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The Almighty Buck Media Music The Internet

The Rise and Fall of Napster 297

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."
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The Rise and Fall of Napster

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  • by Blaine Hilton ( 626259 ) on Sunday April 20, 2003 @04:46PM (#5769976) Homepage
    Its too bad Napster had to do music sharing. The technology between P2P networks pionered by Napster was something though. This type of network along with open souce and GPL software, along with MD5 checksums could be a great combination.
    • Sorry, I ment to say "behind P2P", and not between. Although I'm sure that as with everything is still debatable ;-)

      Go calculate [webcalc.net] something.

    • You mean like Gnutella?

      Repeat after me: fuck MD5.

      MD5 is flawed.

      Use SHA-1 instead.

      Or better yet (some say), TigerTree.

      All of which Gnutella uses.
      • It's simply a matter of what you're testing for. MD5 is great as a checksum. Checksums are meant to find errors introduced at random by corrupted packets and the like. SHA-1 is a cryptographic hash, meant to foil malicious attackers purposefully changing the message.

        So really, fuck MD5 only if you're trying to make something secure against attackers.

        • So really, fuck MD5 only if you're trying to make something secure against attackers.
          What shouldn't be made secure against attackers? MD5 is obsolete.
          • Not really. MD5 is obsolete if you're trying to make a cryptographically secure hash. MD5 is great for everything where you just need a pretty damn fucking great checksumming function. For checking whether a chunk of a file is indeed what it's meant to be, md5 will do the job way faster (and hence better) than sha1.

            Security for the sake of security is just as stupid as no security.

            Daniel
      • by 0x0d0a ( 568518 ) on Sunday April 20, 2003 @06:16PM (#5770277) Journal
        Repeat after me: fuck MD5.

        MD5 is flawed


        Given known current flaws in MD5, it is possible to produce bogus data that matches a given MD5, though no constraints can be placed upon the content. A trojan, for instance, cannot be placed in a MD5'd file, but the file can contain random data.

        However, one of the fairly obvious ways to use MD5 is with a "tree" of checksums -- one for the whole file, one for each half, one for each quarter, etc, etc, etc. In this case, it is not possible to produce data that will pass validation.

        eDonkey uses MD4 hashes -- which is significantly easier to attack than MD5 -- yet I haven't seen problems with forged chunks on eDonkey.

        And while SHA-1 is nice -- and it might be just easier if everyone used it -- it is significantly slower. When I tested the md5sum and shasum implementations on my Linux box, I found that shasum ran at about a sixth the speed of md5sum.
      • MD5 is flawed.

        Guess I missed this one - what's your source?
    • Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday April 20, 2003 @06:00PM (#5770217)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • I have yet to see significant uptake of Gnutella and various other services for legitimate uses.

        Because most of them are wildly inefficient. BitTorrent is not uncommonly used for large-scale legitimate large file distribution among the tech-savvy now, and eDonkey is similarly useful.
        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          Comment removed based on user account deletion
          • There was a nice 10 minute mpeg off GuerillaNewsNetwork a while ago that was distributed through BitTorrent. I actually went and installed the bugger to download the damn thing, and I've gotta give the credits where they are due. The thing downloaded from about 10 different sources in all, switching to the next source when the previous one dried up, and I had the movie as fast as if I had downloaded it straight from one fast server.

            Daniel
      • Furthurnet [sf.net] has (twice? three times?) removed all Phish shares because some moron put up a disc or two Phish was selling from their website. Everything on it is supposed to come from tapers trading shows where the bands authorize audience taping. Some good stuff, lotsa hippies.
      • IRC (Score:3, Interesting)

        Nobody remembers IRC?!? People were downloading (and even trading) files on various IRC networks long before ICQ and Napster were around. Sometimes within IRC itself using DCC and XDCC bots, but mostly by using FTP in conjunction I believe. Sure the scale was different (as were the bandwidth and file sizes), but file trading didn't orignate with mp3's and wasn't pioneered by Napster or ICQ.

        Sure, both were innovative but I doubt either would exist as the did/do now if it wasn't for IRC coming first. To an

    • by sean23007 ( 143364 ) on Monday April 21, 2003 @01:32AM (#5771795) Homepage Journal
      The phenomenon of Napster was that it captivated the non technical crowd by giving them a way to find something they already wanted in a new format that was just as good as (or better than) the formats to which they had been accustomed. Napster was so popular because people wanted music. You can't make the vast populace want open source software just by creating a distribution system. Napster was the creation of a distribution system for a latent demand.
  • by telstar ( 236404 ) on Sunday April 20, 2003 @04:46PM (#5769977)
    "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.
  • by RLiegh ( 247921 ) on Sunday April 20, 2003 @04:47PM (#5769984) Homepage Journal
    ...watching the musical!
    Seriously, doesn't this seem a little like 'great expectations' or something (only problem being I'm not sure if GE got made into an musical or if I'm getting it confused with something else. :-/)
  • Amazon Reviews (Score:2, Interesting)

    by paulychamp ( 131799 )
    The two "spotlight reviews" on Amazon are interesting.
    • Heh, agreed.

      Nice how each is "A reader" from some place in california. Didn't even attempt to place a name behind their statements.

      Since when are AC posts "spotlight" reviews :p
  • sure... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by gimpimp ( 218741 ) on Sunday April 20, 2003 @04:49PM (#5769989) Homepage
    napster's rise was stunning, as was it's fall - but it's left behined something that the riaa/mpaa CAN'T take away, and that is the concept of p2p sharing of media on the internet. pre-napster internet use and post-napster internet use are two completely different things for numerous age-groups now...

    cheers,
    • Re:sure... (Score:2, Funny)

      by muzthe42nd ( 598331 )
      i never run a P2P client any more, not for moral reasons though, but because i am on the shittest dial up connection imaginable. I am connected at 4,800 (yes, 4 thousand 8 hundred) bits per second. Do you know how shit that is?

      yes, i am on a 56k modem, thank you BT.....
      • so bad...there are laws in the US that force telcos to fix your phone lines if you don't get a 14400 connect or better...granted that's not the fastest thing on earth but better than 4800...ever tried another modem?
      • You are lucky. Some parts of Northern Ireland dont even get half that. A friend gets 1000 bits per second even after tweaking the modem settings.

        And BT still stick broadband advertisments through the door even though they dont offer it anywhere within 70 mile of here.

    • Re:sure... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by iCEBaLM ( 34905 )
      It was there before napster, especially on IRC, napster just brought it to the masses with a pretty interface. If napster didn't do it another program would have. The idea and technology were already there, napster didn't really do anything innovative that wasn't already happening.

      -- iCEBaLM
      • Re:sure... (Score:4, Interesting)

        by yellowstone ( 62484 ) on Sunday April 20, 2003 @06:09PM (#5770255) Homepage Journal
        [file sharing] was there before napster, especially on IRC, napster just brought it to the masses with a pretty interface.
        Don't minimize the importance of mass popularity. Having the ability to do something (like share files across the internet) is one thing. Having it become popular across a large population, to the point it changes the way people think about intellectual property is quite different, and far more powerful.
        • That's my point, I don't think it changed the way people think about intellectual property, I think they always thought that way because it was already being done. It just centralized it and allowed the music industry (in this case) to specify and villify a single enemy.

          I know I had always thought that way, even back into the BBS days and the local warez BBS's.

          -- iCEBaLM
  • by dotgod ( 567913 ) on Sunday April 20, 2003 @04:50PM (#5769991)
    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.
    • in the first 3 client releases there was a banner ad space, but it never displayed anything except a link to napster.com. I guess we should have known the business model was fkd up when the new clients had no banner space.
    • Venture Capitalists greedy bastards dumped millions into the company, I'm sure Fanning got some of it. Later on I believe they started selling shirts, I got one at OZ-fest, and some manager person came up and started yelling at the lady who gave them to us because they were supposed to sell them. After he left she gave away the rest of the shirts.
      • Venture Capitalists buying into the company is exactly how Fanning would have made his lucre. If the founders start with 100% of the company and sell off an interest (60%?) to others for $X million, they walk away with a tidy sum. Greedy Bastards? More like engines of progress, but who wants to split hairs...
    • by lseltzer ( 311306 ) on Sunday April 20, 2003 @04:55PM (#5770012)
      Your first impression was correct. It made no money at all, and any money Shawn made was out of dumb-ass investors' pockets. If you ask me, it had no serious potential for making money.
      • by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 20, 2003 @05:06PM (#5770045)
        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.
        • 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

        • What if the music industry had purchased napster

          Why would they buy Napster? All the record industry had to do was release their catalogs on a convenient pay site (which they still haven't really done.) Napster's "innovation" (which wasn't patented) was useful, but hardly necessary for this business.

          All Napster really had was a name, and the public demonstrated that they were willing to go elsewhere for free music.

  • by lseltzer ( 311306 ) on Sunday April 20, 2003 @04:57PM (#5770021)
    ...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.
    • by Anonymous Coward
      What a waste of time.. I pirate my books the old-fashioned way .. I borrow a copy from a friend or the library!

      Sometimes, when I'm feeling particularly criminal, I go to the bookst^H^H^H^H^H^H local pirate's den and read the book without paying for it!

      Actually my local bookst^H^H^H^H^H theft haven has awfully comfortable chairs and a coffee shop. I think they actually WANT you to sit and read books without paying for them. I feel sorry for the CHUMPS that actually take their books to the checkout counter.
  • by l0ungeb0y ( 442022 ) on Sunday April 20, 2003 @04:59PM (#5770026) Homepage Journal
    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 :)
  • Who is everyone? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by kidlinux ( 2550 ) <duke&spacebox,net> on Sunday April 20, 2003 @05:12PM (#5770066) Homepage
    I thought Napster was bloody awful.

    Audiogalaxy was far superior in every way. It's a damn shame they got shut down. I think AG's model and design is the best starting point for the music industry to get into a paid-for music downloading service.

    Unlike Napster, it just worked. I didn't have to sit around to make sure the download started and that I didn't get cut off, and I didn't have to find other sources. I just queued up as many tracks as I wanted, and AG made sure I got them.
    • by black mariah ( 654971 ) on Sunday April 20, 2003 @05:20PM (#5770083)
      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:Who is everyone? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by NanoGator ( 522640 ) on Sunday April 20, 2003 @05:47PM (#5770156) Homepage Journal
        "men. 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. "

        For $10 a month you could use Listen.com. As long as ya pay that, you have access to any song of their library. plus playlists etc. It's like a server-side MP3 locker, only they're all there. Click a song and you're listening to it within moments instead of having to wait for it to download. (then it caches so it's not like you go through that every time...)

        Not a bad deal. It's not quite perfect in that you don't get to keep the compressed version and it's Windows only. Oh well, it's not for everybody. Still, $10 is less than one CD per month.

        I'm thinking about writing up a review of it for Slashdot, but I'm concerned about whether there'd be any interest in it.
    • by Afrosheen ( 42464 )
      My favorite thing about AG was that it had a nice little linux shell client that worked alongside the web interface. You're right, it just worked and it worked well most of the time.

      giFT, Kazaa, Shareazaa and all the bullshit these days is a test of patience.
    • Re:Who is everyone? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by bakawally ( 637407 )
      Audiogalaxy was doomed to failure from the start though. It used their website to show which files were available. In essence it ended up becoming a warez site.
  • Free Joe [servemp3.com]
  • Too big (Score:4, Interesting)

    by harks ( 534599 ) on Sunday April 20, 2003 @05:44PM (#5770146)
    I thought the problem with Napster was that it was too easy and too good. It was fast (faster than Kazaa is now) and huge (Got more results than anything I've tried since). Everyone I knew used it, even the least computer-knowledgable. Because of this it attracted too much attention and became a target large enough for everyone to go after. I believe that nothing will be as large as Napster again for this reason.
  • 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

    Uh...Napster wasn't going to succeed as a company, regardless of whether he or his uncle was running things.
  • by wo1verin3 ( 473094 ) on Sunday April 20, 2003 @05:49PM (#5770165) Homepage
    Napster will be back, here is a portion of a press release from Roxio talking about the sale of the GoBack product line to Symantec.

    "The opportunity to sell GoBack comes at a great time for Roxio as it provides an opportunity to add to our cash balances and divest an asset that is not core to our digital media strategy," said Chris Gorog, President and Chief Executive Officer of Roxio. "This transaction will enable us to bring an even greater focus to our digital media software business and the development of our new on-line music business with our Napster assets. Symantec is currently one of GoBack's largest marketing partners and it is the logical and best new home for GoBack and its customers."
  • by sielwolf ( 246764 ) on Sunday April 20, 2003 @05:59PM (#5770207) Homepage Journal
    At the Rotten Library [rotten.com]. Some of the interesting parts:
    "Ultimately, Napster sold itself out to Bertelsmann, a worldwide media conglomerate (and fuckers of the first order), but by any of a number of accounts, John Fanning's clinging to control of the company to the end and demanding huge amounts of cash for its properties doomed it completely."
    and my favorite:
    For all his name being on the building, Napster had as much to do with Napster 2.0 and the growth/direction of the company as Ronald McDonald did with flipping burgers at the local Mickey D's.
  • a money-making concern. If we're 'sharing' things then the cost of the bandwidth and the development of the software that enables it should be 'shared'; not made into a business or corporate entity. If someone wishes to contribute the work on the software or financial support to the authors of the software, great. If someone wants to use the system then they contribute the bandwidth necessary to share the files. A major purpose of the internet was to distribute the load so the system could survive failu
    • by PetWolverine ( 638111 ) on Sunday April 20, 2003 @08:03PM (#5770688) Journal
      A major purpose of the internet was to distribute the load so the system could survive failures or an attack. Sadly, we have lost sight of this paradigm and allowed money and greed and corporate entities to subvert one of the best things about the 'net.

      And I always thought this would be
      the land of milk and honey
      Oh but I came to find out that it's
      all hate and money
      And there's a canopy of greed holding me down.

      --Blind Melon, Tones of Home

      Incidentally, I never would have found out about Blind Melon without P2P file sharing, and now I've bought two of their three albums (with Soup high on my to-get list). File sharing makes people less likely to buy music? The RIAA can eat me!
    • "If we're 'sharing' things then the cost of the bandwidth and the development of the software that enables it should be 'shared'; not made into a business or corporate entity."

      That's fine if what you want to share belongs to you. Sharing what belongs to someone else is a bit more problematic. Many college students "shared" bandwidth that belonged to the university, dragging down system performance for others. Not to mention "sharing" the work of others.

      >K
  • by TerryAtWork ( 598364 ) <research@aceretail.com> on Sunday April 20, 2003 @06:51PM (#5770411)
    - Finding Robert Crumb's Cheap Suit Serenaders after searching for the album in vain.

    - Same with the Wozard of Iz - AFTER I bought it on eBay... :-)

    - Getting Camarillo Brillo after finding it ONLY on a box set for $70 (thanks Frank)

    - Getting cursed out by dorks for cutting their dls off (which I never did) - then putting them on ignore

    and at the end...

    - watching as a series of mesaages from emusic came up demanding I remove the following 12 songs or get kicked off.

    - Screwing up and removing them all but one.

    - Getting kicked off.

    • and you can't forget the 48,396,872 copies of
      Ozzy_and_Dweezil-Stayin_Alive-VERY_VERY_VERY_R ARE! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.mp3
      that would come up no matter what search you did.
  • The Irony? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by thebes ( 663586 ) on Sunday April 20, 2003 @08:08PM (#5770714)
    I was never in the filesharing loop back in the day of napster...I'm still not that big into it right now...but doesn't it seem rather ironic that the attack on the biggest file-sharing program (Napster) spawned a horde of new p2p programs which allows the sharing of practically any digital file? Seems just like shaving myth/fact: the more often you shave...the faster it grows...the more you hit down on p2p, the more it will grow, and be defeated.
  • That Napster was headed by a con-artist.

    Well it's good to finally see the details behind his con.
  • by hndrcks ( 39873 ) on Sunday April 20, 2003 @09:23PM (#5770996) Homepage
    From the Amazon.com review of the book:

    "...an internet culture that enthusiastically stood centuries-old notions of property rights and demand-and-supply pricing firmly on its head..."

    This is farcical. The concept of making obscene amounts of money from artistic expression; indeed, the concept of art as property, is a very recent invention, since 1900 or so. This is what the media conglomerates want you to forget. Napster simply reminded us of how things were a very short while ago.

HOLY MACRO!

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