Bertelsmann Looking At Pulling Plug On Napster

azaroth42 writes "The end of Napster has finally come according to the Guardian as German group Bertelsmann pull the plug on the already 'past its use by date' music service. And the same story on CNN."

Comments

Re:this is news?

[blixel]

I think most Metallica fans became "former" the day the Load album was released. They haven't made a good album since the black album and even that was tame compared to their older stuff.

Agreed... The black album was still pretty good but just wasn't the same as the older stuff. Personally I liked "...and justice for all" the best, even more so than their albums when Cliff Burton was their bassist.

But I think most Metallica fans became "former" the day Lars decided to become the spokesperson against Napster. I mean come on dude... Go watch some of the old Metallica documentries where Lars himself was advocating how great it was in the old days when Metallica fans were ILLEGALLY swapping Metallica tapes amongst themselves. My, how we've changed our tune. (No pun intended.) It was OK then because no one knew who Metallica was and they were spreading the music, thus creating a larger fan base. But now that they are established and each band member has 60 million dollars each, it's not so great any more? What a hypocrit!

Day of infamy

[the bluebrain]

So I'll get shot down in flames for the quote in the subject line ... but I believe there is indeed a quite historical aspect to this story:

Most /.ers will have read some SF (that *Speculative*, godamit :) tome on the subject of the Valhalla machine (or whatever you want to call it): the end of the age of scarcity, thanks to "universal replicators".

The "IP" version of this is the "celestial jukebox" ... which Napster would have become, but for the stumbling blocks.

I can imagine business / law majors a couple of decades down the line pointing out to us, back here in the time well, just where we went wrong & what we *should* have done - how it could have worked.

Music & films nowadays *can* be replicated & distributed for nothing more than the very cheap transmission & storage costs - thing is of course, they *aren't*.

I am very aware of all the linkage - artists & crew having to feed families & suchlike - but nonetheless, humanity almost had it, but somehow couldn't quite manage to organise things in such a way as to enjoy the fruits of the labour of previous generations & share the luxury of entertainment & education all round the globe.

Grand-style napsterisation of anything & everything digitizable *will* come ... and Shawn Fanning's legacy may be just that: the word.
Hopefully it won't acquire any more negative connotations than it already, illegitimately, has.

----

"and they say that I'm a dreamer / but I'm not the only one"