Slashdot Mirror
Shawn Fanning Interview
peter303 writes "The Wall Street Journal (via MSNBC) interviewed Shawn Fanning, the founder of Napster.
Shawn talks about the end of Napster and his personal plans."
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
..its to locate your servers in a country that doesn't give two shits about the american lawmakers.
he had some interesting things to say, especially in light of the recent news about Telestra(and Bill Gates!). Chew on these two articles together.. whoa
--
WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
Ummm...and risk getting bombed?
The law of excluded middle : Either I'm foo or I'm foobar
But, far more importantly, mad propz to the WSJ for knowing the difference between "less" and "fewer".
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Ummm...and risk getting bombed?
Yes.
if you're reading this, please let it be known that I hold you in the highest esteem for setting off events that exposed the veiled side of the receording industry.
And thanks for all the music!
Use ISO 8601 dates [YYYY-MM-DD]
You mean Texas?
Maybe here?
"Seven miles off the coast of southern England, a group of American Internet entrepreneurs is planning to set up the world's first offshore data haven."
"Based on the independent principality of Sealand, the self-proclaimed smallest principality in the world, the new company called Havenco promises prospective clients complete security for their computer files and freedom from the laws and regulations of any government."
The most important question, to my mind, was not addressed in the interview.
Why in God's name did they accept the settlement they did?
What were they thinking?
It should have been plainly obvious to anyone above the age of six that the instant they added any "real" DRM to the servers, they would die. Napster had nothing they could possibly leverage to make a profit other than a brand name image. They had no community, no meaningful service, and absolutely nothing to keep anyone to stay besides those file-swap-advert servers. They just had a recognizable brand name. But that's at least something-- they should have done something with it. Doing the one action guaranteed to get everyone to stop using napster simultaneously-- locking out all old clients and forcing you to download a new client, at a time where alternate programs to napster were already available and just as easy to download-- without first lining up a very definite reason why people would continue to use Napster as a service caused anything positive about that brand name image to evaporate instantly.
Just about everything Napster ever did was stupid, but this one is the one with the most unfathomable motives. Why?
Lame interview - all very disconnected clips, nothing being said. Big whoop, got his 15 minutes, move along, nothing to see here
You've never had first post, have you.
I like how MSNBC had the story title on their tech front page:
"Napster Boy, Interrupted"
Man that would piss me off if I was him and people are still calling me "Napster Boy".
("Hey, Napster Boy, why don't you go download me some mp3's?! Ha ha ha ha! Did you hear that, fellas? I just called Fanny Napster boy! ha ha ha!")
If you had nuts on your chin, would they be chin nuts?
Get some rest, guy - unplug for a while.
You sounded freaking *EXHAUSTED* in that interview...
Cheers,
Jim
-- My Weblog.
A very good article. I think if anything Fanning will be remembered for jump starting the p2p revolution, getting the attention of the RIAA who had obviously underestimated the power of technology, as well as bringing awareness to a lot of average consumers on certain unfair aspects of the way the 'music industry' works, and last but not least introducing a lot of us to a lot of wonderful, independent music. Anyone know where he's working these days? The article didn't mention it.
The DRm was needed to satisfy the big name record labels, but if you ever used the Napster Beta you'd see that most of the content was still in plain mp3.
I'd imagine that all the big label content would be in limited DRM format, and people would realise that the plain mp3's provided by smaller labels were better value for money. Next thing you know the community around napster would higlight the best mp3 content and some minor band - no stars - just talent would be making more money of the digital downlaods than the major labels.
Napster in the past showed that it could make significant changes to what people were listening to simply because it would provide more content than anywhere else and a collaborative filtering system through good old word of mouth. I wouldn't doubt that the label content and the napster brand would help attract the early users, but the more free content would probably become a more significant part of the service.
Hey it's a theory.
The real question is why did napster outsource all their DRM development to DWS, who in turn outsourced it to everyone else. this was a bad decision which led to problems when playmedia filed all sorts of lawsuits claiming they owned all the DRM technology - expect a DRM system from playmedia sometime soon.
From what I've read radio faced a similar problem of music licensing, only at that time the issue was the licensing of copyrighted classic music recordings. The solution was to open a new genre of music, pop music.
However, this would have required Napster's founders to have actually done some work that they probably didn't want to do, such as interacting with social classes of people who were ignored by the mainstream. But that's just not what people who want to only have clean hands programming want to do. Too bad, Napster blew the biggest opportunity in this generation to dominate a new medium.
Let be honest here. Getting single tracks off P2P networks works pretty well.
But, I would just love for someone within the RIAA (or BPI - UK version) to actually sit down with a list of 5 albums and try to download entire CD's.
It's barely possible. The chances of finding 10 tracks in the same album which aren't badly encoded, labelled wrongly or sampled at 96kbps is extremely high.
Now that doesn't mean that what is happening is ant the less worse (after all, it's a free for all sharing of copyrighted material than many people do not already own) but personally I think that it's only really single sales which are damaged as much as the RIAA/BPI make out to be.
Getting all the tracks of an album decently encoded is bording on the impossible most of the time.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
Sealand is a joke, _7_ mile offshore is well within the bounds of UK law. The telling statement is 'self proclaimed' whch means squat I can proclaim my self king of America, it don't matter damn until the law wants to dispute my claim.
The promise of data freedom is a joke, Sealand is an old WWII gunnery fort, designed to defend the Thames I think, where do you think the data link comes a shore? Kent or Essex?
The best place to put your data if you want immunity from prosecution would be the servers of the NSA. National security concerns would stop any court case dead. Of course you could develop a sudden fatal heart condition when they find out.
Gee, after the WSJ learned that the dude didn't make the millions they thought he did, the interview kinda petered out, didn't it? Like "Move along. Nothing to see here!" being called out in the middle of a circus.
Bhudda-lite
(Whatever)
Is a Canadian allowed to say that?
Regardless, as a US citizen, I would like to back up the parent statement wholeheartedly.
WSJ: Compact disc shipments fell 7% in the first six months of this year. The recording industry says its data show consumers who download music from the Internet are purchasing fewer CDs
And in this time of unprecented economic growth, prosperity and consumer confidence, theres no other explanation for that, right?
I was pretty disappointed that Fanning replied "It may be hurting the music industry at this point ..." instead of pointing out that six months is not a large enough amount of time to gauge the real effect of p2p networks. That may be obvious to Slashdotters but Average Joes (and Janes, don't want to be sexiest now...) might be tempted to take the RIAA's word that p2p is obviously to blame.
Fanning also misses a prime opportunity to explain that the "proposed legislation in Washington that would excuse the industry from antihacking laws" is essentially giving RIAA the freedom to engage in cyberterrorism. He, instead, just makes a bland "it won't work" statement and leaves it at that.
It really upsets me that someone who was on the forefront of p2p networking and is now giving an opportunity to speak to the masses via newspaper completely wastes this opportunity to explain the pro-p2p viewpoint to everyone. If we don't start getting some big name people to clearly and coherently explain to everyone why p2p is not necessarily evil, the public may well indeed support the RIAA's tatics simply because they haven't thought deeply enough about the problem.
GMD
watch this
This conjecture corelates with my experiences on the matter.
Any sufficiently advanced influence is indistinguishable from control.
Perhaps you can mark it up to his age, but I was impressed by the candor and honest that Fanning demonstrated in the interview. Even though he didn't go into too much detail, I was surprised at how candid he was about the mistakes he and the company made... I think he'll go far and we'll be hearing more from him in a few years!
England has washed its hands of it. It is, for all intensive purposes, out of England's Jurisdiction.
Read the article and see what is says regarding the British Naval intervention, the German POW's, etc...
No, more like Redmond.
Emacs or vi?
/. post.
Sorry, I'm a troll who only reads the headlines and not even the
I'll have something intelligent to add one of these days...
WSJ: You're living in Mountain View, in Silicon Valley?
Mr. Fanning: Yeah, I rent a house here.
I find it ridiculously unfair that Enron execs (and others) who have no real product, screw their shareholders and aren't able to lead make millions while real innovators rent houses in SiliValley.
(High cost of living jokes aside...)
-Sean
Too Cool
The telling statement is 'self proclaimed' whch means squat I can proclaim my self king of America, it don't matter damn until the law wants to dispute my claim.
Long live the king!!!
Metallica jumped the shark with Napster, no doubt about it.
You mean Texas?
Nah. California.
Ya see, I don't figure the decline in CD sales as a result of piracy, or of changes to the consumer economic model. I think it is good old-fashioned grass-roots protest. I know, myself, I haven't bought a mass-market CD since the RIAA started their petty little lawsuits to drive everyone out of business, and I know I'm not the only one. I also know a good deal of friends who are using KaZaA(lite), Freenet, LimeWare, et al, in protest of the death of Napster.
I say Rock On to P2P! 'Real Soon Now'(*), people will figure out that it's the downturn in your economy and protest from consumers over price and silicone-inflated plastic singing Barbie clones that is driving down sales, not P2P. Perhaps, in some fit of irrational sanity, they may actually examine why people use P2P, and figure out that if they can improve on the model with, say smooth resumes on interrupt, distributed Akamai servers, no bogus files, live cuts, better indexing, and proper labeling, that they may actually be able to charge a resonable amount per month to let people download mp3 or Ogg files. But, alas, they cling to "We'll only release music that is old and out of date, and we'll insist on proprietary formats, and DRM that ensures that you'll never play this on another computer, or even your own if you have to reinstall, or if we go out of business."
So, while you're at it, write your congressperson and senator, and urge them to kill any bill which requires DRM enabled sound cards and speakers (which, yes, has already been proposed), let alone any bill which requires anything electronic to be DRM.
Next week: How to get your Barbie to record Britney Spears songs! (By some odd coincidence, the electronics get implanted in her chest, she switches randomly between anatomicly correct and "anatomicly unidentifiable", and Ken does all the singing anyways)
(*)Mad Propz to Jerry Pournelle and Chaos Manor!
http://www.jerrypournelle.com
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
Adopting your own brother... that must have been a fun little family outing. Sounds like Shawn has been living a somewhat hellish existence.
Perhaps he could market this somewhat like the "Osbornes".
Business Model:
1-Dysfunctional Family. Check.
2-Famous Member of Family. Check.
3-Good Market for Reality TV shows. Check.
4-?
5-Profit!
Shawn if you're reading this, I want you to know that my real feelings are that you've done a good thing by adopting your brother. Reading between the silent lines I get the feeling that he was being damaged back East.
And me without mod points to upvote the parent. Damn.
this is getting old and so are you
blog
I have an immense respect for Mr Fanning. Here's a guy that quits school to try to write code on his own and changes the world. You think the word is too strong? Everybody remembers the Napster days. People burning CDs like crazy, sharing rips of old albums, live concerts, weird one-of CDs picked up in cut-out bins. I made my best compilations during that time. I received awesome CDs from my friends, packed with stuff I had never heard. A guy at work started making CDs with kids songs. Another made the most hilarious Christmas songs compilation. These were people that had almost no interest in music before Napster arrived. I could go on and on... I miss Napster. Every day.
Thank you Mr. Fanning.
there's no place like ~
Napster isn't worth that, but Audiogalaxy is worh dying for ;-)
"If you keep an open mind people will throw a lot of garbage in it."
Goddammit! It's "intents and purposes" not fucking "intensive purposes." Illiterate jackal.
BTW it's 'intents and purposes' not 'intensive purposes'.
As in 'whatever they intended' or 'whatever their purpose was'.
That is all.
This is similar to saying "when you drive a car at 60 miles per hour, you are speeding plain and simple."
The kind of blanket statement that you made is misleading and makes me furious. It is repeated day after day throughout the media and it is a misconception that the RIAA has tried to propagate for years now (and has to a large extent succeeded) in order to maintain its effective monopoly on the distribution of music. Joe Sixpack thinks that downloading music from the Internet is illegal. It is not. There are numerous legal ways to download a song from the Internet and I am not referring to the murky issue of fair use.
The correct statement would be along the lines of "When you download a song off of the Internet without having previously secured the copyright holder's permission to do so, you might be contravening copyright laws."
I have downloaded hundreds of songs from the Internet in a perfectly legal fashion from sites such as mp3.com , iuma.com , besonic.com , etc.
Please say it correctly or don't say it at all. Otherwise, you are simply aiding the RIAA's anti-competitive propoganda practices.
There are actually some of us out here who aren't interested in Blink 182. What Napster never did was offer premium services, nor even something as simple as the kind of profiling of peers we have grown accustomed to in other peer networks like icq and y! messenger.
If you want Miles Davis, chances are you were not going to find good tracks on Napster.
Sopmebody should conceive of a public market for music catalogs, because what we *still* don't know is what music exists out there which might be up for bids.
Napster still never reached eBay status. These are some of the reasons why - concentration on college demographic musci instead of all music.
fault-tolerant
Well, if you get bombed, it's the cost of playing the game. If you don't get bombed, then great. If you do, then well, it's not so good, but it's the cost of avoiding U.S. Law. So, in these situations, you always have to roll with the punches, so to say.
Screw bombs, whatever happened to due process?
Couldn't really let this topic pass without linking to the story:
RIAA Sues Radio Stations For Giving Away Free Music.
Maybe he really meant 'intensive purposes' :)
Also, whilst illiterate jackal is not incorrect, I thought the usual phrase was 'illiterate jackass'. Or was that a joke too subtle to stimulate my humour centre?
"The worst that could have happened was what just happened"
no, the worst didn't happen.... at least not from the standpoint of the officers and directors of Napster.
For them, the worst that could have happened was a contempt of court citation, and possible personal civil or criminal liability......
WSJ: Compact disc shipments fell 7% in the first six months of this year.
A 7% drop? That's it? Wow, they're doing amazingly well in these tough times. The company I work for (different industry) dropped about 50% in sales.
Actually it's my fault record sales dropped. I used to buy CDs like crazy from those "10 CDs for $.01" deals. Now I just buy used, unless one of my favorite artists just comes out with a new release, or I can't find it used. That rarely happens though.
The newer artists I favor are an acquired taste, so they are common in the "Used" section. Also, that section is where I purchase bands I never heard of before, and I have yet to be dissappointed. So, it works both ways.
As for the older artists, they rarely come out with something new. The only new CD I bought recently was Dio "Killing the Dragon" which was released this year. This guy has been performing since at least the 50s, and concentrating on the Metal genre at least since his experience with Black Sabbath in 70s. (I say "at least" because nobody knows how old he is). My point is that many of the artists I favor are retired or dead, and therefore are not spitting out new recordings any more. This particular case is an exception.
In conclusion, people like me see the "New" CD shelves as no more than obsticals between the door and the "Used" shelves/bins (which often, though not always, are found in the back of the store). It's really the best "Under $5" I can spend (and sometimes as low as $1.99 or even $.99).
New sales from me have dropped at least 95% in the past decade. Feel the burn.
TodayTM BillyJoelTM GoogleTMd for StitchTMes due to WindowsTM while RollerbladeTMing with an AppleTM and a PopsicleTM
Let's see....the issue should be tackled by giving the industry and the US Government the finger, moving offshore and going "Now what are you going to do about it?". You don't think the US can exert pressure on other countries? Trade is a two way street. How eager would, oh, say Guatamala be to protect something like Napster if it meant sanctions on other forms of trade? One of Napsters biggest problems was the attitude of users, specifically the "I'm going to do it anyway, and I don't care what the industry or the law says. You can't stop me". When you poke a bear, you shouldn't be terribly surprised if it attacks.The ONLY way to address your fair use and file sharing issues is through the law. It's not easy, cheap, or quick, but it's the only lasting solution. Things like these offshore schemes are only going to fail in the long run, and hurt your cause as well.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Sealand was declared sovereign before international borders were established. (It used to be that if you were outside the range of British cannons (2 1/2 miles), you weren't under their juristiction.)
That and a few hundred other comments on this previous (Napster + Sealand) story on Slashdot.
What's this Submit thingy do?
... your 15 minutes of fame are up. Time to move into obscurity now.
Not on my little island it's not, fucker!
Young Mr. Fanning is obviously the kind of person who is going to be just fine, and be successful at whatever he does. He did not achieve fortune, but he did receive the fame of being a true inventor. It's appalling how he was treated after he created something so new that it literally rocked the entire world. We should herald and praise our young inventors, even when their craft appears witchy at first glance. Instead our countrymen repeated the mistake they have made over and over - they saw something new, like a tribe or a lion. It looked scary to them so they killed it.
The statement as it reads is factually incorrect and I do not accept your assertion. Within the bounds of that post on its own, there is no contextual clarification and one should not have to parse an entire thread to find it.
I am not suggesting that you are intentionally trying to propagate the myth, nor do I question your honor, but I stand by my sentiment that by being so casual in your prose, you abet the RIAA's efforts.
And me without mod points to downvote the parent. Damn.
OK so here's a quick summary of sealand:
First re-occupied and declared a country in 1967 when the limits of UK territorial waters were 3 nautical miles. They were later extended to 12 miles but international law states that they're still an independent country (if the UK extended their territorial waters by 500 miles they wouldn't then have a claim on France and Ireland - the boundary is drawn half way between countries in this case).
They got attacked by some Dutch in the 70s but fought back and reclaimed it. The UK government has never actually acknowledged it's existence, but the British citizens working on Sealand have their income classed as overseas.
Sealand is not the smallest principality in the world. That would be Vatican City. Which might be a good place actually...
Anyone know where he's working these days? The article didn't mention it.
It's called "unemployment".
I can proclaim my self king of America
I offer you my sword, your majesty.
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
This guy has no job, no income, and he's taking responsibility to another human being? What a moron!
"Do I dare disturb the universe?"
I've had no problems downloading over 150 albums from WinMX and Napster before that over the years. It takes about a half hour to get a whole album, or a few days carry over if a certain song isn't on that day. I have pretty much any CD I want with VERY GOOD (ie. burnable on CD and listen on a stereo) quality. It's not that hard if you are organized and you have the time.
Just my 2 cents from the positive side.
BTW, I haven't bought a CD in 4 years and before that I probably bought 25+ a year. *I'M* the kind of guy the RIAA doesn't like on P2P networks.
The best place to put your data if you want immunity from prosecution would be the servers of the NSA
Nah, security through ubiquity. If every PC has 60Gigs of unused disk space, that's a lot of real-estate. Thus the beauty of P2P.
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
Hail to the king, baby.
James.
"I have spread my dreams under your feet, Tread softly, because you tread on my dreams." - W. B. Yeats.
Yes, you are obviously American.
Jean Marie LePen is a far-right French politician. Bravo to your wide-ranging world knowledge.
Now go back to watching Jerry Springer.
I wish. Audiogalaxy's servers were in Austin, Texas, and look what happened to them.
Oops - sorry I have better things to do than to keep up with French politics. Yeah, I must sit at home watching Springer and peruse /. durring commercials.
"Jean Marie LePen is a far-right French politician."
Does this mean that not all French are pussies?
Go back to being an AC...
You have to sell blood to pay your lawyers? I thought they just sucked it right out of you... :]
Think the WSJ guy should have suggessted that the next program Shawn writes, he shouldn't have Stevie Wonder design the interface?
If there was a progam with a worse interface than napster, I have never seen it.
You're reading slashdot.
RIAA Sues Radio Stations for Giving Away Free Music
...
LOS ANGELES--The Recording Industry Association of America filed a $7.1 billion lawsuit against the nation's radio stations Monday, accusing them of freely distributing copyrighted music.
"It's criminal," RIAA president Hilary Rosen said. "Anyone at any time can simply turn on a radio and hear a copyrighted song. Making matters worse, these radio stations often play the best, catchiest song off the album over and over until people get sick of it. Where is the incentive for people to go out and buy the album?"
According to Rosen, the radio stations acquire copies of RIAA artists' CDs and then broadcast them using a special transmitter, making it possible for anyone with a compatible radio-wave receiver to listen to the songs.
cpeterso
Shawn should write an autobiographical book. He has seen a lot of behind the scenes technical and legal sides of this HUGE issue that has seen lots of press. He is a semi-celebrity, so he could probably sell quite a few books.
Plus he just adopted his 15-year old brother? There must be some interesting stories behind that. Sounds a lot like Dave Eggers' "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" (highly recommended!) In fact, the title "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" could easily apply to Napster!
cpeterso
I am quite nostalgic about Napster too. I remember a summer during Napster's heyday, the last summer my sister and I lived in the same house (before I graduated college and got a job in another city).
She would set up her laptop next to my desktop, and we were plugged into our parents' new cable modem. We would stay up all night, downloading songs, talking about music and life, and sharing new bands we discovered.
Good times.
You have better things to do...yeah, right. Give up. You're an idiot.
I take it English, or more specifically, English grammar isn't your forte...
Maybe my experience with Napster wasn't the norm but I for one miss it everytime I fire up Kazzalite. I never had a hard time finding the unusual or little known on there, Live tracks, unreleased materials- everything from Jiker to Bing Crosby was easy to find and nominally easy to download. I was also the Music Director of a small Top 40 station below the radar of any of the Major Record Labels so the only way for me to get new music was Napster, and it rarely failed me. 2-3 years ago may have been the golden era of P2P though, most users were somewhat competent college students and adults. Now that every 12 year old has a 12 gig mp3 collection(all labeled Cr33D 0wnz j00 and the like) finding material is getting harder and taking longer. I've used WinMX, Limewire, Audiogalaxy(R.I.P) since Napster went down, but I still have yet to find anything that worked as well
Good? Bad? I'm the guy with the gun.
George.
That this guy made it on the cover of Time magazine, not that it is really that important anymore (Time). I think it goes to show how non techie ppl think, they would probably believe stuff like when you program en source your programming communism would probably get through to them.
That I had to think for a moment to recall who Shawn Fanning was says enough about him to satisfy whatever curiousity would lead me to read an interview with him.
- Dan I.
If I record songs from radio and digitize them into MP3's, would that be called "unauthorized copying", akin to downloading them from the internet? Or is it the frequency and choice that limits the radio which make it an acceptable way of illegally copying/digitizing music?
'A lie if repeated often enough, becomes the truth.' - Goebbels
Back in college, I had my bicycle stolen. The bike was my only means of transportation, and the thief left me literally walking miles at a time in Texas heat. The thief caused me great harm.
On the other hand, if the thief had simply looked at my bicycle very hard, or even ran a scanner over it, and then made a copy of it to ride away on, I wouldn't have cared.
Oh, but I hear you say, then Schwinn would have lost a sale! No, they didn't. This guy probably didn't have the money to buy a bike, hence the theft.
But, but, but, if he doesn't have the money, he doesn't deserve a bicycle. Schwinn has a right to maximize their profits.
Um, no. Schwinn is a corporation, and in their corporate charter they swore to benefit society. (Yeah, they did. Look it up.) That was the deal. We the People give them immunity from liability and a bunch of tax breaks, and they promise to benefit society at large.
This means if Schwinn ever figures out a way to manufacture bicycles for ten cents each, they have an obligation to do so -- because they promised to. If Schwinn wants to charge a million dollars per bicycle, they are free to do so as Sole Proprietorship or Partnership.
Now, about copyright law. Yes, the Music Industry holds copyright on a great deal of music. But part of copyright law is the simple fact that if you use copyright to abuse the market, then your copyright is void. (Look it up. It's black letter federal law.)
What this means is that if our courts and legislature weren't being distorted by floods of illegitimate contributions, the RIAA would have had their copyrights revoked long ago.
So please, spare me the "It's shoplifting" talk. It's not shoplifting. It's certainly not murder, pillage and rape on the high seas.
What it really is, is poetic justice.
Had the Entertainment Industry at large listened to the screaming back in 1990 about the coming digital era and actually figured out a way to accommodate the Internet market, they might have had my sympathy. However, since they've spent the last ten years doing nothing but trying to fight the tide, leaving hobbyists to do the job they were obligated to do themselves, I have a very hard time shedding any tears for them.
The minstrel industry died, as did carnies and vaudeville. When Hollywood and the LA music industry join them on the slag heap, I'm not going to care.
They just haven't been doing their job.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
The nice thing is that if you pay a minimal fee you can get a Sealand passport. Under current treaties this passport will allow access to most countries in the world, with the minimal of visas and paperwork.
It is a great backup passport that can be used in the event of highjacking, traveling to countries forbidden by the issuer of your current password, or just to impress your friends. For information post your e-mail here and you will shortly be contacted.
As somebody that did not even think about the legal consequences of his software, in the first place (I read interviews in which he specifically says so) I don;t see why he would be all of the sudden interested in all the legalese.
He does not understand the posibilities his relative fame gives him to make important points about copyright issues and RIAA FUD. That is what happens when geeks become dissociated from politics. Please, don't do the same the rest of you.
Shame.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Right, but other than CDNOW where can you find this stuff?
I bought more stuff when napster was up; the quality sucked.
Here's a side-rant...why can't people fuckign rip and encode their songs. Its trivial, but most people think its okay to have AM quality that is encoded at high bit rates. I just don't understand how to even fuck things up that much if I wanted to.
Back to my point. I bought more albums because the sound quality was iffy, but it was enough to get me to say, "Damn...I like this stuff, but the sound quality sucks...where's that CDNOW site?"
Seriuosly, I'm not the only one who did this shit.
Universal sends it out with a "don't play it" letter.
Then they expect everyone to play it.
Then they send a cease and desist letter.
Its so phony and staged. It makes your local clearwater station seem to hip and irreverent.
I heard some dumb ass kids buy into it, but you're not that dumb, right?
The sad bit is, until I reread where the link pointed to, I thought this was real.
Dear Ms. Postnews:
I couldn't get mail through to somebody on another site. What
should I do?
-- Eager Beaver
Dear Eager:
No problem, just post your message to a group that a lot of people
read. Say, "This is for John Smith. I couldn't get mail through so I'm
posting it. All others please ignore."
This way tens of thousands of people will spend a few seconds scanning
over and ignoring your article, using up over 16 man-hours their collective
time, but you will be saved the terrible trouble of checking through usenet
maps or looking for alternate routes. Just think, if you couldn't distribute
your message to 9000 other computers, you might actually have to (gasp) call
directory assistance for 60 cents, or even phone the person. This can cost
as much as a few DOLLARS (!) for a 5 minute call!
And certainly it's better to spend 10 to 20 dollars of other people's
money distributing the message than for you to have to waste $9 on an overnight
letter, or even 25 cents on a stamp!
Don't forget. The world will end if your message doesn't get through,
so post it as many places as you can.
-- Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...