The Rise and Fall of Napster

Jedi Paramedic writes "Boston.com has an interesting story about the rise and fall of everyone's favorite file-swapping service. Also the subject of a new book by Joseph Menn, the story goes into great detail about the unfortunate-but-heroic Shawn Fanning and his reluctance to admit that his uncle, who in the end masterminded little more than the lining of his own pockets, had taken advantage of him. From getting screwed in the original 70/30 split with his uncle to his uncle's refusal to loosen his iron grip on the company even at the expense of its very being, the article (and the book) go a long way in chronicling the rise and fall of Napster, and crediting Shawn for not airing the family's dirty laundry. An interesting and well-written read."

Comments

Of course he credits Shawn...

[telstar]

"crediting Shawn for not airing the family's dirty laundry"

• yeah .. 'cause if he had, there'd be no reason for anyone to buy Joseph's book.

Excuse my ignorance...

[dotgod]

Can anyone explane how Napster made money? AFAIR there were no ads on the site or in the client (save the cdnow link that was in later versions of napster). It obviously made some kind of money, however, because I remember hearing about how Shawn Fanning made a lot of money.

Re:Excuse my ignorance...

[Anonymous Coward]

You are excused.

What if the music industry had purchased napster and released their full catalogs for free but ripped at a low bit rate say 96kb and then offer a pay version for the same data but ripped at a 320kb rate. No one could have competed because they would of had the depth of inventory. Lost opportunities. They went the other way and crushed Napster and they totally lost it by not having something to pick up the slack. Where did they think that the Napster users were going to turn when an option (Kazaa, Bearshare, et al) arrived. Lost opportunities.

When you get the book...

[lseltzer]

...please scan it in, OCR it and "share" the contents with others on the net, because I don't think people should have to pay for it.

Napster as the internet martyr

[l0ungeb0y]

Seems though the RIAA succeeded in crushing it in doing so it has created a cultural icon that shall be remembered for years, even decades to come.

Now, if we could just form a religion based upon the cat-like diety, perhaps we could defeat the DMCA as a form of freedom of Religion :)

Re:Who is everyone?

[black mariah]

Amen. I would be WAY more than willing to shell out $20 a month to have AG running the way it used to. The fact that it was "set and forget" was the best thing going for it. I never liked Napster either, but AG did it right. Too bad the record companies are too stupid to see a VIABLE SOURCE OF INCOME when they see one. Dipshits.

Re:Shawn Fanning was heroic?

[prisoner-of-enigma]

Here's a hint, if I shoplift a CD, the store doesn't have it anymore, if I use Napster, no one is deprived of anything.

And that's where you're wrong. You are enjoying the fruits of someone else's labors, namely that of the artist, the producer, the sound mixer, the recording booth operator, the marketing company, and all the secretaries, managers, and janitors that work for the above companies. They all work for a living, and they get paid when people buy the music that you just stole.

That's right, you stole it. You now have something you didn't have before, and you didn't pay for it. Copyright law says you have to pay for it. Intellectual property law says you have to pay for it. Common decency says you ought to pay for it. And if the long arm of the law catches you, you can be damn sure they're going to make you pay for it.

Look, you can hate the RIAA/MPAA all you want. I have no love for them at all. I think CD's are ridiculously overpriced, that the companies are gouging us while providing us with horrid content. I think the MPAA's control over the DVD format vis-a-vis region coding, CSS, and Macrovision is one of the most belligerent things a provider can do to a customer. However, none of that gives me the right to steal from them, and it sure as hell doesn't give you any moral credibility to be justifying your theft.

If you had any morals or principles at all, other than your own self satisfaction at someone else's expense, you'd be content to simply boycott the labels you don't agree with and trade music from bands that allow you to legally do so. Instead, you're just content to be a thief, attempting to moralize your actions because it allows you to steal and feel smug about it.

Face it, information is not free, nor will it ever be free unless the owner of that information chooses to make it so. Information is worth whatever the owner wishes to charge for it, and the rarer it is, the more they can charge. If you don't like it, I'm sure there's some nice socialist country somewhere that'd take you in. North Korea, for example.