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?

Comments

GPL and Napster-like things

[deanj]

Someone please explain to me why people think violating GPL is bad (I agree, it is), but why trading music via Napstar-like things is OK?

Re:GPL and Napster-like things

[Sentry21]

Argument 1: Because the 'big bad music companies' are companies, and gouge the artists, supposedly. Artists hardly get any money from a $16 CD. Theoretically, this justifies not letting the artists get anything at all, by pirating the CD.

Argument 2: Stealing music helps sales. The first year that Napster was out, sales of CDs went up by a lot. People argue that this is because people could 'try out' the music. I argue that this is because dial-up users pay more for their dial-up connection than they do for CDs, so they try one song and then buy the CD. Broadband users have no such problems. Also, I'd expect that people just bought more CDs through normal market forces.

I agree it's rather hypocritical. Me, I pirate music only to the point where the CD isn't worth getting. If I like a song, I'll download the song. If I like an album, I'll buy the album. If I can't find the album in stores, I'll download it.

--Dan

Re:GPL and Napster-like things

[Verteiron]

It's not that it's ok, and despite popular opinion, whether or not it's ok isn't the point here. The point is that instead of trying to find the source of the problem, the music companies are trying to demonize P2P as a whole and litigate it out of existance, along with a few other things. The question they should be asking themselves is not "how can we shut down all peer-to-peer systems to curb copyright violation?". The question they should be asking is "why are people setting up these elaborate networks to share music in the first place?"

The answer is not to destroy existing systems and spend all your time and money chopping off heads of the hydra. The old adage "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" springs to mind here. It's becoming increasingly clear that P2P file sharing is here to stay, and no amount of litigation and FUD-spreading is going to stop it. The music companies need to solve the problem by adapting themselves to the new way that things are going to work. Offer people a better system than the existing over-priced retail one.

How? I don't know. But I bet if you turned all the resources that the music industry is spending on trying to squash the future of music towards finding an answer to the problem, you'd come up with one.

Re:GPL and Napster-like things

[uchian]

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.

Re:GPL and Napster-like things

[slow_flight]

You aren't 'trading' anything if you still retain the original to be 'traded' again. What you are actually doing is bootlegging and bartering copyrighted music. Rationalize it to yourself however you choose - at the end of the day you are stealing.

Re:GPL and Napster-like things

[pcmills]

I guess you need this plugin

Re:GPL and Napster-like things

[Danse]

No.. the record companies should realize that their years of gouging customers are coming to an end. They've already been smacked by the FCC for price fixing. That has been going on for years. THEY ARE THIEVES every bit as much as people who download music and don't pay for it. All of their hysterics really seem like the pot calling the kettle black. They don't give a damn about artists, except how much money they can make off of them. That they tell us otherwise is just another indicator of their hypocrisy.

You are correct in saying that people download music to avoid paying for it, but you don't go far enough with the explanation. Why do they want to avoid paying for it? Maybe because retail prices on CDs are outrageous? Maybe because they know that artists get only a tiny tiny piece, if anything of that money? Maybe because they know that they are being screwed by a cartel of record companies that are set on gouging consumers? Maybe because copyright laws have been so distorted by money from the entertainment industry that there is no longer any public interest in them now?

Re:GPL and Napster-like things

[Danse]

You can try to call it something else, but using illegal tactics to screw customers out of their money is just as much stealing as infringing on copyrights is stealing. Why is it just "disagreeable behavior" when the record industry deprives consumers of money through illegal acts, but "criminal behavior" when it happens the other way around?

What's more, your opinions do not represent a majority view.

Do the majority of Americans know a single thing about the record industry or copyright law? Hell, most of them don't even know who their own House representative is. I'm sorry to break it to you, but if we have to depend on what the majority knows or believes, we're in deep shit. Now if you'd said "majority of people who are fairly well informed on the subject, then you might be onto something. But I'd really like to see some evidence of that.

Of course they will break the record

[Judg3]

IMHO at least, these services are superior to Napster in any way. I used the Morpheus client mainly, and loved it. Being able to preview mp3s/wavs in the client (like napster) and movies too (not like napster). Plus, in these guys your not limited to just .mp3s. You could search for mpeg, jpg, exe, wma, avi, you name it.

Plus, they tell you who has the biggest pipe according to them, not what the users says he has. I love it!

Too bad...

[Drizzten]

...they're all getting sued. By whom? Guess who.

SHHH!!!

[SpookComix]

Quiet down!

I make it a point to not tell most people I know about Morpheus. Why? Because it works, it's fast, I can find almost everything I search for, and most of all, they're not yet attracting enough attention to get shut down by the court system!

So please, for the good of those of us who use and enjoy the service, let's just keep this our little secret, ok?

--SC

Subtext: RIAA warming up the attack dogs?

[dave-fu]

I'm wondering how the court's recent ruling against the RIAA will translate into (in)action against these newcomers?
They're hitting the bigtime in terms of usage, but I don't see them having the mindshare (feh on marketroid lingo, but it works) that Napster did. People know Napster and what it's all about: the rest of these are just stopgap solutions to find what they're after. I don't think people can ever be passionate about, say, Kazaa like they were about Napster, but maybe that's just me.

Xolox

[Jagasian]

GNUTella still kicks ass... better than Napster ever was at least. You can get faster more reliable downloads with the Xolox , which uses multi-source segmented downloading among other advanced file transfer features that make using the GNUTella network highly effective! The client basically downloads the same file concurrently from multiple sources, giving you greater overall transfer rates. The only problem with Xolox is that it currently only has a MS Windows port.

GNUtella is open, free, and it works great! Forget about these commercial closed networks.

Re:Xolox

[nabucco]

I'm a Gnutella fan as well. It's just a matter of time before the RIAA closes down closed networks like the FastTrak (Kazaa/Morpheus) network now is with these new authentication schemes.

Right now Gnutella is the most popular open P2P network which has open source servents (like Gnucleus). It also has some brain-dead (which doesn't necessarily mean bad) servents like Bearshare and Limewire which are easy for the average person to figure out and use - possibly easier than Morpheus in any event.

Gnutella is just a really cool protocol and network, lots of fun for techies to play with, which inevitably means lots of new innovations. I love the ability to get most of the audio and video I want right away over the net, and I'm happy with their competition with the authoritarian music/movie business distribution model (Go to the store, sorry we don't have the band you like, just this NSYNC/Britney/Backstreet Boys CD we're pushing, that'll be $17).

I haven't heard of Xolox before, I'll look for it.

It's pretty simple really.

[Nindalf]

You seem to be confused by the legal similarity of violating the GPL (violating copyright) with the typical use of Napster-like products (violating copyright). The legal basis, however, is unimportant. Law is not morality.

When someone violates GPL, they are generally attempting to restrict distribution of useful, non-personal information products. When somebody uses a Napster-like product, they are distributing useful, non-personal information products.

The consistent ethic is that free distribution of useful, non-personal information products is good, and restricting this distribution is bad.

gnutella

[Darth Maul]

I've been using LimeWire for all my file collection needs. Windows and Linux clients available. Great app.

http://www.limewire.org/

There is a way around it!

[Mordain]

Its like this .. napster clones keep popping up, each one broken down by lawsuits, each on costs the RIAA and cronies money, yet each one they beat down causes more to rise in its place! So the RIAA stops seeing the lawsuit business as worth the effort as it starts impacting their most precious (and unfortunatly deep) resource, their pockets. Things like this happen all the time in society.

Morality, Ethics, and Law...

[Bonker]

I think that most people just want to use the servicies to get free music, but the question you're asking here boils down to a very basic ethic and moral question:

When is it okay to share information and when is it not.

First of all, we have to recognize the fact that, unlike property or personal saftey, information is not a finite resource. It can be duplicated infinitely, first in people's minds, and now in digital format.

It's almost always better to give information away freely than it is to keep it hidden. This is a subjective viewpoint, but one that's very easily defendable. Look at the growing AIDS holocaust in Africa right now. The pharma companies are all doing their damndest to keep from from having their AIDS drugs, or at least the intellectual property rights to those drugs, taken away, nationalized, so that those drugs can be made more freely and be used to treat individuals.

Sure, it will hurt those companies if their patents are violated, but then how many lives would it save?

Yesterday, we talked about Hillary Rosen of the RIAA saying that online piracy hurt small-time artists. 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.
The GPL was written with this kind of sharing in mind. The overall purpose of the GPL is not to put restrictions on information, programming code in this case, but to make it as available to as many people as possible. Sure, restrictions exist, but now that the GPL is in existance, we have a wide, open body of programming code that anyone can draw on. The BSD license is probably a more perfect example of a 'Free' software license, but the GPL does a good job of preventing people or companies from becoming information hoarders, and encourages them to release their code back to the world at large.

The GPL would not have to exist, however, if there was no such thing as copyright law. The code could be as free as you like, without the need to protect it from companies that would otherwise hoarde it.

It's moral and ethical to distribute your code, and because of the GPL, you're also granted legal protections. It's unethical to violate the GPL because it harms everyone else, not just the person who originated the code.

The same kind of logic *ought* to be applied to music, but it's not. Instead, most music is protected in exactly the opposite manner. When individuals buy music, the sale doesn't benefit everyone. Instead, it benefits the very few. The record company, the record executive, and if he or she is very, very lucky, the artist who originated the music.

Even then, these same companies are going even further, trying to prohibit their customers from redistributing that information, music in this case, to anyone else.

In my opinion, placing an artificial scarcity on the music in this manner is immoral. It keeps people from doing what is in their best interest, namely sharing information, enjoying it, and quite possibly learning from it. It may be illegal to share music in this manner, but it is not unethical .

Let's all repeat the mantra, just so we don't forget it.

Legal is not the same thing as ethical.
Illegal is not the same thing as unethical.

Re:Morality, Ethics, and Law...

[ergo98]

It's almost always better to give information away freely than it is to keep it hidden. This is a subjective viewpoint, but one that's very easily defendable. Look at the growing AIDS holocaust in Africa right now. The pharma companies are all doing their damndest to keep from from having their AIDS drugs, or at least the intellectual property rights to those drugs, taken away, nationalized, so that those drugs can be made more freely and be used to treat individuals.

Sure, it will hurt those companies if their patents are violated, but then how many lives would it save?

Classic anti-IP FUD. The reality is that drug companies don't just "give it away freely" because those drugs cost billions of dollars to develop in the first place, and the earnings from sales finances the NEXT round of life saving drugs. In other words it's real convenient to say "Geee, thanks for the drugs...now let's make them free!", changing the rules after they've been developed, but the reality is that that would DEMOLISH the future of drugs that will save countless future lives. Your position is the compassionate position, but the reality is that it's the simplistic position that equals countless deaths/shorter lives because you've undermined the whole foundation of why these drugs exist in the first place.

Re:Morality, Ethics, and Law...

[Mozai]

"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).

In other news...

[shayne321]

INTERNET PORN REMAINS POPULAR

SAN FRANCISCO, CA (reuters) - Despite a sagging U.S. economy and a war in progress overseas, the Internet Porn Industry is going strong says Mark Johnson, spokesperson for Web Association of Nude Knowledge (WANK). Johnson cites Americans' commitment to supporting U.S. companies in this time of need as the primary drive behind this continued popularity.

"People simply want to fulfill their duty as citizens", says Johnson.

Since the Sept 11th attacks the porn industry has faced increasing pressure as more companies have continue to lay off employees. With less disposable income, analysts feared citizens would direct their money towards drugs, or hookers rather than the traditional staples of booze and porn - but so far those fears have prooved groundless.

"Like, I was so scared, I called my coke-dealer and told him I may have to cut back my habit", says Misty Rayne, actress for Vivid Productions, Inc, known for her gang-bang of 500 tri-sexual midgets in 1999. Fortunately Mrs. Rayne has not been forced to reduce her 5 grams a day coke habit.

In this time of need, Americans have answered the call to arms. God bless America.

Shayne

Someone tell me if this is ridiculous

[Vryl]

But hey, we have Aimster ... why not say: "outlookster" or "muttster" or "pinester" etc.

Build what basically amounts to list management software into an email plugin. You 'log in' to the network by emailing one of the 'peers', it replies with a list of other peers that it knows about, with maybe a timestamp. You then email your 'request' or search string, they pass it round via email, and the server answering the request emails you the file.

Further refinements are possible etc etc.

While this may be insane in actual practice, in theory it further demonstrates the idiocy of attempts to stop the internet doing what is was originally set up to do, ie, share files.

It's all publicity

[M_Talon]

The RIAA doesn't realize that every time they go after someone, it just increases the visibility of file sharing and gets more people involved. Napster climbed in popularity after people found out they were being sued (thanks to American media). Now it's happening again.

As has been said before, the RIAA is going to have to realize that what they're doing is simply feeding the very beast they're trying to defeat. They must adapt or be tossed aside as obsolete. So far, the RIAA has shown no desire to adapt and as such are being boycotted and otherwise damaged by the very customers who fund their legal pursuits.

yes, there is a way around it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Unlike Napster, the new file-sharing clients are not linked to a central name server. The system is truly distributed. When installed on your computer, the client software detects if you have a broadband connection. If you do, your machine will be used as "supernode", which takes the place of the central servers Napster used. This is also works better than Gnutella clones, as there are not the scalability issues caused by 56k dialup users and the resulting bottlenecks. MusicCity et al are just web pages that come up when the client is loaded to display advertisements. A lawsuit might shut down MusicCity, but as long as the client software exists on users computers, the file sharing network cannot be shut down. The ironic thing is that Napster was willing to bargain with the RIAA, but the Powers insisted on shutting Napster down, which created a vacuum to be filled by other more indestructable versions of Napster.

eDonkey is a great program too

[Anonymous Coward]

eDonkey is fantastic...it instantly shares any part of the file you've downloaded etc. It actually forces people to share some(there's also an enforced min upload; at least 10KB/sec, or you can only download at a limited rate.)

http://www.edonkey2000.com

Be patient trying to get a server to connect to, and when searching, you should click "extend" to extend the search to another server on your list(it only searches your primary server first, so it may not find a hit.) Don't do stupid searches like "mp3" or "movie" or "porn", and try to pick the category you're looking for so searches go faster.

eDonkey is a "set and forget" program...downloads may take a while, but it'll succeed where others fail, particularly with very large files. It will download even the smallest part from another user if it comes available, and will stream from multiple sources.

NONE of these programs will work if people don't share what they download.

Don't run a server unless you can support at least 500-1000 users and can keep it running; 100-200 user servers are pointless. The linux server is supposed to be able to handle more users for equal ram/processor specs than the windows versions, and it's easier to background etc.

Re:That is stupid...

[JabberWokky]

Bzzzt. It is technically legal to make a free copy for a friend. This only applies to music, and dates back to bad analog copies and a different revenue system in the music industry. It could be seen as a archaic law, or possibly one that was once archaic and now is becoming newly appropriate.

Note that I haven't stated my opinion on the issue... because I don't really care; I play my own damn music on my git-fiddle, and they can pull it out of my cold dead hands. If the RIAA becomes brutal enough, the artists *will* revolt - or at least the ones who are really the artists or entertainers. The ones in it for the fame don't care about the art or the audiance, and I've personally had enough of prima donnas (who care about themselves over art or audiance) to last a lifetime.

--
Evan

Dirty tricks and bad precendents

[D_Gr8_BoB]

Too bad that in order to do provide such great filesharing service, they wreck everyone else's network experience. The client pulls all sorts of nasty against-RFC tricks in order to increase its avalible bandwidth, which result in Morpheus/Kaaza/MusicCity users getting more than their fair share of the network.

At the university I attend, things got so bad at times that although 50 or so people would be downloading movies at a given time at perfectly reasonable speeds, no one else could so much as surf the web without unacceptable lag. Worse, standard application-priority procedures didn't work because of the applications' non-standards compliant behavior. We ended up having to impose a hard limit on the amount of bandwidth allowed on that port, severely limiting the resources allowed to the programs, even when the network is mostly idle.

The bottom line is that there's more than ethical problems with these new services. By resorting to breaking network protocol rules in order to increase bandwidth, they're setting a very bad precendent. If more programs begin to follow their example of treating the host network as something to be selfishly exploited, network admins will be forced to impose draconian restrictions on network use. This would be a very Bad Thing (TM), and it's my biggest problem with these new services.

what it means to be unlawful

[oni]

Courts are going to protect the copyright holders' rights (they HAVE to) and they don't like their orders to be ignored. They have the power of the government at their disposal, and can call on it to enforce their orders.

IIRC, governments derive their power from the consent of the governed. If enough people realize they are getting screwed they will demand change. As I see it, the only way to bring the issue to the table for discussion is through effective civil disobedience.

Compare P2P with the Boston Tea Party. The obvious difference is that the colonists destroyed the tea rather than taking it home and drinking it. In our case, the object of our anger has no physical substance. The only way to "destroy" it is to reduce its value by making it freely available.

Re:what it means to be unlawful

[grytpype]

"Consent of the governed" does not mean it's improper to enforce a law against a particular individual who disagrees with it as applied to him.

Re:Streaming Audio..

[b1t r0t]

Nice sound bite, but completely missing the point behind collecting MP3s vs streaming. The point is to have your own copy, rather than being at the mercy of someone who a) spoon-feeds to you what they want you to hear, and b) can, like the Ministry of Truth (Orwell's, not the band), declare any music that you want to hear as non-music and deny you access to it for all time.

Never forget the fable of the programmers and the ASCII pr0n. When an ASCII picture of a naked woman appeared on the mainframe, all the programmers printed out a copy, except one. He punched a deck of cards. Sure enough, the file was discovered by management and deleted. Then while the other programmers were stuck with their fading printouts, the one programmer still had his deck of cards and could print the naked woman any time he wanted to.

My favorite way to get files...

[b1t r0t]

I use the oldest P2P file-sharing app of them all: alt.binaries.* in Usenet. Works great, as long as your news server doesn't flake out under the load of the September crowd "giving back" to the group by re-uploading something that's already been uploaded to death, and is already on DVD, too. (my main context here is alt.binaries.anime.)

My second favorite way is to go over to a friend's house and push files at his Hotline server over 100Mbit Ethernet.

Re:Just am matter of time...

[rlowe69]

..until they are killed by legal actions.

And it's also just a matter of time before a newer, better system comes along and takes over in the quashed system's place.

Would GNUtella (an arguably superior technology compared to Napster) or Kazaa be as popular as they are if Napster was still around? Maybe, but I doubt it.

If anything the RIAA is doing us a favour by spurning innovation in peer to peer technology. Geez I love irony.

For example?

[Gendou]

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.

File-sharing, music now!

[stain ain]

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'll try to be more specific

[D_Gr8_BoB]

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.