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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."
Of course, it will probably all be copyrighted porn, so they'll get sued by all the pornographers now too.
Getting sued by the RIAA vs. getting sued by pornographers... which is worst?
"'Along with Hollywood and the recording industry, we have become increasingly concerned about the level of copyright infringement inherent in the free peer-to-peer file swapping services,' Prast said."
If this is true, why would they want to use a brand name that was almost entirely devoted to copyright violation?
Napster itself died long time ago. It's just becoming a generic term to designate P2P services... they all say "like napster but it works" :)
I wonder if they are responsible for Pornster?
It would soon become P2W, porn to wankers
what the logo will look like now....
Napster for p0rn should be interesting. Regulated p0rn distribution. Wait, that sounds like an oxymoron. :-) None the less though, I wonder what will the new Napster look like...
P2P with centralized servers with lists of content, whether pr0n or music, will inevitably end up trading "intellectual property." This could range from pics that are owned by a magazine (ever hit the alt.binaries groups and see the # of posts looking for a recent playboy spread), or the 31337 k1dd13z learning that if you append .mpeg to the end of your Metallica tune, it'll look just like pr0n on the servers. Then the RIAA comes after them again.
:-D
As for the videos that could possibly be traded.....Is there such thing as an MPPAA?
a.k.a the "money shot"
Anyone notice that in the article it mentions a 2.41 stock value and the quote at the foot of the article mentions a ~22% gain (.55)? It's no surprise I suppose considering that the porn industry is a multi-billion dollar one, but still kind of astounding. Another half million for Napster if they accept..
Logic is the ultimate device.
Man, it's like the editors of Slashdot are posting this story as bait for every troll to come out and post a goatse.cx link.
Or the hordes of people posting the old adage of "All advances in technology are driving by a desire for easier access to pornography."
So be warned, any link that a post in this thread links to could conceivably redirect you to a dreaded goatse.cx link. Click on things at your own risk.
Additional coverage:
CNN
SiliconValley
Yahoo
In fact the ostracod fossil had not one penis but two.
Obviously born to be a porn star.
Free porn? Wow! This is just what the Internet needs! coughUSENETcough.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2241855.stme ck out this news that took place in northern Europe, where people are so smart, they are forgetting to have kids.
Ch
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
They'll probably have to change the name to "Lapster".
Napster anagrams to "panters", so it must be fate!
("Pantser" works too...)
A lot of people seem to have missed these two quotes from the article:
"Along with Hollywood and the recording industry, we have become increasingly concerned about the level of copyright infringement inherent in the free peer-to-peer file swapping services,"
and
"Private Media claims to own the largest library of adult-oriented content in the world, with global copyrights to the content."
Assuming they stick to charging users for access to their network and making sure only their content gets "shared", it doesn't look like they'll be shut down by the RIAA, MPAA or sued into the ground for trading content without the adequate rights. Plus, it's not like the MPAA would be too concerned by porn flicks being traded on the service...
Simply for the reason that the top exec's at Napster want to keep their names "clean". If they sell out to a porn company, regardless of their (lack of) future involvement, it will limit their opportunities in the future. It's really sad that this is how it works, but true nonetheless.
Selling WOULD be the best business decision, Napster is a dead name otherwise -- and this is a way to bring in some cash (to pay creditors, employees, whatever). Too bad the CEO's wont soil their names to prevent bankrupcy...
"Private Media said it plans to use the Napster trademark to offer millions of adults worldwide the ability to swap adult-oriented content for free and to also gain access to "top quality" content at a reasonable price."
So one guy/gal buys the "top quality" stuff and then trades it to the rest of the Pornster users for free. How, exactly, does one make money this way?
-ted
Think about it for a second. There definitely are copyright issues, and it seems though there always has been and always will be newsgroups for getting this stuff (as well as music, movies, and all sorts of warez). But if this company can make a business model that increases sales for the pr0n they market (however they plan to do it), maybe the RIAA and MPAA will wake up and realize they can use this technology instead of trying to kill it off.
Though, even if this new "Napster" is successful, I doubt **AA organizations will try to get the consumers of their products what they want. They seem to be kinda dense in that respect.
Check this box to filter out anything with Ron Jeremy or goatse.
It can be tough mentioning goatse and staying on topic you know.
I can forsee trouble ahead here. There's actually no such thing as public domain porn.
The penalties for illegal transfer of copyrighted porn are harsh, and in my experience, such litigation events are open-close-pay-lots-of-money to them affairs
For anyone who may not be aware, Napster isn't Peer-to-Peer, thats why it was so easily shut down and blocked by firewalls. It's client-server, remove the server and it doesn't work. (to say nothing of all the unofficial server software flying around, all the independent networks probably got sued out of existance along with the official one.)
You know if the picture doesn't show the faces of the people involved it's going to be a real bitch to prove who is who for any kind of copyright purposes anyway. I expect this service to be an easy way to find mockup britney porn and the like.
Hell, imagine what kind of spyware will be built into it...talk about pop ups...hehe.
I thought Napster was dead!
That's what they wanted you to believe.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
...this just reaffirms that there is no technology that the porn industry cannot benefit from
They may have a little built in app that has webcam streaming so people that want to do their best goatse imitation can sit around at their pc and watch. I saw some freaky stuff on mplayer before they started charging. Perhaps this is something they have in mind... a community of webcam shows and hell...they may jusy offer some nice hosting packing for the peeps that wanna show their booty at a higher quality and higher bandwidth. Oh never mind me, it's just an idea that hit me... and probably not quite on the mark. I just wonder where the money would be made in this.
I don't think it'll fly, people will end up putting up porn that isn't free.
A bigger problem is who's going to pay for all this bandwidth. It isn't going to be the ISPs, that's for sure.
All this P2P stuff is likely to cost all of us dear unless something revolutionary happens (and in my opinion, this would still only delay the inevitable).This BBC article has more detail about possible consequences, and actually mentions Napster porn (admittedly as an afterthought).
All I can say is, "w00t".
The Political Programmer
I think its called .NET
Also...
I don't know about you but I think in the context of porn, micro and soft are usually bad things.
I signed up for this service that promised to let me grab porn from other members' machines.
However, it keeps coming back with nothing but their MS-Word documents.
Table-ized A.I.
Why pay for the naptser brand name? Yeah free publicity... but seriously if their service is at all usuable it will spread by word of mouth about as fast as word of a porn only napster would.
ultimately, the owners/lenders/board members get to decide whom, what, and how much of Napster gets sold, and what the price is. Its the money people that have the final say, not the CEO, unless he is a majority owner. Those people are all for recovering as much as their losses as possible, and they are not going to be too worried about sullying the image of Napster, 'cuz its dead.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
"why jerk off, when you can napsterbate?"
well, it sounded funny in my head, anyway.
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.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
This may be totally crazy, but I've read in one or two places that Shareaza is releasing a branded Napster/Gnutella clone to be distributed from Napster.com
Its interesting because the creator of Shareaza when asked about this possible development said "I can't comment on that."
Perhaps they should just skip the purchase of Napster, and just make a service called Nappy-Stare.
This statement is false.
... They've finally created Fapster. =D
(reference to A!THL^WSexy Losers...)
You mean the guys who just spammed me? Um, great... =P
Alari
I use Windows... like a two dollar wh.. why don't I just go ahead and not finish that sentence.
This is another victory for capitalism in it's best form.
Brought to you by the Artificial Idea Factory.
jury duty just got more fun...just imagine the look on the 80 year old great grandmother on the jury's face when asked to compare these two photographs...
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
snatchster anyone?
"napster bad!!!"
(very bad, in a naughty kind of way, apparently)
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
All the searching was handled by centralized servers, not napster itself.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
There are already a bunch of services claming to bhe the "napster of porn", supposedly trading passwords to porn sites. but in actually they're probably prearranged deals. Give out a 'psudopassword' and let people resubscribe for a higher rate.
This would probably end up being the same kind of thing. I know this is a bit hypocritical to say, but the online porn world is full of some of the sleaziest people out there. I mean, how much spam is for porn sites? These people will use any deceptive marketing tactics they can to make money, or as they would say '$$'. I remember reading some supposed how-to guide for starting up a porn site, and it explained how to scam search engines. The acted like there was nothing wrong with doing that at all. And of course, these are the people who invented the popup window.
The most discussing thing, though, is the way they'll put copy up on their sites that totally degrades women, you know, "This fucking bitch wants the cock so bad," etc. Its just, well as I said, discussing.
I suppose I could theorize that the people who end up going into porn are already willing to throw off morality for profit, (but don't want the legal exposure of, say, being a drug kingpin)
But anyway, if these guys succeed in buying napster, it'll be a sad day for napster. Not that napster was really that great, but these guys probably don't have any intention of even letting people trade files, but rather simply using the napster trademark some kind of supped-up pay site. (and yeah, the stuff won't be free.)
One of the things I'd like to do, if autopr0n ever became a big thing, is try to create a place where people can find pornography without all the ridiculous bullshit, Spam, etc. I think porno can be profitable without being incredibly demeaning to the customers and the women who appear in it.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I'll have to sue 'em. Sounds way to much like "Porno for the People" (p4p) :P
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
"Acquiring Napster is our way of entering the peer-to-peer marketplace for adult content in a closed environment," Prast said.
Yeah.. it's called FreeNet
"The ones who dont do anything are always the ones who try to pull you down" -- Henry Rollins
So one guy/gal buys the "top quality" stuff and then trades it to the rest of the Pornster users for free. How, exactly, does one make money this way?
Bit rate and file size limitations....
Was it really that hard to figure out?
They can also lock out specific files by hash code or something, so unless people downloaded and then reencoded their stuff, it wouldn't be an issue. Of course, people would do this, but that's what the bitrate/filesize limits are for.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
There's actually no such thing as public domain porn
what about this?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
It's not like the technology is worth anything...
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
A method for propegating human genes between two people using no genetic science.
The Kama Sutra is attached as a reference manual.
Whoever stated that signature sizes should be limited to one hundred and twenty characters can just go ahead and kiss my
seems like all they really are buying is little more than the domain name for napster. everything else is likely garbage to them with the infrastructure they already have.
members are seeing something, your seeing an ad
Every time it appears on Slashdot, it "dies a little bit more each time". Geez, are we all not sick and tired of reading about Napter dying every week?
The Private Media Group's ticker symbol says it all: PRVT.
(I stole this post from Fuckedcompany.)
The shareholder is always right.
Private Media Group Announces Offer for Napster Trademark and napster.com URL
Barcelona, September 12th, 2002/PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Private Media Group Inc. (Nasdaq: PRVT) a worldwide leader in premium quality adult entertainment products, services and content, today announced that it has made an offer to Napster, Inc. to acquire the Napster trademark and napster.com domain name for one million shares of Private common stock.
Private's offer, if accepted by Napster, is subject to customary terms and conditions, including approval by the court having jurisdiction over Napster, Inc.'s bankruptcy proceeding.
With the Napster trademark, Private plans to create a unique peer-to-peer (P2P) environment that would offer the tens of millions of adult consumers worldwide the opportunity to share adult content for free as well as access top quality adult content at a reasonable price.
Napster is one of the most recognized names in P2P file-swapping services that allow users to trade and download files. At its height, Napster had 84 million users of its software and was the fastest-growing software application ever monitored by online tracking services.
Charles Prast, President and CEO of Private Media Group stated: "Along with Hollywood and the recording industry, we have become increasingly concerned about the level of copyright infringement inherent in free peer-to-peer file swapping services. It is estimated that up to 35% of all content downloaded from P2P sites is of an adult nature, which raises significant issues both in terms of copyright infringement and lack of controls of access by minors. It is an industry that presently has over 150 million users.
Mr. Prast continued: "At Private, we feel that there has been an excess of spamming, credit card fraud, abuse of consumer data, and price gouging among many on-line providers of adult content. We intend to use the strength of the Napster trademark to build a community for adults to share content provided by Private and our industry partners.
"Private has high standards, both from a regulatory and financial perspective with a 37 year track record of legal compliance. Private owns the largest library of quality adult content in the world, global rights to all our content, and strong technological know-how. All of these factors make Private uniquely suited to manage a viable and legal P2P network for consumers of adult content", said Mr. Prast.
Private Media Group is a leading global adult entertainment company that distributes its content over a wide range of media platforms, including narrow and broadband Internet, DVD and video, magazines, broadcasting and wireless technologies. Private owns the worldwide rights to the largest archive of high quality adult content in the world, which it distributes digitally worldwide and physically in over 35 countries.
This release contains, in addition to historical information, forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, which reflect the Company's current judgments of those issues. However, because those statements are forward-looking and apply to future events, they are subject to such risks and uncertainties, which could lead to results materially different than anticipated by the Company.
For further information about Private Media Group, please contact in Barcelona, Spain:
PRIVATE MEDIA GROUP
André F. Ribeiro
Phone: +34 679 983 772
E-mail: andre@private.com
URL: www.prvt.com
GRUPO ALBIÓN
Alejandra Moore Mayorga
Phone: +34 91 531 23 88
Mobile: +34 670 799 33
E-mail: amoore@grupoalbion.com
Please visit our Download Zone, where you can find relevant information relating to this announcement in PDF format: http://www.tresddb.com/gadz/private.html.
The shareholder is always right.
Heh, "finally combining the best two features of the Internet . . ." They need to link to mp3s too.
I thought of this back when Napster was still being widely used. I was going to call it Tapster (tm).
There doesn't seem to be anything inherently wrong with the statement, except that it expresses an opinion you disagree with. Why don't you refute the statement instead of attacking the person?
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
Heh, well I don't really want to spend my whole life, or even really that much time looking at random porn on the internet.
:P
One of the reasons that autopr0n doesn't have as many links as some of the other TGPs is that rather then just a simple 5-7 word description, we actually go a bit more in-depth usually. Also, mods need to mark down the properties the image falls under (like Asian, lesbian, etc) so people can search for stuff.
It takes me like an hour or two to post just 32 links, which is what I try to go for when I'm on the ball.
(btw, if you're wondering what I mean by "we", I'm talking about myself and the other volunteer moderators for the site. There are like 30 or something, but only about 7 or 8 really active ones.)
Also, I do try to have a life. I'd like for AP to have a higher volume, though. If you'd like to help out you could sign up as a mod (just email me). And if you're just interested in links, you can look through the thousands that I have sitting in the queue
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Ya know before napster, porn was the number 1 bandwith consumer at universities. Napster gave credibility to the internet, dispite the fact that the stuff traded was in complete violation of copyrights.
about 3 years ago, you could ask someone about the internet, and they would say it's a good place to get porn. when napster came on the scene, it gave people, your average joe, a reason to get an account other then to get porn.
Now the very service that actually permited access to media that isn't porn, is now going tits up and knickers down, well, I don't know about you, but this makes me a very sad panda.
For some reason, in our socity of dual tape decks and cd-recorders, it's pretty much standard practice already to make duplicatios, mix tapes, all in plain site, how with Napster going porn, it's not more of an Entrance in rear deal.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
Well, yeah. People are stupid, and it's easy to take there money. That dosn't mean that you should or that it's some how a good idea to do it.
:P. Will it contribute to the world? Will it actually let people find good pr0n quickly? I really doubt it. Instead they'll be mislead, by more 'controlled media' to buy crap from this company.
The other problem is that it creates a situation where everyone tries to pander to the lowest common denominator. Just look at the sorry-ass state of 'portals' before google came along. Google just gave us what we wanted and no bullshit, and now they serve up 97% of the links out there. (google is kind of my inspiration for ap. I figure the 'net pr0n world is so full of crap that if I just provide a non-pandering, bullshit-light site most people would prefer it)
But yeah, those other BS portals still make money, but they are still bullshit and they waste peoples time and they contribute nothing to the world at all.
Will this new napster make money? yeah, probably. Porn always makes money
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I don't understand how anything changed. So what exactly did other people use napster for before?
;)
Was there anything else on there?
L053R
I'm talking about the text that accompanies the images. Stuff like "This bitch loves my cum" or "I got this chick drunk and played a trick!" or "See what this slut does for $20".
:P. I do check the pages out occasionally, and it's pretty lame.
Normally, I don't even see the text on porn sites, since I wrote a special browser that just downloads the linked pics
Anyway, a skank is a woman who's dirty and will probably give you an STD. Just because a girl is promiscuous doesn't mean she's a skank (porn producers usually require STD checking before hiring people). You're thinking of 'slut', which I find to be a rather retarded title. Basically insulting women for doing what 90% of guys would do if they had the chance.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Like that infamously bad security guy.. what's his name.. the one who insisted raw socket APIs in Windows were a security hole..
:)
The Gibson research guy. Can't remember his first name. He's not related to william gibson though
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I was calling him a moron, specifically, for complaining about objective evidence that it's better. How can one Turing complete language ever be objectively better then another one? I mean, I'm assuming he's asking for a rigorous mathematical proof of... something...
Otherwise there's lots of statistical information that could lead us to the conclusion that OOP is better. Such as case studies, etc, that show OOP to be easier to code/maintain/etc.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
if you've got a decent USENET newsfeed, and a nice bandwidth pipe, you can get a zillion times more porn off of the alt.binaries.* newsgroups than you can get off of any P2P app.
*duh*
It's funny how alot of non-techie people have no idea what USENET is, and find programs like Free Agent for windoz to be really confusing.
[Connection closed by foreign host]
"Napster Reporn"
If this catches on, you could soon find porn all over the Internet.
who thinks the new company should be called napsty ?
theolojin
Life is short; think quickly.
So basically an immoral company wants to use a program, used mostly for illegal and unethical purposes (stealing music), to distribute its filth. Sadly, I'm not really surprised that such a thing would happen.
Oh yeah, great plan. Centralized download management, virtually no verification of the legality of the content. It would be easier just to drop all your computer equipment off at the local FBI office.
porn wants to be free
13 year old white supremacists are shitty web designers.
...it's gigabytes of the same pr0n.
No one wants to be a whore! It's vile exploitation and porn is it's ultimate extension. People pose for those pictures when they have run out of hope and self respect. Think about this hapening to your mother, sister or daughter.
The internet was not designed for this. It was designed to share computing resources and information, not to sell crap. Those who look at this as a good thing smear all the other causes they are associated with.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
...if they're GPL'ed, you can modify them as you wish, but you have to share them with RMS.
I'm not surprised that porn companies are trying to take P2P and turn it into a viable business model. They've always been ahead of the curve, whether good or bad. They were some of the first businesses on the internet, they were some of the first spammers, they had the first popups, first streaming video, and I'd bet that they were distributing VHS tapes when Valenti was still babbling about the Boston Strangler.
We've all heard the adage on /. that a standard won't be adopted unless it's an order of magnitude improvement over the existing system.
Ever since the original Napster crashed and burned in mid-2000, several other P2P filesharing systems came up. Among college students (a fairly heavy market for porn), KaZaA is definitely the drug of choice.
Systems like KaZaA already have porn on them. *I* am certainly not one to download two programs to do what one already does well.
Napster fought the good fight, but now it's gone. It's lost all its mind-share.
R.I.P., Napster...
EOM
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
I'm all for it. I like the ideolgy behind the idea. Plus who can resist free porn? Music didn't turn me on so hopefully this does.
it sounds to me like perhaps this is just a way for them to serve more people and reduce their server load by shoving the load off onto their users... hmm...
Shouldn't that be pr0n instead of porn ?
Exercise caution when modding this message up: the author acts like a jerk when his karma is excellent.
That's fine... as long as it's not open sores.
I was at the Lapdance 2000 party put on at the Sundance festival by CRAPTV, the producers of such great movies as "Cannibal, the Musical," and "Orgasmo."
;-) He used the idea of peer-to-peer porn sharing to illustrate the huge threat/opportunity the industry was about to face.
Matt Stone and Trey Parker had invited my friend Mark Pesce (the inventor of VRML) to host a panel discussion entitled "What is this whole Internet thing, anyway?"
To illustrate the huge force that peer-to-peer networks would become within the media industry, Mark jokingly announced the IPO of his new company, Pornster (I came up with the logo, the P in Pornster was a penis with a cockring through it
This was at Sundance, mind you, where every third person is someone big in the entertainment industry. Amazing how clueless most of these media folks were, even in 2000. The presentation really made folks look at their roles as 'gatekeepers of entertainment.'
What place have the gatekeepers, when all the walls are gone?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I can see it now:
Slashdot
News for Nymphos, Stiffies that matter.