Slashdot Mirror
Napster Clawing Back
D Anderson n'Swaart writes: "As the BBC reports in this article, Napster is set to return shortly, as a subscription-based sharing service, a concept facing a less-than-rosy future. The report gives a brief history of Napster, and the current state of the various lawsuits that were brought against it. The briefs: Napster is going to have to fork over a total of around $36M USD, $10M of which is downpayment on future royalties." And whatAnotherAolUser writes that the company "agreed to pay $26 million to settle a copyright lawsuit with songwriters and music publishers, and to make royalty payments to the writers and publishers once it started a fee-based service." Guess it depends where you start counting.
Note that the $26 million settlement is only with publishers and songwriters; there is still the distributers (aka RIAA) that have ligitigation against Napster that must be overcome before Napster can continue with the subscription service.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
Can a college/isp/company/etc fire/kick off/expell someone for downloading MP3's anymore if they're doing it through this system?
... I believe the main complaints from colleges etc. about Napster were the amount of data being transferred, not the legality of the data.
Yes
You're out of date, mate. You can already share files, and there is a hack to do multisource downloads. There is already a gui which uses it, as well as the 'official' Java gui. And the correct link is here
The nicest thing is no spyware, not even registration. It is as good as napster ever was for music, plus films, software, etc.
I still use gnapster and download plenty of music via opennap servers. Admittedly, the volume isn't what it once was, but you you can still find an awful lot of music.
Kinda like XM satellite radio being launched today in Dallas an San Diego - $10 a month for something you can already get for free, PLUS you have to pay for an expensive new radio. Yeah, like many people are going to go for that!
Yeah, look at what dismal failures DSS satellite and cable TV are! Who would pay for TV?
Oh...wait...
Seriously, tho, where I live (Denver) the local radio (all run by Rear Channel, of course) is so piss-poor I'm considering sat radio.
I'm sick of inane DJs and identical playlists of mainstream butt-rock that Rear Channel stations continuously spew.
The only decent channel I have heard is KVCU out of Boulder, but they're low power and half the time I can't get reception.
I heard somewhere tho that XM has commercials, which, IMO, sucks if I'm paying for it.
Sirius (a competing sat radio company) says theirs is commercial-free, so I'll prolly look into that.
C-X C-S
As reynaert pointed out, there is also an open source client (called giFT) for FastTrack, the protocol that Kazaa/Morpheus/Grokster use.
;)
;)
I'm reposting it since reynaert gave a bad link to it
I haven't tried out giFT yet, but I use Kazaa occasionally, and the number of files and users on the network is astounding (~half million!) You can also regularly find movies on FastTrack that are still in theaters, but don't tell anyone you heard it from me
It was a new, and refreshing phenomenon. Back when Napster was a thrice a day Slashdot phenomenon, I couldn't block the whole Music category because I liked to hear about non-Napster related music things. Not that there were many, but a blanket Jon Katz style ban wasn't appropriate.
Now that it's rising from the grave, can we make a special "Napster" category so I never have to hear another goddamn thing about this particular silly company again? I'd love to hear stuff about filesharing and music licenses, but Napster's death and resurrection do not interest me.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
Sorry to rain on your parade but...
Phish isnt on tour anymore,
And the Greatful Dead kinda stopped touring since the big Garcia died in the early 90s, but they have toured since with different frontmen but its not the same
BUT! There are a HELL of a lot of really really really talented musicians of all genres that constantly tour. Especially within the indie labels.
"Think, It aint illegal.....yet" - George Clinton
WinMX is an excellent replacement for Napster.
You need to use it with an updated server list. The default list is pretty
useless.
Instructions
http://www.trippynet.f2s.com/nservers25.dat.
You'll have to rename it to nservers.dat
Choose the final option, "ignore". It may prompt you for a default login
and password. You can enter anything for these values.
section and start searching.
Notes
WinMX searches on several networks at once, so results tend to trickle in
rather than hitting you all at once like with Napster. This can get annoying
since it sorts new results on the fly which means that previous results will
jump around in the list. You may wish to let it go for a few seconds, or
until you get the results you want, and then hit the "stop" button to
prevent new results from coming in.
Also, set your defaults for screening files. I go with "cable or better" for
connection and a bitrate of 128 k (only). Some audiophiles find this
insufficient and go for a higher bitrate, but to most ears, the only
difference is the larger file size and download time of mp3's with high
bitrates.
WinMX will find everything you search on, much like Napster, but the
connections aren't quite as reliable. If you get "connection refused" or
most other errors in red text, forget it and move in. If it says "busy, but
may join queue", you can join the remote queue by right-clicking on it.
WinMX will update your status periodically to tell you your position in the
queue.
It also works for other file types, like pictures and videos. You can :)
probably guess which types of multimedia are most commonly traded