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Napster Alternatives Coming Strong
viking099 writes "File swapping programs such as Morpheus, Grokster, and Kazaa (all based on the same software from FastTrak) have grown over 480% in the past 4 months, and are set to break the 1.57 million concurrent connection record that Napster set." So who exactly is surprised by this?
My entire apt. complex got put on notice of "termintation of Internet service" by minions of Sony unless we stopped allowing uploads from Kazaa, etc.
And someone might be walking into a liquor store with a balaclava and a handgun because he's cold and wants to open his vodka with a bullet. The reality is that the OVERWHELMING (meaning >99.999999999999999%. This is not a scientific number but I'd wager that it's accurate) use of Napster and derivatives is for the trading of copyright infringed music and applications. Just because some guy in somewhere/someplace uses it for a legit purpose doesn't legitimize the overwhleming number of people who don't/
The irony of all of this is the early days of Napster when the lawyers were first starting up their engines: Here on Slashdot and elsewhere "Freedom" advocates were yapping about how Napster gives garage bands the type of exposure that the big names have, and how it equalized the playing field and now the Big Record Co. no longer held all the cards. Viva la revolution! Of course what was ACTUALLY traded on Napster and friends? Britney Spears, Backdoor Boys, etc. The usual pop garbage.
I've been using LimeWire for all my file collection needs. Windows and Linux clients available. Great app.
http://www.limewire.org/
--- witty signature
As far as the litigation is concerned are they going after the individual companies that make the wrappers for the Fastrak engine or Fastrak itself? Are the other engines used being pursued as well? Stuff like WinMX and all the other sharing programs use a similiar if not the same engine.
Because the GPL is giving extras rights to the people who use the software, and violating the GPL is removing these rights.
:-)
:-)
That's the easy one. Now for the controversial one, cos it's technically stealing, but most people don't see it that way, and there's lot's of good reasons why.
Downloading music off the internet is quite often a very easy way to find out whether or not you like a band, or whether or not the latest Jamiroquai album is worth buying (my verdict - yes it is). And then there's those times when perhaps you like ONE song on an album, and it was never released as a single. Not many people are going to buy the album for one song. Download it off the internet? Sure they will.
If someone is that keen on pirating songs anyway, they normally find a copy of the CD from somewhere (mates, library, whatever) and rip the songs from there, because it doesn't take so long - stopping services like Napster won't halt piracy much.
Again, most people who use Napster I guess are the same kind who visit Warez sites. They might happen to have several gigs worth of downloaded stuff which they would have NEVER bought, but hey, they don't actually use it for anything worthwile either so who cares?
And that's the thing, if you really like a particular band, then you will buy their stuff. I love reading Terry Pratchett, so I buy all of the books. I don't have enough money to buy the Hardback editions, so I wait for paperback. I love listening to Jamiroquai, so I go out and buy their albums. I'm not a fan of Robert Palmer, but I liked Addicted to love, so I downloaded it. I don't like it enough to go out and buy it though, and I don't listen to it enough to warrant buying it either. So Robert Palmers not lost anything (I wouldn't have bought it anyway), I've gained a bit because I can listen to it occasionally.
But hey, maybe I'll start downloading and listening to some of his other stuff, and maybe I'll like it. Then I'd go out and buy the album, if for no other reason than to rip it to ogg vorbis cleanly at 160bps
Have I done this in the past? Yes, I bought the Bloodhound Gand single "The Bad Touch" after finding it on Napster.
And then there are all those songs on Napster which you can't find in the shops easily, such as that Irish Drinking Song, "Bugger Off" (If I see an album in the shops with that on, I'd buy it too
But hey, that's just why I download stuff. Perhaps other people have more compelly reasons.
Since Congress has made the amazing discovery that porn is traded via P2P and the RIAA is now beginning to pursue these new P2P services, I'm rather surprised that the RIAA has failed to use that as an advantage.
"And look, Mr. Government Official (tm), you can prevent kids from seeing PORN if you shut these services down, not just benefit our "amazingly creative" artists!"
Do you like German cars?
For every head the RIAA cuts off, three more show up. After a while, you get the idea that maybe cutting off heads is not the right approach.
Flaw in the analogy: the RIAA is no hero here.
OK, I have to admit, that even though I do download MP3 from sites like MP3.com (and have bought CDs from there as a result), I've never used any of these peer-to-peer open-source alternatives.
Are any of them truly IP anonymous services that encyrpt it in such a way that they can't tell who's hosting it and the network is randomized by region (IP wise) so you can pop up and drop off without major problems?
Obviously, as someone who's sold my writings, software (mostly done as freeware), and who supports musicians promoing their work without the bloodsuckers ripping them off, I'm totally into the concept. But I really don't know the pros and cons of the alternatives now, and now that we've got Super Carnivore out there from the feds, we have to assume RIAA's breathing down people's necks.
Anyone willing to be unbiased and tell me about which is which and if there are any that are upcoming that might meet the standard?
The main thing I hated about Napster was you could tell it was going to turn commercial in a bad way.
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--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
"Any artist you talk to will tell you that the best way to 'get big' is to give your music away, getting it into the most hands and ears possible. There are dozens and dozens of examples I could cite here."
You're not looking far enough. I'll relate to you a story from a relative who 'finds' talent.
He's found three good bands who are still playing clubs (one group actually has a busker's license and plays in subway stations). He approches the company and says "hey, great new talent, they're fresh --"
"Are they black?"
"... pardon me?"
"Unless they have a black singer, or they're singing black music, it's not going to sell, so I don't want to hear about it."
Now this was unheard of. After some nosing around and asking some of the big city music retailers, he finds out it's true: so-called "black" music (hip-hop, R&B, rap, house) is still selling, but retail sales for rock, pop and alternative have sunk. I'll admit it's a bit of a jump, but a simple solution is because people affluent enough to own computers and net connections listen to rock, pop and alternative but not hip-hop, R&B, rap and house.
The anecdote made it easy to see the feedback signals: Music you like gets on Napster, you download it, the money that you'd use for buying it stays home. Music producers notice the sales for your taste in music is dropping, and divert resources to music you don't like because it's better sales. The agents that find this music (for distribution by the producers) pass over the musicians you like, leaving them in the subway stations, the cafes and busking on street corners -- nowhere near you, and they certainly won't appear on Napster or Napster-a-likes.
The pursuit of immediate gratification is a mistake that we (western culture) never seem to learn from. Legislating away P2P filesharing is *not* a solution; it's in the same vein of immediate gratification that has made this a problem (not to mention the can-of-worms or Pandora's Box nature of technology).
You've got me curious about this... I'd like to know what sort of non-RFC-compliant things an unpriveleged userland application could do that would cause so much trouble. Do you have any specific examples? And what sort of "application-priority procedures" do you use, because I'm not familiar with that term either. I'm passingly familiar with QoS and related issues, but I'm afraid I don't really understand.
They can fight against Napster, Morpheus, audiogalaxy Musicity, Kazaa, Gnutella... and they might win individually, closing Napster, maybe Kazaa, defeating Limewire, but it is quite stupid to think that they can stop it.
Napster closed, so what? Alternatives appeared, and for everyone that is shut down, 5 new ones will appear.
I can tell you, a lot of people demands this service, now it is on the mainstream public, some of them have a big time trying to find where are the downloaded files the first time but they use the services anyways.
How wonderful it is to get that song, now! It cannot be stopped... it will never be, this way is better and besides it, much cheaper.
Now my advice for the music industry: it cannot be stopped, join the wave! you'll have to stop charging 12$ per CD, maybe give them away free, focus on promoting concerts, live music, offer a file-downloading service, flat-rate (it will have to be cheap though!) and always highest-quality non-broken non buggy-names MP3s and I would be on it.
Boys, reshape your business or it will die... I think it will die.
I only work for the campus network admin, so I don't have a complete understanding of what we do and how it works, but I'll give it a shot.
As I understand it, Morpheus does not heed the various TCP/IP limitations concerning speed of connection attempts, numbers of concurrent connections/connection attempts, etc. Therefore, trying to limit its access to bandwidth through TCP/IP traffic shaping doesn't work the same way it does for say, Napster or Gnutella. With those applications, we were simply able to assign them a low priority, such that they would only get bandwidth which wasn't being used by more critical applications. With Morpheus, we've had to impose a router-level traffic cap on the port, which is an imperfect fix because a lot of the time, it would be perfectly alright for Morpheus to be using say 60% of the campus bandwidth when nobody else is interested in doing much. Instead, it always has to be confined to 15% or so.
Ironically, the cheats that Morpheus uses to get more bandwidth actually resulted in it getting less in this situation.