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Napster Reprieve
camusflage writes: "As if to try to prove that Napster doesn't suck, the 9th Circuit Appeals Court overturned Marilyn Patel's July 11th order that Napster remain down. Now they've got the green light to turn it back on, blocking "only" 99% of copyrighted songs, instead of the full 100% Judge Patel required of them. Full details here."
I'll save everyone the trouble:
63 "I don't need Napster, I've got WinMX/AudioGalaxy/Gnutella/etc." posts
8 "Like it or not: what you're doing is illegal." posts
38 "Napster was dead a long time ago." posts
24 "I thought this was supposed to be 'Stuff That Matters'?" posts
3 "First Posts"
40 "I hate the recording companies!" posts
58 "I'm sick of hearing about Napster." posts
There. Now we can just end this topic and get on with more important things. What's that? Good software takes ten years?...
right here
work, work, work.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
... was on the CNN story ( http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/internet/07/19/napste r.offline.ap/index.html ):
Napster immediately sought relief from the appeals court, which overturned Patel in a two-sentence order.
Two sentences? This must have set a record for brevity in a court case. Now if only the DMCA could get overturned in such a concise manner:
"We find the Digital Millenium Copyright Act to be a vile piece of underhanded manipulation designed to screw over the average consumer for the benefit of record, movie execs, and - indirectly - corrupt or incompetent congresscritters; DeCSS for all!!
"(P.S. We'd like to see Judge Kaplan in our offices post haste for a severe beat down.)"
Ahhhhhhhh ....
-jdm
Really, who cares? I've got Gnutella and WinMX and I'm sticking to them.
Napster's only chance was to get a tidal wave of defence for its actions, and it failed. In its favour, it inspired a lot of people, and its caused a lot people to rethink their beliefs on intellectual property.
But it's dead and gone now, no point worrying about the corpse.
_____
My Journal
Last report I saw, traffic to Napster's web site is down 99%. They must have TONS of over-capacity to serve those pages now...
---
At least mafia-owned pizzarias make excellent pizza. Compare to Bill Gates.
Almost everybody left Napster, and with the 99% blocking, I don't think Napster will ever be a popular service anew.
The court decision doesn't change anything. Instead of ordering Napster to close its doors, they have a green light, but they must block anything and lose all their visitors. The result is the same, only the form changes.
-- Pure FTP server - Upgrade your FTP server to something simple and secure.
{{.sig}}
This article's been here for a little over 12 hours, and it only has 18 replies.
That speaks louder than the comments.
You still have to fight the lower court fight like your life depends on it -- because it does. If you surrender a technicality that turns out to be pivotal issue at the higher level, you lose the greater battle. It can be hard to figure out, at this level, what the pivotal issues are going to be.
This is one of those instances of "somebody's got to do it". Given that the fortune he made was made through the sharing of music, I can see him being willing to tithe a portion of it to the fight over the peoples' rights to share their beloved art. -- and if he wins, he may still make money out of it.
I know that it may not make sense from a pure greed point of view -- but not everybody operates from a pure greed perspective. Some people take on battles for a larger section of society than just themselves. I think that it's something that we should honor -- even if we wouldn't do it ourselves.
--
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
...namely the "Beowulf Cluster" and "All your base" bitches.
You're using her as bait, Master!
...but I've found that WinMX has not been blocked at all and I can find any MP3 I want, anytime... or any movie, or image, or zip file, or... Whatever whoever on the network happens to be sharing at the time. There is a problem with queues not being open or available, but at least you can see who has queue slots open on a search... Very nice little program, if you've never used it before. Give it a whirl before the RIAA attacks it too. (And forgive me if this comment leads to its attack.)
Legal prescident is interesting that way. Even if the company will never provide a usefuk service again, the legal prescidents set by the case will stand. IF it is allowed that the service be shut down for failure to completely filter the copyrighted music it is required to filter, then a dangerous prescident has been set.
IF instead, they made a good faith effort to comply with the court order, to the limits of modern technology, then that should be recognized by the court as a sufficient level of complience. It is a vary dangerous prescident to set that a court can order something which is not technically possible.
--CTH
--
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
Nobody cares about Napster! I've gone back to borrowing CDs from my friends (yes I know it's illegal lending) and going to friend's homes to listen to their CDs (yes I know it's illegal public performance) and humming tunes in the shower (yes I know it's illegal to create derivative works without permission). So can we please just not hear about Napster any more? In fact, can /. filter out articles based on words in the title? Hmm.
You let somebody else listen to your 1000 CDs? That's intellectual property theft! You pirate! You should go to jail for illegally distributing the music on your CDs! Remember kids, sharing is stealing! Protect those CDs better next time!
(in case it isn't clear, that's a joke.)
Napster has proven the old addage, "Give someone an inch and they will take a mile". Napster should have *never* given an inch to the RIAA. Once they did the RIAA just kept asking for more & more until Napster was effectively useless. Court orders be damned, let the US Supreme Court decide on the matter and burn up all the VC money and go out like a rock star not a punk :^)
Space may be the final frontier, but it's made in a Hollywood basement. --Red Hot Chili Peppers, Californication
From the article
The Recording Industry Association of America (news - web sites) noted that the court only temporarily lifted Patel's order and will hear arguments on the case later this year. At that time, the industry said it expects to prevail.
It's more like a stay of execution rather than an overturning.