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Napster files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy
Joey Patterson writes "CNN Money reports that Napster has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy." Thank god the industry shut them down... now that piracy
has been stopped they can all sleep much better.
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If I understand this correctly.. Napster is gone... which leaves now... wait.. no it doesn't get rid of sharing software.. instead we now have access to tons of FREE (napster was to be pay) sharing software for MUCH more then napster ever dreamed of when they came out..
Want paintshop? Ok.. let me fire up KaZaa!
Want videos? Ok.. let me fire up KaZaa!
Want sheep? er.. that's not my department but you can probably find that on KaZaa too.
You're sooo funny. Of course napster isn't why piracy exists. But until recently Napster's sole purpose was to feed piracy. blah blah about fair use. Just admit it, everyone used Napster to pirate the latest and greatest from Eminem, and our favorite homeboys of LimpBizkit.
I'd have a lot more sympathy when you guys whine and moan if you'd just go ahead and say it "They suck because they're shutting down my favorite piracy outlet." Noone really believes that you're just downloading backups, or whatever other lame excuse you've got. You're stealing, you know it, I know it, now be a man about it... or something like that.
scott
(jumps up on soapbox)
Folks, I am sorry, but Npaster was truly only a place where people stole copyrighted material. The arguements that it helped/hurt the industry do not matter. The arguements that they weren't hurting anyone do not matter.
Right now sharing music in the way that we want to share software is illegal. There is no musical GPL. Even if there were, the artists who's music we want would not be released under it. Napster could have been a great place for budding artists to get some coverage. Instead it was used to get the Staind tracks onto CD without ever making it to Sam Goody.
One of the things that would help this community tremendously is to respect the laws and try to get done what needs to be done within the framework of them. Crying out as a group because some poor little business that was struggling along broke a law and that aided in their demise is worthless.
Don't tell me nobody didn't see this coming - the innovator is rarely the successful party in any technology leap, usually it's the follow-ups that jump on the bandwagon and streamline/fine tune a process that make the big bucks.
Napster paved the way for P2P, but really, who thought they'd get rich doing it? Well, besides Shawn Fanning, anyway.
-72
-Those who dance are considered insane by those who can't hear the music.
"Once the RIAA shut down the filesharing service, Napster, Inc. had no means of turning a profit that I could see."
How were they making money before they got shut down? I'm astonished they lasted as long as they did, too.
--
pants ahoy
They will never again have the opportunity that they let slip through their fingers because they killed Napster. Napster had the widest selection where anyone could find anything, and it worked well. They threw away the opportunity of a lifetime because they got greedy.
Instead of working out a system where they could have gotten paid something somehow, they grasped for millions, throwing away billions
It is a typical case of the big fish in the small pond fearing the ocean
There will probably never be the same chance to create a market and integrate it all into one service again.
There was a pretty good interview with John Lanning on CnetRadio that is worth listening, goes into the history, and where he sees things going from here.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
" Bertelsmann stepped in on May 17 with $8 million to buy Napster's assets. As part of that agreement, Napster was to voluntarily seek bankruptcy protection and emerge as a wholly owned unit of Europe's second-largest media group. "
you are comparing music theft with Jesus' acts, the boston tea party, and the freedon of slaves?
Thanks for making my point. You really did just fall off the turnip truck.
Whatever you think about Napster, the editor's comment on this story is lame.
Putting a murderer in jail doesn't put a stop to all murders. Does that mean it's a waste of time?
We're blowing this argument, and when we lose, everyone's going to blame the record companies, but it's going to be our own fault.
Defending stealing is wrong, and as much as everyone likes free stuff, it's just not possible that the "stealing is ok" argument is going to fly in the courts and in congress over the long run.
The other lame argument that people make is that "the record companies would be better off if they allowed sharing." Maybe. Probably not. But the point is that it's their property, and they get to decide what to do with it.
There are two issues on the table. The one that everyone talks about is piracy. There's no way to win this in the law, although technology will probably make it possible to steal music and share it over the net for the foreseeable future.
The other one, and the one that is winnable, is about whether or not there will be open electronic distribution systems. Right now entertainment companies control distribution, and that's how they make their money.
Movie studios make money by controlling access to the multiplexes -- indpendent films have to make "distribution" deals if they want to be seen. And if you want your CD in the Virgin Megastore, you've got to cut a deal with a big label. That's the toll booth.
The entertainment companies are using the piracy issue to cover up their other agenda, which is to avoid open distribution at all costs.
And their biggest allies aren't corrupt senators, they're whiny assholes with a sense of entitlement, sitting on their asses, believing that the world owes them free eminem records.
The arguments for stealing marginalizes the people who make it. It marginalizes the public's interest. It's suicidal politically and morally bankrupt.
Take my karma. I don't care.
"Thank god the industry shut them down... now that piracy has been stopped they can all sleep much better."
Remember what happened when Carnegie endowed thousands of libraries across the United States? Well, people could then get their books free! And the obvious thing happened: The book publishing industry never sold another book, except to libraries.
Not!
Then there was that second socially destructive technological advance, TV. Once people could get their entertainment at home, and without paying extra, the movie industry almost completely disappeared, except for sales to TV broadcasters.
Not!
Well, the movie industry was already dead, of course, but another technological advance, the VCR, killed it again. When people found that they could record perfectly good movies on video tape, they stopped paying for movies! It was completely logical and understandable that this would happen.
Not!
The fact is, no one completely understands the issues surrounding intellectual property. We can't write a good law if we don't understand. Someone must sit down and do the thinking, and the thinking hasn't been finished.
The music industry is so abusive that I tend to stay away from music. I find that, when I have access to free music (tapes and CDs from the library), I become interested in a particular type of music and buy more, not less. Maybe there are a lot of people like me, because, during the height of Napster, the U.S. music industry had its best year.
Napster had good effects as performance art, however I always thought that the idea that Napster would make money out of the scheme was kinda wierd.
Napster became popular by offering people something for nothing. While a lot of the criticism of the record industry is valid the justification of Napster rapidly became an exercise in rationalisation 'the record industry rips off artists, so I am morally justified in ripping them off as well'.
The recording industry did not help in their response which completely failed to understand that the principle mechanisms that cause laws to be respected are psychological and not technical.
However the business plans that Napster dreamt up to 'monetize' the user base they built up were pretty slimy, and it is no suprise that their replacements all specialize in propagating scumware that will report your every move to advertisers (and with the recent Ashcroft changes J. Edgar Mueller's FBI), bring up pop up ads at every turn and redirect your DNS to an Idealab! startup so that if and when new.net goes the way of Pets.com your machine will stop working and you won't know how to fix it.
Napster as a political statement worked, but as a business it was never going to survive. Even if it had won the copyright case the inevitable outcome would have been a change in copyright law to outlaw their business - which inevitably would contain even more clauses to push copyright law in the direction of Disney and Time Warner against the public interest.
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Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
It seems to be a far cry from the old days when the free software/open source movements were about letting the creators of a work choose the license and the distribution methods.
Apparently, some of us have decided that that is a freedom that should be reserved for some of us, and not for everyone.
If the large corporations in the music industry want to limit their distribution method and use antiquated licenses, we should respect their decision. They do not have a monopoly on music. There are alternatives and just as the open source community would prefer people using open source software, other musicians would like to get their music heard.
For once, lets consider treating others the way we want to be treated.
No Zen is good zen
i can produce an album just fine. record guitars, drums and vocals with cool edit, mix them with cool edit. burn with nero. f**k the record labels
too bad you won't make any money. Recording labels or not, the music pirates of the world will always have an excuse.