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Napster Execs Resign, Company Appears to Teeter
renard writes: "The NYT is
reporting that five top executives at Napster,
including founder Shawn Fanning and CEO Konrad
Hilbers, resigned yesterday. This occurs in the
wake of their Board's rejection of the latest
buyout offer from Bertelsmann AG - as Hilbers says, `I am convinced
that not pursuing the offer is a mistake.' Could
this be the end for the upstart MP3 indexing service
that changed everything?"
Napster as a company is irrelevant.
The P2P architecture pioneered by Napster is what matters.
Just like 3dfx (which is no longer) revolutions outlive pioneers.
Let's just hope it doesn't totter as well!
here and here.
---- scrm
And for those who wants to hire Shawn, his CV
is published at todays gnuheter:
http://www.gnuheter.com/article.php?sid=1486
Why should I buy Napster when I just downloaded it from Kazaa??
Attention all planets of the Solar Federation! We have assumed control! - Neil Peart
Napster spent millions
Only the lawyers got rich.
H. Rosen smiles.
the napster market share has been taken over by a lot of other p2p applications...
To try to build back a userbase on the napster name would be a mistake imo
It would not supprise me if those 5 execs left at the same time to persue a similar product without the history that napster has had
and Napster will never again regain it's past glory, at least not legally... I'm surprised these rats didn't abandon ship before.
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
Talking about Napster is like talking about Netscape. They are both dead companies that thought the light at the end of the tunnel was daylight when it was an approaching train.
As far as the actual content of the story, it just goes to show what incompetent boobs were running the show. Too much VC money was flowing through them to allow them to give up, I presume.
I have been pwned because my
The courts killed their market and technology. Napster has been history since that ruling, barring an upset by the Supreme Court, which hardly seems likely.
My $0.02 will always be worth more than your â0.02, so
One boy in South Dakota crys at the loss. Hilary Rosen decides to use one of her four remaining orgasms to celebrate. Next expect use, 2024.
Rest of population, doesn't really give a shit. Grandmother unavailable for comment.
Computational Madness in a round package.
Could this be the end for the upstart MP3 indexing service that changed everything?
I thought it ended a long time ago. we already knew it wasn't going to come back in any way shape or form like the good ol' napster.
This is kind of like the Amiga situation.
The Napster brand has changed owners multiple times. Owners with different agendas have tried (and failed) to shape the brand and the underlying technology to their agendas. During this cacophony, the brand has been rendered irrelevantt in a marketplace of far superior competitors.
Napster is done. It has been rendered irrelevant. Let it die already.
...another on CNET, for those of you who loathe free registration, or whatever :)
--Kylus
Idiot-proof something, and Life will build a better Idiot.
Although for a short time it was great, and most certainly changed the face of audio entertainment, we can see Darwinism at work. Ideas and implementations which exist in our current tech world, exist in a hostile world, where the single greatest threat comes from the "subpoena attack". Those devices and implementations which are immune to this attack are the ones which will thrive and survive.
If it hadn't been for the destruction of Napster, I doubt there would be the flurishing of the Gnutella clients we see today. And IMHO, although Napster was great for music, Gnucleus is a far better tool for sharing information/entertainment than Napster ever was, or could ever hope to become.
Napster has the distinction of being the first company slain by the serial killer known as the DMCA
Could this be the end for the upstart MP3 indexing service that changed everything?
No, that was March 25, 2002.
Does anyone have any idea why they did that? It cost them dearly, but I've never understood why they made that distinction. Was it to keep porn off the network? Was it to brand the service? What the hell were they thinking?
Seriously, while I didn't ever understand their business model, I mourn the loss.
A year ago I could get any mp3 I wanted. I was just getting into a lot of music (that I have since bought on CD), so this was great.
Even six months ago, when Napster was gone, there was Kazaa.
Now, even that is gone (under Linux).
Gnutella is a nightmare.
I have to say, this is the first instance I can recall where innovation has been squelched by the twin swords of control, legislation and litigation. For some reason, I doubt it will be the last.
The revolution was fast, but the counter-revolution was furious. Let's start preparing for the next round.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
>Leaders of the worlds largest pirate network are resigning [hopefully to go find a real job....] big deal.
I suppose you would say the same things about Yamaha, HP, LG, and Philips if they go out of business.
I mean, they are all piracy boosters. They make CD Recording drives, right?
Or perhaps you should just stop being so... generic?
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
I find it funny that Napster came and went, the FBI raid came and went and it seems to be business as usual as the new Eminem album is leaked as well as a (bad) cam job of Episode II.
Piracy may never be so widespread and popular again, but it will always exist. Anytime you don't have a free market, a black one will exist.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
When companies appear to die after turning down offers, I wonder, what do you have to gain by not just taking whatever money and running? Ok, maybe they'll sleep better at night, but somehow I don't feel that figures into it all that much.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Or perhaps you should just stop being so... generic?
Saying napster had legitimate uses? Such as what? It only indexed music.
If I want to look for a good non-signed local band I certainly wouldn't use P2P. Those stupid "it helps the little guy" excuses are the masses way of justifying downloading 10GB worth of RIAA music.
If Napster was truly altruistic they would have banned IPs from those who sent/got copyrighted material. Instead they let it go for years before being slapped around.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
"a sticking point had been Bertelsmann's refusal to indemnify Mr. Barry and Mr. Hummer completely from further lawsuits that the record companies have threatened to file."
Looks like these guys are a little worried that if they take the money and run, the record companies will hunt them down and beat it out of them.
In Soviet Russia, hot grits put YOU down THEIR pants.
Fare thee well.
--
Runnin' around, robbin' banks all whacked on the Scooby Snacks...
There was little point in maintaining the company anyways... from a business perspective, the company possessed little which couldn't or hasn't been engineered elsewhere.
Arguing from a brand name perspective also falls apart as it has been damaged in the eyes of the market and consumers in a number of high profile media reports.
Many of the original millions of users had no intention of contributing financially and have since moved on to other products... it was mainly a way for them to leech music.
This meant that it effectively was running at a loss with little chance of making money from past 'customers' or attracting new customers. The company possessed little valuable assets and legal cases as well as monetry concerns was killing it off slowly.
The biggest surprise was how it has managed to survive this long...
The net result is that it made the recording industry start clamping down on things like MP3 ripping and CD copying (both of which I do legitimately; I make MP3s of CD's to listen to on the computer/iPaq and copies of CDs to listen to in my car). All that Napster has done for me in that regard is make my life hell if I want to continue doing that with new CDs.
I'm not going to start the argument about "Napster helps CD sales" because it's been beaten to a pulp. My guess is that it cuts both ways (some people would figure "why buy if I can get it off Napster?" others would try it on Napster then decide to buy)
I hope people were able to salt away money as a cushion for their future.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Uh, they were only allowing MP3 files to be transferred on their service. It's not like they could also be used for backing up data files.
Are you going to burn millions of CDs and then mail them out on request, for free?
Having said that, this also makes me kinda optomistic for the future. The future where all the old dinosaurs that are running the world now finally retire, and get replaced with people that have a clue.
When someone yells "Stop" or goes limp, or taps out, the fight is over.
--
Runnin' around, robbin' banks all whacked on the Scooby Snacks...
Ignore my previous post. Bad morning so far, and I didn't have my sarcasm detector turned on yet.
Can we have a port of the *BSD is dying post to Napster please?
From what I could gather, it seemed that 90% of its users were only interested in getting MP3's of songs they didn't want to pay for. There were some who would use it to listen to a song to evalutate whether they wanted to buy a CD, but they were the minority.
I love the last bit the best. Um, even if you are going to buy the CD you have no right to infringe copyright. Thats like downing a 1L of pepsi just to "test the market" first. Same goes for those pirate-game-but-only-for-24-hours-then-delete people. Copying game even for 10 mins is illegal in most countries. Just because you plan on buying a copy in no way makes that ok.
Thats what radio is for. If you want to here what is new tune into your local radio station. They at least [probably] legitimately have copies!
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Directly tip/pay musicians (I've said how ad-infinitum here, so I won't repeat my whole rant now). It's not hard to break the payment-system bottleneck and cut out the middlemen, I've been selling the tools for YEARS...
http://101574.clicktwocents.com tips me with my favorite kind of money if you've got any (and around here, I give the stuff away!) but I have 0 musical talent. The Radiators are quite good, though.
JMR
Try e-gold - (contact me). I'm NOT e-
>Saying napster had legitimate uses? Such as what? It only indexed music.
Exactly. Napster never put in a filter until they were forced to in an effort to stop you from putting non-pirate music online, just as HP never put a filter in their CD Recorders to stop you from recording tracks without the copyright bit set.
>If I want to look for a good non-signed local band I certainly wouldn't use P2P.
Just because you don't want to doesn't mean no one else would. I enjoyed the surprise of finding quality indie bands on Napster. For once they were at the same level as "pop" music, and this is what is really freaking out the RIAA. That an indie band with no label could become popular just by sounding better than Britney (shouldn't be too hard, really).
Napster was the great leveler, and I appreciated it for that.
>If Napster was truly altruistic they would have banned IPs from those who sent/got copyrighted material.
They did. Many times and in many ways.
And if Napster were truly altruistic, in my opinion, they wouldn't have tried to turn it into a pay service and wouldn't ban anyone at any time.
Either way, Napster is as much a front for piracy as a company that makes CD Burners.
Both can be used for bad and good. And, to tell you the truth from what I've seen, more CD Burners are used for warez than for backing up hard drives.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
[i]All that Napster has done for me in that regard is make my life hell if I want to continue doing that with new CDs. [/i]
Napster didn't do that. Overgorged and overpowered corporations who have far to much power in our government have done that. I didn't like Napster nor did I use Napster but place the blame where it belongs.
jello.
aka aron.
The Internet is still only ~30 years old. We are still in the "early days." And think about it, when our kids (I'm only 21) use the net, they will be asking us, "What was the Internet like before the government and ACME Corp. screwed it up. You know, in the old days?"
...And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me." - Martin Niemoeller (1892-1984)
Pirate network? How so? By this logic, then all of your major ISPs would be the worlds largest "pirate network." Down with UUNet! For they have warez traders and skript kiddies as part of their customer base! This is seriously a case of "shoot the messenger." And Napster tried, they really did, to control what was on their network, but they just couldn't satisfy Rosen.
I have about 300 CDs in my collection, and a lot of these would have never gotten purchased had I not had access to the material on Napster and other P2P systems. So yeah...it really hurt record sales.
[i]I love the last bit the best. Um, even if you are going to buy the CD you have no right to infringe copyright. Thats like downing a 1L of pepsi just to "test the market" first. Same goes for those pirate-game-but-only-for-24-hours-then-delete people. Copying game even for 10 mins is illegal in most countries. Just because you plan on buying a copy in no way makes that ok.[/i]
That depends on if you're talking about laws or morals. Legally, yeah.. the "sample it" idea doesn't fly. Morally.. well, that's another matter to be determined by ones own opinions.
Personally, I have no moral problem at all pulling down an album of MP3s, giving it a listen or two, then deleting it and using that to decide if I want to buy the work or not. It's just the same as having a friend copy the cd onto a tape and giving that to me (which is legal, btw). Yeah, you can say that's what the radio is for but the radio doesn't play what I want to hear it plays what the record company wants me to hear. Too many times have my friends and I been burned when the record execs pay for the two good songs from some album to be played then the other 11 songs are so bad the cd never even gets put in the player again.
jello.
aka aron.
What do you mean "for once"? Underground music has been at and above the level of corporate rock for at LEAST 20 years. Think of what everyone listens to from the 1970's. Think they're innovative? Try again. There was underground music back then too. You think Aphex Twin is hot? All his stuff has its roots back in the 60's, in music written by people almost nobody has heard of. You like Orbital? Three high school kids from Detroit started that stuff in the 1980's. That an indie band with no label could become popular just by sounding better than Britney (shouldn't be too hard, really).
That will never happen unless people stop paying attention to marketing and equating popularity to quality. Unfortunately that's a lesson we all learn to early and too many never forget. (and not just from advertising!)
"Could this be the end for the upstart MP3 indexing service that changed everything?"
Napster "ended" when they lost their copyright infringement case...
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
Napster was great.
If every musicians in the world went broke from napster, I would still think it was great.
There would be other incentives besides money to create music and life would go on. Maybe there wouldn't be so much of it, but is that such a bad thing?
If I were a musician, of course I'd be pissed, just like anyone else who chooses a profession thats core business model has become obsolete.
I'm sure this post is short sighted, poorly thought out and doesn't consider the massive effect entertainment has on the economy.
I don't care and neither did the thousands of napster users who were told by the recording industry that they needed music in order to live.
The music they forced down the throats of our generation is what encourages this attitude, now they reap what they sow.
The legacy Napster did leave behind is the other filesharing networks (Kazaa, etc.) That's good. However, the genie's out of the bottle, and those services are next.
Time to fire up the ol' FTP client and Usenet reader...
The new, BMG-owned Napster was very much a Responsible Grownup proposition. Responsible Grownups would centralize the files, take them out of that greasy-kids-stuff MP3 format and put them in a Responsible Grownup format with "rights management" that would curtail your ability to format-shift, time-shift and repurpose the music you downloaded. The system really looked like it was going to brutally suck.
So I can't really feel too sad for poor old dead Napster. Death was the best it could hope for now. Dead, its name can remain synonymous with revolutions; had it lived, its name would have been synonymous with crap.
Well, that was smart.
I mean, that the DMCA was necessary, of course.
How is that ironic?
I'm sure your a great altruist. You probably take care of your sick grandmother while working 3 jobs so you can buy Celine Dion CD's for poor inner city youth.
Or maybe, like me, you are just another self-absorbed consumer that likes the sound of their own voice.
If your sick of hearing selfish idiots making excuses to justify their ways I suggest you get off the internet, or rather, the planet.
Throw on a new appearance... call it Napster XP and people would start using it again.
Worked for the iMac.
I still butter my own toast with a knife.
I still have to drive a car that's fueled by gasoline and uses the principles of internal combustion to generate horespower to work every day.
Oh, what's that? It changed how music is distributed online? Well, I guess that's not everything, is it?
I'm tired of everything on the internet being a fucking revolution.
Uh, they were only allowing MP3 files to be transferred on their service. It's not like they could also be used for backing up data files.
... and it is a dangerous precedent that something is banned simply because it can be abused and some people choose to do so. Apply the same level of justice to other products and you ban VCRs (which the Copyright Cartels tried to do), kitchen knives, and automobiles, to name just three commonly "abused" devices.
The example I'd like to use is my old single I have on the shelf (six inch vinyl record, now hopelessly scratched but still playable, if I still had a record player) of "Too Drunk to Fuck" by the Dead Kennedy's. Not their best work, but I was 16 when I bought it (for juvinile "its got profanity, cool!" reasons), and it introduced me to a great punk band whose other albums I have owned (and seen get destroyed at parties, etc.). Somehow through all that, this one single survives through today.
So I downloaded the mp3 off of the internet, and can now listen to music which I've legally already bought and paid for, but for which the equipment I had is now no longer in service, and the format so dated that the only equipment I can now buy costs a small fortune.
Napster had many legitamate uses
I should note that all of the music on my hard drive is legal. I own a copy, in one format or another, of every single mp3 I've downloaded, and every single ogg file I've ripped myself.
So, which is the more extremist position to take? The idea that music and other information should flow freely, as it arguably did for the 3 million years humanity was around prior to the British inventing copyright as a means of censoring the then emergent printing press (with great success, I might add), or the idea that copy control policing technology should be built into every digital device in America, from your computer to a baby's rattle (as proposed by "Disney" Hollings and promoted by the Copyright Cartels) to prevent the possibility that someone, somewhere, might violate someone's government granted, monopoly entitlement?
I think you need to examine just who you are calling "extremist" and how your defining the word. "I don't think that word means what you think it means."
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
About a year ago I wrote an article about why Napster should have called it quits then, instead of coming to an end this way. I'd like to take this opportunity to say "I told you so." But there's a little more substance and principle to it than that, if you check out the article.
What can Napster do? What DID Napster do? I mean, really, come on. What kind of property did Napster have that they could create a demand for? Music. Okay, now, what could they have done to make money off of other people's music? Obviously, the only thing would be to charge a subscription per month or per downloaded song or something similar. If they did that, then other filesharers would come along that were free. Napster would lose market share. The point is, Napster was dead from the start , just like most the other dotbombs, because Napster did not have a viable way to make money. It doesn't matter what the DMCA did. It doesn't! Even without the DMCA , Napster wouldn't have made it long before they died a bloody and painful death. That's the way it is.
Mags
Shawn Fanning is the one who lost the most on this one. His pet project started as an interesting software hack and went to having millions of users worldwide. It was then destroyed by clueless people who have access to a near-unlimited supply of money who blamed him for users that abused his service. Good luck to him, and it will be interesting to see what he comes up with next.
You mean I won't be able to spend 30 dollars a month to share my files and get files from people? But they promised!
Something like "Napster's recent apparent teetering was, in fact, confirmed by respected industry experts as an actual corporate teeter. 'This was a genuine teeter, make no mistake about that' said Flughart Frockwiffle. 'This, in combination with other recent news, may well put them on track to acheive full-scale beleaguered status'. Meanwhile, both remaining executives are disputing the analysis. 'This is far short of a teeter by any modern calculation. The teeter standards [used here] are more than 20 years old. That's before the Internet even existed.".
Liberty uber alles.
my old Pentium 90 that sits in the closet and from which I pulled the CPU out to make it a key chain.
It is quite amazing to see that even the view of daily activities, like listening to music, improve following Moore's law.
I'm not disagreeing with you, but I thought this might be helpful for you, just in case you have other old albums lying around. It's not worth what they're asking ($130 -- about $75 too much), but it's far short of a small fortune. Not that I would advise buying anything from "Worst Buy" these days....
GreyPoopon
--
Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
Of course, when your company is facing lawsuits from every angle as stated here in the Financial Times, you might have a bit more incentive to simply bow out. Especially if the only deal that could save Napster would turn it to crap in the process. I gotta respect anybody who turns down a $20 million dollars on the grounds of principle. Yeah, it hurts, but it sounds like Napster was going to be turned into another proprietary piece of shit service anyway. At least they didn't sell out.
I do like a few quotes from this artical... "The failure of Napster would represent the triumph of Hollywood over Silicon Valley..." Heh... While they're waving their victory flags, the world has gone and passed them by. Also note the quotes by Terry Semel (CEO of Yahoo) and Andy Grove (Chairman of Intel), in the last two paragraph.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
has already come. This is just confirming it.
"Do I dare disturb the universe?"
My guess is that they were the Pioneers... The man on point. They had this really successful, kick ass idea and probably thought they were on solid enough legal grounds to do it. Heck, a lot of sites still think that disclaimer saying "you must erase this within 24 hrs, etc, etc, etc." is enough to keep the legal dogs of war at bay. What they actally thought is a mystery, but when unforseen problems like this do pop-up, the pioneers always take it on the chin.
...at the cost of it's life...
You're right. A strait "File" sharing service should have gotten away with it, but Napster probably would have suffered the same fate eventially simply because an example needed to be made of them. The labels would have ran Nabster into the ground simply by tying it up in legal fees, let alone prosecution. What it did do was tame the wild frontier (cue sad french horns)
You need a FREE iPod Nano
Sure the internet came into being 30 years ago, but do the years from 1972-1990 even mean anything? A bunch of universities and defense contractors on 56k links, with a lot of nodes UUCP only?
The same is true of the "early days of TV" -- sure, it was *invented* and very narrowly used in the 30s and 40s, but for most people the early days of TV means the early-mid 50s when people generally starting buying and watching TV regularly.
The same is true of the internet -- I worked at a major University and we didn't get general internet access (IP connectivity of our computers) until probably '90. Dialup wasn't an option until '91 or '92, and generic consumer access not an option until 93-94, and even then it was limited and expensive.
The "modern" internet as a mass phenomenon (cheap home dialup, most server sites accessed via high speed dedicated connectivity) didn't really start until '94-95 and wasn't even a popular force until a couple of years later.
Counting 72-90 as "the early years" is legitimate only if you're talking about the six geeks who did something with it then.
Bertelsmann poured in excess of $85 million into Napster (that they've declared), and they're getting none of it back, because the fucked up control freak DRM-infected new-Napster technology that it paid for is utterly without a market. That money is gone, burned, buried.
Now... where are they going to recoup that $85 million from? Pay cuts for their executives? Hmmm, I think not.
That $85 million is coming from two places. From their artists, and from us.
You have a think about that the next time the RIAA tells you that you're stealing from artists, and that you'll suffer in the long run. Bertelsmann paid $85 million to come up with a worse system than one 19 year old college dropout knocked up in his spare time. And we're going to pay for it. No doubt they will spin that so that their incompetence becomes our fault for using Napster in the first place.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Do you believe in death after life?
Simple...STOP BUYING, STOP STEALING. Let your favorite artists know that you don't appreciate THEIR support of the very mechanism that is serving to systematically dismantle the rights of consumers. Let them know that you believe in this strongly enough to sacrifice any further enjoyment of their work, until they begin looking at alternate methods of distribution. If the people who endlessly complain about the RIAA (and steal as a means of getting even) aren't willing to walk the walk, they really don't have anything to complain about. The festering sore that is the RIAA, and other parties attempting to impose undue restrictions on the use of copyrighted material, will only get worse.
No, I don't mean at the same quality level, or innovative level, or that underground music is new. Sorry I wasn't clear!
:( ). Napster was one of the great equalizers, IMHO. It let the small frys play with the big guys, just like the web lets you put up a webpage (like slashdot) for fun in your dorm and next thing you know you're on TV and in Magazines.
;-). Its just plain hard to find. Just like many pop bands burn out after their one-hit wonder and are forever forgotten, indie groups are gone even quicker. Which, again, brings me to another point I liked about Napster. If people were to keep their files online (and many more would if they didn't think they'd be in jail for it) older good music would be simple to find. As it stands now, if you are an indie group and quit selling CDs, you're pretty much gone for good.
I'm really meaning that they are at the same level of visibility. "Joe indie band" was no harder to find on Napster than "Britney Speers" with Napster (assuming someone else had it). Whereas if I want to buy a "underground" CD now I'm looking at searching for it on the web or seeing what a local CD shop can do for me, or seeing if I can get it on vynil at the local DJ shop (too bad I don't have a record player
I know there was decent underground music before Aphex Twin/Orbital/whatever-you-name-it. Heck, I do a radio show of underground electronica (no, I'm not a pro by any means, but I'm the only one in my area broadcasting at 4000 Watts
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
No way this comapny was going to see the light of day under BMG (or any tradition-bound record co's) stewardship: from the Dataplay story a while back, I repeat:
"The RIAA should kiss Shawn's nappy little ass for providing the only true breakthru in music marketing since the music video. But as usual, the industry has figured out how to tie the whole relaunch up in knots because even BMG really doesn't like the whole thing but they smell money. I doubt it was a sanctified "we should be honestly representing our artist's interest" but rather a pant-wetting "holy crap - see these DL logs? can you imagine a dollar sign in front of each of these?" I mean please - it's taken them a year to not get ready, and from the get go they won't be able to write a MacOS client (no mention of any other platforms) and they can't for the life of them figure out how to take credit AND debit cards at the same time. There are one-man roasted cashew operations in East Rainbucket, Maine who can do this.
I gotta go.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
What in heaven's name were/are they doing?!?!
sulli
RTFJ.
I wouldn't always equate moral with legal if I were you. Downloading and then buying doesn't hurt anyone, it actually helps both parties. Yes it is illegal, but I dont' recommend always following the law of the land blindly.
Jeremy
Napster wasn't an "upstart MP3 indexing service," it was a "revolution in piracy" that bubbled up to the mainstream. The American Revolution was illegal in it's time, but it did some good. However, in our "civilized" society, Shawn Fanning shouldn't have given Napster out to more than his close friends. He should be held accountable for his role. Consumers should learn to hold the labels accountable for anti-competitive practices in a more legal way than simple looting. Before Napster, we had reasonable fair-use laws. Now we have the DMCA et al. Akamai didn't setup a massive pirate FTP network to get where they did. Good riddance Napster!
I wouldn't always equate moral with legal if I were you. Downloading and then buying doesn't hurt anyone, it actually helps both parties. Yes it is illegal, but I dont' recommend always following the law of the land blindly.
...
The road to hell is paved with
If you disagree with the laws of the land, change them. Don't just break them then stand up proud saying "I meant well!".
The reason a civilized society follows laws is because normally it takes a concensus to form laws. That means more then person must be involved.
Sure some laws may be found inappropriate [dmca, slavery] but just breaking the law because you want to is wrong.
Put it this way. What if I think all of a sudden that fat people shouldn't own food, so as a favour to them I rob them of all their food in their homes. Even if my intentions are noble who am I to randomly make up a "law" and follow it?
Downloading copyrighted music, even if your intentions are honourable [e.g. you will buy or delete it] doesn't mean its legal.
And I don't think anyone is disagreeing that your way of business is more efficient/practical but that doesn't make it right. I personally don't believe in income tax, but that doesn't mean I can't skip paying it.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
If you disagree with the laws of the land, change them. Don't just break them then stand up proud saying "I meant well!".
Just to play the devils advocate..
Have you ever heard of civil disobedience? It can work wonders. Might have heard of a couple of guys who did some nifty stuff with it.. King and Ghandi I think were their names. Something like that.
jello.
aka aron.
Their netblock is no longer announced; have they been blackholed by their upstream provider? If they are not back quickly, we'll have the proof that they're gone for good.. Everything has to end at some point! Now my original Napster shirts are collectors ;)
have you been defaced today?
What exactly do you think P2P is? People just randomly figuring out a way to connect to each other, then exchanging information?
Napster is pretty much the epitome of P2P: software that enables people to transact directly with each other. That's exactly what Napster does/did. If that's not P2P, could you give me a better example of it?
I'm sorry sandwich! --Brak
On Wired news there's a very brief history of Napster, from the cradle to the grave. Interesting read.
Yep. They disobeyed the law, then stood out in the open and were publicly arrested.
A little different from being weaselboy with a HD or two full of MP3 files hidden in your 'room.' (parents basement)
I whole-heartedly agree. My point, however, was that simply saying "change the laws if you don't like them" is meaningless. It is obvious from the current path of legislation that our lawmakers are not operating in our interests. Therefore disobeying these unjust laws is what needs to be done to change them. Until people do start getting arrested for things most of the public feels should be legal nothing is likely to change.
jello.
aka aron.