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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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...is that Hilary Rosen probably thinks she's won.
Napster is gone, legally they're caught, but lets face it, P2P is quickly becoming a killer app, and Napster made that possible. Brian.
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.
"RIAA Sues Audiogalaxy"
The music/movie industry seems to be going after napster and co one after the other, with the money and clout they weld who can and will stand upto them? We can look forward to corporate networks serving you movies/music for monthly charges continuing their shrink wrap monopolies.
Not every good hacker is a good business person.
Not every great idea can be best exploited by its progenitor.
Napster was, at worst, a means for the long-standing fact of exploitation of artists by record labels to become common knowledge. Even teeny-boppers are familiar with the concepts of mechanical royalties, publishing contracts, and "recoupment".
Napster is dead; long live Napster.
(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.
FTP has now been banned under the DMCA since it can be used to distribute copyrighted material.
Later,
Phil
"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
If you recall, K-Mart has also filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy to protect them from their creditors while they attemp to reorganize into a profitable company.
Filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy does not mean that the company is gone or is no longer operating. In the case of Napster, the great levels of piracy ended long before today.
end of line
Personally this is my two cents. I really could care less to see napster go. I buy my music, because i like collecting CD's and records. The only reasoned I cared at all about napster is because when it came out. I found it was an awesome way to find new music i hadn't heard... preview it in good quality, listen for a while make sure I wouldn't get bored, then I BOUGHT THE DAMN CD! Alas, I know I am one of the few people who used napster that actually ended up buying more CD's because of it. Thats because radio in this day and age, at least where i lived, which is philadelphia, sucked and still does, and is one sided. BUT that is a whole other rant for a whole other topic.
Anyway so Napster is gone.. I'll just have to go back to free previews on www.cdnow.com to figure out if I like new music that i want to buy.
Who makes you Sig?
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"
Chapter 11 means protection from creditors while reorganizing, which has been the plan. They're not shut down, they've not gone away, they're just shifting debt around and restructuring (i.e. laying off any worker bees left, negotiating terms on debt payment, etc.)
This is hardly a surprise, nor the end of Napster. The only effect against "music piracy" is that Napster, under BMG's thumb, will simply be a store front for their products. In a way, similar to what the Mega-swill Brewers did 10-15 years ago, buying up all those threatening little micro-brews and screwing up their distribution to preserve market for the highly profitable [yecch] that they sell (i.e. you don't become billionaires without putting rice in your mash instead of expensive barley.)
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
attention xxAA's, usenet does not exist. it's just an old fairy tale meant to scare you. please move along, nothing to see here...
Sure, Napster has gone bankrupt because the efforts of a typically greedy industry, but don't side with their "moral" argument and accuse me or Napster of stealing MP3s. I never stole anything. I copied someone else's zeroes and ones, and zeroes and ones are not music until you interpret them. In fact, I could interpret them in any way I want to. Go ahead and argue that I was in fact always and exclusively interpreting them as musicm but the fact remains: they will never, ever be the music exactly, they will always be a digital approximation, however convincing it is. I will not agree with the stealing argument until the RIAA defines clearly what the music is and what is stealing them. By their argument, am I stealing the song if I sing it? That's an approximation too. You'd have to plug the analog hole in my head and stop me from thinking of the song after listening to it. How close to the song does the approximation have to be until it is considered to be the song? And what defines the song? Is the song zeroes and ones? No, it's a pattern of sound waves reaching my head, but the pattern is never the same as it was in the studio on a digital approximation. What if these zeroes and ones can be interpreted to be the music in mp3 format, but if I change the extension to .doc and open it in word, it's really an informative paper? If you allow people to copyright digital approximations of a song, you effectively allow people to own numbers, which are a natural phenomenon. Look at the case of the people who wanted to translate their DNA sequences into MP3 format for the same degree of copyright protection. You might as well copyright air if you are going to say, "This, and anything I decide is arbitrarily similar to this in a specific interpretation is mine!"
The fact is, stealing is a fuzzy line when you speak in terms of zeroes and ones, and what music is. I believe that due to this argument, the music industry has no choice but to adapt to use file sharing to its benefit, and the RIAA is working against consumer and its own interests in this case.
Hilary Rosen, shut your analog hole.
~Ben
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.
located at news.com. It's quick and to the point.
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
I acctually used Napster to grab old TV show themes and bootlegs of concerts that I could never in a million years make it to. In effect, I was stealing art that was inaccessible. You want to cart me off for it, come get me. I buy cds. I buy litteraly tons of DVDs. Don't tell me I'm hurting anyone. I'd still like to see the artists get the real money, not the distributors. They wouldn't even have a product if it weren't for the artists. And yes, I would buy the downloads of an album directly from the artist if it were available.
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.
I'm sure there's something I don't understand about this, but...
Sure they could move their servers offshore. But they still have to have a business located somewhere. If you have an office or employees in a country, you (or at least the portion of the company that those employees work for) need to follow the law in that country. Moving the server to Sealand doesn't mean that your office in New Jersey can't be issued a summons. Even if you incorporate offshore and have your employees telecommute, you need to have at least bank routing to get them their paychecks. The government can impound those accounts.
Sealand only seems to me to be a good place for individuals to host info pages, not to run a business out of.
"God of puppets"
Only one song on the CD will be worth listening to.
I'll let the misspelling go, because this is Slashdot. However, you buy "litteraly tons of DVDs". A DVD weighs about 15g. Let's be generous, and assume you were including the packaging in your wight calculations, which would put it up around 150g per DVD. A ton of DVDs would therefore be ~6600 disks and packaging. You have tons, i.e. at least two, so we conclude that you have at least 13,000 DVDs.
Where do you keep them all?
--
E_NOSIG
But the point is that it's their property, and they get to decide what to do with it.
Except once they sell it to me, it becomes my property. That's what selling means.
Of course, we have copyright laws to make sure I don't sell multiple copies of the work, but within those laws, it's my property, and I get to decide what to do with it.
--
E_NOSIG
"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.
<sarcasm>
Somebody please delete this post. According to Rosen people like the one above don't exist. Note that
" I buy my music, because i like collecting CD's and records"
We all know that NOBODY that uses Napster buys music because it is a den of thieves and lowlifes... I know this because the RIAA told me so
Also..
" I found it was an awesome way to find new music i hadn't heard... "
This is another fallacy. The only music that you find on Napster is copyrighted, pirated, ripped illegal music. Music that you hear on the radio, media pressed, mainstreamed music. You don't find any other kind of music on Napster but illegal music. I know this because the RIAA told me so.
so either this guy above doesn't exist... or the RIAA has been lying to me. And I trust the RIAA
</sarcasm>
You raise some good points. However, I think that the real losers here include not only the Napster fans, but the recording industry, and the artists themselves.
I remember reading an interview with one of the Grateful Dead members about their efforts to set up a free archive of their works. The interview was particularly telling because it tackled the question of piracy of music and its effects on artists from a very non-RIAA perspective.
Basically, the Grateful Dead moved beyond tolerating piracy on the part of their fans (in an effort not to drive fans away) to actually appreciating it as a sort of free marketing. Note that the vast majority of the money that most artists make comes from performances and not from record sales.
The real napster issues are really complex and involve the following topics:
1: Unbalanced copyright law.
2: Exploitation of artists by the record companies.
3: Piracy.
Piracy is wrong because it continues to feed the unvalanced system. Copyright law was originally conceived to create a richer culture, not richer media moguls. An unballanced system causes the same sorts of damage as no copyright protection for literary works. This is why fair use is so important.
Piracy also has to potential to cause the same sort of damage by preventing literary works from being created in the first place.
The real issue is-- Napster was the symptom, not the problem, and the RIAA, etc. are strangling our culture (and themselves in the process) trying to enforce their warped view of copyright rights.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Can we find a new joke to make for any "death of Napster/Gnutella/KaZaa/P2P" news?
-jon
Remember Amalek.
Venues for...
Television theme songs
High-quality bootlegs for bands that permit concert taping
I've been using AudioGalaxy, but I just read they are going to be sued, and presumably go under soon.
What is the easiest way to get MP3's now that doesn't have a company that can be sued?
I've been trying to find blues travelers cover of johnny b. goode for 3 years now. the only place I've EVER found it was on napster. it was from a tape someone made at a concert. imagine john popper soloing on that song with his harp going at 3 times the normal tempo.
I'd gladly PAY for that song, however I've yet to find a place that sells it, including www.bluestraveler.com
Napster served one purpose and one purpose ALONE for me- rare bootlegs of songs the bands never put on cd. Oh, that and john mayer
Looking for Book Reviews? Check out Literary Escapism.
Click here or here.
Here's the thing; Napster isn't filing for bankruptcy as a result of government oppression or RIAA meddling or anything of the sort. They were simply a neat idea with no business merit at all. Napster:TOG was neat, and it was free... Maybe under the mistaken theory that they could get people addicted and then start charging $5 a month to the junkies to get access to the network. Not a workable solution, as we've all seen in the past, as free service after free service folded. They'd begin to realize that buying $5000 laptops for all their staff and cool cars for the execs didn't help the bottom line when there was no revenue at all. Ah, the post-IPO spending sprees.... Napster:TNG stood no better chance of making money. They were pinning everything on the BMG deal at the end, and as anyone knows, if your company only has one client, you're that client's bitch. N:TNG was effectively what resulted when the government and industry forced the company into the "charging" stage of a failing dot.com. Don't kid yourself that they'd have done alright if they'd been left to their own devices and moved to a subscription model on their own timing. People get pissy when they have to start paying for something that's always been free... Paying for Slashdot yet?
--- http://foo.ca
the central servers that napster used to connect weren't free, my friend. neither was their webserver.
Got Freedom?
Thinking?
Thank god the industry shut them down... now that piracy has been stopped they can all sleep much better.
Yeah and it's a good thing we caught Timothy McVeigh, cause now there's no more terrorism in America.
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."
Then Taco would have to admit that he's a hypocrite who complains when others infringe on his copyright but then goes and infringes on others' works himself.
It's funny how libraries are rarely attacked, because the industry probably knows that if they did that, there's no way they could get their agenda through. Libraries offer more than books, most offer videos, cds, dvds, magazines, etc. for to people to borrow for free.
I'm glad that libraries are more protected that most places; especially with that required censorship bill being shot down a few days ago. (Although it will probably show up in the Supreme Court).
Without libraries I would have never learned how to code or read 1/2 the books I read. Many of which I now own, because they were such good books I wanted to be able to read them again and share them with other people such as my family or kids someday.
What?
And yes I can. Or are you claiming I can't read a book aloud in front of my son's kindergarten class?
--
E_NOSIG
If you're looking for live blues traveler you should check out furthur www.furthurnet.com. Its a free and legal mp3 live performance program that allows trading of artists who allow it. And blues traveler is on the list. Check it out.
Don't tell me nobody didn't see this coming
I ain't never gonna not tell you somthin' that won't never happen, noways.
Sigs are out of style, so I'm not going to use one...oh wait..
Well, according to CmdrTaco, it means the same thing as copyright infringement. "Thats totally a copyright violation... I wish people wouldn't steal."
If they did business in the U.S. (i.e. had people in the U.S. connecting to their servers), then they would have to abide by U.S. laws for those customers. There are many, many precedents for this. Sure, they could set up shop in Sealand and serve up anything at all to the locals, but most people don't want to move to Sealand to get around free music.
I'm inclined to agree with you.
m y-house.
There are several dynamic forces at work here, and whenever you have dynamics, you don't have absolutism.
Negative forces:
Economic free rider problem: Person one pays for a good/service, and person 2..n benifits for free. The problem is that if a firm knows that only 1 person will purchase, then they either have to fully charge, or not produce.
Lack of control:
When you control a comodity, you have a monopoly and can have secondary incomes ($4 drinks at the movies, for example). It's not garunteed profit, but it always helps. Presumably if secondary income is great enough, you can even reduce the price of the main good (i.e. MS Windows, amusement park entrance fees, etc) to maximize revenue. The music industry has numerous secondary revenue's. Most importantly, control over what is a best seller. Radio-brainwashing and store-marketing are key to make a pre-determined best seller. Search-based music downloading removes promotional viability. The general effect of brain-washing is to produce die-hard fans. I suspect that research would show that a hardened fan will spend more dollars than a casual fan (I know many such people). Thus it pays to have a fully polarized population; no matter what particular artist they're obsessed with.
Open Market:
The more competitors, the lower the viable price. If new *good* artists choose not to sign with record companies (because of the generation alternative distributions), then there will be popular media titles outside the revenue streams of existing big media. Since there's a limit to the total capable media-expendatures (namely everybody's income scaled by some reasonable amount), this necessarily reduces the amount of existing media giant purchases.
Positive forces:
Better competition:
With the open-market item, more competition usually leads to more variety and better quality (though quality can go down when companies compete on price alone; but this doesn't seem to be the case in entertainment fields; there are enough consumers that are willing to pay premiums for entertainment).
Cheaper:
More efficient distributions means lower costs. (Don't have to print CDs, artists don't necessarily have to spend marketing dollars)
Less purchasing risk:
A negative effect of media marketing tactics is that you often purchase CDs which have minimal enjoyment (just as much as you knew it had to have, but not an ounce more; i.e. only liking a single song on a CD, sometimes less). A common tactic is bundling uninteresting goods with a single high-ticket item, and raising the price accordingly. MS learned this tactic well. With an search-based system, only the interesting media ever need be acquired. Thus the consumer would be less averse towards a given purchase (even if music is acquired for free, there is the economic cost of wasted bandwidth or time spent listening to bad music). Even if the consumer ultimately didn't like the media, they must have had some interest in acquiring it (word-of-mouth, flashy titles, etc).
Greater economic welfare:
Along with the above reduction in purchasing risk is the increase in the number of consumers that purchase what they want, which counts as increased utility. High economic welfare can be interpreted has having a greater level of total happiness.
Luxury utility:
Rational people maximize their time and minimize their frustration. This means that people are willing to make tradeoffs, such as exchanging money for services or goods that make their mundane work go faster, or go-away (such as hiring an accountant). Obviously, the more wealthy a person is, the more likely they'll spend money on simpler and simpler things (like parking a car). The same applies to the media industry. Some people will pay to not have to deal with burning a CD, or finding music, then downloading it. Beyond a certain point of wealth the time spent doing these things takes away from time working (e.g. physical loss of money) or in relaxing (time spent away from work). Thus there is a definite demand for the service of collecting media and making it readily available (such as a theater, the radio, or venues such as music stores (even online ones)).
Conscious:
Many people will obide by their conscious; feeling a desire to do good and support good things (such as artists that they like). It's the same as droping money into the hat of a street-musician. They too are plagued with the free-rider problem, but find some semblence of an income. In some european countries, you even have to audition to be allowed to perform in the subways (since it had a definite market). When you download trial-ware software, you're encouraged (on the honor system) to pay the author if you like it. A rational person will contribute since they know it'll encourage more such software which focuses on pleasing the consumer. The other aspect of consciousness is that when we go out of our way to circumvent a form of security, we know that's we're idealistically hurting someone else (if I sneak into someone's house, I'm hurting their sence of autonomy, whether they catch me or not). To continue with the act we either justify it (they make too much money anyway), live in shame or blow it off (usually a person that can casually blow things off tends to do so in all aspects of their life; psychologically being hardened). In general, the more good-willed a society is, the less hardened the people will be, and the less likely they'll have reasons to justify their free-rider position, equating to more good-will payments.
Media Quality:
Lets face it, currently MP3 isn't viable on hi-fi. It's possible to make this the case, but it's generally inaccessible to the majority of the population. How many people know how to hook up their computer to their stereo. How many people know how to turn downloaded MP3's into PCM files capable of saving onto a traditional audio-CD (playable on the hi-fi)? If a person doesn't care about the quality of highly compressed audio, and they have sufficiently high quality computer audio equipment, then this isn't an issue. But there are those (myself included) who are frustrated by _any_ popping or lack of quality due to audio-compression (or lack of full surround capability). Bandwidth is still too constrainted to acquire decent quality (DSL/cable only uploads at 15KBps), to say nothing of video quality. While this is only a temporariy issue (assuming we ever get to home gigabit down/upload streams), it still causes people like me to seek out legitimate DTS CDs, DVD-Audio, nearly-original-quality DVDs (meaning that even DVD does compress the video in sometimes noticable ways). Thus while I always try to make mp3 copies of my purchased CD's, I still make use of my originals in a CD-juke-box. Sure it lacks the flexibility of my mp3 jukebox, but this does not mean I don't have additional utility. Further, most people don't purchase RCA output jack-capable sound-cards (usually the Sound Blaster Gold series), so 1/8 connectors definately lose something over my fiber-optic CD-player-to-reciever with 14 gauge monster-wire-to-speakers-which-spread-throughout-
Tangibility:
There is a bizzar human essence (or psychosis if you like) that desires tangibility. People tend to not feel content unless they can regress to their childhood and physically feel some otherwise abstract concept. To hold a CD, to know that even if my computer crashes, I still have my "originals". To "own a house", or "own a CD collection", are irrational, yet undeniable urges. There are many subtle undertoning advantages to such tangibility, but our higher level mind simply attributes the "good" flag to it. Thus, even though we might download a Nine Inch Nails song, we might purchase the CD and the DVD-video just to "have it". I believe that this is probably the single biggest contributor to the napster golden age for the media giants.
Summary:
Negative. The only negative that affects society as a whole is the free-rider problem which ultimately says "don't produce".
Positive. There are natural financial markets in the media industry that counter-act the free-rider problem; namely good-will and quality-persistence (hi-fidelity), with the subtle tangibility aspect looming in the distance.
-Michael
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
Exactly. And God forbid that we should punish those who break the law after the event, rather than just letting them go free after they successfully establish a fait accompli.
It's amazing how many of the same people who cry foul over Microsoft and feel they should be annihilated are outraged at Napster receiving a similar treatment. Hypocrites.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
And the obvious thing happened: The book publishing industry never sold another book, except to libraries.
When was the last time you went to the library, borrwed "War and Peace", photocopied it, bound it and *then* read it? Book copying doesn't happen because its a physical medium with dollar costs associated with duplication. It's the same reason Ford isn't pissed that Avis rents its cars -- what are you gonna do, copy it instead of buying your own?
the movie industry almost completely disappeared, except for sales to TV broadcasters.
Except that going to the movies is a totally different experience -- I don't have a 150ft screen or a room big enough to put it on in my house. Going to a movie is an experience -- out of the house, seeing a "current" film -- TV can't eliminate the experiential aspect of it or duplicate the significant physical differences of the big screen.
When people found that they could record perfectly good movies on video tape, they stopped paying for movies
Most people can't set the clock on their one VCR, let alone hook two up for dubbing. And it still begs the question as to where the source material comes from. Most people are too busy working, raising their kids, doing other stuff to bother with trying to dub movies -- they go to the rental store for $1 and rent something they feel like watching from a huge catalog of movies.
I agree with your prinicpal, but at least draw defendable analogies.
well all is said and done for the people that dont understand that chapter 11's can be a blessing to a company. if you dont have enough money to run the company you go chapter 11 and you have a slime chance but you do have a chance to bounch back. microsoft crony's and the like that want it to be all done and over with are sending out the message the Napster is done for. go to http://www.business.gov/busadv/frame.cfm?urltest=h ttp://www.inc.com/incmagazine/archives/09930861.ht ml&catid=365&urlplace=maincat.cfm
to read more.
Careful what you say around me.. I will assume you mean it.
When (insert technology here) is outlawed, only outlaws will have (insert same technology here).
KaZaa just went under last week, too. Hell, it was even reported (okay, cut-and-pasted) on slashdot. So, you can fire up KaZaa all you want, but you won't get much from it.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
I am not making that comparison.
I am incredulous to anyone comparing copyright infringement on Napster to such an event. I never said the Boston Tea Party, anything Jesus did, or the freeing of the slaves was legal at the time. Actually, I did not discuss it at all.
I merely questioned the sanity of someone that wanted to compare copyright infringement to events of that magnitude. Oh, and fancy phrases will not candy-coat the ENORMOUS magnitude of difference there is in claiming to OWN a human, to feed or not, violate sexually or not, let live or not, to STEALING music. Music theft is what I would term petty. It is stupid.
I also never claimed to AGREE with the copyright laws. All I claimed was that they ARE laws, and stated that the correct way around the problem was to get the law changed!!! Breaking the law is NOT going to get it done. Wake up.
Although the parent's author uses what reads like slightly broken english, I dont' think i've ever seen this point more well put.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
I'm sorry, I'm sure you're a smart guy and all, but P2P is hardly comparable to terrorism, especially in this case.
This is more like sueing U-Haul until they go out of business because you can carry fertilizer bombs in their trucks.
Same as Slashdot is not responsible for the comments posted because they where NOT POSTED by Slashdot, Napster was not responisble for the illegal MP3s posted on their service because they where NOT POSTED by Napster.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
Even if it is, which isn't clear, it's a stupid law.
If laws don't reflect the will of the majority, they're stupid laws. People ignore stupid laws.
If companies want fair treatment from consumers, they need to treat them fairly. If they buy a law (like Disney and copyright extensions) that allows them to cheat consumers, they should be suprised to see consumers with no concern about cheating them.
Ignore a law today!
Fortunately, in some places, the law is actually comprehensible to the average man, and it isn't necessary to pay just to read your own laws. We prefer to keep them in the interests of justice rather than lining the pockets of lawyers serving international corporations, y'see.
While you may have a Home Recording Act that may or may not allow Napster-like behaviour, other places certainly don't. In the UK, for example, you can't arbitrarily copy a music track just because you own a recording of it in some form. (This may or may not be a good decision, but it is the decision. I help run a dance club in my spare time; trust me, I'm no lawyer, but I'm quite familiar with UK law in this respect.) There is pretty much no scope at all for claiming that Napster wasn't abused under UK law, which essentially operates on a "copyright owner must give explicit permission" sort of basis.
Now, if Napster are operating out of the US, this raises the as-yet-unsolved problem of jurisdiction on the Internet. But my point is that in some places it is cut and dried that Napster was facilitating the breaking of the law. Granted I said "our legal systems" without being aware of the possible ambiguity under US law, but elsewhere that ambiguity may be no more plausible than "I don't know if I can shoot someone dead at 5pm on a Thursday night from 13.64m away, because no-one's ever done exactly that before". You can just turn around and point to clear, unambiguous legislation that makes it illegal.
Ah, baloney. Napster was a blatant attempt to capitalise on the Internet bubble and people's intense desires to rip things off. The only people who refuse to acknowledge this are those who've saved a fortune by pirating material they should have paid for, who are seeking some legal basis to justify their own actions because they know damn well that what they did was morally wrong.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Occasionally the book publishing industry does try and nibble away at libraries' privileges. They mostly lose because of the wonderful image libraries tend to have. There have been /. stories in the past on just this point (somebody else can dig them up if they're interested).
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
check out crime rate statistics in states like NH and Maine, where owning a handgun is easy. They are soooo much lower than in other states where it takes an act of congress to get one.
;)
;)
Fortunately for the New Hampshire crime rates, they don't count what Jeb did with his sister-mother
(just kidding...
When was the last time you went to the library, borrwed "War and Peace", photocopied it, bound it and *then* read it? Book copying doesn't happen because its a physical medium with dollar costs associated with duplication.
:), (and I eventually did find a secondhand paperback about 3 years later) but it was at least 20 years out of print at the time, and I would have had no chance of finding it in a bookshop. Borrowing wasn't an option, for some reason I forget -- I probably needed it for longer than the two weeks I'd be able to have it, and there were other people waiting to borrow it, or something like that.
:/
I photocopied most of a book once at the university library -- maybe 200 pages or so. Obviously I would have bought it if I could, to avoid RSI from operating the damn ohotocopier if nothing else
Total cost of photocopying was probably close to A$9.00, and the book must have cost me about A$2.50 when I did eventually find it.
Obviously, if the information is important enough, (some) people will do it... in fact I think libraries are actually allowed to, at least in this country, for out-of-print books -- I was always seeing a few of these on the shelves, with photocopied 'out of print' letters from the distributors stapled to the front.
deus does not exist but if he does
Perhaps because you walked in wobbling across the floor, he could see you holding the car keys and your Porsche in the car park, and then he served you anyway, even when your mates warned him that you were going to drive home?
What the hell kind of mates would let a you drive drunk?
The same sort that drive Porsches I guess.
I know I'm going to hell, I'm just trying to get good seats.