Slashdot Mirror
Napster Traffic Drops
rev420 writes "Wired is reporting that Napster traffic has fallen by 60% since it instituted it's (er, the labels') name-blocking scheme. Despite their best efforts, few people seem to be finding name-scramblers like Catnap to be useful and the Aimster's Pig-Latin encoder is no longer available because Napster requested that it be disabled." No big shocker here.
Home Page
I actually heard at one point that that biggest problem with putting music online for download wasn't necessarily the problem of micropayments, security, or the technology involved, but rather the problem lies in the accounting practices of the industry...in order to take micropayments for song, they'd have to redesign/build their entire accounting and payment structure...which admittedly would be a nightmare...but I suppose that kind of nightmare is preferrable to slow death by starvation.
congrats to napster! you've just removed the skum artists from the face of this earth. no longer will people buy anything of theirs, because everyone will be online and no one will hear their music, therefore they become as popular as mud. (no harm intended to all you mud lovers out there. [= ) oh yea, it also makes off beat artists more popular. think of it this way, if you change tv programming, will people stop watching during prime time even if the shows suck? the answer is no.
go here for out of print books
Searching for Creed? You're a glutton for punishment.
Scour was shutdown a few months ago as part of bankruptcy proceedings. However, as a founder, I always made sure that Scour was accessible from Linux, usually through a perl interface. Linux/Perl versions of the Scour Media Agent and Scour Exchange were available at the same time as their Windows counterparts.
I walked up to Best Buy the other day and purchased Aerosmith's "Just Push Play" CD, for several reasons:
1) Aerosmith rocks, as does their new CD.
2) I needed the excercise from the walk.
3) I wanted to encode the disc at the highest possible quality setting, which to me means using MusicMatch Jukebox in Very High quality mode with error correcting (when it reads the CD) turned on. On my 900MHz Athlon, the CD rips and encodes at 0.7x speed. The CD now sits on my shelf, awaiting the next great digital recording standard.
Now, while I would grant you that I need all the excercise I can get, I would rather be able to conveniently purchase a licence to the CD online, download high-quality unrestricted files from high-bandwidth servers in the format of my choice, be able to redownload them later in newer formats or to replace my existing copies, and save a few bucks by cutting out the meatspace overhead. I'd certainly buy a lot more music. (Come to think of it, MusicMatch licenses their software in this manner...) Unfortunately, by fighting a lost cause in the most obnoxious manner possible, the record companies are merely making life more difficult than necessary for honest customers and giving priceless publicity to Napster, Gnutella, etc.
The record companies need to learn what the software industry figured out years ago: copy protection on mass-marketed products just aggravates your best customers.
Having read the story I logged onto Napster, performed some searches and noticed a marked improvement in the speed at which results were returned. Maybe it was just me, but Napster was less responsive when the craze was at its height. Now that a huge chunk of users have left, Napster seems so much faster.
I'm not going to lament the absence of users because, chances are, they were not sharing files which I was looking for. I use Napster mainly to locate obscure hard-to-find, sometimes out-of-print tracks which I have no hope of being able to purchase. I also use it for techno, house and jungle mixes, many of them never released on CD or tape and most of them bootleg. Since I have no chance in hell of ever being able to find these items for purchase elsewhere, let alone be assured that the money will find its way to the music creators, then I have no qualms about my actions. If, however, I find the item somewhere I will purchase it but that has happened only once or twice.
Without those 60% I've still been able to find items of interest on Napster, so I will still find a use for it.
ian.
ian
I guess the money that the artist and record company would have been paid were you to legally procure said works is besides the point. BTW artists are paid between 8 and 12 cents a song for publishing (BMI/ASCAP), which should include live works and covers, it is paid to the one who wrote the song. Thus at 171 songs per user and 60 million users equals $1 billion just for shared songs, we haven't even started talking about leaches.
I doubt it. Most people that are interested in trading live shows do stuff w/etree (http://www.etree.org). shns are a far better quality recording for live stuff.
I do download *SOME* live MP3's, but not for the purpose of recording to CD.
unfortunatly, most bands that ALLOW taping of their shows are "jam bands like Phish". Grateful Dead, String Cheese Incident, Widespread Panic, Phish, etc. All have influences from similar places.
Although.... I did just pick up a Rachel Auburn hard house 12" which samples Madonna. I wonder if the RIAA can legally name this title in it;s lists for napster - I mean it only samples an RIAA act.
Courtney love complained that napster was full oof techno, well - now it's going to get ever more full as the RIAA doesn't care about these short run vinyl pressings.
30 gigs??? That's it??? I think you meant terabytes. :)
the DMCA would never figure that one out!
bp
Remember that Napster usage increased sales of CDs. The RIAA was able to use all this extra money into a promotional campaign to destroy the credibility of Napster and its users. They could also use this money on lobbying the government. They could point to the rampant "Ooooh, non-free stuff for free -- gimme!" attitude that was starting to take hold among a lot of people, and being so unattractive, this gave the RIAA a pretty solid moral ground compared to their adversaries when it comes to future rights battles.
So, I'm sure that the RIAA would like to plant a big wet one on Napster and its users for, (1) increasing its income through greater CD sales, (2) ensuring that future laws will be favorable to RIAA's terms whenever they decide to get into the online game. I gotta give 'em credit, the plan was fuckin' beautiful.
Cheers,
Try as I might, I just can't bring myself to care what these people think. Anyone that dumb deserves whatever they get.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Thanks, I try. :^)
stupid people deserve nothing?
No, they deserve whatever they get. More specifically, if their concept of reality is so completely determined by what they here on the the TV that they don't even think to look for themselves, then I don't feel any motivation to point out the obvious to them. If Ted Koppel told you that your car had been stolen, would you go out and buy a new one without checking your driveway first?
Where stupid is defined as something I would never be.
Hopefully.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Do you really think an abused child is in any way analogous to the topic at hand? Or are you just trolling with inflammatory analogies? Perhaps you will compare me to Hitler next?
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
So you are arguing that the Napster user in this scenario is not in control of his/her own actions?
Hitler spoke better german than you.
lol! :^)
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
How soon we all forget! If it wasn't for Napster, none of these others would have come about as quickly. I have a Time Warner Cablemodem. I had been using Napster and sharing files for several months when a representative from Time Warner called and threatened to close my account if I did not turn off my file sharing. I find it ironic that teachers are living at or below the poverty level while these overpaid and, for the most part, untalented bastards overcharge and are way past overcompensated. I hanging in there with the Napster folks until the end. To me, there is no difference between the loyalty of the Open Source Community and the loyalty of the Napster Community. College students started them both. Hang in there, Napster. You're not alone out there. dadadadigital "Time spent with Linux is not deducted from one's lifespan."
the loudest words are the ones we never say
if you ask joe 56K napster user, he'll tell you he doesn't use napster any more since it was shut down a few weeks ago.
all of my friends are novice napsterbaters at best, and they never even try to sign on anymore, since the press keeps telling them on the evening news that napster is dead. lost its court case. defunct. deceased.
it's along the same lines as those people i talked to about buying a computer about 5 years ago who said that Apple had gone out of business and that i couldn't buy a mac anymore.
like everybody else is saying here, napster's still there, and you can still get anything you want, and, in my estimation, it's faster: no more queueing up to get on a server, the serious users are still there (like me) and the fat pipes are still flowing.
- Entertaining Bits from the Ancient Kernel Tree
I've been on Napster 5 times during this last week and I've found every song I was looking for.
On Wed. I pulled down a whole album that I was looking for. So, whatever Wired or the rest of the media is saying... I don't seem to have any trouble finding what I want. Maybe all the Eminem and Christina Aguellera songs are gone... but the obscure shit that I listen to is easy to find.
What's a "Windows registry?" :)
All told, I'll stick to Usenet for a big reason: I already have most of the stuff I know I like, since I bought it before MP3s came along (and any newer stuff I know I'll like I buy the CD anyways)
Usenet is far, far, better at introducing people to music they've never heard of, because you never know from day to day what's going to be posted.
I have NEVER bought Napster's arguments that they can be used to distribute unknown artists, because Napster's biggest draw is a search feature.
After being on Usenet, I've gotten to know some of the regulars, and some of them are constantly posting weird shit that very few people have ever heard of! And that's why it's so damn brilliant.
On top of that, people often post uber-rare out of print stuff, often from records, that are NEVER going to see the light of day thanks to the record companies.
Pope
Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
What made napster so popular (INHO) is that it was one centralized server for everything, so you were more likely to find what you wanted.
So in a way the RIAA has won.
MP3 swapping happened before napster and it will happen after this. Making it harder is a deturent
If it take 3 hours to hunt down 3 tracks is it worth it to those with too little time already?
Given the time it takes for Gnutella searches to return (10-30 secs on average), I like to type in a few key words and let it go. All searches are presented in their seperate tabs.
I hope nobody is still using Gnutella 0.56? It's BAD for the network! Update to something new, please...
Napster traffic has fallen by 60% since it instituted it's (er, the labels') name-blocking scheme.
... Well, ma'am, it's is a contraction of "it is," not a possessive pronoun for chrissakes!
That's it! Just switch its and it's in all of your mp3 file names. The RIAA will never know what hit them!
Example: Well, Ms. Rosen, we did block the R.E.M. song "It's the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)," but you can't honestly expect us to block "Its the End of the World as We Know It"
Also, try having fun with two, too, and to.
Cheers,
IT
Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
Just as a point of information, bootlegs and live recordings are just as covered by copyright as anything else that's traded on Napster. The fact that a work is created puts it under the copyright control of the creator, unless that right is reassigned. The difference here is that the RIAA isn't going after those types of recordings, because the record labels (who they represent) don't have the mechanical rights to those recordings like they would have for the songs recorded specifically for the labels.
Of course there are plenty of artists who would want to exercise their copyright on that kind of stuff to keep it out of circulation, even though the RIAA isn't behind their cause. The law is, but with distribution that easy, they'll never see that enforced.
-Aaron
So do you demand to be let in to movies for free that aren't sold out? Hey, those empty seats aren't doing anything right? If the management won't let you in, hell just walk in through the fire exit.
The fact is, it's the movie cinema's call - not yours. Sure, you can try and argue you wouldn't pay to see the movie (but your still willing to walk to the cinema and sit through a couple of hours of this movie). But at the end of the day, it's not up to you. The cinema rightly views you a potential customer, and letting you in for free undermines their service to those who did pay.
Same with Napster. You'll search for a song, pay bandwidth charges to download it - yet claim you'd never buy it so who's losing anyway? Well I'm not convinced you wouldn't pay for that song - which is irrelevant in any case as the music label has exclusive rights to sell this song. You're undermining the people who did buy the CD - why should you get it for free when they paid for it? Hell, they may as well start downloading future releases too. Uh oh, you've started a trend that's reduced the future earnings of that artist.
Whether or not it's good for an artist to permit their songs to be traded on Napster (as some artists have) is up to them, not you. It's not something you can force on them because you've decided trading their songs "can't be theft". Your claims that the industry is making more money than ever and that Napster has opened your eyes to new artists are irrelevant - it's not your right to force what you think is best onto someone else (well, unless they're your child).
So you see, trading mp3s can't be theft, because nothing is missing.
Potential revenue is missing and the integrity of the artist and their material is compromised to those who did pay for it.
--
--
Rare Window - free your photos
Actually the RIAA, MPAA and every damn author, musician, commercial software developer, director, screen writer, actor, orator, song writer, graphic designer etc.
I don't see any distinction between "theft" and "copying" as particularly relevant at all. Theft is really an economic concept (although the bible espouses it as a moral one) - you're stealing wealth from another person, be it money, physical property or intellectual property. It's simply FUD to imply that "theft" is some kind of amoral, natural law and "copying" is an artificial construct of the RIAA and other nefarious organisations to make more money.
The fact is, there are many, many people whose careers would be undermined if everyone was legally allowed to copy their work. This copying deprives them of wealth either directly or in diminished future earnings. Where's the distinction?
All this post-facto argument is a contrived attempt to justify (and thereby keep alive) this admittedly addictive habit of downloading free music.
Give it up. Downloading illegal mp3s is not a natural progression of Freedom of Speech; it's not some noble crusade to make information free. It's theft.
--
--
Rare Window - free your photos
That's cool. I didn't mean to say that every artist doesn't permit copying. Rather, all (ok - most) artists want to have the discretion to choose whether their works are made available to be copied OR NOT. It's cool that you distribute your work for free, but you made this decision - it wasn't forced on you. That's the issue. Arguments that copying is not theft and therefore one should be free to abitrarily copy others work (or that it's legally wrong but morally right) are what I'm against.
Theft deprives someone of property directly. Copying does not (though it may, indirectly). There's plenty of reasonable arguments to be made about copying being bad, but none of them come down to analogies about stealing cars.
So what do you call it when I hack your bank and electronically transfer funds from your account to mine? I'm just moving numbers around - no theft of 'property' - I'm not saying it's "copying", just that it goes beyond the bounds of your convenient definition of theft. The stealing cars analogy is grossy over-simplifying the matter. That fact is, the more you look to define what theft is, the more blurry you'll find the distinction between theft and copying.
Let's talk in broader economic terms (note: we could talk in social or environmental on other areas of theft) and the distinction is even more diminished. At best, copying boils down to some sort of "take from the (information) rich, give to the (information) poor" Robin Hood approach.
I think the Free Software and Open Source movements are great - and I directly benefit from them. As do I benefit from artists such as yourself distributing free music and typefaces. I'm not against these things at all. What I am saying is that artists have the choice as to whether they distribute their works free or charge some amount of money for them (or a combination of the two) - we should respect this.
--
--
Rare Window - free your photos
Finally a Gnutella client that had most of my wishlists. It appears almost bug free too. When I run it for 3-4 days in a row, it might hang. IT also creates too many threads when left running for a long time. But the threads are idle.
I quit using Napster long back. I run LimeWire all the time on my computer and it accounts for a major chunk of traffic on my DSL.
If you haven't you should give this a try.
any one else can recommend anything similar??
LinuxLover
http://www.eDonkey2000.org
Distributed file sharing. Download from multiple people. Download from people downloading themselves.
FunOne
FunOne
Not only they claim to do so, but they do. Fire up Lopster and you'll see that they have 40 servers linked together.
--
I have no sig at all.
Boy, you really know how to copy and paste, don't you? I mean, you must be some sort of elite ctrl+c ctrl+v freak.
--
I have no sig at all.
I think this is the sucessor to the old MyNapster client. Not a bad piece of software. I like it more than Napster. It connects to about 7 Opennap networks at once, giving you access to about 70 terrabytes of files and can be used to exchange more than just MP3s. Download it from MyNapster's Website (Win32 only).
It could happen.
- Have a picture
The registry is "the thing that gets fixed when you click on this .reg file that lets you connect up with a new Napster ID".
Only a clueless newbie would click on a .reg file without inspecting its contents. But - the people who don't know what the registry is are precisely the people clueless enough to blindly do so in order to get back onto Napster.
So yeah, if all they did was nuke users, they would ultimately end up with a situation where all Joe Windoze knows (and to accomplish his task, all he needs to know) about "the registry" is that "it's what gets fixed by clicking on the 'i want my napster back' icon"...
Name scramblers had to hit the userbase because they require effort from the user. Napster's success hinged on the fact that the music directory was shared *by default*. If the users had had to click a button to share their files, most wouldn't have bothered. It was too much effort for most people to bother turning it off, even though it cost them nothing, and saved their upstream bandwidth.
So now having to download and install a program is required at both ends for this to work? There's no chance this would have worked. As much as a people laughed at name filters as a solution to Napster, it's going to work, at least for the purposes of eliminating a majority of the available music.
But I'm sure Napster knew this, they're the ones who made the directory shared by default. right now they're trying to keep as much of their userbase as they can so that when they switch to a subscription service, their numbers are larger.
If they keep just 10% of their remaining users, it'll still probably be a profitable business.
m.adonna
b.ritany s.pears
or something like
b.spears
c.aguilera
w.a.yankovic
http://www.livejournal.com/users/cixel
Kinda odd what they are filtering- for example, most of my Pink Floyd and Bob Dylan was filtered while most of my CSNY, Neil Young, and 4 out of 6 of my Cake MP3's weren't.
-bugg
Except for the fact that Weird Al has not done a parody of Spears' "Oops... I Did It Again."
Napster has only increased the trouble. An easy way of figuring out who is who is this: Weird Al has sung in every song he has ever made. Even in "The Truck Drivin' Song", Al's tenor was converted to a low bass by waking up early in the morning and singing his first words into a microphone. I'm glad to know that other people realize this, R1ch... :) Just remember, boys and girls... there are a myriad of parody artists. Figure out which one did it before you name your mp3s. :)
I would love to try it. I've downloaded it, but when I try to create my account it always times out without ever logging on to their server. I've got a feeling that this is due to the firewall here at work, though. I'm open to suggestions.
Metaphysicist
Metaphysicist
"If at first you don't succeed, keep on sucking until you do succeed"
- Cu
The way that I read it was that traffic, per se, wasn't what was down. What was down was the number of shared songs per user.
"Webnoize, a 'digital intelligence' company that has been monitoring Napster usage for a while, reported on Thursday that the number of shared songs per Napster user had fallen 60 percent since Napster began filtering MP3s on Wednesday."
Metaphysicist
Metaphysicist
"If at first you don't succeed, keep on sucking until you do succeed"
- Cu
Dude. Chill.
You sound like you haven't even looked at any of these alternatives -- check your information before posting. iMesh alone had more MP3's (number of terabytes) available than Napster ever did
But I am not talking about terabytes of data. I am talking about the pure number of users. It will take some time for the user base of the alternatives to reach the millions and millions of napster users. Napster was/is a Phenomenon. Will OpenNAP take the lead? Or iMesh? Will bearshare get a linux client? Who knows?
I know that this is not going away. For the next few months, however, it will be interesting to see what happens.
Sig:
Sig:
Barbeque is a noun. Not a verb.
See, I just thought of this, but its a nice idea. More groups should do what daft punk did. With their new cd came this card(looks like a credit card, with a 16 digit number). You go to www.daftclub.com , enter that number, and install some software. Daft Punk is releasing remixes, b-sides, etc. over the net through this software. They have proof you bought the cd(it validates the card number and it didn't work when my friend tried to use mine) and thus they've gotten the money from you already, so getting mp3s from them isn't a big deal to them. Then again, this could all just be a big pipe dream, considering daft punk is one of the few groups that actually retains control of their music(they own a company which legally owns the music, and will allow record companies to lease the songs and sell them on CD for a price. Moby does the same thing, IIRC.)
Sorry for rambling
Crow
I get 100 hits (the max) for Britney Spears, as well as for Metallica. I just downloaded "No Leaf Clover" from one of many available copies.
If Napster is publicizing who/what is blocked, I didn't see it. But right now, it seems that they're not blocking much at all.
I haven't been a huge Napster user in the past, but I just got a portable mp3 player, and wanted to grab some tracks so I didn't have to spend the weekend ripping CDs. Also, it helps when you only want one track off the CD and you can't track anyone down who will let you borrow it...
Anyway, I still found all the tracks I searched for on the official Napster server, with practically no name mangling. Perhaps I'm lucky and was looking for stuff that hasn't hit the filter lists yet, (or my tastes in music just won't make the lists at all), but I didn't seem to see a big degredation in music available. I guess we'll see how things compare in a week or so.
CuteMX is no longer available. It was only for testing, but might be back later on.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
CuteMX is gone due to testing. It might be back though.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Not only that, but MusicCity claims to link all their servers together (way more than 30k users). But up to now the most I'd seen was about 25k or so. Its been going up steadily, three weeks ago they were in the 12-16k range for users on their servers.
OpenNap sites, thats where the users went. I went there months ago.
It seems that /. has been /.ed, or has it perhaps been Hubbarded? Has the CO$ amassed forces for a giant DDOS?
Oh yeah, this is supposed to be about Napster. Napster is pretty cool. It will never go away, the source is already out there.
Linux is cool, too. So is Linus. And RMS.
... but seriously, Rachel Auburn? give me a break. that new label of hers, "RA," puts out the worse circus house crap around. it's kind of cute at first, but it gets very annoying, especially if you're exposed to an entire set of that bouncy nonsense. if you want some decent UK Hard House, there are better alternatives. HardNRG.com and Energy UK. i'm not sure if you spin yourself, but those two are good places to start for the non-dj.
...of course, some people like Rachel Auburn. but there's no accounting for taste! :) at any rate, it's better than the RIAA shlop that's been removed from Napster. i'm all for it: now it's even easier to find the good stuff! a quick search brings up 97 copies of my CDs :).
- j
You mean the majority of napster users were actually trading copyrighted works from the big five, rather than innovative pieces from unknown artists/composers?
while some of these may be intentional misspellings, i think the more likely explination is that people just can't spell. go to google and search on 'maddona' or 'madona' and you will find sites that really meant 'madonna'.
the only way the RIAA is going to be successful at this is to first teach the entire world how to spell. and Slashdot is probably a good place to start.
"I don't need a compass to tell me which way the wind shines." - Mr. Furious, Mystery Men
most of the use i and i think a lot of other techno heads get out of napster is collecting long, bootlegged dj mixes, especially recordings of BBC One's Essential Mix show.
i'm not sure about the copyright status of a radio show, tho - i think it's protected still. anybody know?
This is not a very convincing argument. Is the money destroyed? Do we not spend that money on other things? By copying, we've created NEW wealth; just because some imaginary figure can be calculated doesn't mean that it is necessarily a loss for society.
Perhaps you can make a utility argument based on the reduced *incentive* to create (I don't buy that either, but many people do, and it is reasonable). But once works are created, I can't believe any argument which says that society benefits from having to pay to duplicate it.
Anyway, my original point was not a defense of copying. I am just trying to keep the ideas of "theft" and "copying" separate so that we can engage in a discussion which is less confused by bad terminology.
Every author, musician, software developer...? No, certainly not every one. There are lots of people who give away their work for free, and lots who permit you to copy it. I'm serious, some people do not think the way you do. Linux and a lot of the software that goes with permits copying explicitly. I'd like to think of myself as a graphic designer and musician, and my fonts and music are free, and I permit copying. I'm sure we can find significant examples for your other categories. This is not an obvious point.
As for the "copying is moral" argument, I don't expect to win over many people with just slashdot posts. Morals are more complicated than that. However, I believe the distinction between theft and copying is real, and that you are just plain wrong to claim they are the same. Theft deprives someone of property directly. Copying does not (though it may, indirectly). There's plenty of reasonable arguments to be made about copying being bad, but none of them come down to analogies about stealing cars.
I think it's important that we don't conflate the idea of "theft" (stealing property, removing it from its owner) with the idea of "copying" (duplicating something without degrading the original). To be sure, both are illegal under current US law. However, they're illegal for different reasons, and with different justifications.
The RIAA and others want you to fall into the mind trap that copying IS theft, since practically everyone believes that traditional theft is immoral. In order to make sound judgments about these issues, we need to clearly separate the two concepts.
I don't know if anybody else has checked it out, but I just logged on and I only saw about 6k people on napster. So I fired up gnapster's OpenNap browser, I went around to a few servers... stopping at the MusicCity network, it has 30k users on it! And the number's grown about 1000 since i got on 20 minutes ago that's crazy... everybody must have gone there I wonder if the RIAA will be able to get ISP's to shutdown OpenNap. Supposidly ISP's aren't liable for the traffic on their servers... but who knows with the courts lately.
- "Never let a computer tell me shit." - DelTron Zero
If I record my own song "OhMyMommaDonna.mp3" can I sue Napster for hindering my distribution of it? Or how about my other hit song, "Madonna and her RIAA jackboots can suck my hairy sack.mp3" Keyword blocking is retarded and violates my free speech.
Not that I was looking for Madonna songs on Napster anyway. In fact maybe it'll be a little easier to look for the occasional odd thing like the Oompa Loompa song or "Baby Beluga".
All kings is mostly rapscallions. -Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
I dont understand, as soon as I read this article I tried logging on to Napster and check things out. After having to close the "Napster Action Network" (read: save our company for us) popup, I was downloading Metallica in seconds. I don't see any filter in effect... is it just me?
No vowels! Spread the meme!
I'm sure someone has thought of this already, but wouldn't it be a simple meme to spread that anyone sharing MP3 files should have the vowels removed...thus you would have names like
Mtllc - ntr Sndmn.mp3
It's pretty easy to remember, even for a non-/. reader, and should work acceptably well.
Of course, it's so simple that it might already be filtered, so if it is, that's too bad.
Comments?
I've been going on Napster to see how the filter is working.
So far searches for "metallica" always come back with hits. I would think this would be the primary thing they be trying to block.
Searches for "godsmack" came up empty last night. I tried "god smack" and got plenty of hits spelled "godsmack" and "god smack".
Just thought I'd share the info if anyone cares.
actually there has been a scour client for linux for a few months, try searching at fresthmeat.net sometime.
Iyay annotcay elievebay atthay apsteNay usersyay ereway ownloadingday ixtysay ercentpay opywrightedcay ongssay! Andyay ownay atthay avehay annedbay ethay igpay atinlay ecodersday, owhay amyay Iyay upposedsay otay indfay ongssay ybay ymay avoritefay ipga atinlay artistsyay ikelay iggyPay artinMay andyay ehtay ackstreetbay ogshay?
isThay isyay unacceptableyay!
Anyoneyay avehay ayay igpay atinlay otay Englishyay anslatortray inklay?
Does anyone know what Napster would have done if Aimster hadn't removed the Pig Latin encoder?
--
Peace,
Lord Omlette
ICQ# 77863057
[o]_O
http://www.limewire.com is a gnutella compatible p2p file sharing client... It's fairly nifty, although it doesn't work when I'm behind my ass firewall at school :(
--
Peace,
Lord Omlette
ICQ# 77863057
[o]_O
Has Alice Deejay had a boob job??
There now hooooooooooooooooj (as in tunes)
Errr, sorry.
Oops. I meant 30,000 gigs. Yeah, TB. :-)
Perhaps this is just a ploy by Napster to throw off the RIAA. Because Napster is implementing all of these blocks on its own servers - the Napster network - people are flocking to the other networks. Hmm, imagine that. Perhaps I should keep my mouth shut about this before the whole world finds out, then.
- Suzy Greenberg
- Tweezer Reprise
- Why Don't We Do It In The Road
That's out of 37 tracks. For a test, I had made a copy of "Why Don't We Do It In The Road" and called it "Madonna Sucks". That got filtered as well. Then I made a copy of "Blister In The Sun" and called it "Madonna Sucks", but that didn't get filtered. Strange.-- My comment is above.
This kinda reminds me of the Simpsons where booze is banned and the owner of Duff Beer says "No, we aren't worried, our customers enjoy duff for it's smooth taste, not it's alcoholic content. They will enjoy our Duff Zero even more." Three minutes later duff goes out of business. Once again, we can look to the Simpsons for a humorous take on reality.
It's just a matter of time before someone figures out an easy workaround to the naming/renaming scheme, then Napster will be right back up where it was before. In the meantime, there is always Aimster.
Actually there was a Linux Scour client.
It was just pretty much a CLI type client.
If you ran it in X, it would display a download bar using '#' to
indicate progress. The client was written in perl and was at version
2.0 last time I checked. Not as 'slick' as the windows client, but it
worked just fine.
FWIW...
johnny
Most of the music I have been looking for lately is still on there. And if all else fails it's quite simple to hop on over to opennap.
Anyone have data on whether the alternatives (opennap, gnutella, etc.) traffic has increased 60%?
Gnutella was inundated with a 600% increase of traffic
...) uses Napster. I really don't know why this would surprise anyone.
What is the surprise here? That it didn't drop more? We all know why everyone (meaning everyone except for you so don't go freaky on me about how you use napster for only non-label artists who sanction the usage of their songs on napster and
--
1. Small networks, like in my house, where no one computer is bigger than the others, peer to peer would be handy. I could share files with JUST my friends on the net if I could add a little client side authentication, and still protect from prying eyes.
2. For general, non-client authenticated peers, the FBI would have a harder time finding pr0n, the RIAA would have a harder time finding m34talica... etc.
It's the sysadmin in me wantin' to know.
...or maybe not.
-------------
"If I were to ask you a hypothetical question, what would you like it to be about?"
Actually it had already dropped off yesterday.
That's cool, i'll just go for some Phish now...
Why do we care so much about Napster? The server-less solutions will get up-to-snuff Real Soon Now...
ourpla.net is your planet
Yeah; people are trading cool music that the RIAA doesn't own (or at least didn't put on their list). Napster is better than ever. It's faster, and its easier to find rare stuff by known artists since all their proprietary stuff isn't in the way. By looking at other people's files based on common interests you can discover new bands. Why do people always assume "piracy" is the only thing p2p tech is good for? Just because that's what the RIAA says?
As long as the RIAA attack on p2p remains at the level of filtering I think Napster - at least the spirit of Napster not Napster Inc./Bertelsmann - wins. Sure it's harder to trade copyrighted stuff but that is technically illegal and they have the legal muscle to enforce the law - so let them waste their money doing so. (Besides, that stuff is easy to find in stores anyway!)
If filtering Napster makes them happy I am not complaining. The real fear is that they will limit the functionality of the internet. This is a radical new distribution mechanism and in the long run it is better for musicians even though it may not be better for the music industry as it currently exists.
subject says it all, I think it is the new successor to Napster
Filenavigator
--
That's because Scour went under, and it's assetts were bought out.
The company that has owns it has a website here. They have not relaunched yet. but they are talking about it.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
re: "Maybe 40% of Napster's users really *do* use the service to trade bootlegs, live recordings, and other unregulated music."
I'd really like to believe that.. however I'm pretty confident that the 35% are mispellings and artists too obscure for the RIAA to care for.. maybe 5% unregulated music.
Tyrannoctonus
Im a dj myself so I use Napster to download the full song to decide if I want to buy it or not after I hear clips of it on record store websites. These labels are all in Europe and I don't think are with the RIAA so hopefully they won't be affected. I know universal, sony, bmg, don't make any good trance. Deepak
American?
John Susek
Yes, the RIAA won, and some people think that they have an argument for why sharing music in such a way is legitimate (fair use?), but for the sake of the community, I think its inappropriate to whine about them wanting to remove the copyrighted material off of their servers, now that they pretty much have to keep it off in order to stay in business.
The filter blocked probably around 80% of my files, and most of the ones it didn't block, I am surprised that it didn't.
It's no big deal that these pig-latin encoders and name-scramblers don't work or aren't available. If people just spend a bit of time and are creative, there are LOTS of filenames that will pass the filter!
For instance...I renamed this:
"Nirvana - In Utero - Rape Me.mp3"
to this:
"Nirvana - In Yootero - Have Your Way With Me.mp3"
another one would be this:
"Pink Floyd - Dark Side Of The Moon - Any Colour You Like.mp3"
to this:
"Pink Floyd - Daaark Side Of The Moooon - Any Color You Enjoy.mp3"
It's actually kinda fun...some of the filenames you can come up with can be pretty funny.
Time is fun when you're having flies.
Time is fun when you're having flies.
-Kermit the Frog
This brings up an interesting point that I've been thinking about. I have around 150 CD's, and a LOT of them are scratched/damaged/broken, and a lot are lost (For instance, I had quite a few broken and lost due to a car accident recently).
If the RIAA is only concerned about "their intellectual property," then why must we pay twice for intellectual property we already "licensed" if our cd gets damaged? I guess the same would generally go for software as well, but I don't hear software manufacturers whining and suing their customers.
My main point here is that I think the record companies should allow us, if our cd was damaged, to bring it (or send it) somewhere, and have it replaced, maybe just for a shipping fee or the cost of the disc itself. If they would do this, I would definitely end my RIAA boycott.
Time is fun when you're having flies.
Time is fun when you're having flies.
-Kermit the Frog
Mojonation.net
"just connect this to..."
BZZT.
Liberty.
Now I had no trouble finding it on the filtered Napster. Go figure.
By the way, I was legitimately seeking this song, cuz my Ride the Lightning cd got too scratched up. Crazy eh...a legit use of Napster to download a copyrighted song?
Clients Gigs
Napster 6830 1926
OpenNap 28320 33009
What can I say?
No amount of filters/lawsuits will stop the 31337 underground. I don't agree with them - but I feel a bit sorry for the RIAA - trying to take on the 31337 underground. They obviously don't know who they're messing with. These guys are the mafia of the internet. So get their ISPs to ban them, I hear you say. Sure, but when that was tried with one of the 31337 leaders, the 31337 group took out the ISP - DDoSed it to death. If they can't do that they'll attack the upstream.
They have literally thousands of automated vulnerability programs searching for open servers to build new platforms to attack again. You can't stop them - they are the 31337 underground. I know, I've tried to stop them. It's not their abilities (well, in most cases at least) but their sheer numbers that make them impossible to defeat. Also, they are not centralized, so law-based methods won't help - they are in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, UK, USA, Canada, Germany, France, Russia, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, Japan, Hong Kong, Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Mexico...yet they all speak a common language - "31337 h4x0r 5p34k."Their average conversation is this:
- y0...- wh4t n3w sh1t y0 g0tz?
- k00l sh1t- FTPx0r d4 1nf0...
Yes, you definitely don't know what you're messing with. I don't agree with what they're doing either, but trust me - there is no way to stop them. They are the 31337 - Elite in the 31337 speak....and that they are, Elite 31337 h4x0rs on the information superhighway...A long term strategy to deal with them must be formulated - that I'll grant you. Because if they aren't stopped eventually, 31337 5p34k will be the world's official language. These guys make other terrorist groups look like the tooth fairy for one reason - all other dictators so far have done their work through military force - therefore they could be combatted with military force....but the new era will see increasingly complicated telecommunications systems taking over functions of the very human world. And the 31337 will control that, unless we formulate a plan to stop them within the next 5 years.
There is one man that needs to be targetted - the Dark Lord of the Internet, a 31337 h4x0r known as "Goatboy25". A 25-year old 31337 h4x0r who is the New Dark Lord. These are dangerous times on the Internet.Dangerous times on the Internet indeed.
"A few atoms won't even light a match" - Dr Jones, 1933
The current American popularity recipe is two equal parts of cheap and easy. The easy part just flew out the window. Even though it is still VERY easy, it is not simplistic. The cheap part is going next, so can I download "Taps.mp3?"
----------------------
The recording industry didn't shut Napster down. They are bleeding it to death.
;-)
Banning users wasn't going to shut Napster down because a banned user could fix their Windows registry and signon with a new ID. The IDs also required no verification.
Screening the shared files for copyrighted material and automatically not sharing them is a killer though. Nobody is going to bother with rediculous naming schemes to share their content - there are easier things to do. (Like BearShare, or other Gnutella clients.)
My take on it? Gnutella all the way. Now if it were just a bit more usable.
Napster would have been a great service if the quality of the MP3s was limited to 96kbps or 112kbps. Something that is similar to broadcast radio quality, but not CD quality. Then people could have continued to sample and enjoy new music, while having an incentive to go buy the real thing if they wanted a higher quality version. Just like we have today with radio. Too bad the recording industry has cut off their nose to spite their face.
On the bright side, Polish speakers would probably find it a seamless transition.
This next song is very sad. Please clap along. -- Robin Zander
Good: I don't have to worry about 100+ irrevelant titles covered by the RIAA.
Bad: The filters can also possibly block out the non RIAA covered titles.
I haven't listened to radio in over 3 months, and have picked up exactly one domestically released CD in the past year, and that was still an import!
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
But then again, I could be completely off-base.
Btw... why does courtney love care if Napster's full of techno? Techno is good :)
Using Napigator, I've noticed the reliability of MusicCity's server's has dropped. For example, opennap1.musiccity.com is down at 50% reliability. In fact, at the time of writing, none of their servers have a rating of higher than 82%, but a week ago they were in the 90's. Seems like their servers can't handle the load, which is a shame.
It's probably just as good, and accesses a deceny number of servers... You can find it at http://www.winmx.com
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
All the labels would have to do is take their digital masters, encode the song - or not encode it and charge twenty cents. And put them on a web/ftp server with micropayment capability or something.
RIAA labels could easily do something to make it worth 10-20 cents. Getting a song direct from a digital master, rather than ripped by Joe Schmoe or recorded off the radio, is almost enough by itself. If they would just spell everything correctly in the ID3 tags, that would be enough for me too. People wouldn't get "disconnected" in the middle of a download - another plus. There are all sorts of other ways to add value too.
There is a lot of copyrighted music that is not to be found in the song lists that Napster has been told to block. There is e.g. a world of music outside of the US. It's not suddenly legal to copy copyrighed songs that happen not to be on those lists.
britney spears: 15 results
metallica: 100 results LOL
ac/dc: 100 results
dave matthews band: 100 results
soundgarden: 90 results
pink floyd: 100 results
christina aguilera: 23 results
stevie ray vaughan: 100 results
rolling stones: 100 results
nsync: 100 results
david bowie: 60 results
otis rush: 0 results
jimi hendrix
it seems like they only filter out britney spears and christina aguilera (otis rush is always hard to find), that's a good thing as far as i'm concerned, less bandwidth taken by trading stupid pulp music. If this is the only effect the riaa has then they might have even done a good thing...
downloading mp3's is not theft, it's copyright violation. Theft and copyright violation are different things, copyright violation might leed to loss of income but it doesn't decrease the value or amount of property like theft does. If I copy a cd it only harms the copyright holder if I don't buy that cd because I have copied it. If I steal a cd from a store it decreases the value of their inventory....
I'm not saying that copyright violation is not wrong, I'm just saying that copyright violation is not the same as theft. Record and software (media ?) companies would like you to equate copyright violation with theft, but they're not the same...
I agree with the parent post, because of Napster I have discovered a lot of new music. I intend to buy every single cd once I graduate and start making some decent money.
"-but that means there are 40% still going on. Not an insignifigant number."
Especially considering thats 40% of however many billions they had before the "filtering".
No small number indeed, still quite enough to show the RIAA that Napster is still a valuable service, even if its "copyrighted material" isn`t traded.
No pleasure, no rapture, no exquisite sin greater.
It's amazing how many parodies get attributed to Al...
Even stuff that's completely different from his style, with a completely different vocalist, if it's a odd parody, it's by 'Weird Al'.
Dumb kids.
RG
----
Deepthroat my submarine, swallow my seamen.
If I wanted Metallica, I could go to the store and buy it. But I still haven't been able to find the DJ Juergen mix of "Better Off Alone" on a CD. Maybe I just live in the wrong country.
So, at least some of us can still listen to cool music as we fight the tyranny.
--brian
it's only going to reduce the number of "mainstreamers" getting mp3s, and in all honesty, those are the people the record companies should be worried about.
It's the mainstreamers that purchase albums like britney spears, n'sync, aguiliera, etc...but because they only listen to the albums for a few months until the trend changes, they feel no loyalty to the band, and have no reason to purchase the cd.
the people who have been using mp3s since way before napster, have other means of getting them: ftps, irc, and private forums immediately come to mind. and ftp can NOT be stopped unless the whole protocol is banned (won't happen) Us, on the other hand, do purchase cds even after downloading mp3s. Yes, I have about a hundred mp3 cds that I didn't buy. But I've also bought well over a hundred cds because of mp3s that I first downloaded.
No I don't condone downloading mp3s, and yes, it is theft. But economically, me downloading mp3s is making them more money than if i wasn't.
and napster's death isn't going to stop me or millions of other music lovers. as i said, there's other ways that are faster, more efficient, and more reliable.
"Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto"
(I am a man: nothing human is alien to me)
My only political goal is to see to it that no political party achieves its goals.
I think the traffic has dropped just because most people are too scared to use it now cuz they are afraid they might get sued or something. I know of a couple of people who don't know any better and they don't want to use it anymore.
...All I can say is that my life is pretty strange...
I wish I could see a plot of the traffic on Napster over the last year or so. Does anyone know if there's a chart anywhere?
I bet the 60% drop is from the recent peak when people thought Napster was going to be shut down. Or maybe they are just saying 60% fewer files are being shared? Well duh if they are filtering them.
I tried searching for stuff like Eminem and Britney last night and it was all still there. A few spelling variations but not hard to find. In fact if I didn't know anything about the court battles I wouldn't even have noticed much.
who cares about Napster... just use WinMX and connect to several OpenNap-servers simultaneously. Mmm... ogg!
I've come to... anesthetize you!
No surprize that the volume went down. What I don't understand is why I never see scour mentioned when people talk about other options to download what Napster provided. It can be found here: Scour.Com It may not have a linux interface, but then again, neither did Napster when it started.
http://www.codewolf.com - Just good stuff to waste time
The bottom line is that this will only slow down song swapping, but now that people have seen what technology can do for their songlists, no one will ever go back to only buying CDs.
=-=-=-=-=
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Oh bother.
There is not a direct link between the two. In our curent situation, you have no choice, you can't download a filtered song (at least in theory, I haven't tried). If they charge, then there is a clear option for getting that music with the record company's blessings. Not that their blessings are a concern to me, but it might entice some people. 60% for filtering doesn't mean an even smaller population will pay for the service without filtering.
I really hate signatures, but go to my website.
Well, I guess I just answered my own question... Crowded House isn't being filtered. Phew.
Hell, it's not even making them any money.
Let's face it, the average music listener is busy listening to Brittany or N'Sync, and the only reason for downloading that crap is that your folks aren't paying you enough allowance to buy the CD.
What I loved about Napster was the stuff that is copywrited, yet not for sale. Rare tracks, bootlegs, unreleased cuts, out of print EPs... that is the stuff dreams are made of.
The labels aren't going to burn a CD and print a jewel case up so that they can sell you your "I had it but a friend borrowed it and never gave it back so now it's out of print and I can't get it *sob*" music.
But, they could have allied with Napster to provide work that they no longer sell to to audiophiles and hard core fans. Let's face it, if the RIAA made any money off of such a partnership, it would be more than they are making now. I would have paid for the Marilyn Manson and Nine Inch Nails cover of Down in the Park, but it's not for sale.
Not to mention that it would have been an example, something for related industries to emulate. Ever tried to find an out of print book? Wouldn't it be nice if you could download it (even for a small fee), rather than scour used book stores, estate sales, flea markets, etc.?
The labels really fucked up a golden opportunity. For shame.
It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not. - Andre Gide
Actually, it's probably just the fact that only a relatively small percentage of the copyrighted songs are being blocked. The RIAA had to submit a list of songs and possible filenames that they wanted blocked to Napster...they couldn't just say "Block all copyrighted music!" I believe there were about 155,000 or so songs on the list the RIAA finally put together, though I think they can add to that list any time they want. Naturally, they wanted to block the most popular songs first, so they went after the "pop" artists and their most popular works. However, there are many Napster users who listen to other, less popular music, and that music is still being shared on Napster. For example, of the 720 or so songs in my file list, only about 150 or so are being blocked. Most of these are the few pop songs I actually like, and some of the songs by the more popular artists in the genres I listen to. The other 570 songs or so are not being filtered. Several of the artists I listen to are not being filtered at all, like Angels of Venice and Dead Can Dance, because they just aren't very popular. Thus, if you prefer less popular artists or music, you can still find a lot of it on Napster. If you're into boy bands and bubblegum pop, though, you're probably out of luck (not to mention out of your mind... ;-D ).
DennyK
I do a search for "Metallica" and still get results...
Oh well, I'll keep using it until they either shut down the servers, or they come to my house and arrest me.
And somehow I don't think either of those is really going to happen....
Caino
Don't touch my .sig there!
I did, however find this story on The Register that claims the number of transfers has dropped by 50%, so my original points are still valid.
I see two possible causes for this, first, the filter may be ineffective, and copyrighted works may still be being traded.
Second, the RIAA greatly underestimated the number of legitimate downloads going through the network, or fudged the figures a bit to improve their position during the trial. Maybe 40% of Napster's users really *do* use the service to trade bootlegs, live recordings, and other unregulated music.
It used to annoy me that recent pop tunes made up the bulk of what was available on Napster, but now I'm grateful because that's all the RIAA seems to care about blocking. Bartok, Mozart, and Hindemith are as easy for me to get as ever. :)
The coolest voice ever.
The recently-posted commentary suggesting that the RIAA will lose its only real adversary by shutting down Napster seems to be pretty close to the mark. The poster of that opinion pointed out that Napster might be the only entity that the RIAA will be able to negotiate/bargain with, and that the Recording industry should take the $1B and run. I think the recent surge in the use of other file sharing networks has lent some credence to the article. I think it's entirely possible that these services will take over and the sharing services will all be 'underground'. Good luck to the RIAA then.
Like the old saying goes... If you outlaw mp3s, everyone will be an outlaw.
This is a very half-assed attempt at a filtering system on Napster's part. A simple search for Metallica still yields plenty of unmodified( no Met4llica's or Meta11ica's) results. Any novice programmer could implement a search algorithm to pick out these strings.
--
--
silence is poetry.
There goes that famous billion dollar.
--
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
I noticed some suttle differances yesterday. If you searched on Wednesday for "Oops," hoping to find the Britney Spears song I noticed some suttle differences yesterday. For example if you searched for "Oops ... I did it again!", you would find the song. But there are now only two or three different versions of the song, where in the past there might have been dozens. There are still many copies of "Oops ... I Farted Again," the Weird Al Yankovic parody of the song.
Diplomacy is the art of letting people have your way
people ARE leaving napster.... find out *where* they are going at NAPanon, a support group for homeless Napster users!
Absolute Stupidity
http://www.13kingdoms.com/odd/
Damn the record companies. They take too much away from the artists when they produce albums. If the record companies took less percentage of the profit, Napster would still be running. People should be able to "share the wealth."