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Preview the New Napster
*ZiggyP0P* writes "Napster has finally released a preview/teaser of their new business model. Seems kind of sad that so much work will be done on something that noone will use. Quite interesting the part about their own file format..."
Is there a reason why the link to Napster is going through fark.com?? They don't appear to have anything to do with Napster...
but FIRST POST!
the worst part is that I havent even read the artical yet.
(premoderation says this post gets a -1)
I'm just this guy, you know?
Artists Get Paid.
Why would Napster even bother anymore? WHY? If they get even 1/100 of their old users back, I'd be amazed.
...yet another music file format. Why are they bothering?
Absurdity: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion. -- Ambrose Bierce
Napster is so screwed!
I thought Napster was dead. Guess this is the death rattle for the investors sake. Sad, sad, sad. No one can seem to find out a profitable scheme of ripping off the evil Record Labels.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
So its like linux on the desktop?
-linux... they can't *give* that shit away.
That "nobody" will use the new service is a bit of a misstatement; I think that there will be a dedicated, but small user base - certainly, nothing like the huge usage Napster once had, but if they are able to create a subscription model that has a good enough balance between Cost/Hassle and Product that Joe User will choose it over messing about with AudioGalaxy, there will certainly be a user base.
Expect a PR campaign simultaneous to the release painting those who use Napster2 as hip, aware people while those who use others as music pirates.
The PR campaign won't be as scary as the legislative offensive launched to outlaw music trading apps without DRM... Napster and the industry will be on the same side.
In other words, this isn't the end of Napster, not by a long shot. And I suspect that, of all the fee-based services, the one from Napster will be more forgiving than the one that MS puts out.
" Why should I pay when I can get it for free somewhere else?
You mean aside from the fact that Napster is the coolest?
Seriously, we know that there will always be a lot of alternatives. Ultimately, the choice will be yours, but we feel that file sharing communities that pay copyright holders and provide simple, useful tools to help you do what you want with your digital music collection are going to prevail. We feel strongly that the value you receive from Napster will make the fee seem insignificant.
yes, the alternatives we've grown the love over the last 6 months just don't compare the the 'quality' that we could get with the satisfaction of making the RIAA much richer than it already is.
Runnin' On Empty
It will fail for entirely different reasons. Primary amongst them is the fact that plain old mp3 files are all people really want. The hardware players people own play mp3s, the files they already have are mp3s, and and no one likes restrictions on copying their files.
Not that charging a monthly fee won't work against them, it will, but there are still a number of people who would gladly have paid a monthly fee for what napster WAS. What it has/will become is something no one wanted or asked for napster to make.
And the final problem is that by now a solid napster replacement in the form of Morpheus/Kazaa/grokster has come out. Napster waited way too long. They will always have a place in history, but they will never have a place in the future.
Hmm... Fark is /.ed so try this link: http://www.napster.com/preview/.
Hands in my pocket
Two words: .NAP files.
Why should I spend money to get music as files that won't play on my Nomad or Archos Jukebox?
I'm all for giving the artists a cut of the subscription, or on a per-download basis, or what have you, but if it's in this "secure" format then it becomes worthless to me.
Who is this "Napster" you keep talking about? I'm too busy using Morpheus to pira^H^H^H^Hdownload my music (not to mention videos, pr0n, games...)
This is going to be like looking in on a swap meet of really lame baseball cards. There will be about 7 users when this thing roles out.
Hopefully it comes with a new chat client so that when one user reports that all AOL "You've got ____" messages are cleared to trade on the system, another user can reply back "Awesome!!!!!"
------
Today's Top Deals
...cracking their new "security layer"?
Yup. Definetely a "snap". And faster than I could read about it too...
So how long will it be before someone hacks a linux player for the napster format? Bet it won't take long, and people will be trading the new files again =).
Before you had people buying CD's, ripping them, and distributing them. Now they simply subscribe to napster, [use elite linux tool to convert to mp3?] and redistribute them. Such a great plan!
Can all fish swim?
All the content available through Napster's fee-based membership service will be licensed for sharing in the Napster community. In order to give artists and rights holders choices about how their music is shared, we've created a new file format that includes a layer of security. There will be some unrestricted files in MP3 format, but when the rights holder requests it, we'll wrap their music files in a security format that defines how the file can be used.
How much you want to bet the first person that cracks this secure format lands a 5 year jail sentence and $500,000 to napster? How much you wnat to bet this secure format is cracked within a few days of the opening of Napster?
- It costs money.
- It's not MP3.
- It's MP3, but with copy protection wrappers.
- You can only download a certain number of tracks per month.
And last, but not least, from the "new FAQ": "Why should I pay when I can get it for free somewhere else?", the answer is "You mean aside from the fact that Napster is the coolest?"After I wiped the coffee off my keyboard, I kept reading, and saw "file sharing communities that pay copyright holders and provide simple, useful tools to help you do what you want with your digital music collection are going to prevail."
Well, sure, but the last time I checked, paying for the privilege of being Hilary Rosen's bitch and copy-crippling my MP3s qualified as "what I want to do with my music collection".
I propose that for 2002, all articles concerning RIAA-endorsed music subscription services go under "It's funny. Laugh".
but did the information on the fark.com website even mention a reason to use this? Or are they just going to assume that we're all so eager and willing to download music from them just so that the artists get paid that we'll sign up for the service in a heartbeat?
This is the NFL, which stands for "Not For Long" if you keep making those bulls*** calls.
Are there VC's who are actually pouring more money into this? Haven't they learned with the .com crash that you can't turn a profit running a free service. And who wants to pay to download music they can rip themselves or from friends?
Why would I go back to napster, or anything like napster, when gnutella has been serving me fine since the day napster shut down it's service?
New word in the English language: noone.
done on something that noone will use
It's either "no one" or "nobody;" "noone" isn't a word (unless you're referring to Peter Noone)
Ok, so the files are basically going to have a wrapper and that makes them a NAP file? No funky encryption?
Just me or does this scream "Hack me! Hack me!".
It's a neat idea, but far too late. Napster has lost a good portion of their user base and it will be difficult to reclaim it now with all the GNUtella clients and other P2P apps out there.
But hey, they're trying, I'll give 'em that much.
---
Why should we need to go through a middleman(napster) to get to paid music? If you want the mp3 just to listen, you shouldn't need to pay for it(you don't pay for the radio). If you want to support the artist, then you should buy the cd, instead of going through another layer to "borrow" some of the profits.
Well I guess on a larger scale it may be CmdrTaco's responsibility since he is the author, but the words that are annoying you are those of the poster, *ZiggyPop*, not Taco...
"Karma can only be portioned out by the cosmos." -Homer Simpson
To little, to late. I think this is just the last gasp of a dying company. why would anyone pay to use resticted p2p when you can get unresticted p2p for free.
A few people of course will, but some people still think that thae e-mail they just got is going to make them rich.
Title this article "The Dying Of Napster", and lets not hear about it again until "Napster closes shop".
Napster is old old news that no one cares about.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Within 24 hours of release, the NAP file format will be cracked and a free util circulated that will allow you to pull them all you want on Napaster and then rip them out of the security blanket.
Within 12 hours at least 100 hackers will be using Napster full on for free using their "l33t sk111s" or what ever.
Napster is DEAD... thanks to bone heads like my former heros in Metallica (old school baby, the 80s ruled).
What, you seriously think Napster != Crapster? Please clarify.
It also helps to secure legitimate venues where artists with the moxie to dive into the digital revolution headfirst instead of trying to control everything like their pig corporate counterpartts can debut their work yet still have a chance of seeing some return.
Any information distribution scheme that attempts to exploit the natural efficiencies of digital interchange is significant, since the copyright vultures are intent on preventing consumers and artists from enjoying these benefits - they want to cut their costs and gouge us for more. No legitimate competition means their monopolies remain unchallenged.
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
the twitching of the dying limbs of the Napster beast. The death rattle can be heard here.
We dance to all the wrong songs.
--Refused.
Seems kind of sad that so much work will be done on something that noone will use.
Aw, poor Napster. Compare to the musicians' lament: Seems kind of sad that so much work will be done on something that everyone will steal.
"Lets advertise for Music City" but it was deemed to obvious.
I can't see too many people paying for a P2P service. Why only share MP3's that the RIAA/MPAA deem alright to share, when you can go to some other P2P service and get everything for free? Lame.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
*ZiggyP0P* writes "Napster has finally released a preview/teaser of their new business model . Seems kind of sad that so much work will be done on something that noone will use. Quite interesting the part about their own file format..."
Based on the quotes, it appears to me that the submitter was editorializing. I thought it was kinda funny myself. I think most readers realize they are going to get lots of editorializing on slashdot and, far from being impressionable nerds, they are ready to smack down dumb statments faster than I can reload.
Move on. There's nothing to see here.
So, anyone want to start putting numbers on the time it'll take before .NAP files are cracked?
Somewhere between 1-2 hours is my guess =)
Will the app becalled "DeNAP"?
MP3 is the standard, end of story. It's as much a standard as CD is. People will switch to .NAP, WMA, or even OGG ... oh, I dunno, just as soon as they switch to DVD-Audio, which will be well after we are all dead.
sulli
RTFJ.
In other words: we've been legally required to implement a security layer on most MP3 files. But it's just a code wrapper, and if you're persistent enough, you can strip it right back off. Just don't mention our name on your "Downloads" page.
A good business, or business model usually focuses on a companies ability to offer something to its core audience that either
a) isn't offered elsewhere
b) offer a service/product BETTER then existing competitors
This is the first business case I've ever seen that offers LESS for MORE money.
.
Actually, the "Artists Make Money" section was somewhat interesting.
If I can put my music/audio on Napster and then get paid whenever it changes hands, that might be interesting.
MP3.com used to have the "Pay for play" system where artists could get money each time their music was played or downloaded through the site.
At first that system was awesome - it was free for artists AND the listeners! But then MP3.com got bought out and you had to pay $20/month to be part of the program and they started adding all these things which made it really complex. So I quit that.
But if registering my stuff with Napster can get me cash, I'm interested.
There might be some cost to the artist (or maybe it'll be free in the beginning) but it could be cool.
Macintosh humor! MacComedy.com
rooooar
(yes, this is a "me too" post)
They are still around?
It doesn't look like the artists will be paid (from the FAQ):
How is Napster going to stay legal? Will you filter out certain songs, like before?
All the music available through Napster will be legally licensed for sharing in the Napster community. When you make music available for sharing, our system will check to make sure it's licensed to Napster. We're busy getting licenses to music from copyright holders ranging from major to independent labels, so there'll be a lot of great music when we launch -- and we'll continue adding to that body of music.
(Emphasis mine)
So, once again, it looks like both the artists and the users are being screwed.
This solution Napster will be offering would be more palatable in my view if we knew the money was going DIRECTLY to the artists, rather than via the "label"...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Apparently the /. editors were on the ball and removed the fark.com part within minutes. The link is now directly to Napster.com.
/. editor responsible!
Kudos to the
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
I probably have more mp3's than all the current users of Napster put together right now.
The Napster & Napster clones only work when a critical quantity point has been broken, due to many users. It's an upward spiral after that. However the "new" Napster will never hit this critical point.
I can't imagine working for Napster's development team. How boring and bleak those halls must be compared to a couple years ago.
I'm still disappointed I could never log onto Napster with more than 8,000 mp3's at a time. It just locked up tighter than a drum. I imagine my collection of 533 GB wouldn't even get to knock on the front door anymore.
anyone make out the URL at http://www.napster.com/preview/getpaid.html? (-:
S
That is what Napster will become if the new incarnation is widely adopted.
.nap files, making Napster the number one controller of digital rights on the planet.
.nap files so that compliance is 100% in that arena.
.nap DRM schema so that the other sharing services can be brought into line.
It will act like a massive distributed file converter, changing billions of MP3 files into
SONY made a small attempt at this with thier proprietary format and portable player that would not play MP3s. It came with software to convert your MP3s to thier format. It bombed.
The new Napster a brilliant idea on paper; use everyones bandwidth and existing mp3s to create a billion file pool of locked music upon which royalties must be paid, in a fully automated system.
The record companies save having to host and convert thier catalogues, and have a ready made system for effortlessly controlling billions of files.
Radio stations will then be compelled to play from
Next of course, they will attempt to legislate that all other formats comply with the
If we are not careful its "Bye Bye" clean Ogg Vorbis, and any other tool that helps you use and share music the way that you used to.
Lets see who signs up for it. What a story.
ATH0 Bitcoin: 1DnwFLXczVZV8kLJbMYoheUrpqHesjxrSi
but apparently our U blocks access to anything located at napster.com.
One thing I don't understand: why keep harping about "sharing?" As I read this -- the new Napster FAQ -- you no longer share music, right?
You simply connect to Napster, Inc and grab your limited tracks? So this is essentially a crippled version of the "jukebox in the sky" model that everyone has been talking about but no one can implement?
I mean, this is like MP3.com back before they got bitch-slapped by the RIAA, right? When you stored your music in a "locker" and could access it anywhere? (Which remains an interesting idea, although I have no idea how it works now on MP3.com. Last time I checked, all but two of my songs were "locked down" and a pop-up let me know that MP3.com were "working diligently" to restore the music in my locker. Sorta like the same lame rhetoric that Napster has: "We're working as fast as we can to get you MP3s to play on your MP3 player.")
Now, okay, maybe someone can explain this to me. I don't mean this to be a troll or flamebait. I'm actually curious about this: why in the world would I *pay* Napster simply to get a crippled version of (take your pick) Morpheus?
Granted, it's nice to see that artists are going to get paid. But -- again -- maybe I'm missing something here -- but if the RIAA four years had foresight enough to deal with the MP3 onslaught in a shrewd, savvy way, we'd (a) have the great big jukebox in the sky at this point and (b) the artists (at this point) *would* be getting paid.
So by supporting Napster -- or MusicNet or PressPlay -- what I'm essentially doing is two things: (1) paying protection so as not to get fingered by the RIAA and (2) supporting the RIAA in their quest to *litigate* technology out of the marketplace.
This new Napster is "approved" technology where the old technologies are maverick technologies, unapproved, and therefore illegal?
I get the sense that Napster will become some sort of litmus test for the RIAA. It's going to be one of the incubators (MusicNet and PressPlay being the others) to see how profit can be derived from on-line music.
And again, I got no problem with giving artists their fair-share, but I'm very uncomfortable with the RIAA being in the middle.
What I'd like to see is a Napster that takes the RIAA out of the equation. I'd like to be able to give Bob Dylan or whomever my five cent listening fee and know that it's going into Dylan's pockets. I don't want some fat-cat exec skimming 4.5 cents from that nickel in order to support his Lexus habit or the fact that he or she has to pay rent on his overbig house in the Hamptons.
Napster? PressPlay? Forget it.
If Napster's going to license the music anyway they might as well serve it, too.
This is all well and good but does anyone have any information on how much this is going to end up costing the consumer? I know there have been numerous discussions about subscription and pay per song type models but is the decision finalized?
proof that no one cares: if you look at the front page of napster.com, you'll see that the preview was updated 12/12/2001. took nearly a month to make slashdot.
somewhere, in the distance, a dog barked.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
The general public knows the word "Napster", and that name alone could carry it to success. Yeah, the FastTrack network has gotten huge, and Napster hasn't even been up for a long time, but Napster still has some big name recognition with Joe Public.
I mean, can't anyone think of other cases where people chose an expensive product over a free one? I can think of one or two off the top of my head.
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
Napster really needs a plush stuffed mascot that I can buy and place next to the Pets.com dog I have stuffed away in my bedroom closet.
Methinks this little bubble will burst too quickly. Before the labels had to lie to the artist, now they have to just fudge some numbers.
Schnapple
At least one of the other major new music services (Real Networks' RealOne Music) uses files that stop working when you unsubscribe from their $9.95/month service. Napster's web site doesn't clearly explain whether or not one can continue using .NAP files after cancelling one's Napster membership. Does anyone have any information on whether or not they're planning to follow in Real's footsteps on that issue?
credit cards, genius.
ok, that's three words...
The sad thing, IMHO, is that I'm sure a lot of people will pick back up using it because a) they don't know any better and b) they think that paying a bit for the music makes everything OK (after all, the artists are getting paid, right?).
I can't help but think that we'd all be better off if the RIAA companies would agree to start a subscription service where people can download songs for $1.00 per song in MP3 (unprotected) format. That kind of pricing makes it so that most people wouldn't mind paying for the music (after all, getting it from your friends would just be a bitch and it's only a dollar). Not to mention, you could avoid the "filler" tracks that come on many albums.
A buck per song. MP3 format so I can take it with me when I go for a jog/sit in the bookstore/mow the lawn/visit the outhouse. If the RIAA companies "trim the fat" a little to get production costs down, everyone could be happy.
My sigs always suck.
One thing that people keep forgetting is that the brilliance of Napster was that we all shared bandwidth with each other and everyone carried the burden of distributing files. Kazaa does an even an even better job at this. Now that this is a pay thing, does napster plan to host a large number of files itself? Or will they still depend on their users to host the files for them? If Napster hosts the files, how will they pay for all the bandwidth they will need?
Why aren't we told when editors moderate our posts?
Feh!
:wq
Some crap about subscription services and charging one dollar per song. As usual, I probably should have thought about it a bit more beforehand. Would one dollar per song be profitable?
I'm just asking because I know I've certainly never produced an album or promoted an artist. What kind of costs are involved here? If you wanted to produce an album (assuming CD sales would continue as well as online distribution) and then make the songs available for download in MP3 format, would $1.00 be a good price at which to sell? Would that make money for the artist as well as the company?
I'm guessing that albums and singles that are really successful are those which have sold upwards of one million copies, but that math doesn't seem to work out on a per-song basis. Assuming an artist/band has ONE hit single that one million people download and pay $1.00 for, that's only $1 million in revenue. Considering the likely costs involved, it doesn't seem worth it.
Anyone got any idea what it costs these days to have a professionally-produced album? How about the costs of maintaining a file-download facility like the one needed to support this kind of MP3 distribution?
My sigs always suck.
75K a month will not pay rent, utilities, multiple oc3s, servers, office supplies, riaa bountry, salaries, lawyers, insurance, etc.
It's fucked.
"Dude, we know it's futile, but we're supposed to becomne a big money grubbing machine, we may as well act like one!" -- napster executive.
But this could have a beneficial effect too that is not immediately noticeable:
"Our goal is to obtain licenses that allow you to play that music on your portable player; we'll get there as soon as possible."
So they want to you to download these files to your ipod, jukebox, etc for a price. This could be good because people will realise the hassle of this and subsequentially realise that the music industry is trying to get everyone to pay for more than one copy of each song. The users don't want to pay extra but they still want to use their portable players.
The formats that these players play (mp3, wma) have legal or DRM stigmas attached to them. Because of this, the momentum for .NAP files on digital players could be diverted to some other format like .ogg! For example, the users of "NewNap"* would get all excited about their new legal music downloads and try to download them to the Nomad Jukebox. They then realise they have to pay extra and say "screw this!!" Creative labs and other mp3 player manufacturers would realise the same thing. They and their users would align themselves AGAINST the industry and go to that 'free' format they've been hearing about. Enter the ogg vorbis player support.
And THIS, my friends, would be a good thing(tm).
*[and btw, I made up the term "NewNap" and hereby [encourage you to use it :-]
From Napster:
Artists Get Paid
Napster will offer artists and labels tools to register as rights holders and get paid for sharing their music on Napster. Artists and other rights holders can set rules for how their music files are used, check their account status online, and receive quarterly statements.
Many artists are legally bound to thier labels and have no control over thier music, so most of your money will go to those labels. HOWEVER, A Label isn't required to distribute your music via new Napster, so those Artists who wish to get paid directly CAN. And those who wish to sell thier soul, can sign up with the labels...
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce
alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.heavy-metal
;)
is that what you said?
ahh thought so
usenet gives me w00d.
NAPSTER WAS K00LI3Z BUT NOW THEY R S3LLOUTS!!1!
BUT AT LEAST I CAN ST1LL USE WINDOWZZ WHICH IZ HAX0RS FRIENDLY NOWWWZ. LINUXZ IS OLD AND DEAD. NAPSTERZ IS OLD AND DEAD. I CUNT FIGUREZ OUT MORPHUES HAHA WHEREZ NEO!??1?
B1FF OWNS J00
I am on the Napster team that created this new Digital Rights Managment file format.
.NAP format is hereby implemented using ROT-14.
We did extensive research and analysis on all of the available encryptions schemes. We even considered rolling our own. Based on the fact that all client programs would be required to have the decryption algorythm, and at some point the content must be presented to the user, we concluded that security rested entirely within the DMCA.
After reaching this conclusion, we did what any good programmer would have done. We decided not to waste time writing redundant code. We reused an available package. At the insistance of the lawyers, we spent a few minutes customizing the package to be incompatible with the original. The
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
This isn't about paying the artist.
It is about keeping the fat cats in the middle and skimming that 4.5 cents.
They have to make at least a decent effort at encryption, after all.
I'm the stranger...posting to
You are about to witness the abuse of power in a monoloply (RIAA). W/ the new naspter out, people will flock to it. This is because Americans read something in a magazine or see it on the News, and then download it. Who controls the News media? Companies like AOL-Time Warner?...
I doubt that. There is a chance that millions of users will fall for that stupid system as long as bertelsmann convinces Microsoft to ship it as the default filesharing tool (or mediaplayer whatever they call it) in their next OS Version.
I experience stuff like that in my everyday work, watching people use all the default tools MS ships. Why is FTP something most Windows Users never heard of? Because there is no big FTP Button on their default desktop installation.
I promise you if Bertelsmann manages to get that thing in the next Windows Version it will become terribly popular. And with Napster beeing the name they heard of Kazza/Morpheus and all the others will be in serious trouble as soon as they're being sued. Just as Napster was. Or would you really have imagined that noone will know Netscape in 2002, back in 1996?
Just my theory...
cu,
Lispy
As you know, file sharing at Napster has been suspended for several months. During that time, we've been blown away by the number of Napster users who've continued to download the software and use it to organize and play their music. These dedicated users keep us inspired as we work on our new membership service. We're in the home stretch, with all of our critical technology complete and in testing.
Who the fuck are these guys trying to kid? "Dedicated users"... Yeah, right! Just a bunch of computer-illiterate AOLers who can't use Windows Explorer!
Napster was always buggy, it was always ugly, and since the RIAA caught on, it was doomed.
I think Vegas should seriously considering putting odds on crypto standards. Napster's new sound format will have a built in security mechanism that is (I can only assume) based on some sort of encryption. So the bets are:
1) How long before somebody cracks the standard?
2) How long before Napster sues the person who cracks the standard under the DMCA?
Oh and word to the wise of whoever cracks it, don't take credit, just place it anonymously on some newsgroup and dissapear. Let somebody else take the heat.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
The payment goes to the label because in 99% of circumstances the artist does NOT own the copyright on their own music. They agree to sign all rights to their work away for eternity to the record label before the record comes out. So you COULDN'T pay the artists directly in trade for licensing the mp3's, they no longer own the art, they already sold it. Contrast this to the book publishing world where authors sign away rights to a work for one printing. Very different.
This has nothing to do with paying artists and never did. The artist has already been paid. They may get a small cut of record sales, they more likely do not. So it's always only been about paying the record companies. Just for clarification....
Sadly, like most people, I'd pay jack from what they're likely to release.
I just bought a new computer and I can't find my files. What happened to them?
I always wondered when using Napster, "What group of people used this service?" Then I remember, during it's peak usage, everyone. I think that's why Napster was so great. It gave me something about computers to which my non-geek friends could relate. I remember knowing people who bought computers and subscribed to the internet because of Napster.
On a side note, the recent recession must be realated to Napster use in some way to the recent economic downturn.
Too busy staying alive... ~ R.A.
For new music this is correct. But if you want something by Madonna, the record companies already own all her old work. That's only accessible by making deals with the record company, the artist unfortunately has no say there.
Hey, if there was any way to verify this, I'd even make a $20 bet that -everyone- who modded down on this thread was running Windows at the time.. (anon because this is in fact offtopic, and it would be perfectly fair to mod it down as such..)
That's dumb. Anything said on slashdot that can be remotely construed as FUD is modded down!
I don't want the bullshit the RIAA will invariably give us to protect their "rights" and lose their customers.
Actually if you want to support the artist & not the RIAA, isn't the best method to go to the concerts?
This seems like a bad busniess model. If they have a lot of people downloading music from one server farm their bandiwth bill will be a nightmare.
...
And on top pay the artists too? What'll be the price for a subscrition to them? 100$/month?..
Would you be able to find anything you want on there?
The only good thing is that this will help them avoid the record industry and new artists or new albums could get better exposure andvertised by Napster but who cares when you have so many peer 2 peer options where you can find what you want
Aside from having to pay for stuff you can get for free, the new Napster could fail due to download constraints. Obviously, it will be impossible to make every download work all the time. People log off, cancel downloads, etc..., which annoys the user at the other end. Admit it, when you are downloading a nice huge 700MB movie, you are a bit perturbed when the sender cuts you off at 650MB and your download fails. Now imagine that you just paid for that download. You'd be steaming. There would have to be some way for Napster to prevent files from failing to download along with allowing them to download fast.
-Vic
I wish that I had mod points right now because you're entitled to some for that post. Good going!
Try crapster
sulli
RTFJ.
Its more like you being forced to pay the same 25 cents for the paper, then only allowed to read it on a poster on the wall of the subway. Oh, and you can only read 1 page per day. Oh, and if ou copy an of it to read on the way home, youll be arrested. And dont let any of your friends read over your shoulder, either. You criminal bastard!!
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
Look, ogg can only win if it gets widespread support in hardware players. Until then, mp3 is it. I am not holding my breath.
Why would I pay a buck for a song? I have almost 20,000 songs right now and I haven't paid a *dime* for any of them. I certainly wouldn't hand over $20,000 for those 20,000 songs.
Especially when I could just *not* use Napster and get them all for free by sharing with other people around the world. And if there is something amoral about that - so fucking what.
Imagine just being able to donate a dollar or two if you think the mp3 is great. Notice I said donate not subscribe. With the exact same abilty as you do and do not have right now to download songs, just add the abilty to donate DIRECTLY to the artist.
Now that would be cool. Maybe someone like PayPal and winMX could work something out. But this subscription service crap is for the birds and lamers. I won't even go near it.
People use the new Napster, and the RIAA make money where they wouldn't have otherwise.
People don't use Napster, and the RIAA claims we are a bunch of pirating hoolagins and therefore justifies more laws and restrictions.
Start hording those copy protections free hard drives and CD burners...
--------
It's OK to be social, just don't tell anyone about it.
napster(the owners) should have sold their trademark/domain. its a VERY well known brand (a lot of generic people on the street -not literal- know the brand)
oh well. <awaits "napster closes down" before march 02>
.nap files ? give me a break. What are you guys thinking ? can't you just take the money you already made and just quit
Seriously, napster is dead. Are the napster folks having a hard time adjusting with this ? probably
GarageBand has an interesting idea - they take unknowns and when the internet fan base takes an interest in an artist they sign them on and try to launch them into traditional outlets. Frankly, I don't see why this couldn't be extended further from the traditonal markets then they have... they have the distribution capabilities to market the music from their servers direct to the fans...
Sig under construction since 1998.
Of course, napster crapping out has spurned the development of alternative clients and networks. Napster, like the RIAA is no irrelivent. Whatever methods they come up with to stop file sharing are broken, subverted and then mocked.
The FAQ sums it up best:
Why should I pay when I can get it for free somewhere else?
You mean aside from the fact that Napster is the coolest?
Check the link. I'm not kidding. Really.
Do people realize that the best way to make large sums of money from your music is to get signed by a record label and have them do all your promoting etc....
There is a reason that Independent artists are not as well-known as artists that signed with a record company.
Artists have to make a decision, sign with the mutually hated (by both fan and artist) label or stay independent and fight for every dollar and bit of advertising that they can.
Some of the more popular artists have gone on to create their own music labels. IMHO these are the people you should be supporting with your dollars.
How much effort is needed to get music from Napster? I think it's still somewhere between turning a radio on and buying a CD. That's not going to change.
All music videos should be available for download for free in as many formats as possible. They are meant to promote the albums, right?
And you thought microsoft was going to miss out on P2P??? Think again, they have a hand in the release of PressPlay a NEW napster-clone. Check out betanews for all the details.
.NAP or .WMP (Thats windows media player files for you linux-only people)
Can't decide whats better...having to use
Have I got it all wrong, or do I really have to pay Napster for offering my bandwidth for sharing? If so, there should be some moneyback for each song people downloaded from me that I could use in the system. Second I don't want to pay for a low quality music file because some moron had fu.... up his PC.
But then again, I could have it all backwards.
SOLUTION:
/\ \;/g;
#!/usr/bin/perl
print '<TT>', "\n";
while (<>)
{
chomp($_);
$_ =~ s/\s+$//;
print '<DIV>';
$_ =~ s/\
print $_;
print '</DIV>', "\n";
}
print '</TT>', "\n";
print '<BR>', "\n";
exit;
This is great in that so long as one P2P service is "legit", ports just can't be filtered anymore without pissing off a lot of people.
Sure, I won't pay for napster, but you can bet your ass that other P2P programs will use the same ports to get around filtering!
Method of processing duck feet
You were good, but now you're redundant. Others have taken your place. The RIAA killed you and in the process signed their own death warrant. They're just not dead yet. But they will be. Not even protectionist legislation (bought) from Congress can help them. They got done in by their own greed. Someone the other day compared Hilary Rosen to Osama bin Laden and I think they're not that far off. Both are terrorists. Both work from fear. No one wants to steal music. No one but the RIAA that is. They want to steal it from everyone, including the artists. It won't work. It's over Napster. It's over RIAA. You'll see....
That's a model that already works. We don't have to pay anything to listen to songs on the radio, we just have to sit through commercials. Napster should make money off of ads and set aside a certain percentage for the artists. It wouldn't be hard to set up a system where the number of shares an artist gets credited is proportional to the number of times his songs are downloaded.
I should have expected the Slashdot Socialist Brigade to rise yet again.
This is the best argument you guys can come up with? "It's not the same as MP3, and besides, I can steal it anyway, so why should I pay? Anyway, only the fat cats at the record companies would benefit. If I could pay the artists directly, then yeah, maybe."
Why stop there? Why shouldn't you pay programmers directly for software instead of their employers? When I buy a gallon of milk, shouldn't the money go directly to the dairy farmer instead of the grocery store? [ PETA version: it goes to the cow. ] And of course every penny of that $25K Explorer should go to the auto workers that built it.
It's very simple, folks. These artists chose to enter into an agreement that stated they gave up the right to market their work. That's the way business works - sometimes you make a good deal, sometimes you don't.
I wish folks would stop rationalizing theft in the name of some distorted notion of "freedom".
Yeah, I know you're a big fan of playing "Devil's Advocate" (often, you're simply being sane, as sanity is lacking here at times), but you've got to be fucking kidding me on this one. Artists don't get paid unless/untill the labels make millions off their music.
I personally know some artists who have been on the verge of making it big for the last 4 years, every chance their labels(yes, plural, they've been all over) get they totally fuck them over. If you listen to metal much, you've probably heard them.
They're simply whores and their labels are their pimp. The labels get the money, the artists do the work and get bullied and pushed around and just generally disprespected and treated like shit. Lables are in constant violation of their already extremely label favoring contracts.
It's really one of the most ridiculous industries on this sad little planet.
note: I won't disclose the name of the band because I'm not sure what they have publicly disclosed about the trouble they've had with their labels.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
1. 192kbps+ Ogg Vorbis or MP3 files, no exceptions, proprietary files are simply unacceptable.
2. Central servers. Why the fucking hell would I PAY for a service that allows me to SHARE? Why do I care about SHARING if I'm PAYING?!? WTF? I can share on my own thankyouverymuch!
3. Relaxed licensing dammit! I should be allowed to share a few files with friends or bring the files into work. I'm not talking about setting up a free-for-all ftp, if I could simply buy the files in a decent format for a reasonable price I would which would make running an ftp unnecessary.
FYI, I currently share MP3 files with 2 people. I'm not into "piracy" at all, I simply like music and like to listen to music before I buy it.
Is that such a huge problem for the music industry to handle? Can't they deliver what their customers want?
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
mp3 has become the standard now - no arguments there I would think from anyone. (Ok, flame me if you want on that one).
.ogg won't take over is that mp3 is good enough. Just like CD's were good enough. They were built in a time when it was impractical to have decompressors of any power, and even the music players didn't have the displays to show the title and artist name mostly. Which is why we need gracenote (CDDB) now.
The reason that
mp3's have limitations, sure. No digital rights management (so sad, that one). Poor compression algorithms. And so on. Of course, for their day the MP3 compression algorithm was quite processor intensive, its just that CPU's have gotten faster.
But a poor algorithm just means more disk space. Is that a problem? Well, no as disk spaces have improved alot. In fact, its getting to the stage where you wouldn't need to compress the music at all. An 80 GB HDD would hold about 120 CD's, uncompressed. You could almost argue that compression isn't necessary now. Except for the bandwith limitations on the internet, of course.
But mp3's are good enough to do the job. Sure, they need high bit rates to sound good. Is that an issue? If it was, would you ever buy a CD? As long as you can get your music to sound ok, you probably won't care.
Its good to have ogg there, as a backup in case there is a problem with royalties with mp3, but really I can't see anyone dumping mp3's in a hurry.
Even microsoft acknowledges this as it tries to subvert the movement with its wma architecture.
Microsoft might manage it, but only if they can offer something better (they managed this with internet explorer, failed with iis, and the court is out on the pocket pc). Restricting users isn't an improvement, and isn't going to get everyone to move over to wma. As those people who ripped to wma find out, its harder to get a good player for that format, even if it uses half the space.
The CD has been with us for a couple of decades, and isn't going anywhere mostly because its hard to do better. MP3 is going to be with us for at least a decade more, for exactly the same reason.
Just my $0.01 worth (Allowing for US/Aud exchange rates).
Michael
There is no cryptographic solution to the problem where the intended receiver and the attacker are the same entity.
I agree with the above.. The simple fact is this: NOBODY IS GOING TO PAY FOR A SERVICE IN WHICH THEY CAN'T BURN THEIR SONGS TO CD or COPY TO THEIR iPod. Period, end of story. Most of the folks out there who would spend money on something like this want to take the music with them. I for one burn myself mixes for the car constantly. Who's going to pay to listen to music through tinny computer speakers? The answer: nobody. Mp3 is portable (both in its ease of transmission and ability to morph to other devices), and any format that wants to compete needs to allow such flexibility. I maintain that the record industry should have jumped on the mp3 bandwagon in 1997 when this entire thing began inching towards critical mass. Napster et. al. took off because it was just so darn hard to find digital music files on the web. Had the RIAA's goons decided to profit from it before MP3 became a culture of 'free,' they would have had something. I've always been prepared to pay a buck per track if it meant I could actually keep the file and not have it self destruct after 30 minutes. It's just so frustrating. They just don't get it.
www.lonseidman.com
It boils down to this: I don't need music. It's not like by *not* using their service or any other that I'm going to die. This puts them in a position where they are putting more or less trivial restrictions on a product which is itself more or less trivial. I enjoy music quite a bit but if I have to pay them to control what I listen to, I'll return to my previous 1 CD a year buying habits. They'll make their 60-90% of my single $15 purchase instead of perhaps the dozen or so I made while I had the opportunity to listen to it on the net.
I'm sure I'm not alone in saying that by and large Napster was a preview service. They got some obscure tracks you can't find in stores and thus wouldn't (have the opportunity to) pay for and the ultra-popular tracks that are on the radio for free but if I wanted a full album to judge as I saw fit I couldn't rely on someone else to post the "duds" for me.
Besides, they'll have to come up with some compelling new music for me to start buying again. All of my favorite stuff has come out of the 60s-80s and over the years I've built up a collection that will keep me plenty busy without any further investment in albums or services.
As you said in your first sentence, that all depends on it becoming widely adopted.
Joe average may be dumb as a rock and use Windows and drink "full-bodied" beer and smoke cancersticks and pay taxes to subsidize his enemies and vote for people who sell him out and eat at McDonalds and watch MTV and make sure his office is configured for the best Feng Shui .. but he's still not
that dumb.
I mean, sheesh, come on!
Recording artists are no different, they like the comfort of the labels and I don't blaim them. They should be paid.
Except that most albums fail to recoup all expenses and thus fail to pay the artist one thin dime. If the record labels consider album a work for hire, why is the employee paying the expenses rather than the employer? I can potentially see bringing minimum-wage laws into this.
Also, if you insist of trying to prevail with this whole no intelectual property idea, say good bye to biotech and your expected 100 year lifespans, who will bother without a profit?
At least patented drugs pass into the public domain while the inventors are still alive (20 years after filing, generally 20 years after it works in rats and rabbits), unlike copyrighted works (95 years after December 31 after first publication; may Sonny Bono rot in hell). A short privilege term promotes progress by forcing creators to continue to create new things such as the new weekly formulation of Prozac rather than sit on their as^H^Hback catalog.
Will I retire or break 10K?
So long as the pricing is below some threshold of pain (I'm guessing $15/month but I'm no expert)
You mean like this service (which I don't work for)? eMusic.com is $45 for three months or $120 for one year to anybody in the USA.
Will I retire or break 10K?
or perhaps "no-one".
Remember if I can hear it I can copy it, through my Soundblaster Live it's as simple as record what you hear.
Not if the app turns on the Secure Audio Path in WinME and WinXP, which turns off all the card's digital outputs, including what-you-hear.
Will I retire or break 10K?
It looks like one of the graphics guys was messing around. Look at the text on the picture for "Organize with Ease", the top artist listed is "Spanker Madness", but if you click on it, it changed to "Mad Man". The following song title stays the same, though. I guess "Spanker Madness" is a good way to describe what they are trying to do...
No, really.
:)
Look at the screenshot under "Organize with Ease". The song is "Blade of Grass" by the group "Spanker Madness". Which is a real song by a real group.
But if you click on the screenshot, the page it takes you to has "Spanker Madness" replaced by "Mad Man". Which doesn't exist. Guess some PHB saw the screenshot and demanded they change it.
Possibly a really obvious question, but ... I have to ask it anyway. If one had an older installer for Napster, pre the shutdown, and a copy of Napigator from the same era, could one not continue to use Napster in the "old" way, just with different sets of servers?
:-)
Hell, if you're paranoid about Napster II learning about you running Napster Classic, block their domain and IP range from connection on your open source firewall machine at the front end of your home network.
You do have an open source firewall machine at the front end of your home network.... don't you?
Ok, from what I can tell, the "new" Napster is basically going to make it so music available on it results in copyright owners getting paid. If you find music on Napster, someone somewhere approved its presence.
:)
.NAP thing, as anyone with half a brain realizes, is just there to appease the record labels. Nap2mp3 will be out a few hours after Napster goes live, but this isn't really a big problem. The issue here is that depending on how much press they get and how many people want to actually pay for the service (virtually unlimited music LEGALLY for a monthly fee? I'd sign up if it didn't suck and I can get them to play on my portable.) Napster very well might be poised due to their well known name brand to begin the weening of artists off the RIAA for those who want to distribute exclusively through MP3 (or, actually, NAP files.)
So basically, for popular music, this translates to the RIAA getting paid. This is what people bitch about, somehow using their hatred of the RIAA to justify breaking the law, but of course this is legitimate business since the artists signed away their copyright to the record label(s)..
I speculate that during the downtime Napster has been able to get thousands of artists "approved" to use the service. This means that when they get back online I'd guess that many people who initially sign up (and with the Napster name, I think there will be more than just a few) will have their entire MP3 collections tagged as approved with a few exceptions. This is actually one good thing that comes from a monopoly on music: only half a dozen fat cats to bargain with and you get the right to re-distribute (or in Napster's case, piggy back the distribution of) a shitload of music
However, it also seems that Joe Q. Artist will be able to "publish" his music on Napster and get paid for it. If a lot of people migrate over to the new Napster, it's possible that many artists currently being screwed by the RIAA might say "fuck it" and just release their stuff on their own via Napster.
The
I don't see it being much of a big deal to the tens of thousands of college kids when the phrase "Hey Napster is back up!" is uttered around campuses to shell out $15 on mom's Visa in order to log in. I'm talking about the non-Slashdot reading CS majors who shower and used to enjoy downloading the trendy songs they heard on the radio via Napster. These people are not going to complain about NAP and the few tech savvy will convert them to MP3, and will not make the connection that Napster is making money off of their bandwidth.
I think it might just work. The question really is weither or not there are a lot of people who dropped sharing MP3s altogether after Napster died (and didn't try Gnutella, etc.) and will be willing to pay a bit each month to start getting new music again. Also, there will probably be a few people who switch just so they're not breaking the law anymore (if the Slashdot "Information wants to be something I don't have to pay for.. I mean.. Free!" piracy team can believe that.) We'll see I guess.
--
This kind of posts makes me wanna hurt someone (their respective posters, perhaps?)
Farking whiners
Isn't it entirely possible that Napster, with its big public image and long-running experience, is now the testign grounds for pay-per-play schemes the RIAA would like to impose? RIAA and Napster come up with a scheme, and try it out... and it will probably bomb. So, they come up with another (perhaps the RIAA will even partially fund Napster on the side; it's not inconceivable) and test that. Repeat until you have the best possible model for forcing people to pay for this service, and make everyone else use it.
Morpheus, Gnutella etc. will not have had any experience instituting pay-per-play business models, so there is no chance that they could compete with the (by now) new and streamlined Napster corporation.
Probably and hopefully won't happen... but...?
Security through promiscuity is no better than security through obscurity.
Before you start knocking any business models CmdrTaco, you should take a look at yours. You can bet Slashdot will end up on the crap heap with the rest of the .coms. Its not a matter of "if", its just a matter of when.
Doesn't Bertlesmann, the German Big 5 record conglomerate, own Napster now? It's not Sean's anymore.
This leads me to think that Napster is, like PressPlay and MusicNet, designed to fail. It is designed to allow subscribers to listen to music on their computers, not elsewhere. So it's value to the user is grossly inferior to, say, FastTrack/Kazaa/Morpheus or the old Napster.
The major labels are willing to put money into failures, because they want to prove a point, that online sales are not going to work. They want to divide the world into two camps, those who purchase costly mechanical artifacts with stored music (CDs, etc.) licensed to their possessors (good), and those who copy off the net (bad).
A real online music distribution system could be concocted, with the artist getting directly paid based on upload volume, and the consumer paying, say, a monthly subscription fee that is allocated among artists proportionately (not fee per play). But that would undercut the major labels, who won't let it happen. And the DMCA + WIPO let them keep it from happening.
I would go to a "legal" pay service if...
A. The subscription to the service itself was free.
B. I could download the songs I want for $.25-$.50 per song (maybe more).
C. The song I buy and download is in open MP3 format without ANY copy protection / DRM.
D. The service offered a 1-2 minute trial version of the song in unrestricted MP3 that I could download and listen to.
E. If most of the proceeds went to the artists, not the middlemen/RIAA.
-Valen
This is perhaps the one and only driving force behind the music industry's push to kill portable, digital music formats. They've been ripping off the naive consumers for the past 50 some-odd years, ever since the vinyl LPs were introduced. The music industry has made billions, if not trillions, and they will continue to do so, unless we the consumer, stand up and oppose them. They see this as their holy cash cow, and they want to protect it till their deaths, and I hope that MP3s will bring forth their eventual demise.
The one question that we must ask is, should these musicians be making tens of millions of dollars, when the average American makes only about $30,000 annually (give or take a few)? Granted, in a capitalist society, everyone has the potential to become a millionaire if they have the desired market skills and talents, but isn't this simply a case of pure greed? Wouldn't it be more fair if they made $250K to $500K annually instead? These are questions that we must answer, because with the continuing popularity of MP3s, we need to re-evaluate our priorities and where we think our money should go.
Gone are the days where an artist must go to a multi-million dollar digital recording studio to record their songs. Now, with the advent of computer technology, an artist can record it from home with a modest investment of a few thousand dollars, or they can pool their resources and share their own digital recording studio. This is what the music industry clings to, this was one of their arguing points, and now, it is no longer valid.
Technology should drive down the cost for the consumer, but for the past two decades, the cost of a CD has remained relatively the same (at about $15-$17 per CD), if not slightly increased. Is this fair to the consumer? Obviously not, but the deluded music industry continues to believe that it is. And for this, I hope MP3s will hasten their demise.
http://merch1.napster.com/shirt/default.asp
Anyone notice in the new napster player playlist the song Gnappy - Late for the short bus? or have
i just been staring at the same page too long?
Let's see....give the people something they really DON'T want..throw in some annoying advertising....place it in a forum that invades a persons privacy.....hey... SPAMERS must make money right? Why can't we use the same business model? We can! And as long as we say the artists get paid, and we can enlarge their penises, we're in the clear!!!
Canadian Bred with American Buttering
I mean...some of these bands out now have none to begin with....
Woot.
> ...bone heads like my former heros in Metallica (old school baby, the 80s ruled).
It's statements like these that pierce my heart like a spork. When will we see real music make a return? Will it ever happen?
-- a despondent '80s music lover
"These artists chose to enter into an agreement that stated they gave up the right to market their work. That's the way business works - sometimes you make a good deal, sometimes you don't."
Interesting how labels almost always wind up with the good deal, and some of the crem de la crem of successful artists (TLC, BBKing, Toni Braxton...) file for bankrupcy. Business works because sometimes you get good deals, sometimes you don't. When an entire class of people never get a good deal from people who are making truly disgusting amounts of money, things move from the realm of business to the realm of exploitation. They did sign a contract (whose only other option was to go back to Mc Donalds and never be heard), but contract law in this country (usa) has always been based around the balance of the technicalities of the agreement and its spirit. Calling it "very simple" is a gross misuse of that term.
I know that is a separate issue from piracy. That's like saying in 1930 that I won't buy German cars because of their politics. That's not exactly a fair analogy: Other countries made cars back then. But when the money trail goes 95% assholes, 5% artists, it becomes quite tempting to enact the only power we have (veto) and shout "Fuck it! Nobody gets paid!" This is of course a strategy successfully utilized by strikers and boycotters around the world, with the major difference that most strikers / boycotters are a little clearer about their reasonings than most of the morpheous crowd.
Napster took distributers, labels, paid radio play (and all of it is paid these days), coca-cola tie-ins, and all of the rest of the uglyness out of something that is a low-level expression of humanity and culture. Unfortunately, it also didn't pay the artists.
Yes, Napster2 should use MP3's. These wrapper formats are basically a form of house arrest for music, whereas one of the largest benifits of digital music is the awesome portables. Yes, distributers and those who accept financial risk (which is the primary function of labels) should recieve their fare share. And yes, the idea of paying 20$ a month for the general shoddyness we've come to expect from Napster connections seems rather foolish. A portion of that 20 should definitely go to some servers and some bandwidth. None of this is really up for debate.
Speaking of money, How much have mainstream CD's crept up to? Let me go see... The latest N'Sync lists for 19 bucks. We bought a licenced, artist-paid 2 CD set of Bossa Nova & Samba in Argentina for 5 dollars. It lists here for 22.99. Compared to tapes and records, the distribution and manufacturing costs of CD's are nothing. Compared to CD's the distribution costs of MP3's are nothing. Shouldn't such reductions have some effect on the overall price of music? Shouldn't these effect the price paid to distributers?
The artificial control - based politics of the RIAA, which is what keeps music prices high, is going to be a factor in whether or not people accept these new services. Ask Dimitry. Ask Johansen. Ask Courtney Love. Ask the young artists struggling to get some radio play. Ask the consumers who are spending 4 hours worth of paycheck (after taxes) to buy (technically, "licence") 1 hour worth of music. The RIAA hasn't exactly killed 20 million Jews, but if it was in their business interests I wouldn't put it past them. Knowing that a large portion of the money I spend on CD's will go to a group dedicated to the strengthining of the DMCA and the destruction of basic freedoms in this country makes me feel like it's a moral imperitave to NOT pay for music. We're not living in Saudi Arabia yet (unless of course, you are), but we could very soon find ourselves living in Australia. Theft of rights is a form of theft too, and the kind that we have to be most vigilant about.
Music is one of the strongest forms of culture we have, and those who make money creating a scarcity (and qed a depravity) of culture should not be supported. Go to shows, go to concerts, buy a pack of beer for your favorite artist, dance, and be free. Spend money on music in ways that help artists and seem fair all around, and which don't destroy the cultural landscape. Support positive labels. The ugly, exploitive side can go screw: Napster taught us that we can always just help ourselves.
20$ a month = 140$ a year = 10$ to the RIAA = 10 minutes of some prick convincing Ashcroft that talking badly about encryption legislation is a form of terrorism. Now multiply this number by a million subscribers.
The ______ Agenda
I'm not paying a monthly fee.
I'm not paying for music with a security 'wrapper', 'rights management', or any kind of rights abuse ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H protection on it...
I'm not paying more than $0.50 per song for songs older than a year, or $0.75 for "new songs" [the RIAA already charges $1.00 per song on a CD with 15 shit songs and 1 good one...]
So long as *ANYTHING* out there is free, I'm using that.
After I download it - it's mine. If it expires, I want my money back.
-- give me what I want, and I'll BUY everything. Don't give me what I want and I'll GET everything anyway but you won't GET my money.
is broken eventually (soon, no doubt)
Contains the artist information [account to be paid is all that matters]
.NAP to your account or somesuch - just change it. Now, somebody fetches the file, and it pays... the new guy? Sounds like an interesting way to rip people off.
Oh, and a theoretical (but I doubt likely) way that Napster could use pubkey crypto:
Alice owns the file already.
Bob wants the file.
Eve is trying to steal the file during transfer.
Napster wants Alice to only be able to play Alice's copy of the .NAP and Bob to only be bale to play Bob's.
Bob sends Alice his public key and request for the file (after searching).
Alice runs the file through her private-key decryptor (or Alices's Napster program does, keeping the data hidden from Alice herself) then encrypts it with Bob's public key. This can be done as a stream operation.
This is then sent to Bob. Eve, intercepting every packet, would have to know Bob's private key, but that wasn't sent. Eve gets the shaft, Napster gets what they want, Alice is happy and has done a Good Deed of sharing her bandwidth, and Bob's your Uncle.
Now the decoder would have to be called twice (to play and to send), but it doesn't seem otherwise too expensive... another packet for public key and some CPU time.
_Knots
Then if we can take an arbitrary file (say Out-of-SYNC's latest hit) and just change the artist encoding information inside the
Anarchy$ dd if=/dev/random of=~/.signature bs=120 count=1
People don't want to switch from mp3. People don't have hardware that plays
The same comments were made for ogg and were moderated up to +5 for the last ogg article.
You are not as oppressed as you believe.
1. Will I be able to burn songs I bought at Napster on CDR (mostly for my car player)?
2. My friends produce music. Can they share their own songs using Napster?
To me this sounds like the Napster consumer is paying twice for the service. Once to browse or connect to the Napster network, and once to download and upload the file to peers.
That sounds a bit of a scam, its like Apple charging $20 for a new piece of software but you have to download from the network (other paying customers) and not from Apple directly.
If i'm going to pay for music, I want guarantees that the file is what is supposed to be (what if the ID3 tag and filename is wrong?), I want guarantees that I'll get the whole file (when the download is interrupted) and finally, I want to download at a reasonable speed.
No unreasonable demands for a service I pay for, don't you think?
It is still based on sharing, right? Then why the hell would I make my own stash available for others to download from? Especially when I know that Napster gets dough by letting others download music from my HD.
Why should I pay to help Napster make money? Napster should be paying me!
We all should accept Napster as a begining of direct file share. All things that began new era are now gone. Napster is gone. It'll never be the same. Let it rest in peace. amen.
Well I didn't exactly read the entire FAQ, but something tells me in order to hack the format, you'd need a file.
And in order to get a file, you'd need to pay for the service.
And since when did hackers pay for anything other than computer hardware?
Let's say there's a CD with 12 songs on it. I like six of the songs and my friend likes the other six. We buy a CD, rip the tracks, convert them to MP3, and then throw away the CD to avoid any messy questions regarding who actually owns the original CD. Would that be fair compensation to the artists? I mean, the end result of what we'd be doing is the same as the Napster scenario, right? Every song was paid for and we didn't distribute any duplicate tracks, correct?
Now, what if we both liked the same six songs and hated the other six. We rip and convert the six songs we like and discard the CD. We each keep only the six mp3s we like. Is what we did still fair? We each only kept 50% of the CD. Again, this seems to be what the Napster business model achieves.
But wait a second. What if one song is eight minutes and another is only three? What if one song is very popular and another three are not? Who decides how much a song is "worth"? Should the sum of the individual tracks be equal to the cost of CD? More? Less?
I wouldn't have to point it out to the people saying they want to pay the artist for the material. That's not a possible legal solution for most of the music they want to access.
Why specifically record companies? Why not anyone who deals in someone else's intellectual property? Booksellers, publishers, librarians... all these are scum of the earth too, according to your logic.
Thing is though, your logic is flawed. You presume that the artist is the thing that deserves the most reward.
It's not actually that difficult to make a really good song. It's not even difficult to distribute it, provided it is done digitally. So how come there aren't lots of great songs going around on Morpheus that don't exist on CD?
Because what is difficult is to market a really good song. As in, publicise it, take it to the masses and actually bring in the money.
Firstly, radio station playlists don't come from a team meeting of benevolent DJs who spend their time searching out new sounds. Playlists come from record companies bombarding radio stations with publicity. Wise up, sucker. Commercial radio stations (and even the BBC) have fixed playlists controlled by marketting hype. It's only on the unprofitable grass-roots stations that have DJs who actually do any research.
Secondly, every artist who has tried to make a living (actually pay their bills, without claiming social security) SOLELY out of online trading of their IP has failed. You can only do this if you are already established, ie. have already shifted lots of coasters. Not forgetting that you need a decent way to accept payments.
So the horrid harsh reality is that ARTISTS NEED RECORD COMPANIES. Sorry, but they do. Record companies are not evil, they are actually the largest part of what makes pop music pop.
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
I don't understand how getting a license from "labels" screws the artist. This is really fuzzy thinking, IMO.
If the artist used a major label, one of three things happened: they were savvy and negotiated a very nice deal when they CHOSE to sell all or most of the rights to their music to the label OR they were naive and will hopefully chose better next time OR the artists' work has no inherent value and is only valuable due to the marketing muscle of the label (see NSync, 98 Degrees, Jessica Simpson, etc, etc, etc).
If the artist used an independent label, they are probably getting their fair share already. If not, they were probably really really naive and will hopefully chose better next time.
Finally, don't ask me to feel sorry for instant multi-millionaire teens and barely adults who are being prevented from becoming bigger instant multi-millionaires by the oppressive music industry. The real artists are doing their work in the independent arena where they retain control. When and if they've proven their appeal there, they can and do exercise the deserved clout when and if they decide to sell themselves and their work to a major label. Ani DiFranco has not only showed how well this can be done when there's truly golden talent involved, but she has also created the machinery to help others with less ambition, savvy or talent to do the same.
Look at what happened recently with the Ukraine. The US doesn't like their IP policies so they set out a bunch of tariffs to get them into line. The math on this is grim and simple.
Big media corporations stand to benefit from tight intellectual property controls. Wealthy countries have large entertainment industries. Politicians in all of these countries need money and so the politicians bend to the will of those corporations.
Wealthy countries have leverage against poorer countries. They can threaten everything from tariffs to witholding aid money to inciting political unrest in a country to get their way. Smaller countries have very little financial incentive to not confrom to the interests of the wealthier nations and so they give in.
America may be starting down the road to hell first, but they are dragging everybody else with them.
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I wouldn't have to point it out to the people saying they want to pay the artist for the material. That's not a possible legal solution for most of the music they want to access.
:)
Yes... but I ALREADY pointed that out my original post.
You just expanded on what I said by putting in the context of an example, but you made it sound like I missed something.
PS, I'm not being obsessed on being right... I'm obsessed on how everybody else is wrong...
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce