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2002 MP3 Winners and Losers
An anonymous reader writes "MP3newswire.net is running their annual losers and winners list in digital media. Each has 8 finalists with the big winner KaZaa for becoming profitable and doubling Napster's peak traffic despite setbacks like getting briefly booted from Download.com. The big loser? No surprise, it's the RIAA who despite several wins in court have failed in their quest to stem file trading. Lawrence Lessig and Dmitry Skylarov also made the winners list, though as the article points out it wasn't exactly a great year for Dmitry."
I seem to remember hearing something that might reverse the positions of Kazaa and the RIAA. :)
++ Say to Elrond "Hello.".
Elrond says "No.". Elrond gives you some lunch.
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Offtopic: Just how bad will it look on RIAA's system administratiors resimay to have worked there?
Kazaa, it seems to me, is a fundamentally flawed approach to file sharing. Sure, it's a strong program, well implemented, well maintained - but it seems to violate the very principle which makes file sharing symptomatic of a wider, very important issue in the music/film industry - openness. They have yet, for example, to port their software to Linux or Mac OS X. They don't release their source code. They are profitting on something which qualifies, very obviously, as stealing. How are we to make the principle of file and information sharing and open models legimitate if the main proponent of anti-corporate file sharing is a corporate, profitable entity in and of itself? The only way to make file sharing a legitimate cause is to make it an open cause - to force the middle men out of contention by making a legimate counter-movement and unfurl the banners of open source, open information, open everything. I don't support KazAa for this reason. It's a very efficient(and for them, very profitable) way to steal. The music industry needs incentive to reform, to make something as easy as KazAa available to its demographic. It has yet to do this, and I don't see how KazAa is helping.
I'm not sure Kazaa being profitable is that good of a thing for the 'net in general.
Remember, Kazaa is a Spyware/Adware-filled program which brings along with it a lot of annoying programs that pop-up ads while users are browsing sites other than their own, redirect click-through commissions from sites other than their own, and spy on users when using programs other than their own.
Kazaa simply has no morals. They're not just stealing from the RIAA, but if you run a website they're stealing from you too. If you haven't noticed, they don't have much respect the laws of the U.S, Canada, Mexico, U.K... or anywhere else that says stealing is wrong.
Kazaa should just go away... the online world would be better off without them. Them being profitable is a very scary thing...
Both the linked article and the /. story has it wrong.
If you doubt me compare this with this.
I just think the error shouldn't be allowed to propagate.
Besides, I woke up this morning and found out I had mutated into a spelling nazi. I just hate it when that happens...
Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
I was surprised that emusic.com didn't make their list. As one of the largest online providers of legal, non-DRM MP3s on the net they should have at least garnered an honorable mention. With practically unlimited downloads for $10 or $15 a month, I'd say consumers are the big winners here. I've been using the service for the past month and my music collection, especially jazz, has grown larger than it ever could have at $15 a CD.
The problem is, they not only own the content, but they also own the "distribution channels" that control what content is pushed into the marketplace.
The RIAA's MP3 fear is not that they won't be able to make money off of MP3s, but that people other than the existing RIAA members can as well. What's more, it'd be possible for an artist to gain popularity without needing the help of an RIAA label's publicity machine, therefore the artist could make 100% of the money off of the recording, and not have to give the RIAA members any cut of the action.
That's why the RIAA is trying desperately to block the progress of 'net-based music distribution in any file format by anybody. The fact that some people are surcomming to illegally transfering music that the RIAA owns the copyright on just makes their illogical case easier to argue. What they want is for the music distribution system to stay as it is for as long as possible, because if we ever transition to an effective electronic system of any kind, they will be written out of the story.
I don't understand why there is no single word about Edonkey in articles. Kazaa doesn't work in Linux (at least without Wine) and AFAIK lack few features of Edonkey network.
Why Edonkey community is ignored in such comparisions? Is it really so small?
First of all, p2p is used for more then piracy. Its not the "sole intent" as many people like to pretend.
Yes pirating occurs.. but so does drug running on our roads.. does that make it the 'sole intent'. No of course not.
Plus you are also not considering that waht you consider piracy only applies to YOUR country. many do not reconize copyrights, so its NOT, I repeat, NOT piracy there...
Try to spread the truth, not biased lies desgined to skew public opinion.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
"An acquaintance recently purchased the new Peter Gabriel CD. It played fine on her standard CD players, but would not play on her computer at work where she regularly listens to music to pass the tedium of her job. What did she do? She simply downloaded the files from the Net onto her PC and played that instead. The problem is she was still angry that the CD she bought was intentionally disabled, preventing her from using it as she wished. Do you know what she did next? She returned the CD. A perfect example of a dissatisfied consumer who (had) already committed to the purchase and was completely discouraged by the intentional hampering of the product. Scariest for the music industry was when I heard her angrily mutter these words..."I won't make that mistake again."" Did you hear that, RIAA? Your antics are really pissing off your customers! Oh wait - I forgot...you don't call them customers, do you? You call them thieves and pirates!
What I want to know is: why would they choose Kazaa as the number one winner?? That makes absolutely no sense. They talk about how great it is that they are profitable, and then in the same breath explain how they got that profitability: "by stuffing the app with adware, spyware, and most notoriously Brilliant Digital's Altnet, a distributed computing program covertly placed on users machines when KaZaa was downloaded." What is the author trying to do, promote such underhanded moneymaking techniques? When other developers and companies read this, they will undoubtedly make a connection. "How can we be more profitable? Well, Kazaa did it with adware, spyware, and lying to its customers." All those things should of course be mentioned, but in the Losers list, not the Winners. The adware, spyware, and covertly placed programs were the reason I never downloaded Kazaa, and never will. If Kazaa is going to be number one, they should be there because of the FastTrack network, which I think is wonderful. My vote would have gone to Kazaa Lite, which should definitely be up there on the list. It connects you to the FastTrack network without spying on you or lying to you.
Kazaa Lite is the real winner, not Kazaa.
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
Having recently picked up an iPod, I think it's great. However, I do have a few qualms with it. The wonderful device can only be "linked" to one computer at a time, and if you ever accidentally hit "Yes" when you've plugged it into the wrong computer you lose all your songs and have to set them all back up again on your main iPod computer. I have several computers on my home network, and they all have MP3s on them. I wanted to be able to use my iPod to transfer files between each of them, but you cannot take files off the iPod. The Firewire connection is blazingly fast, and I love that, but in my mind its inability to transfer files between computers is a crippling issue. If it had this capability, it would be number one on the RIAA's hitlist, which could become one of its biggest selling points. After all, the MP3 Winners' List said it itself: in this post-Napster world, the number one indicator of the quality of a product is the fervor with which the RIAA wants to kill it.
And by the way, connecting the iPod to that little FM transmitter they sell at the Apple Store is incredible. You sit down in your car and all the music you want is playing on the radio, without commercials. It's like satellite radio but you choose ALL the music, not just the station. I love my iPod, and I think it should have been placed higher than Kazaa on the list. It is better for the music lover than Kazaa, because Kazaa can pretty much only be used for stealing shoddy versions of the music. The iPod can be used with MP3s ripped from CD, so you can control the quality of your music. I hate downloaded music, because so much of it sucks (qualitywise).
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
I work in IT. Whenever I talk to other people who work in IT (and for that matter people who don't), most of the time I hear that the music distributors (e.g. RIAA) have outlived their usefulness. Once Hilary Rosen remarked that the IT industry was swallowing their industry.
It is. We are.
When you can electronically transfer music and burn it to recordable, red book-compatible media, when you can print cover art on an inkjet or color laser printer, there is absolutely no need for music distribution companies. No need whatsoever. And, more importantly, no need to pay US$21.99 for a music CD anymore.
The problem that the RIAA has is that people aren't nearly as stupid as they think. Uninformed perhaps, but not stupid. When people are clued in I always see the same response: we should either be able to download music for a small fee, or call our local music store, tell them what we want burned and printed, and head over to pick up our custom CD for all of 5 bucks.
So yes, the IT industry is going to swallow the record distribution industry, just as the automotive industry swallowed up the need for horses and buggies (and buggy whips).
I am sorry, I have no sympathy for the labels, or even the artists really (sorry) when it comes to losing their CD profits.
Let's not forget, not so very long ago, there really wasn't a way to record music. So, music, like every other form of "service" us humans provide, was a 1:1 ratio. If a show charged a fee to see, you paid it. If you wanted to see it again, you paid again. Much like 2 donkeys for 2 dollars, 4 donkeys for 4. Music was an artform, experienced first hand.
Then one day, technology advanced and shook things up. For a brief period a loophole was opened for a very small segment of individuals. It was discovered that an "artist" could "perform" only once, yet make virtually limitless, 100% accurate copies of their performance and sell them to everyone on the planet for pennies of production costs. Amazing! Sure, doctors, architects, automobile makers, any just about anyone else on the face of the earth that builds something or does something for money will never be able to (barring huge advancements in quantum replicators) do this. But who cares! Musicians could!
[this part is my opinion, disregard if you disagree] Music turned ugly. It went from meaningful art created one off, by the artists themselves, straight to celebrity fame, gaudy fortune, ass and tit shaking, commercial trash. Are there exceptions to this rule? For the love of God, YES! But, come on... Britney Spears?
Anyway. For a few decades music became a massively profitable industry. Handed to the labels by techological advancements. But now. The very same technology that gave musicians and their "masters" an unfair advantage has advanced once again and taken that cash cow away.
And I can't help but say... boo... fucking... hoo.
Welcome back to the rest of the world, where hard working people turn one kind of material into another, or provide a service for money, and are limited by the constraints of how much time is in a day, and how much the original materials cost. It may have been fun while it lasted, but I am not going to cry that you're losing it.
I'm Rick James with mod points biatch!