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New Legit Napster Service Coming
Serith submitted a CNN story talking about the new
Napster Service. This is of course an attempt to legitimize music sharing. Provided the price point is fair and paying is convenient, I'll be first in line. Of course the odds of that happening seems awfully weak.
fp, you nazis!
We authorize you to distribute this audio file among your employees:
the_sound_of_a_boot_meeting_a_dead_horse.mp3
Cordially,
The RIAA
Do you like German cars?
This is not the first post so you may continue reading on.
frist psot bitches
i luv jon katz
he tosses MA SALADE
probably not.
That did not stop music publishers from suing Bertelsmann for $17 billion last week, arguing that by throwing Napster a lifeline in 2002 it was responsible for the service continuing its illegal infringement.
this reminds me of when the photocopiers in the libraries had to have huge disclaimers about copying any material that was copyrighted.
i can only hope that personal use will extend to purchased music as much as it did to purchased books. as much as i hate these lawsuits, it is in the courts that the personal use issue actually finds some teeth.
Its amazing what some people will go through to get something free
hella izzowned
Vot are deez insits?
damn first posters...
Napster bankrupts YOU!
I'd like some insight into what an "insit" is.
The linked article doesn't actually contain the word.
There will always be backdoors and new applications for sharing. Until the RIAA decides to shut down IRC and FTP et al. they will never remove music swapping from the world of file sharing.
People are greedy, they want it for free, and they'll get it.
Posting as directed.
Spelling error in title...
Walking along like this, alone, down these backalley store crowded streets, makes me feel - not really empty but missing something. Some sort of purpose. And the rain just makes it worse. There's this store I always go into. One of these throwbacks to mysticism and voodoo and black magic. All sorts of weird shit. Cards, stones, boxes, sand. All of it part of that underground sub-culture of mystics and believers. I don't really believe in much but fortune and destiny. Not that your life was mapped out by some all-powerful being, but that it's got a course set, just like all the other times you've lived your life. No one MADE it, but it's there, and no matter what you do, you end up going from point A to point B through course C and there's nothing you can do but live it. And some people have fortunate lives and some people have shitty lives. . . Mine's been pretty fortunate.
So I go into this store. It doesn't really have a name, it's just sort of THERE. The woman who owns it knows me by name now. Her name's Dorothy, really sweet. Always helpful. She's given me some great deals on stuff and taught me a lot about the cultures whose merchandise she sells. Well today, I walk in and she's got this odd smile on her face. Something's up. I mean, she's never cheated me or done anything illegal, but she's creeping me out today. "Hey Dorothy. How are you doing?"
"Oh, I'm fine dear. I've just bought something incredible. I think you'll like it. See if you can find it." She liked to do this a lot; tell me that I'd like something and make me look for it. All of it has been incredibly cool. So I wander around the tables and shelves along the walls. I see something moving out of the corner or my eye. Some sort of fluid, quick movement. Like the way a cat's tail swishes in the sunlight. I turn my head and see this brass canary cage. There's no swing in it, but instead, some rocks and a small box. Sitting on the box is a tiny devil, not more than 4 inches tall. He has a thin, pointed tail and delicate ebony horns. They remind me of the pincers on an earwig. Threatening like that. Sharp. He's rather handsome, muscular. Sinuous tendons, body like a dancer. I wondered what it would be like if I were 4 inches tall and kissed him. Would his tongue feel like fire? Would it be passionate? Would he fuck me like a purely evil beast? . . . God, what am I THINKING?! Jesus, I think he's getting to me. . . No, this can't be real. There's not such things as devils or gods or pushing your will on others. It's all mind fucking. Smoke and mirrors.
"He's beautiful Dorothy. Is he, I mean, is he real? He doesn't seem mechanical or anything."
"Oh, he's real. Very real. I picked him out myself. I knew you'd like him."
"Well how much? He must be awfully expensive. I couldn't imagine putting a price on a living BEING."
"Why not, we do it with animals." She had a point.
"Yes, but, well, he's so human." He had been sitting on a rock but now he stood up. He had a twisted black staff, almost like a toothpick. He climbed up onto the box in the middle of the cage and banged the staff down. It made a small tapping sound, but the way he stood and the way he held it made it seem like a loud echoing boom.
"I'm NOT a fuckin' pet. You tell that bitch to let me out of here before I rip her balls off with my teeth." His voice was raspy and deep. Not what you'd expect from such a tiny creature. It was almost erotic in a way. And yet smooth, as of from wine. His skin was that color. Like sweet red wine. . . Snap out of it. Jesus. "Jesus has nothing to do with it honey."
"I'm sorry?"
He looked up at me. Eyes like black holes, eerie. "I said Jesus has nothing to do with it."
"Don't mind him, he likes to play with people." Dorothy yelled from over by the counter. "I hear him in my mind too." She paused for a second, then her tone changed. "You like him, don't you? He's yours, you know. 20 dollars."
"20 dollars, are you serious?"
"I'm worth WELL over that, bitch. Man, cheap ass whore." The devil mumbled.
"Well, do you WANT to pay more dear?" How could I pass this up? A whole devil. All mine. I wondered if he had any powers and if he did, could he pass them on to me?
"Alright then. I'll take him." I picked the cage up in both hands so it wouldn't move around much.
"Damn straight you'll take me. You'd have to be a fuckin' moron to pass this up baby." And he thumped his fist against his naked chest. He wasn't wearing much. Just a black, velvety robe.
* * *
When I got home, I set the cage on my kitchen table. I felt giddy and excited. This was the buy of the century. "Let me out of here bitch. I hate this fuckin' cage. And these damn rocks. I need luxury. I need leather and silk and velvet and cashmere." "Are you always so rude?" I opened the cage door and he sauntered out tapping his staff along as he went. "Why couldn't you open the cage on your own? I mean, you have some sort of POWERS, right?"
"Yes, I'm always so rude, and yes, I do have powers. . . when I'm FREE. In captivity, well, I'm mortal. . . Now watch this." I stood back. He stretched his arms out and tilted his head back and soon began to levitate as if pulled from a string attached to his chest. He floated off the table so he was hovering above the floor in front of me. It was hard to tell, but it looked like he was becoming translucent. Like smoke. And then he WAS smoke. It began to dance and grow, until it was a thin stream coming from the floor to 6 feet above it. Then the smoke spread out and solidified and there the devil stood. All his 4 inch glory there towering above me. God, he was even more beautiful this size. His skin tight and glistening, his horns perfect and reflective. His eyes had lava and sin in them.
He grabbed me by the back of my neck and kissed me as I had never been kissed before. His tongue tasted like wine and sex and sent a flame of passion down my spine. I wanted him. I knew that now. I wanted him to ravish me and devour me. Whole. Alive. "Fuck me." I murmured, and he did. I screamed and moaned and begged for salvation. A steady stream of curses passed my lips and then he pierced me, past all barriers, past the edge, past the hard ground and down into the fiery depths of hell. It was pure untainted madness. I clenched my teeth until my gums bled and then I screamed at decibel levels off every scale.
I was left in a sweating pile of spent flesh and pleasure. Panting and broken. His serpentine tongue flicked out to paint my neck in glistening white wine and I slept for decades it seemed.
* * *
It went on like this for days. We fucked in the morning, in the afternoon, and in the evening. I finally quit my job. I began to drink heavily and often. And my skin tone darkened with every thrust of his evil cock. My days were spent in hate and contempt. When I went out, I glared at every passerby and muttered foul curses of disgust. I was angry at the world. I even hated God. I vomited when I stepped into church and great flashes of pain coursed through me with the mention of the Lord, God, angels, or heaven. Holy my ass. It was all bullshit. God was a hypocritical, egotistical son of a bitch. I spit on cathedral steps and took the Lord's name in vain every chance I had.
* * *
Soon I had my own tail and horns began to spout from my head. My hair darkened to a satanic black. I didn't need to eat anymore. I only craved carnal pleasure. I laughed at hatred and grew with every evil deed I witnessed. And the sex got better. I didn't bother with clothing anymore since I spent most of the day naked and pressed against my love.
"Juliet," my love grumbled in his endlessly deep voice, "I want to test your powers. Come with me." I followed him to where his old brass cage sat on the bookshelf. It still contained the rocks and the small box. "Do as I do. Spread your arms like a great eagle and think of nothing." I did so. His finger tips touched mine and soon I felt nothing at all. . . I heard his voice in my mind. "Collapse and open your eyes." When I did, I felt small and insignificant. Inferior to my surroundings only to find out that I WAS. My love flew into the cage and I followed him until we stood hand in hand inside the small brass cage.
"You did it darling, I'm so proud of you." He kissed me and stroked my face. "Now I must leave you." He disappeared then and the door on the cage slammed shut. My love reappeared outside the cage in his 6 foot splendor. He was pale now. Almost white. His hair brown. he looked. . . ordinary. Plain.
"My love, what's happened to you?" He laughed and told me to shut up. That I was the pet now.
* * *
Satan paid my love with a higher rank and sent him out to the streets to work. Then he put me on the shelf where I had originally found my love. I cursed at him as he morphed into Dorothy. His aura was slick with superiority and torture. "Keep your mouth shut bitch. You'll get yours soon enough."
Eat Shit and Die asshole, I got the first post!
It sounds like Napster is trying the ol' "Throw enough shit against the wall and some of it'll stick" routine. They put out enough news "releases" to keep some mindshare then try this crap. Methinks they'll keep doing this until someone offers to buy them.
Trolling is a art,
Someone please tell me, what is a "Napster Insite" (what the slashdot headline says) or a "Napster Insits" (what the slashdot summary says)? Neither "insite" or "insits" appear in the text of the CNN article.
Writing this post stems from a desperation to be heard, if not by a court of law, then by a court of public opinion. Before I say anything else, let me remind Napster that if Fate desired that it make a correct application of what it had read about obscurantism, it would have to indicate title and page number, since the salacious organization would otherwise never in all its existence find the correct place. But since Fate does not do this, if it had even a shred of intellectual integrity, it'd admit that denominationalism is dangerous. Its noisome version of it is doubly so. On a completely different tack, we have to consider all of our options. And let me tell you, if you've read this far, then you probably either agree with me or are on the way to agreeing with me. Napster clings to any argument or principle, however puerile or self-righteous, that appears to support its excuses, yes. But if I want to turn pale and run for cover, that should be my prerogative. I don't need Napster forcing me to.
Pardon me for not being able to empathize with the most mindless ratbags I've ever seen, but my general thesis is that I'm sticking out my neck a bit in talking about Napster's press releases. It's quite likely it will try to retaliate against me for my telling you that I unquestionably dislike it. Likes or dislikes, however, are irrelevant to observed facts, such as that just because Napster and its slaves don't like being labelled as "improvident curmudgeons" or "brutish, sex-crazed schizophrenics" doesn't mean the shoe doesn't fit. I'll talk a lot more about that later, but first let me finish my general thesis: Napster's plans for the future have kept us separated for too long from the love, contributions, and challenges of our brothers and sisters in this wonderful adventure we share together -- life! Let's be frank: I once told Napster that it doesn't let a day pass without showing to the world that is is as little fitted to be trusted with liberty as thieves with keys or children with firearms. How did it respond to that? It proceeded to curse me off using a number of colorful expletives not befitting this letter, which serves only to show that Napster's half-measures are not an abstract problem. They have very concrete, immediate, and unpleasant consequences. For instance, Napster insists that disorderly drugged-out-types are more deserving of honor than our nation's war heroes. Sorry, Napster, but, with apologies to Gershwin, "it ain't necessarily so." Whenever someone tells Napster not to exploit the public's short attention span in order to create some power-drunk, pseudo-psychological profile of me to discredit my opinions, Napster gets all teary-eyed. My, my; how sad. My heart bleeds for it, it really does. Napster's rank-and-file followers portray themselves as fervent believers in freedom of speech and expression, but are loath to reveal that Napster is typical of domineering nutcases in its wild invocations to the irrational, the magic, and the fantastic to dramatize its publications.
Now, I'm no fan of Napster's, but still, Napster says that we should all bear the brunt of its actions. Wow! Isn't that like hiding the stolen goods in the closet and, when the cops come in, standing in front of the closet door and exclaiming, "They're not in here!"? I could go on and on about Napster's special form of solecism, but you get the general idea. Napster operates on an international scale to break down traditional values. It's only fitting, therefore, that we, too, work on an international scale, but to act against injustice, whether it concerns drunk driving, domestic violence, or even credentialism. The great irony is that if you're interested in the finagling, double-dealing, chicanery, cheating, cajolery, cunning, rascality, and abject villainy by which Napster may disparage and ridicule our traditional heroes and role models one of these days, then you'll want to consider the following very carefully. You'll especially want to consider that if I recall correctly, the next time Napster decides to attack the critical realism and impassive objectivity that are the central epistemological foundations of the scientific worldview, it should think to itself, cui bono? -- who benefits? We don't need to demonize Napster; it is already a demon, and furthermore, it argues that people don't mind having their communities turned into war zones. I wish I could suggest some incontrovertible chain of apodictic reasoning that would overcome this argument, but the best I can do is the following: It has never gotten ahead because of its hard work or innovative ideas. Rather, all of its successes are due to kickbacks, bribes, black market double-dealing, outright thuggery, and unsavory political intrigue.
Napster will fail if we unite. This applies first and foremost to a group under whose benighted brand of oligarchism the whole of honest humanity is suffering: lame-brained delinquents. Napster's personal interest in seeing its undertakings shoved down people's throats is insipid, but that's to be expected of it. In keeping with all of their inner sordid brutality, Napster's drones force people to act in ways far removed from the natural patterns of human behavior. Racialism is rapidly becoming the rule of the day. Let me try to explain what I mean by that in a single sentence: I have one itsy-bitsy problem with Napster's ultimata. Videlicet, they cater to the basest instincts of supercilious voluble-types. And that's saying nothing about how when it was first found trying to trade fundamental human rights for a cheap "guarantee" of safety and security, I was scared. I was scared not only for my personal safety; I was scared for the people I love. And now that Napster is planning to rip apart causes that others feel strongly about, I'm terrified. To restate the obvious: Napster and its vicegerents are social pariahs and should be ostracized. It's that simple.
Let me be clear. I once managed to get Napster to agree that it turns its back on those who have been the most loyal to it. Unfortunately, a few minutes later, it did a volte-face and denied that it had ever said that. It's a well-known fact that I am not Napster's whipping boy. It's an equally well-known fact that Napster can be described only by such words as "obdurate" and "intransigent". When logic puts these two facts together, the necessary result is an understanding that Napster contends that two wrongs make a right. Sounds rather immature, doesn't it? Well, that's Napster for you. I have nothing more to say on that issue. Yet some repressive rotters actually suspect that Napster's cock-and-bull stories are good for the environment, human rights, and baby seals. This is the kind of muddled thinking that Napster is encouraging with its announcements. Even worse, all those who raise their voice against this brainwashing campaign are denounced as semi-intelligible, virulent ethically bankrupt-types.
Armed only with a white shirt, pocket protector, slide rule, thick glasses, and some other neat stuff, I have determined that if Napster got its way, it'd be able to promote the avaricious inveracities of ungrateful ruffians. Brrrr! It sends chills down my spine just thinking about that. Honor means nothing to Napster. Principles mean nothing to Napster. All it cares about is how best to replace intellectual integrity with unruly sloganeering. This brings us to the dark underside of Napster's ideas, the side that's known to sidetrack us, so we can't lead it out of a dream world and back to hard reality.
Although chimpanzees can be convinced to wear clothing, understand commands, and even ride bicycles (if well paid for their services in bananas), it would be virtually impossible to convince Napster that scrutinizing its ebullitions may be instructive in this regard. (Actually, it is one of those pompous blusterers that quotes the Bible but never reads it, but that's not important now.) While Napster is unequivocally entitled to ignore good advice from intelligent people, its insinuations are a masterpiece of uninformed escapism. That's the sort of statement that some people think is contemptible, but which I believe is merely a statement of fact. And it's a statement that needs to be made, because I do not find modes of thought that are peremptory-to-the-core, blockish, and asinine to be "funny". Maybe I lack a sense of humor, but maybe if it wants to complain, it should have an argument. It shouldn't just throw out the word "characteristicalness", for example, and expect us to be scared.
Napster should learn to appreciate what it has instead of feeling so oppressed because it can't do everything it wants, every time it wants to. Please let me explain that if I didn't sincerely believe that Napster makes it a point to convert lush forests into arid deserts, then I wouldn't be writing this letter. More concretely, Napster thinks we want it to make my stomach turn. Excuse me, but maybe its threats may have been conceived in idealism, but they quickly degenerated into raucous stoicism.
I cannot believe how many actual, physical, breathing, thinking people have fallen for Napster's subterfuge. I'm utterly stunned. If Napster is victorious in its quest to boss others around, then its crown will be the funeral wreath of humanity. Napster says that it is merely trying to make this world a better place in which to live. What it means by this, of course, is that it wants free reign to make nearby communities victims of environmental degradation and toxic waste dumping. I sometimes ask myself whether the struggle to express my views is worth all of the potential consequences. And I consistently answer by saying that I correctly predicted that Napster would work hand-in-glove with simple-minded Napster clones. Alas, I didn't think it'd do that so effectively -- or so soon. Thanks to Napster, loquacious, amateurish whiners can now freely "solve" all our problems by talking them to death. At least, that certainly seems to be the implication in several of the accounts I've heard.
To be fair, if one dares to criticize even a single tenet of Napster's credos, one is promptly condemned as pigheaded, vengeful, destructive, or whatever epithet Napster deems most appropriate, usually without much explanation. Lest I forget to mention this later, Napster says that it is the one who will lead us to our great shining future. That's its unvarying story, and it's a lie: an extremely intemperate and annoying lie. Unfortunately, it's a lie that is accepted unquestioningly, uncritically, by Napster's apologists. Once it becomes clear that this is the precondition for my crusade against grumpy imperialism, it becomes apparent that Napster's apostles should reevaluate their cherished assumptions about deconstructionism. Am I aware of how Napster will react when it reads that last sentence? Yes. Do I care? No, because some of the facts I'm about to present may seem shocking. This they certainly are. However, whenever anyone states the obvious -- that I by no means claim to know everything about gutless knuckle-draggers -- discussion naturally progresses towards the question, "Whatever happened to community standards?" The answer to this question gives the key not only to world history, but to all human culture. Well, let's get our facts straight. One of the great mysteries of modern life is, Is Napster so neurotic as to think that this can go on forever? Well, we all know the answer to that question, don't we? But in case you don't, then you should note that Napster has found a way to avoid compliance with government regulations, circumvent any further litigation, and advocate measures that others criticize for being excessively jaded -- all by trumping up a phony emergency. Okay, I've written enough for one post, so let me just finish by saying that Napster does not play nice with others.
Where were all those grammar-nazi subscribers with access to the story queue when we needed them? Insite? Insits???
Come on...
This past year, I was accepted into Carnegie Mellon's [cmu.edu] School of Computer Science [cmu.edu]. It has been a remarkable experience that I would lik e to share with the Slashdot community. Here's an account of my experience.
Week 1, Sunday: I moved in today. My roommate, a sophomore CS student, had already moved in tw o days before me. The floor is already completely covered with garbage. He also smells. I think he might be gay too. He's already asked me if I like the color he painted his toenails. This should be interesting. I am almost completely settled in. Techno music is playing in every room in every floor of my dorm. There are computers and other types of trash out in the common areas. What a mess. Tom orrow, I am going to go sign up to get my network connection.
Week 1, Monday: I got hooked up to the CMU network today! I jacked into the network, only to f ind that the hostname and address assigned to me were colliding with another system. I'll just increm ent the network numbers a few times. I am really eager to get on.
Week 1, Tuesday: I am still looking for a free IP address. Can't anybody here properly configu re their systems?
Week 1, Friday: I finally found a free IP! It's mine! You sons of bitches can't have i t, I found it, I keep it, it's mine! To hell with all of you! Head hurts really bad. I've slowly be en developing a headache since I first arrived. Everywhere I look there are these Lucent Technologies wireless access points. I wonder if that's the problem.
Week 1, Saturday: I sat down at my computer today. My desktop wall paper is now the goatse.cx guy. Pleasant. Scattered over every directory on my C: drive are thousands, possibly millions, of fi les titled "J00AR30WN3DBITCH-phj33r-" and then some random hacker's name. Don't these people have liv es? Maybe they need laid or something. It'd take days to clean this out. I mentioned to my roommate that I needed to reinstall Windows, and immediately he jumped up and shouted: "NO! Do NOT use Window s!" Suddenly, two dozen other guys (all of them possibly homosexuals) appeared at the door, each tout ing an operating system called Linux. Half of them got into a fight over which was better, Debian, Re dHat, Slackware, and a bunch of others I couldn't recognize. Some kid who appeared to not have shower ed since he was born was touting "Linux From Scratch", saying that only losers used pre-made distros. A crowd of people in the back kept quiet about how I'd be sorry if I used Linux instead of BSD on the network. Who the fuck are these people? Classes start next week. Hope I have my computer working s o I can do my assignments.
Week 3, Friday: People are still trying to get Linux to work on my system. They keep telling m y that my hardware sucks. We go through about four or five distributions a day. Every now and then, I notice a little devil on my screen. Stickers for every of these distributions have been plastered o n my case. Suddenly, my room stinks a lot more with these people in here. I ask them why they never shower, and the usual response is something along the lines of "showering is like rebooting" and "I do n't want to lose my uptime."
Week 3, Saturday: There's a troop of men running naked in a circle around McGill Hall. I am no t even going to ask.
Week 4, Wednesday: Linux is FINALLY working on my computer! I have a pretty slick desktop too. I think I might like this. I can finally work in my room instead of the labs, although considering the every increasing layer of garbage on the floor...
Week 4, Thursday: My computer flashes messages about how I am "0WNX0RED" and how I should "PHJ3 3R" whoever and how "L4MEX0R" I am for having an insecure box. A kid suggests we reinstall Linux afte r discovering about 17 rootkits.
Week 5, Friday: Someone got BSD working on my computer. I wonder if this will last. The stres s has been building and I forgot to take a shower this morning.
Week 6, Tuesday: Seems I have been "0WNX0R3D" again. Took longer this time. Minutes later, so meone comes in with a "Bastile Linux" install CD. He gets started installing. I am feeling very susp icious of these guys.
Week 6, Thursday: Everyone seems to know more about my system than I do. It's a bit unnerving. I guess anyone could feel upset from this sort of treatment. They hack my box, trash it, then reins tall everything. I guess they think they're being funny. My dirty clothes are piling up and I am out of clean ones. I don't have time to do laundry, I'll have to wear something out of the pile.
Week 6, Friday: I got up this morning, sat at my machine, and stared at it blankly. An icon ap peared on my desktop for Quake III. I suppose it couldn't hurt to play some. I have been very stress ed lately.
Week 6, Sunday: I lost track of time! I started playing Quake III on the network with some oth er CMU students (who killed me hundreds of times in the course of 10 minutes) and completely lost myse lf. There's a bag of chips that has been sitting here for a few weeks. I think I'll finish those off for breakfast and then go to sleep.
Week 7, Wednesday: I masturbate every day now. Not a single girl comes near me. This is so de pressing. Do I really smell? Oh well, I have the task of learning how to secure my Linux box to keep me busy. Who has time for the opposite sex after all?
Week 8, Tuesday: I got into a fight with this little shit who kept telling me RedHat was great. What a fucking moron! Anybody who knows Linux knows that Debian kicks its sorry little ass. I'll b e getting my judiciary papers for the incident in the mail. Doesn't this school get it? I can't let someone go around converting people to RedHat! WtF!?
Week 8, Friday: My roommate squeezed my ass today! At first I was shocked and appauled, and I told him off for it. Thinking about it later though, there was just something that seemed too strong about my reaction. I'll talk to him later and appologize for getting so upset, it wasn't really so ba d.
Why bother.
So it looks like the "New Napster" will have a pretty femine look/feel if the image on that site is representative of what's to come.
Of course the odds of that happening seems awfully weak.
When the headline's only a few sentences long, do we need this sort of pessimism occupying so much space?
I for one think there's plenty of promise in a pay-per-download music service. If it's easy to use, and, here's the most important part: accessible to teens and pre-teens. Allow for a charge account to be set up by the parents, with the kids spending "credits" to download music, games, cell ringers, etc. Are you listening, BMG?
If you fall off a building, go real limp, because maybe you'll look like a dummy and people will be like hey, free dummy
Go home and put a gun in your mouth, because you don't deserve to live.
I find the fact that Roxio has hired X-napsterite Shawn Fanning as a consultant one of the most important points in the article, hopefully with his help we can finally have an easy to use legal way to acquire music.
paul reinheimer
Is this really true peer to peer? Peer to peer is fine, but I'd be hesitant to have give up my bandwidth while downloading music I paid for.
Whale
Or I'm going to be fucking upset.
Upset enough to kill!
Shouts to D to the Motherfucking C!
Two questions:
* Does audiogalaxy still have the volume it used to?
* If music industry is not losing money due to sharing does that mean that we should not respect the copyright holders?
The question I have is what kind of quality will I get? If I pay, I expect better quality than most of the junk found on Kazaa.
If I can get better quality fairly simply, I'm willing to pay. I still buy CDs, for crying out loud.
"Give a woman two glasses of wine and some pad thai, and they'll agree to just about anything." the Sports Guy
$1.50 a song is all I will ever pay peroid.
But Napster ran out of money before it could figure out a way to charge customers for downloads.
Irregardless of lawsuits, I'm afraid that this is the fate of all file-sharing programs. I salute Kazaa and Co. for fighting the good fight and all, but I just can't figure out how they'll ever convince enough people to pay for downloadable music to turn a profit.
And we all know the consequences of that - Record exec's saying "blah people won't buy music online blah piracy blah new DMCA blah THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!
How many more napster/kAzaa/gnuetellas do we need? After all, one can download the soundtrack of LOTR only so many times...
'ta
You FUCKING MODERATORS are all EVIL NAZIS and I HATE YOU. Quit moderating this post down! IT'S TEH FUNNY.
The sad thing is, the only real way to make a Napster service legit is to make it be a thin front-end to the big record labels. Who will really be setting the prices for Napster? If the record companies allow Napster to run this service, then will they allow there to be competitors to Napster? I doubt it, unless they are forced to by the government.
Very popular slashdot journal for adul
Provided the price point is fair and paying is convenient, I'll be first in line.
Just out of curiosity, how many people consider a 'fair' price point to be greater than $0.00? Very few hardcore filesharers will actually buy music online, because the price is 'unfair'.
And how convenient does this have to be? Credit Card? (Oh, wait, we don't trust 'those people' with our credit cards.)
('Those people' being anyone who gets in bed with music producers.)
This is the real signature
(Beats those shadows on the cave wall, don't it?)
- The word is "insight". It isn't used at all in the linked article, and is misspelled twice in the original posting.
- Roxio, the company that took Easy CD Creator and turned it into an unstable piece of garbage is going to do something with Napster? Good luck.
- While occasionally, you'll find someone who says "The artists deserve to get paid for their work," most people say "CDs cost too much, and Kazaa, Gnutella, EDonkey, WinMX, etc. are free." If you really want to support an artist, download what you want from the P2P networks (or FTP or IRC), and send the artists a check in the mail. Cut out the middleman and show the RIAA that they aren't adding any value and don't deserve to get paid
</rant>Overrated / Underrated : Moderation
s/Insite/Insight/;
I'm not really interested in paying for the pleasure of sharing my bandwidth.
MP3s have always been "good enough" for the casual listening environment. But why would I want to pay for an inferior version? If I am going to actually pay for something, it will be for a CD. Heck, then I can compress it myself in whatever format I choose.
Woah. Has anyone actually bothered to read all this?
Ok. My Mom is the type of person who would never steal anything from anyone. Totally good soul . But even she sees no problem with getting CDs copied or songs downloaded form the Internet, in fact she gets me to do it all the time. Why? Because for decades the radio stations have convinced the general populace that music is free (after all, if you can listen to it wherever you want for no charge, isn't that free?). Most people do not mind listning to a few ads on the radio, in fact, many people enjoy advertisements. So with this general mindset that music doens't really cost anything, why would they be expected to pay for it? Ever since the 8 track tape was invented people have copying music. These people don't get (or care) that it is digital and therefore it is an exact copy, they just by default expect to be allowed to do it.
Now that the story has leaked in the "San Jose Mercury News" (see Slashdot article) that Apple is also possibly offering pay for downloadable music the wave has begun. Put quarters in your A-drive and enjoy the music. Son-of-Napster and Apple's pay for play and whomever else wants to enter the game is but a click away.
Harpo Tunnel Syndrome--my wrist feels funny.
There are two things that none of these legitimate p2p programs have that lead to their failure.
The first is price. Honestly, it costs more to download the entire CD than to buy it. There's no incentive to support them at that point. How stupid do they think we are?
And second, is that they need mp3 player compatibility. I have a Rio pmp300. I listen to purchased music on it. If some service I PAY FOR won't let me do that, then I won't subscribe to it.
"Meanwhile, commercial online music ventures like Pressplay and MusicNet, both of which are backed by the major labels, have had a difficult time finding their footing"
I wrote a casebook on mp3s as part of a freshmen english class about 5 years back. At this time several companies were trying to develop watermarked, time or number of plays limited propriatary audio formats. The companies failed to realize that this was a stupid idea, the mp3 files could be found anywhere, were compaitable with a number of good software programs, and didnt suffer from any of the limitations that the RIAA wanted to introduce in order to prevent piracy, and that because of this they would not catch on.
Appearently the big 5 still fail to realize that all the legislation in the world is incapible of putting the genie back in the bottle. Even while resorting to tactics like introducing bad versions of songs and spreading rumors of an upcoming, plaform independent mp3 virus and persecuting those running servers with nasty letters to their isp's, the popularity of mp3's and file sharing continues to rise. The infeasability of a pay-per -play scheme given the current abundance of peer-to-peer software should be obvious to anyone with half a brain...
How do I keep track of people who are fingering
yeah. they'll even go get a library card.
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Why bother.
I'm a bit confused -- did napster ever actually profit from the sharing?
I've left to find myself. If you happen to see me, please, keep me there until I return.
Glad I could clear that up.
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Important Matter: I pray attempt to maintain the starter shafts in the object. Tests to answer to the comments of people instead beginning new threads of the spiral. It reads to the messages of people before that fixing its in order to possess ones in order to simply avoid to duplicate that what has been said already. Uses to the free object that it describes on which are its message. Inflammatory, inadequate, illegal, or offensive the comments of Offtopic, could be moderate (can read all the, starter shafts to you even moderate, measure to you your threshold in the page of the preferences of the customer) if wished the answers to your transmitted comments you, you they study the possibility to enter or to generate of a customer.
Significant matter: Please tentative to maintain posts in the subject. Try to answer the comments of the people instead of beginning new wire of spiral. Read the messages of the people before fixing his to have those to simply avoid reproducing what was already known as. Employ on the clear subject that it describes on what it is its message. Inflammatory, unsatisfactory, illegal, or offensive the comments of Offtopic, could be moderate (you can read all, even the moderated posts, adapting your threshold in the page of the preferences of the user) if you wish answers to your comments sent to you, consider you to enter or create of an account.
Allowed HTML: Important Stuff: Please try to keep posts on topic. Try to reply to other people's comments instead of starting new threads. Read other people's messages before posting your own to avoid simply duplicating what has already been said. Use a clear subject that describes what your message is about. Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated. (You can read everything, even moderated posts, by adjusting your threshold on the User Preferences Page) If you want replies to your comments sent to you, consider logging in or creating an account. Problems regarding accounts or comment posting should be sent to CowboyNeal. will enable file-sharing providers to capitalize on the unused CPU cycles of their members. That in turn would allow them to raise money to compensate artists for the use of their material. Honest Thief said the software, known as ThankYou 2.0, enables a peer-to-peer file-sharing client to turn the computers of digital music fans into nodes in a distributed net. By leasing out the processor power on distributed nets to research facilities the firm could generate revenues that would be distributed back to the musicians. Some
Uhhh..afaik, napster went offline in 2001. And I don't think Napster ever came back up.
And what's this about $17 billion dollars? I know punative damages are usually in excess of what's really expected, but $17 Billion? In 2001, only $13 billion worth of music was sold. So what is this, $4 billion in lawyer's fees?
Yeesh. Let's all pitch in and buy a timeshare nerd resort on Vanuatu so we all have a place to relax and trade files in peace...
This makes me laugh. Where is the value of this new system supposed to come from? Experience dictates that people don't adopt new technological methods of doing things unless there is a marked value improvement. While downloading MP3s is marginally easier than buying a CD (on-line or otherwise), you get lower sound quality, no physical media, and no printed materials.
Even if the value of being able to buy one song at a time and burn your own customized CDs is a significant enough improvement to alter consumers' behaviour (which I think is debatable), the perceived value of such a service has been diluted by the ability to do that exact same thing for free for years!
These companies are in a rush to grab a potentially huge market, but their business plans SUCK because there is no added value. I propose that declining CD sales may have more to do with the ease of burning CDs than actual Internet filesharing. With the current music marketing model of revenues coming from a few multi-platinum albums, it becomes very easy for kids to burn each other CDs since they all want the same mass-consumed product.
One way to give themselves a bit more protection might be to try to diversify musical interests so it wouldn't be easy to share 'the hot album'. I'm not sure if it's feasible, but they could save a lot of money on production and advertising, and still garner some major hits through word of mouth sales (kids will do an awful lot of free promotion if you're clever).
Now I know I may be talking out my ass, but the point is that recycling old concepts and increasing the price is NOT going to be a succesful business model.
What is needed is a system for music downloads that satisfies the needs of the consumer and a fair renumeration to the artists involved. No commercial offering has come close to this - they are all doomed to failure until they do.
What, explicitly is needed:
Compressed AND un-compressed audio file for download
Artwork / track listings etc. to print
Nothing to stop you burning a CD
No watermarking
Affordable pricing that reflects the facts that:
You've bought your computer and internet connection and CD burner etc.
You've bought your blank media and printer and paper
Musicians give their music away on the radio all the time, and the consumer doesn't pay for this. This has devalued and / or shown the true value of music and it is a very low value.
The price of second hand CD's more accurately reflects a true market value of music
Do the sums yourself and even taking into account the costs of setting up the service, the price per song / per minute is going to be pretty low, but if the service / artist do a 50:50 split on that (before costs) I'd reckon that would be amicable.
Ofcourse, this would put record shops out of business, but that's their problem. They don't offer much useful anyway (unless they sell vinyl)
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No, no, no. "Napster" without file SHARING is not Napster.
Napster was never about "free music." Napster was always about community, about "sharing my collection--my very own, personal, idiosyncratic collection."
There is no way the record companies are going to provide the same variety or the same breadth of coverage as a bunch of dedicated enthusiasts.
Sure, I'll be able to get Britney Spears from this site--but am I really going to be able to get Arthur Askey? Or cylinder recordings by Billy Murray? Or sound effects? The Weavers' recording of "Tzena, tzena, tzena?" Bernard Cribbins singing "'Ole in the Ground?"
What, you say--you've never heard about them and don't care about them? Of course not. But on the old Napster there were people who did, and shared them with me. And you have a bunch of stuff of your own that you care about, that _I"ve_ never heard of. Maybe even stuff that isn't available on CD.
This new "Napster" is a one way road. It's going to be all about what the record companies push, and nothing about what the music buying public wants.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Roxio's "Napster" isn't the real thing. It won't have any peer-to-peer. It'll be just another resale of MusicNet and/or Pressplay. "Napster" will have downloads for computer-only play that expire when the subscription is no longer paid up. There will be premium-priced "burns" for a price that makes CDs look cheap, but competitive for "singles" (e.g., around a buck a track). Roxio's value is to integrate it better into Roxio's software.
Napster Fanning himself? He's just a figurehead. George Foreman does more appliance design than Fanning will do with the actual running of this service.
Of course it'll flop, but that's what the record industry wants.
...I think I'll stick with Kazaa/IRC/Gnutella/etc. And admit it, most of you will as well
Defender of Microsoft and Communism!!!
Funny thing this article. When the whole napster fiasco started, I thought that the record companies should work WITH napster instead of suing them into oblivion. I for one would use a for pay service, if said service were reasonable and fair. Here we are, several years into this peer to peer file sharing, and they are starting to see it as another business model. Somehow, I don't see the RIAA doing what's in the best interest of the artists. I do however, see them doing what's going to fill their pockets the fastest. I remember the days when Metallica was a fledgling band and would have LOVED something like Napster to get their sound out to their fans. Seems to me like this is a great way to build your fan base. More so than radio.
Money not found! A)bort, R)etry, D)eclare Bankruptcy
Roxio managed to buy most of Roxio's assets, but it did not assume any of the company's pending liabilities.
That's pretty nice I wish I could buy up all of my own assets and hot have to pay for any of my liabilities.
I'm assuming that "Napster Insite" is going to be the name of the new product risen out of the ashes of Napster, and not some hideous bastard spelling of "insight".
I believe that CmdrTaco got the scoop before anyone else in the whole world., and this is one of those "from the future" stories that he was bragging about a few days ago. Maybe I should rethink that subscription after all?
Slashdot is jumping the shark. I'm just driving the boat.
...because most people won't pay for what they can get for free otherwise. While the system may make some money, it won't even put a dent in copyright infringement. There will always be another free file sharing system. I've asked a number of my friends - most of who are not techie type people - if they would be doing it if they had to pay for their downloads. They all said no.
We can all scream bloody murder about how there are no pay systems, CD prices are too high, artists today blow, intellectual property rights are wrong, filesharing actually increases CD sales, capitalism is evil, whatever your favorite argument is...the fact is you can't beat free and as long as the people can get it for free, the majority of people will not use a pay service.
That's reality. Maybe not the reality in your head or on Slashdot, but the reality of the world.
Frankly, I think if anyone has a shot at making the pay-for thing work it's Apple. The only thing that will make music downloading worth paying for is ease of use. That is, finding what you want easily, with guaranteed quality, easy to burn a CD, etc. And I mean one-button simple. The best man for a job like that is the Big Steve.
The one thing I worry about is the idea that, according to rumor, they'll be charging ~ $0.99 per track. I think that's a bit steep unless they have some slick way of giving you album art and liner notes or other bonus materials.
I wish Apple and Roxio the best of luck. I really want to believe in pay-for-download music. I really want to believe that if you do this right, someone will pay for it.
You like your Macintosh better than me, don't you Dave? Dave? Can you hear me Dave?
I'm from Canada and I already pay money for my hard drives, my CDs and all my other storage space that goes to the RIAA. I personally don't feel that I need to pay any more so that I can use this media for the same intent (downloading/copying) as I've already paid for.
If they're gonna tax me for piracy, then it's my goddamned right to pirate.
I'm going to use p2p services and download all that I want, and it'll be perfectly legal, seeing as how I've already paid the RIAA, so why shouldn't I have a right to it?
Karma: Non-Heinous
"She added that the company was in discussions with the five largest record labels -- Vivendi Universal's Universal Music Group; Sony Music; AOL Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Music Group; Bertelsmann AG; and EMI Group Plc -- to license their music."
.mp3 collection is "recovered", songs I owned at one point but the medium became damaged or obsolete. If these songs are "intellectual property", then I legally own at least half of them. Why should I be charged twice?
.mp3 player...
What I originally liked about Napster was the fact I wasn't constrained to downloading from the traditional schlock the radio and MTV push on us. I'd say 80% of the music I've been introduced to in the last few years is thanks to Napster and Kazaa lite. I'd of never heard bands like Thursday, Death Cab for Cutie, or Rival Schools without digital music, now they're some of my favorite artists, all of whom I've attended their concerts. Now digital music is all I listen to, and I've been freed from listening to corperate schlock. I couldn't tell you who's on the Top 20 right now, nor have I watched MTV or listened to the radio for about 3 years (seriously).
It's the same problem in a different medium: push pre-processed garbage music down peoples throats. HELLO! That's why people aren't buying music in the first place! Why pay 17$ for a CD which you might listen to two songs on? Most of the time I get bored of that song after a month or two anyway.
The biggest thrill of Napster, though, was being able to get all those old songs you used to have, but your CDs were stolen/scratched/lost or you don't own a tape/record player. About half my
I wonder if their new ploy will work with my portible
"In a Democracy, people get the kind of government they deserve." -Winston Churchill
I always fealt that the easiest way for the record industry to counter this is to simply make legitimate purchase easier that p2p.
Imagine being able to walk into Best Buy (using a kiosk for the broadband impaired) or a simple web page and accomplish the following.
1) Design/burn your own music CD selected from the complete vast archives of the music biz.
2) Each song being 128k quality or better or varying based on cost
3) Each song costing anywhere between 49-99 cents each
4) Each song delivered in choice of format (.mp3 or wav etc...)
5) Provide some kind of e-receipt which you could use to re-download/burn music that you lost or damaged (eliminate need for "backup")
Then all they would need to do is promote the crap out of the service using all the money they saved from not suing the crap out of everyone.
---- "Logoff! That cookie shit makes me nervous!" - A. Soprano
one moment it's something about a napster 'insite', the next it's "new legit napster service coming"... very strange
If a music company wants me to pay for music (and I buy a lot of music), then I'm not going to pay $1-1.50 for a music track that comes in a compressed, horrible quality mp3 format when I can go buy it on a CD in a store that sounds far, far better, I can rip and manage myself, and if I have a hard drive crash, won't have to buy it again. In the end, mp3's sound awful (even at 320 bitrates, and ogg sounds awful as well) compared to CD's/SACD/DVD-A and I'm not going to pay for something that sounds worse.
once you know what to look for, you can usually tell most of the bogus tracks. They cant even do that right.
New Legit, New Legit to quit
New Legit, New Legit to quit
I have no idea why I thought of that, but that stupid MC Hammer song came into my head as soon as I read the article title.
Napster is like the evil monkey paw from that Simpsons episode. Any company that buys them or messes with them is DOOMED. Even as a brand, it's worth about as much as a truckload of old iXL stock certificates these days. At least you can burn those and it will generate some heat.
Way to proof-read there, guys, being professionals and all.
Well, it's sure got name recognition...
The problem is that corporate side of the music world recognizes it as the red-headed stepchild of the music industry, and name recognition won't mean much for the users from yester-year once they realize they can't get unlimited free music like they used to.
I still want to know why people are going on and on about music piracy, while video piracy goes largely unnoticed...
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Janis Ian once pointed out that if the record companies had partnered with Napster and collected a nickel for every song downloaded (a reasonable price point) they would have realized revenue of $500,000 a day.
But, such an arrangement will never be agreed to by the record industry for one simple reason. Greed. The mindset of the record companies is "why should we sell songs for a nickel when we can sell CDs for $18"
Unless they have some awesome incentive to join, I really don't see a massive move to the new Napster. What that incentive could be, well:
Maybe higher bit rates?
Some video?
Maybe some high quality bootlegs from concerts (assuming the person has material worthy of boot legs)
Deep discounts on concert tix/T Shirts/trinklets for my desk. etc
Profit????
But for them to get my money, I need something like that one M$ commercial, where everyone likes what is going on and simply replies "Sweet"
What, me Tweet?
I've been smuggling CDRs to my Canadian friends. Many people bring a bottle of wine or something when they come to visit. I bring a spindle. It's always much appreciated.
The availability key, I believe would be in having the ability to offer the service through (for example) my ISP.
Doing so, allows the music service to influence the user agreement between the ISP and the user, also the ISP loses money if an alternative method is being used (incentive to find solutions in trading copyrighted material).
The model could be offered at no cost to the ISP and based on subscription the ISP gets a cut (does mafiaish gesture).
1) Buy Napster's Assets ...
:(
2)
3) Make Profit!
I have my reasons for posting AC today
People are cheap in general. They wont spend money on something if they know they can get it for free, even if it's illegal and safe. It's all opportunistic, I'm sure most people would go steal cars from an Aston Martin dealer if there was a 0.0001% change that the law would get involved. I say the best way to make this new Napster work is to attack sources where people can get free music. By this I'm referring to IRC and Kazaa, which I hear is having it's own legal problems. On top of that, it's hard to get rid of LAN sharing, at say a university residence, where there are 700 students all connected and accessible, and you can get basically any song you want. Even if getting music off the net is difficiult, people are bound to rip their songs off their CD's and share them on the network. I really don't think music ripping and warez will go away until there is some sort of water tight security system on the net, but then doing that would probably violate the whole concept of the internet. I just wonder how bad warez and music ripping will be 20 years from now.
*grumble, gripe* I posted this last week, but apparently it wasn't interesting enough last week.
"Jesus saves, but everyone else in a 10 foot radius takes full damage from the fireball."
He deserves +3 Insiteful
I think the last Napster was legit!
So Nyahh!
I think the RIAA may be on to something. Under the new, "legitimate" P2P services, in return for a monthly fee you get the right to download X number of songs a month. Stop paying the monthly fee and all the songs you have downloaded stop working.
THIS IS THE PERFECT SOLUTION TO THE HIGHER EDUCATION FUNDING CRISIS! Colleges and universities should follow the RIAA's lead and start charging a monthly fee in perpetuity. Stop paying your monthly "education utility bill" and the bursar's office shows up, rips up your degree, and gives you a lobotomy.
"Roxio, the company that took Easy CD Creator and turned it into an unstable piece of garbage is going to do something with Napster? Good luck."
You obviously meant "going to do something to Napster."
Ok. My Mom is the type of person who would never steal anything from anyone. Totally good soul.
Good for her.
But even she sees no problem with getting CDs copied or songs downloaded form the Internet, in fact she gets me to do it all the time.
Well, there goes that "never steal from anyone" thing. Of course, she's co-opted you into doing her stealing for her. Sounds a lot like "contributing to the delinquency of a minor", but then again you probably introduced her to the who MP3-share concept.
Why? Because for decades the radio stations have convinced the general populace that music is free (after all, if you can listen to it wherever you want for no charge, isn't that free?)
Radio stations have convinced folks that music is free? My God, what a revelation! And I suppose all those Blockbuster Music stores, and Media Play, and Tower Records, and all those other music stores don't mind that folks shoplift, either? After all, music is free...the radio said so!
Most people do not mind listning to a few ads on the radio, in fact, many people enjoy advertisements. So with this general mindset that music doens't really cost anything, why would they be expected to pay for it?
Because the music isn't brought to you for free, dammit. Radio stations pay hefty licensing fees to the song artists in order to play the songs. In turn, the station intersperses ads in the music, the sale of which pays for the songs and the radio station staff. By listening, you are voluntarily donating your ears to the listening of commercials in return for hearing music from time to time. You are being paid for your time, the station is being paid for its time, and the song artist is paid for their time. That is what fair is. You, however, advocate something that is totally different, and fundamentally unfair.
Ever since the 8 track tape was invented people have copying music.
Ever since humans have walked the earth they've been murdering and raping one another from time to time. It doesn't make it right.
These people don't get (or care) that it is digital and therefore it is an exact copy, they just by default expect to be allowed to do it.
And ignorance is the primary instigator of this. People who wouldn't even consider shoplifting a CD from a music store have no compunction whatsoever about pirating music online. After all, its so easy, so anonymous...seductive indeed. It's also wrong. Stealing by any other name is just the same.
Look, I despise the RIAA and MPAA to the core of my being. I think they're dinosaurs, breeds that have become extinct but are too stubborn to realize it yet. They are propping up an ancient business model with legalism, which is one of the most reprehensible ways to keep a business going. It totally contravenes the idea of capitalism and a free market, both of which I am a great fan of. But I've had it up to here with all the damned hypocrisy and lying justifications that everyone spouts to "defend" music piracy.
If you wish to steal music, then just steal it and admit that it's stealing. You are enjoying the benefits of someone else's labors (the songwriter, the performer, the recording engineer, the marketing company, and even the guy who sweeps the floor at RIAA headquarters) without paying for it. That is stealing, and it is NOT a gray area.
If I employed you as a programmer, then took the code and refused to pay you, that's stealing. But, hey, that's okay, isn't it? After all, it's just bits and bytes, just ones and zeroes. I haven't depleted the world of anything by taking the code you wrote and using it. I can make an infinite number of copies of the code and I haven't deprived you of any bits or bytes at all, have I? I'm such an innocent soul, all I've done is steal your time and refused to pay you for it. But that's okay, because you're the oppressed little guy, and the record companies are the big, mean, evil guys.
Get off the high horse, people. If you have music you didn't pay for, you stole it. Be grown up enough to admit it and move on, but don't try to weasel through some sanctimonious justification process that makes it seem like you're doing the Right Thing(tm). You're not. If you want to make a statement, just boycott the fucking music and do without.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
They're called wippit (Flash required). They charge 30GBP pa (AFAIK the service is available outside the UK) for unlimited P2P mp3 downloads of music that they have licenced for this method of distribution, and they tell us that the selection (controlled by the client - ie you can only share music registered for that purpose) is growing all the time. When ADSL is available on my local exchange (come on, BT!) I will consider using the service. The only (minor) beef I have with the model is that you are using P2P bandwidth - wippit's bandwidth costs will be minimal - but the capacity to legally d/l over 2000 .WAVs per month (over DSL (for those bastards that can get it )) seems like a good idea to me.
After all, If you download lots of stuff then you have to store it somewhere. They'd prefer it on an adaptec attached HD!! If people are hindered from downloading stuff their business suffers!
In the beta it was... they had central servers you could connect to, and you had the option of not sharing files, but by default you were providing bandwidth for everyone else. Where it's a pay service, and the list of allowed files is centralized anyway, I really don't see the point in that. The only benefit I can think of is that as Napster's user base grows, so will its capacity for users. But maybe Roxio's changed that.
I produce electronic music and write little games. Have a look.
I think you missed the point of the original post - he was not saying it was right. What he was saying is that a lot of normal, very honest people, like his mom (and mine as well) just do not see it as stealing, and in fact would take active convincing to think of it as stealing!
Take my own mom. Totally honest, doesn't even break the speed limit knowingly (much to my dismay). Yet she makes mix CD's and hands them out to friends, or gives them away as presents... sure it's wrong. But frankly the fact that the most honest person on earth thinks nothing of doing this speaks to the point that the record companies do not understand the consumer mindset at all, or what an uphill battle they face trying to control behavior that the majority of the populace already view as legal.
I'm not sure I agree with the original conclusion that radio is what led to this thinking. I think it really is that since my mom has a CD, and when the copying is done, she still has a CD, is the thing - the complete lack of any physical aspect to the music is what I think makes her really not think about it being (technically) wrong to give a copy of some music to a friend. After all, she also bought the blank CD...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
What I am considering for my album: ;)
1. Distribute freely as 160bps (-r3mix) MP3s over P2P, Web etc.
2. Place "Please tip artists at URL" text in the ID3 tag and set up a tip-jar (ala tipster) on my site; Ask (politely, no DRM) for $2.0 for those enjoying my entire album, 25c per song otherwise - 'Honor-system-wise'.
3. Offer a 'no-middleman' directly-sold CD for $4 - $5. Cost is roughly $1.
4. Profit?...
I figure that those who enjoy my music *and* can afford it, will pay / buy the album, like they would in a store. Those who don't/can't -- would not have bought the album anyway. Basically this is Shareware Music...
And this way I get more per-album than through a label *and* I support freedom as I see it. Labels are just over-rated advertising and public-relations agencies... <plug>So why don't you preview an MP3 of my latest track before vocals and before mastering...</plug>
Right now, the only real way of obtaining music online is downloading. All other means of obtaining music online currently are either too limited for general tastes or way too cumbersome/expensive to use.
If you ever saw a system come up where people could sample low quality (or perhaps partial) unlocked mp3's, then pay somewhere between $.01 and $.99 per song, then you would finally be able to figure out if people are willing to pay for music online.
Personally, I think the answer is that people are willing to pay for music. It's just that right now there's no way to do so apart from buying CD's, which is too course-grained a mechanism for the times and is limiting sales (note that I did not say sales were declining, I'm saying the current CD model of buying music is dropping a lot of potential sales that are never seen!).
Why the industry as a whole is satisfied with about a tenth the profits they could have by putting together a real music service, I'll never understand. Imagine the rush if people could download classic Stones songs or the like for $.05 each. They'd be able to plate gold plated stuff with platinum just to make it shinier, and the re-plate that in gold when they wanted a change of color.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I don't exactly applaud the actions of record execs, but running a record label is an EXPENSIVE business. Virtually no artist can afford to record a professionally polished album without a record deal, period. Secondly, labels promote the hell out of artists, giving them exposure they couldn't get themselves. Think getting rid of the labels would solve this problem? Wrong.
Instead of labels demanding royalties, you'd have studio owners and freelance producers demanding huge portions of the sales proceeds from the acts that can't afford to pay them cash for making an album. You'd have marketers demanding a huge percentage of sales for getting the bands exposure, and distributors getting a large cut as well. Unless a band had lots of their own money to invest in their success, they'd be right where they are now.
I'm not sure what giving money directly to the artists would do. They'd still have to pay everyone who took a risk on their success.
500,000 a day is nothing -- 180 million a year. Each of these companies has billions in revenue. How the hell are they even going to pay for artists to record songs with revenues that miniscule? 180 million isn't a lot for a big corporation, let alone split among a dozen.
This is not meant as a bait, but what about Open Source Software? That's free and people are still paying buttloads for propietary OSes.
The translation I'm thinking is that if the pay download services were easier to use than current P2P technologies (e.g. easy searches with high success rates; complete, relatively high-quality files), people might choose to pay for their digital music than search high-and-low for mp3s with tweak in their mojo.
Maybe?
blog
Its marked on the back of the jewl case and sometimes on the actual disc.
"Unauthorized duplication is a vilation of applicable laws."
Bush Fails at Telemarketing Diplomacy
By Steven Niederlande
WASHINGTON (DIK) - Despite little hope that the measure will succeed, Bush added to his already hefty long-distance bill for March in a thinly disguised telemarketing effort to gain support for the UN resolution that would support the US invasion of Iraq.
With France dead set against the UN resolution, Russia joining the nay ranks, and hardly a media mention of the Chinese always being against it, pResident Bush and his top aides engaged in last-minute telephone harrassment of world leaders on Monday knowing full well they hadn't a chance in hell of getting UN support for their upcoming invasion of Iraq.
The White House suggested Bush could agree to modifications to the resolution in order to make it more palatable to undecided nations. "As long as we get a UN rubber stamp on this hositle takeover of Iraq, we don't care what else the bitch says," said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, lapsing into vernacular.
Bush's annoyance grew as he played telephone-tag with various leaders who were obviously avoiding his calls. Bush claimed, "Get the CIA to call AT&T and make sure the international Caller ID system isn't working! All these bastard darkie countries don't deserve to have modern technology like that".
Meanwhile, senior U.S. officials claimed Iraq has placed explosives at the Kirkuk oil fields in northern Iraq to prevent them from being taken over in the event of a U.S.-led invasion.
"There are indications that has taken place," said one official. "Although we still can't provide any convincing evidence to help the weapon inspectors, we can certainly begin a new round of groundless assertions, especially when we need to create fear and doubt before voting on the UN resolution begins!"
Bush made little headway, at least publicly, in a phone call to Chinese President Jiang Zemin (news - web sites), who holds a veto in the Security Council and wants U.N. inspectors to have more time. Jiang urged Bush to resolve the Iraqi crisis peacefully and to let inspections continue, China's official Xinhua news agency said.
After the unsuccessful talk, Bush slammed the phone down, and yelled "Fucking Chang SEE-MEN! Damn yellow-bellies. We'll soon bomb you chop-suey eaters into the fucking STONE AGE!"
Secretary of State Colin Powell telephoned Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos, Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf and Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Ernesto Derbez -- three key swing votes on the council, and promised favorable economic grants and benefits if they would vote in favor of the measure. The strategy is secretly referred to in the White House as "Operation Blowjob".
Pakistani sources said later that Pakistan planned to abstain. Mexico said it was still undecided. Powell even paid for lunch with the foreign minister of Guinea, Francois Ousseynou Fall, to try to secure that country's undecided vote.
After emerging from their "lunch", neither Powell nor Fall gave any indication of whether Powell and "Operation Blowjob" had brought Guinea off the fence. Fall's only response was a breathess "Gosh, do they teach that in the US Army?"
Privately, U.S. officials acknowledged the resolution could go down in defeat. "Christ. But do you really think we care?" exclaimed an anonymous White House official. "The wheels of War are in motion, baby! There's no stopping us now. We'd like the sissies of the world to fall in line behind us, but we don't really need them. Iraq is ours, and screw what anybody thinks!"
The White House expressed annoyance that chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix failed to mention in his remarks to the Security Council on Friday that inspectors had found an Iraqi unmanned aircraft, whose existence was disclosed in a declassified 173-page document circulated by inspectors.
Hans Blix has told reporters that the unmanned aircraft was "Nothing more than a balsa wood model" with a top range of less than a mile when loaded with a few M-80's. "To say it is a weapon carrying drone is just pure bull-shit, because the thing was just a child's toy," he was quoted as saying.
The price won't be 'fair' until the record companies work out a way to avoid every major record retailer closing down the day they price downloadable tracks at 10c a track (or anything less than about $1 a track)
As far as I can see that will be the major problem in the record companies transition to an online system.
That whole sector of the distribution chain will disappear and whatever your opinion of the worth of the sector it will be a major issue that is not addressed by simplistic complaints about profit and control hungry record companies.
Here are some ideas:
Movies and TV episodes
As well as all the stuff mentioned above (easy to use, good quality, wide diverse collection, album art, etc.) I think a good service should also offer movies and TV episodes for download, and maybe even software. I know this would make licensing even more complicated, but a complete service like this would certainly be added value!
Must be P2P
And it would have to be a true P2P service, with users downloading from each other, but with some check that the material is licenced for distribution on the service. This check would also help to maintain integrity and quality. The check wouldn't need to be on a central server either, lists of allowed files could be distributed.
A Community
Recommendations based on what other people with similar tastes to you have downloaded would also add value. People like the whole community thing!
Bandwidth-based Pricing?
An interesting idea would be a bandwidth-based pricing model, maybe with discounts for people who share more (like Kazaa's user ratings). But it would have to be simple enough for people to understand - maybe with just 3 or 4 levels of MBs/month - and people always knowing how much they have left that month.
Quality
I think the biggest problems with current free P2P networks is finding exactly what you want, and always getting guaranteed quality. Reliability would hopefully be solved by a paid for system.
There are so many ways value could be added to such a service. I think if a paid-for service addressed many of the points raised in this discussion, and provided a complete P2P file-sharing experience, then people would use it. I know I would!
As soon as you remove the necessity to make backup copies, it will become illegal. The fact that they might be necessary is the only reason that we're still allowed to do it. Once the congresscritters realize that no significant part of their constituency cares about backing-up anymore, do you really think they'll keep resisting those record execs with big bags of money?
If your theory is different from practice, then your theory is wrong.
Maybe if they stopped filming multimillion dollar videos in big expensive rooms with big expensive cars with big expensive entourages with big expensive jewelry they wouldn't have these problems. The industry has been made expensive because it was allowed to be made expensive. If the RIAA wants to blame somebody, they should start with the people offering the insane contracts to their artists.
Do you know what it would be, if you sent a cheque to an artist for use of their downloaded MP3 album? EVIDENCE
Don't believe me? Try it. We'll send you a nice cake with a hacksaw inside in jail.
Who is the fool? The fool, or the guy that blows him away with a shotgun?
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
You know the old adage... treat me like a criminal and I will become one.
All your monkey crap are belong to us!
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
The term "Blue Stone" is derived from the term "bull shit" as in:
to prevaricate; to lie out the wazzoo; to manufacture false dictionary entries in order to support farcical positions. [Cf Amer. Eng., bull hash, bull-pucky, melarkey, crapola, et.]
And this is in US$$$? If it is more than half that they can go piss up a rope. The same price as CDs only half the sounds quality. I would pay $0.50. The cost of diribution has just gone down nearly 100% by having us download them off their site.
Ever get the sneaky suspicion that these boneheads are trying to screw us even more royally? Man I hate these guys. They really have no good marketing strategy for these services either. There is a really good internet radion station here in Canada called Moontaxi (listen to it at work since it uses *ugh* Media Player but it is pretty unobtrusive with subtle ads only). Lots of channels and they play great music. Lets just say for instance they started providing this service and I could download their songs (and every other damn song I want) for 4 bits. I would be all over that if that file was mine to do with as I choose. Burn it, mp3 player or what have you.
See the good thing is I can hear a lot of tunes while I browse and maybe I'll hear something really good that I want to buy. They should intersperse free tunes from upcoming artists and make us feel like we are getting what we pay for (for a change ARE YOU LISTENING YOU BASTARDS?).
I like the idea of sending the artists money when you download their tunes until these idiots quit trying to fuck us
Sorry...lost my cool there for a minute.
"Laugh, and the whole world laughs with you. Cry, and they still think its funny." - Mr. Boffo
Will offer mp3 in high quality. Propriatory players do not cut it
Didn't you just contradict yourself? If you want a non-proprietary lossy audio format with hardware support, Ogg's pretty much the way to go.
Charging $2 or even $1 per song is NOT CHEAP. Cheap is 25c to maybe 50c depending on the song.
I don't think a US$0.25 per song price point would be realistic. It costs US$0.08 per downloaded song just to pay the songwriter, and not only will that increase in step with the Consumer Price Index, but it can be even higher outside the U.S.
I find $1 per song REALLY CHEAP. An album costs $14 new at Best Buy or $7 used at a local pawn shop. If it has three good songs and nine senseless filler, it can be cheaper to buy the good songs at $1 per than to spend $7 on an album, even after figuring in music downloading's share of the marginal cost of high-speed Internet access vs. dial-up Internet access.
Will I retire or break 10K?
What is Napster? Someone clue me in. Thanks
Why on earth would you ever pay $20+ for a set of lower-than-cd-quality songs without the physical CD or packaging?
Because I don't have to buy the songs I don't want. Many recent albums have about two or three singles and 8+ filler tracks.
no more distribution/pressing/packaging costs.
What about the cost of maintaining the system's back end, front end, and Internet connection?
The artist should take over their own promotion and distribution of their music via their website - or a 3rd party hosting service.
So in that case, without the backing of a major music publisher and a major record label, how is an artist supposed to verify that the song he wrote doesn't infringe the copyright of a song he happened to have heard on the radio? (Take Bright Tunes v. Harrisongs for precedent.)
The old-style music distributors are obsolete
The labels still have one purpose in the modern music industry: to separate the Universal Records wheat from the MP3.com chaff. They sign only acts that are good enough to have a reasonable chance of commercial success.
Will I retire or break 10K?
That you pay for your connection is entirely irrelevant. That is a sunk cost
In the United States, an Internet connection with acceptable web-surfing and e-mail speed costs $10 to $20 per month depending on provider. An Internet connection with acceptable music-downloading speed costs $30 per month more than that. This price difference between dial-up and broadband is your "additional charges for downloading".
Will I retire or break 10K?
RIAA/MPAA: 1: Buy kazaa, charge nothing to users and collect fees for ads. 2: Make money off of everyone else's bandwidth with minimal outlay. 3: Stop whining.
$0.99 per track. I think that's a bit steep unless they have some slick way of giving you album art and liner notes or other bonus materials.
To me, the fact that the good songs on an album are no longer "tied" (by antitrust definition) to the filler more than makes up for that. This service is for people who want singles; this one is for people who want albums.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I might agree that copying music is not necessarily wrong - however, it is currently illegal... I think that's the word I should have used. I'm just saying that I find it amazing that my mom who does nothing illegal (and that includes speeding, which just about everyone fudges on) would copy music without thought.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You're paying the artist for their time and talent, which has a value.
If I'm paying the author of the work, then why does the copyright last for several decades after the author has died?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Look. Since the demise of Napster, I have not shared my MP3 collection with anyone. Also, I have not purchased a CD produced by an artist whose music I have not heard before.
If it wasn't for Napster/file sharing, there would be no Metallica in my car's CD changer. If it wasn't for Napster, I never would have found Rachelle Garniez.
The music industry is the horse and it's kicking itself to death.
In the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king.
Insane contracts? The only thing insane is how shittily the artists are treated.
It's not the million-dollar videos that they wouldn't be able to afford. It's the studio and producer fees necessary to make the music that they couldn't pay if they got 5 cents per download. You clearly have no idea how expensive it is to run a big company. Don't assume the rest of the world will accept what you like.
It seems to me that there will never be a way to stop music piracy. Files can be obfuscated or encrypted in any number of ways that would make identifying the content as pirated impossible. And if a method for protecting copyrighted material is devised, I am fully confident that our devoted and dangerously intelligent computer literate community would find a way to defeat it. After all, 20 software engineers is no match for an angry determined horde of slashdot readers. Indeed, the music industry is entering a new era. Nothing short of broad and sweeping changes to the way music is sold and protected could ever fix this problem (not that I want it to be fixed :P ).
Why don't they just do some packet mangling or something and add short commercials to the beginning of the songs? It would even work with decentralized networks if it was written into the client software.
No, let's make that FAR TOO LITTLE , FAR TOO LATE.
The P2P culture is now firmly established.
And nothing beats *free*. You can no more turn the clock back on this than you can on the Pill.
Both have changed and will change society in fundamental ways we are yet to come to terms with.
At least so it said in the spam they sent me latly....
girl
Dead on arrival. Next please.
I agree. I think I bought the most CD's when I used Napster. When they shut down Napster, I don't think I bought any more CD's that were produced in the US anymore. I just started buying European music. Oh well, their loss. I also tend to listen to European Internet radio stations, since they put that new US law into place practically banning US stations from having Internet radio programs, because they're so expensive to run now... When companies make their products too expensive, people will just look elsewhere for cheaper products of about the same quality. Corporations don't have to rule our lives.
WikiCreole - a common wiki markup language
> I no longer reply to chickenshit ACs and suggest you do the same.
I am offended.
Sir/Madam, I challenge you to a pistol duel, tomorrow, at 1:00 AM, in the place of our mutual agreement.
Because the artist, inventor, or whatever has an estate, heirs, a family to support
That's why there's something called life insurance. Why does Congress seem to feel that the Copyright Office needs to compete with New York Life? And even under an assumption of copyright as life insurance, isn't ten years enough for the heirs to find wage jobs?
Ad companies
Red herring? I understand your point about use of a dead celebrity to endorse a product during the first couple dozen or so years of his afterlife, but that applies only to works containing performances by the celebrity (i.e. only sound recordings, film, and TV) and has nothing to do with copyrights on other works (such as novels, plays, and sheet music) being treated as a life insurance policy. Why does there need to be a "life plus" term at all for those works?
For corporations
Partnerships and corporations are both businesses. That's why USA copyright law speaks of "works made for hire" rather than works of corporate authorship.
What if the head researcher made a massive discovery and died the next day?
That's why patents are limited to 20 years with no "life plus" provision.
That being said, I think the current terms are, indeed, far too long.
So do you think a copyright should last 20 years like a patent? And have you expressed these views to your representatives in the legislature (Parliament, Congress, Diet, whatever they call it in your country)?
Will I retire or break 10K?
"and a fair renumeration to the artists involved. "- millions-of-teenage-girls-parents-and-get-rich. I'm sick of this kind of thinking, and these kind of artists. sure, once in awhile one of these corporate rock stars ends up being a real talent, but the fact is that the *AA has vested interests in keeping the good music to themselves, and giving us the music 'that sells. the whole concept of having money in any way related to music is corrupt, and napster/gnutella helped to begin to rid the world of its influence by creating a society of people who can trade music for free. oh wait! now we can have a world where you don't have to pay for music any more, and that as an artist you can have exposure to BILLIONS of potential fans. i don't know or care about you but if i had a billion people in the world who had heard and had their life improved by hearing one of my songs, i would die a happy man...even if i hadn't made a single cent.
as an artist i'm frankly offended. why should anyone pay an artist for anything? the entire point of being an artist is to create art!! to make the world a better more beautiful place!! the entire point of an artist is _not_ to make money. if you want to make money, go take up prostitution because what we do not need in this world is yet another -i-wanna-be-a-rock-and-roll-star-so-i-can-rip-off
take for example, DJ Schnits-'i am not canadian.mp3'...taken as a satyr of some sorts of the Molson Canadian 'I AM Canadian' rant---i found people in places from Singapore to the UK who had all heard and were amused by his mp3. and i don't think he ever made any money off of that...THIS is what artists should be striving for, if anything. not money.
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
Your analogy is off. It would work if, for example, he owned an album called "Masters of Noize 1970" and was downloading songs from a new album called "Masters of Noize 2003." He made it quite clear he was downloading songs from old albums he already owned.
Your analogy would be more accurate if it went something like this: "I alread paid for my 1970 Civic, it's obsolete now, because Honda keeps suing anyone who makes replacement parts, changes the oil, or tries to repaint the body. Why should they be allowed to sue people out of business for fixing my car?"
Everyone knows that dragons don't exist. But while this simplistic ...
formulation may satisfy the layman, it does not suffice for the scientific
mind. The School of Higher Neantical Nillity is in fact wholly unconcerned
with what ____does exist. Indeed, the banality of existence has been
so amply demonstrated, there is no need for us to discuss it any further
here. The brilliant Cerebron, attacking the problem analytically,
discovered three distinct kinds of dragon: the mythical, the chimerical,
and the purely hypothetical. They were all, one might say, nonexistent,
but each nonexisted in an entirely different way
-- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
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