the anti-Napster bandwagon... the RIAA needed a "hip" band, and probably managed to convince poor weak-minded Lars... by the time they were getting hit from their fans' backlash, it was too late to back out).
I object to 'masses ripping you off'. It presupposes a mindset that copyright is 'right' in some ethical sense.
And I guess that I mean it should be dead in the case of people giving copies to random other people or friends, but not in the case of someone selling many copies to large numbers of people.
Whether or not Napster falls into that category is highly questionable. They don't sell copies. They 'sell' a way for people to find other people who are willing to give them a copy, which isn't quite the same thing.
I also think the unenforceability problem is a very big problem. It really can't be enforced unless you want to wage a 'war on pirating' like we already have a 'war on drugs'. Even then, it can't be enforced. You'd practically have to have a police state if you wanted to enforce it.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
And how is this rectified by listeners ripping off the artists and record companies alike?
Never take moderation advice from sigs, including this one.
Meanwhile, websites are cropping up everywhere to encode filenames to simple things like Pig Latin, as well as more complicated stuff. No doubt open-source Napster clones will have that built in within a few days.
I'm wondering, why is it necessary to encode song names? Since the vast majority of Slashdot are law abiding citizens who would only use Napster to trade non-copyrighted music this should be an issue.
Is the encryption being used to allow people to keep trading copyrighted material? If so, why not give the artists the pay they deserve the purchase their MP3 or CD?
And one day, in an enlightened future, IP legislation will be cast off as the backwards barbarism that it is.
no matter WHAT they do, they will lose. Even if the mow everyones lawn and bring democracy to Cuba, they will STILL lose. on the other hand, its not whether you win or lose, but how many you drag down with you.
if you mod me down, Darth, i shall become more powerfull than you can possibly imagine.. f33r |\/|1 |\|3g4+v C4r|\/|4
1. Napster implements a filtering system that blocks the exact names given to them by the RIAA.
2. Ten minutes later, some kid renames all of his Metallica tracks to Meta11ica.
3. The RIAA goes to court saying that Napster is not complying.
4. Napster claims that the people doing this are violating the DMCA by circumventing copyright protection mechanisms and shifts the blame to the people trading the songs.
Would it stand up? I don't know. I would have never imagined that anyone providing a service on the Internet would be held liable for content that they don't produce, store on their servers, or even have pass through their network. But it has happened.
One would think that this would be legal.
However, the ruling in mp3.com says precisely the opposite: even if the downloader/listener already has legal license to that music, the person who bought the CD that the streaming bits came from is the only person allowed to hear them.
see... oh... this press release from mp3.com
and
wired news article about a congressman trying to create legislation that says "if they already bought it, they can listen to it!"
Now answer me this: how can they tell it's "infringing?" Just because it's copyrighted doesn't mean it's being infringed upon. There's a possibility, yes, but... well, here's a ferinstance:
I bought Blue Man Group's album, Audio, last month. It plays fine on my portable CD player, but put it in the CD-ROM drive, and it misbehaves. I can't even rip it. I have a license to make fair use copies of it, so presumably, if I can find MP3s of this album, aren't I entitled to download them?
Similarly, the Beatles' White Album. I bought that on vinyl, and later on cassette. Am I really required to buy it AGAIN to legally download MP3s that other licenseholders have made?
Forget the technical problems for a sec, and just look at the legal presumption of guilt here.
I'm offended. I really am.
I can see the fnords!
Now that it is clear that Napster has to try to stop the swapping, nobody seems to be interested in trying to do a really good job of it. Letting renaming of a file get around the swapping ban is just too lame.
Shouldn't the filter for copyrighted stuff be like an antivirus? Changing the name, or even making insubstantial changes to the content should not evade the filter.
So we send packets with just ACK set and hack the TCP/IP stacks. Perhaps they could make it so packets need at least one of source and destination being a "registered" IP. There are still ways to hack it. On cable modem send a ping with a forged source of your intended destination to a registered IP. You destination gets back the reply which has N bytes of your original packet in it. It is VERY hard to prevent 2 entities from communicating data that a third party does not want sent. Look into mandatory access control (military grade security, Orange book ratings B1, B2, and B3). It is very complicated.
Or one could encode data in email messages. Make it look like English, at least close enough to confuse filters (i.e. something more subtle than uuencode). Not that hard to do.
Plus ISP's (which include telco's) might not appreciate blanket injuctions denying user-to-user rather than user-trusted server communication. Could hurt their bottom line. Telco's are mostly sleeping giants, but they'll wake at this. They've got WAY more money than Hollywood or the RIAA or the software police.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
Yah... gnutella.. that great, always reliable, always fast, always find what you want program. Yah, thats it..
log on to OpenNap servers. they're just as good as napsters own server, and actually have more people more often than not. Fuck gnutella, that shit is for chumps.
Joseph?
1) That's misquoted. Napster doesn't have anything on it's servers.
2) What Napster is required to do is block all ifnringing materials from being searched for.
3) The Record companies must furnish napster with a list of what to block.
So.. what the court ordered was that napster had to bock all infringing materials the record companies told it about. Isn't that what napster said they would do in the first place?
Sounds fair to me anyway.
At the risk of repeating myself, I must say that while the RIAA thinks they have won this round, in the long term they will lose to the march of technology. They can't legislate it out of existence. And frankly, if Napster continues to operate with all the RIAA's list of songs blocked, it is still a terrific tool. Perhaps more so - and here is where the RIAA's egos are getting in the way of them having a clue about what they are doing. The RIAA's list of blocked songs? Guess what: I can buy that crap in stores. I don't need Napster to find my precious Britney songs. If I want super-leet pirated copies I can tape that sh*t off the radio. If the only music I could get on Napster was indie labels, bands that support napster, and unknown artists -- well, that's a lot of great music. I say let the RIAA take their stuff off Napster; we're better off without it. Sure I like a lot of that stuff too but my point is that Napster (or a Napster-like clone that adequately filters copyright violations) is a great means of distribution and of discovering new artists. And guess where the RIAA labels will come looking for hot new bands to sign in a couple years? Having already built followings via Napster, these new artists will be in a lot better position to call the shots of their contracts, and some may even tell the RIAA to f*ck off.
Yes, but can they do anything about stuff on opennap? I've found that the MusicCity cluster (20 Terrabytes) usualy has more stuff on it then the offical servers (8 Terrabytes), and there's far less idiots on it. (join a chat room on an offical server) Anyways.... I alyas say, if the cat gets let out of the bag over the internet there's no way to put it back in. (Think DeCSS). The RIAA is wasting thier time.
Is 1GHz 1000MHz, or 1024Mhz?
I gave your system a try today, and got nothing from it. Am I doing something wrong, or is in such a fledgling phase that a search across 34 servers will yield no 200k images?
I set up the server after reading this post and went on to get a feel for how much information is currently accessible with Mojo Nation. I wanted to start with something nice and broad, nice and vague, to see what kind of information is available and accessible. So I searched for images across 34 other machines and came up with squat.
I also searched for audio, and got a whole lot of mp3 listings (predictably). But none would download. Not a single one. For every one I was left with an empty file on my machine. I tried about 10. Also, every time I tried to download for some reason, the files didn't have extentions. What the heck is up with that? And none (and I mean not a single file) had the standard "musician - song title" format. It was always just the name of the song. Can you explain why this is happening? I think I followed the instructions just as the are described. After all, I can search. I'd normally just contact you from the Mojo Nation page, but since you posted this to slashdot, I thought I'd ask you here as others might be interested too.
The RIAA didn't agree to anything. This is part of the court order. And you can understand why... if Sony says "Remove Leonard Cohen's I'm Your Man" and there's a copy that someone has which is inexplicably mislabeled (both in the file name and the ID3 tag) "Weird Al Yankovic - Dancing Queen", it's absurd for Napster to be expected to recognize it without being explicitly told about it.
What I'm curious about is the status of bootleg remixes and bootleg live versions. When Joe Basement Producer makes a megamix of Pink Floyd (on Capitol) and Underworld (on TVT), who needs to contact Napster? Capitol? TVT? Joe Basement Producer?
[TMB]
One of the only things that has kept the general non-evils-of-copyright-aware public out of this mess up until now is the fact that it has been relatively difficult to trade MP3's online.
I mean, if you know more than absolutely nothing about the internet, you can download agent or x-news and point it at the MP3 binaries groups and get a wealth of high-quality audio, that has usually been encoded by people who know what they're doing. The same goes for IRC channels.
What Napster has done is to remove that first little bit of knowledge necessary to start yourself down the good-intentioned road to MP3 hell. It's all point and grunt. Even Journalism Majors can use it. My step-dad can use it, and that's pretty damn scary.
So Napster's effectively gone away. If Mr. Berry's figures are to beleived, this means that the RIAA doesn't have a few ingenious crackers and hackers on their hands trading MP3z on undergound IRC and Usenet channels. They have 30 MILLION FRUSTRATED, ANGRY, PISSED OFF users from all classes and races! Worse, they have a veritable legion of crackers and hackers who want to support these people's dirty MP3 habits in order to make money/points/karma/etc...
What's the old saw? If one man owes you a lot of money and won't pay, then he's in trouble, but if many men owe you money and won't pay, then you're in trouble.
This applies here. It was one thing for RIAA companies to pick on the hackers. Now they have visibly, audible, and a finacially insulted the American Public as a whole. Now all that's left is to whip the addled mob into a blood-thirsty frenzy.
Good bye, Napster. You'll make a wonderful martyr.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
As far as not having the artist in the mp3 file name; Mojo Nation has seperate XML metadata describing files and for Audio that includes Title, Artist, Genre, and others. There is no need to put all of this information in the file name with Mojo Nation.
Burris
When you open that (youll need to have Mojo Nation running on your box) you'll get an html page with info about the show and links to the individual tracks. This is freely redistributable music.
Burris
Remember, the courts don't have to decide how napster is going to do this. What the courts have asked for is fair and just.
They've said that if the record companies want napster to block a file because it infringes, then they have to give napster the name of the file, and napster has to block it.
Whether that is PRACTICAL or not isn't the issue. The court merely says that if napster will do this, then they can continue to operate.
Napster is in the business of selling advertising. That's how they try to make money, selling banner ads and such.
They attract viewers by encouraging the unlawful trading of music. Yes, their system can and is used for other things, but napster inc. knows they will have tons of users because people want to pirate music. This is the flaw in their business model; the chief way they attract viewers is by encouring/helping them do something illegal.
A website based on the same principle would be just as bad.
Now the courts have said that Napster can stay in business, as long as they block searches that the record companies tell them to. What's unfair about that?
Which means that Napster is pretty much screwed, as they cannot filter anything else beyond names, and therefore will have to resign to shut down their server completely, or face further penalties for disobeying the injunction.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
According to the article, the record companies will have to give the artist name, song name, and the name of the file. Then, Napster will have 3 days to block it. This should not present too much of a problem to Napster users, since the record companies will have to provide specific file names. Napster users will just have to keep changing the file names.
Record companies will need to keep searching Napster, and provide them new with lists of file names that they want blocked. There are a hell of a lot more of us than there are of them.
forth ?love if honk then
Has anyone been able to connect to their servers in the last few days? I sure haven't. I'm now on Swaptor.
Linux - Because Mommy taught me to Share.
Well, so far both a search for Etallicamay and Octorday Edray have come up empty.
What if you log on with copyrighted material in your personal database, and you send your song list to the server, but you aren't allowing any uploads?
Are you doing anything wrong?
Will you be banned from Napster?
Linux - Because Mommy taught me to Share.
Yeah well, that is going to be a lot harder than folks think. If they start outlawing code based on what it could do (and I mean original code - not code reverse engineered ala DeCSS) they'll realize it useless. You can't do it.
Freenet is in its infancy. They do have a new MP3 sharing client called Espra If it works - the RIAA may be in trouble. Sure they could try to ban Espra - but that'll be harder (Just see all teh DeCSS mirrors out there) I'm surprised the RIAA isn't shaking in their boots. FreeNet CAN cause them major heartache. Admins have NO idea whats on their servers, it is encrypted. No central servers except for key servers, etc. They can go after key servers, but again, they aren't the sole distribution medium for keys.
Yes, Freenet is in its infancy and the media has shrugged it off, but I'm impressed by the advances they've made. Give it 6 months and more resources in development as Napster as a protocol faces the 'music' (which IMHO is a shame since P2P is so much more than MP3)
Run a Freenet Server today!
--
Top Most Bizarre/Disturbing Error Messages
said the recording industry will have to notify Napster of the title of the song, the name of the artist and the name of the file containing the infringing material.
After which, Napster will have 72 hours to block access to that file. Or, in other words:
Napster users will change their file names every 72 hours.
I think it is is extremely foolish what the RIAA and the music industry is doing. The Napster community is millions strong, it just is not going to disapear no matter what the RIAA wants. By forcing Napster to remove copyrighted material all it is going to do is cause people to come up with more injenious and more clever methods of bypassing the system, prime example the Pig Latin encryption trick. And the harder the RIAA tries to tighten their grip the more people are going to squirm to get around it. It got too big before they did anything about it. Thus, instead of the RIAA just saying 'OK' and allowing the basic Napster technology which is easy for them to keep track of since the servers log all transactions(I believe the main ones do atleast) which the RIAA could use for data anaylsis, instead they foolishly decide to make it even harder on themselves to keep tabs of. Napster is now close if not a household word to alot of people, and alot of people do not see it as being wrong to use. We see a classic example of the old big bad guys versus the shiny new guys, and everyone is rooting for the shiny flashy newcomer. In the end, the music industry is going to lose, maybe not to Napster, but prehaps to another P2P technology that is alot harder to shut down due to a non-centralized network model, or located in a foreign country that does not obey American copyright laws.
But not int he public out cry Sense. If all the songs are legit and not part of the RIAA little monopoly then maybe (big maybe)the 50 million users that are left will start liking Indy music starting a trend. This would, if it cascaded, really bite into the RIAA's Monopoly. Though I doubt this will happen Napster's backers will say you can't be profitable so bye bye money... Bye bye Napster.
Name all your files SCREW-THE-RIAA-DMCA-SUCKS-Enter Sandman.mp3
That way they have to specify anti-RIAA names.
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
Being that the mp3 format is lossy, it is not an exact copy of the original. Does a close approximation count? At what point does it become a "hand drawn facsimile"?
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
The choice of pig latin is an intresting one, though it would have not been mine. IMO, it would seem more logical to use something like rot 13. At least then, it would be easier to move to another "encryption" method (just increase or decrease the rotation factor -- this could even be done on the fly on a client level should someone figure work out the protocal issues).
one big mess where all possible forms of encryption are banned, except for use by megacorporations.
Criminals, actually.
Remember, if encryption is banned, only criminals will have encryption.
hmm ...
RIAA = ???
works for me, since their tactics have reminded me of a mafia family protecting their profits.
This is walking into the direction of one heck of a bloody mess in the coursts and the legal system.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
And what's stopping someone from writing a program that encrypts, renames, and decrypts mp3s; distributing this program with a UCITA enforced EULA that prevents it's use by the RIAA, the government (any government), their associated minions; and placing these 'new' files over Napster?
The RIAA would be doublly enjoined from 'finding out' because they couldn't use the program to decrypt the new mp3s under UCITA, and they couldn't break the encryption under DMCA.
I like you, Stuart. You're not like everyone else, here, at Slashdot.
Gnutella and Freenet both suffer from the problem that users are vulnerable at the ISP level. That is, AOLTimeWarner may simply block, and get other ISPs to go along with blocking, users from utilizing Gnutella/Freenet/etc., and just bounce users that do so.
The whole nation is reeling in ambiguity today, as the Perfected Tenses have disappear entirely from the English language. What was once thought to be restricted to those of lower socioeconomic status has spread viciously throughout America.
A Dr. Hanfkopf was interview today. He say "Television has probably contribute more to this than anything else. The TV people have let these people be hear without ever having correct them. My God, now it has happen to me!!!
Moral: There is no excuse for anything less than mastery of the language by those who use it.
If you love God, burn a church!
Ewige Blumenkraft!
Have a peek at the Detroit Free Press for Doron Levin's article Music industry won a battle, not the war.
davecb@spamcop.net
Burris
I'm game. Not like I can get any of the music I like in this freakin hicksville town (without using Napster or similar equipment) anyway.
<p>
I mean, the way I see it if the people of America, by some miracle, get some brains, The RIAA is in serious trouble. I foresee a few different scenarios:
<p>
1) RIAA wins case, Napster dies, users get pissed, hackers create several free servers, users boycott RIAA and get the music they like from hacker's servers for Free or a small fee.
<p>
2) RIAA wins case, shows foresite but remain greedy, give cheap alternative to napster and lower CD prices, cut royalties to their artists, Artists get pissed, break away from lable and go independant / sue RIAA for holding out profit.
<P>
3) RIAA wins case, miracurously loose greedy outlook, cut prices on CD's, <b>Widen Distribution channels to include the hapless goth people that by some twist of demonic fate wind up living in the Bible Belt</b>, increase wadges for Artists... everyone becomes happy shining people hoding hands. ((yeah...right, they'd do this.))
<p>
With any luck the first two options will take effect soon, and then we won't have to put up with the BS of the RIAA.
<p>
Unfortunatly, the possibility that seems more likely is that Napster gets crushed, some users go on to use clones, but most Americans fall victim once again to the propaganda of the major Associations and mindlessly buy overpriced, low quality recordings of some blonde bimbo asking to be beaten.
<p>
If there is REALY a God...PLEASE don't let that Last thing Happen!!! I swear..I'll go to curch for a change!!! Just Don't let the RIAA Win!! I WANT My NAPSTER FREE!!!