The Porn Of Napster

Thomas M Hughes writes "Well, Napster is breathing its last breath. Filing for chapter 7 and slowly dying. Who better than to try and bring it back to life than a porn company? The article claims that the company wishes to use the Napster name to distribute free pornography across the Internet."

Comments

May prove Napster model

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It seems to me that this may validate Napster type services as a valid marketing tool. Napster was unable to do this with musics because the RIAA is unwilling to compete in the open market place. They, like sports teams, MS, and other monopolists, know that is often more efficient to purchase lawmakers than actually compete for market share.

OTOH, the porn industry, which may find it more difficult find (openly) sympathetic legislators, and has a much lower cost of entry, tends to compete vigorously. The porn industry does look for innovative methods to gain market share, to distinguish themselves from the other 600 business card size ads in Hustler. Sometimes this competition leads to Spam, other times it leads to extensive free content in newsgroups, or aggressively priced introductory offers.

Which means that Private Media Group may actually have the experience, motivation, and cash to make Napster work. This may provide a way to differentiate their product form their competitors. If they are successfull, it will be harder to argue that Napster's only use is for pirating, and further increase evidence that content monopolies are primarily concerned about loss of control.