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Justin Frankel On AOL, Subverting The Status Quo
linuxbaby writes "Rolling Stone has an excellent feature on Justin Frankel, the creator of Winamp, Gnutella, Shoutcast, Waste, and other projects. The article calls him 'the world's most dangerous geek', and after years of being muzzled by AOL for igniting the pirate nation, Frankel is breaking his silence." The article ends by asking: "In many ways, Frankel's future encapsulates the debate over the future of the Internet itself. Does it become just a distribution system for corporate product or more of a way to subvert that corporate control?"
my hat is off to this guy, especially for waste. that program rox..
xao
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Thank you.
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"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
simoniker is actually one of the best editors. if there is a mistake in an article summary, he corrects it quickly. he doesn't add his own editorial content to the article summary because, unlike pretty much every other editor, he actually posts in the comments section. he dirties himself up and actually associates with us commoners. the other editors sit on high and rule, simoniker runs games as a reasonable human being who respects other peoples opinions might.
Frankel just might be one of the more revolutionary people we have nowadays. He seems to give people not only the ability to be productive and listen to music with a decent player, but stick it to the various corporations that'd rather have us all doing the same things and eating the same food.
Here's to Frankel!
It looks like he'll be getting out of AOL soon and going back to what he does best. It's an exciting time, and I can't wait to see what he comes up with next.
What the hell is happening to Winamp? Used to be that you could get a version of their good old 2.x series from this site (the latest 2.x were lean, but still do video!)
The latest version I have is 2.91 with md5sum:
68f0f87b12306939e7e3c7549db5df5f winamp291_full.exe
Is there anything newer? Why can't I find these on their web site? There's version 5 now available. What is this... slackware?! (version jump)
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I still remember my first MP3 and the first time I used winamp. My jaw dropped to the ground. THIS IS GOING TO CHANGE EVERYTHING!!! I thought. This was back before Napster. Back when we had to get mp3s from ftp sites and we had to scroll long ass lists of directories to find the song we wanted. There were no p2p applications with fancy search engines. Anyone here remember Blex's page of good mp3?
When I heard aol bought nullsoft I was a little disappointed because I thought Frankel was a sellout and winamp would become bloated and lame. Frankel stayed cool as hell and winamp didn't become lame. Gnutella was the first decentralised file sharing/search network and it scared the shit out of corporations like aol. And he released it after he supposedly sold out. It was opensource. So Justin is still cool in my book. Who cares if he's rich? Shawn Fanning might be a moviestar now (Italian Job) but Frankel is the real revolutionary hacker.
I often got asked who my hero was, and I never had an answer.
This man is one of my heroes.
He is pushing what America once was about, shedding the bonds of control on people. The original constitution and Bill of Rights were about removing the bonds government put on people, giving people the freedoms they deserved.
However, the government stopped being the threat: corporations took that over.
Justin Frankel is a new patriot, fighting in the true spirit of America, and battling against the corporations who are trying to dominate humanity. It has happened in the past. Monarchies ruled men. They were broken. Corporations replaced them. Now, they need to be broken.
We need more people fighting for human empowerment.
Not exactly;
I'd say that RS enjoys pissing off the RIAA
http://www.boycott-riaa.com/article/5640
No, he gathered a bunch of cool people around him and made a kick ass product that no one else at the time could touch then sold out to corporate america for a very large sum of money. Then he went on to work on subverting corporate controll while being paid by same embodiment of corporate america. Justin was NEVER a corporate drone and when they tried to make him conform he quit.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
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From the article it seemed that this guy didn't really do a whole lot for AOL. Sure they got winamp out of the deal but the article implies that he sat around all day and wrote code just to piss them off. AOL didn't want the "run with the little guy" image but yet they must have extracted at least some work out of him. Either way I have to wonder if his PHB has any hair left at all.
I do not disagree, but I believe you are overly harsh.
Mega-Corps, yes they are such.
The government, likewise.
However, much of the media does genuinely try to give accurate reporting. Have you ever tried to give accurate reporting? It isn't easy.
Also, reporters must be wary. If they step on the wrong toes, they'll be tossed. Then, they can't get out any information. Thus, they are cautious about when they cross the line. Yes, many of them are bad. However, many of them are not.
The media is mostly controlled by the corporations. I feel that the corporations are the problem, not the media.
"Many scientists of the day believed that wireless waves travelled only in straight lines from the transmitter and hence range was restricted to line-of-sight. Marconi proved, however, that the curvature of the earth was not an obstacle for wireless telegraphy over great distances." ~ Marconi's Atlantic Leap
In St. John's, Newfoundland in 1901 Guglielmo Marconi's kite received the letter "s", as transmitted in Morse Code from Cornwall, England.
AT&T, Verizon and AOL received $0.00.
The End
Stuff that matters.
I gotta disagree with that idea. It's funny, but not especially accurate.
:= intelligence).
Most of the people I knew at AOL were pretty smart. There are a lot of extremely cool technologies behind the scenes that make the system as a whole work very well.
That being said, many of the upper level managers have risen from the ranks and "grew" into the position they occupy today. They're frequently much better at the technological end of things and not so good at people skills (e.g. feckless yuppie bastards who think that $$$
There is also quite a bit of trust that whatever is done, the end users will swallow gladly and keep paying WAY too much money for fluff and busy signals. They also pinned too many hopes on people sticking around once they got broadband.
I used to think that most AOL users were idiots. When it comes to technology, many are. Most people are those who don't want to know about computers.
Don't anthropomorphize computers, they don't like it.
Because the government is currently placing no restrictions on corporations. We attempt to fight the battle on both fronts: give power to ourselves and remove it from corporations.
While we already have some restrictions on the government (they've been slipping lately) we've got jack on the corps.
Hence, the reason to fight.
Also, there is no way for society to function without a government. If you can find a way, do tell. I do not see it, not in the world we live in. Corporations are a slightly different matter, so we can fight them all out (fighting governments must be reformation, fighting corporations can be eradication)
Frankel was one of the first to create something real from his ideas (Gnutella, Waste, WinAmp), but these were Windows programs. We should also be thanking or acknowledging the people that added to/reverse engineered those programs so people on all platforms could use them (mldonkey, XMMS, and etc.)
Frankel, Carmack, Jobs, Gates. What do they all have in common? They all bet big on PC technology, and changed everyone's life in ways we take for granted today. One additional attribute: They all made a lot of money.
Of course there are a number of other people who have made huge contributions: Berners-Lee and Torvalds for example, but neither made big dollars from their ideas.
In other words, people like Frankel not only innovated, but they were paid quite well for their efforts. Now that's impressive. It demonstrates that others were/are willing to pay for the things they created, which is a pretty good way to determine if you have created something of value.
Imagine how much harder physics would be if electrons had feelings! -Feynman, maybe
You ever take a look at the NSIS installer by Nullsoft? Some of the example code has like "I'm a sheep fucker" in it and other miscellaneous naughty language.
;) It's pretty funny considering that AOL is "family oriented" or whatever the hell they claim to be.
Not to mention his antics, like releasing WASTE and getting AOL's panties all twisted up (by the way.. what WAS the point of that tool??
Ah well... I hope he puts his mind to good use and develops a truly anonymous P2P protocol on AOL's dollar. That'd be a very nice thing...
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
I usually skip the author of articles (the way I skip ad banners at the tops of sites), but after seeing how much he interacted with Frankel during the interview (even picking up an electric guitar and jamming with him a bit!), I went back to the top and was surprised to see it was written by David Kushner, the same man who wrote Masters of Doom.
>>In the near future, he says, he's going to have
>>a sit-down with his boss and enthusiastically
>>return to a riskier way of life. This could
Where is he working now, has he actually left AOL? I see a lot of comments that he is gone, but last I heard he was still there and his words were:
I don't know when it will be, but I'm not going to last much longer.
From the article --
:)
When the company tried to insist that an AOL icon instantly appear on a user's desktop during a Winamp installation, Frankel hit the roof. "I'd be like, 'Look, our users don't want to use AOL!' " he says. " 'They think AOL sucks!'"
But if you notice the Winamp 5 install, this option DOES exist.
It does show an Add AOL icon to desktop, and what more, the option is checked by default too. Am not saying its right or wrong, Nullsoft can do jollywell what it pleases, but this is just an observation.
Now it would be cooler if Justin had come out with a version that has this greyed
is here: http://pron.blorp.com/sym/
(this is the same link in the paper version)
It's interesting to hear slashdot discuss these matters, but I'm a little taken aback by the choice of wording.
Referring back to the text of the original post: "subvert corporate control." I'd like to point out that there's a difference between subverting and circumventing.
First, "subvert" has a slightly
"Circumvent corporate control"... now that's got a nice ring to it. I suspect that's a better word for filesharing. The term acknowledges that there's a corporate domain, but also allows for reality, which is that there's also a domain of independents. That is, i believe, a healthier way of thinking about it.
And, by the way, i think the term "piracy" might be a bit harsh, don't you think? Consider the fact that many downloaders are merely getting an mp3 format of something they already own, or owned, on phonograph, eight track, cd, tape, record, vcr-tape, dvd, etc. I think it would be a mistake to conflate downloading with piracy. To do so puts the "front line" further back than it has to be.
I think the best way to present filesharing in a positive light would be to present it as a form of public library. Ahh. The public library. One of the best bastions of public decency remaining in America. And people love them. And the analogy is so nice.
Somebody once told me the best things in life are free. So if you insist on calling the free things in life piracy, where's that going to get you? Checking out a library book, or tape, or movie, isn't piracy. And it's free.
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." -Jesus Christ The Lord's Prayer
Thanks to the efforts of Justin Frankel, and Yannick Heneault the Karaoke bar I work at on the weekends was able to convert it's aging karaoke CDG collection to MP3+G's.
It's neat because we get to have AVS behind the lyrics. You used to have to buy an expensive JSUB unit if you wanted to "bluescreen" anything behind a CDG song.
We've been using the system for the last year or so. Customer response has been excellent. No more skipping or garbled words. No more confusion looking for songs. It just all runs perfectly.
Your excited tone and your views remind me of Thomas Jefferson.
In the book Founding Brothers, Jefferson's views on the revolution were shown quite clearly. After just finishing that book, and now reading this article, I'm reminded of the Federalists vs. the Republicans debate starting around 1790.
Federalists wanted a strong central government to strengthen the overall standing of the USA as a nation. Republicans wanted each state to have all powers it could, only cedeing in matters that had to be taken care of nationally (foreign affairs, etc).
Jefferson was a strong republican who championed individual liberty and free speech. He not only feared large central governments, but he did not trust "bankers and moneymen". He certainly would not trust corporations and groups like the RIAA were he around today.
He would see it much as you see it. The power of the internet lets citizens communicate without censorship or review by any government. Those in power do not like this. He would see great potential in this tool. The one thing that was totally unpredictable for Jeffereson is the power of corporations. The good comes with the bad.
We now have a way to communicate that is almost certainly above government intrusion. This gives power to the people, just as Jefferson wanted. Almost a dream come true if you told him of it.
But the power of corporations dulls the power of the internet. Corporations and the federal government are now like twin mountains of power. Two forces to potentially block freedom and liberty, when there used to be only one.
So in the end, we have the internet with it's great power, but depedendant on corporations. We have it's power and the technology to "build our own internet", and that is good. Jefferson would see it as a continued fight. Central power vs. the will of the people. It will always be a silent war waging in our hearts and minds.
Finally, one aside. As I look over this message, I think of days before the 18th century. The world once had two moutains of central power, governments and religion. It seems fighting two forces is not new.