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Technology

Shawn Fanning's Account Of Napster 142

Posted by CmdrTaco from the folks-who-know dept.
ttol writes "Take a look at this speech Shawn Fanning did to the Congressional Committee on October 9th. He explains how Napster came about, what his visions of the digital future will be, and how everyone can be involved. It's a good read."
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Shawn Fanning's Account Of Napster

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  • I didn't know that, but where do cassettes fit in? The tapes seem to be made with compactness in mind. Auto LP players? Yeah right.

    If you think the US distribution model is overpriced, check out Japan. Yikes! That's why the bootlegs are soo popular.

    I have my own suspicions concerning legit on-line music. Frankly, I don't have a permanent copy unless I am extremely diligent with backups on media that won't self destruct over the years more than the typical pressed aluminum CD. I also don't want to be buying time-limited encryptions and rights. Although I might not like the track a few years down the road, the bit of nostalgia is worth having it permanantly.

    I like having CDs as they are a sturdy format that's not going to die for a while in terms of backward compatibility. Although I might not use the CD form, if my computer copy gets garbled or corrupted I can re-encode it. There are still no inexpensive car MP3 players or anything like that, so you might as well have a CD available.

    There is no real "secure" format or codec yet, and it seems better codecs and encoders arise every few months. If I buy a legit bits-and-bytes track, it just doesn't guarantee me permanance or a player that is backward compatible to enough formats to apply to what I bought.

    Oh, to get the facts out, I encode from CD to MiniDisc. The CDs stay safely on my shelf while I have my portable MD player and MDs just about anywhere else, even harsh environments.
  • He says he was in IRC and someone was able to kick someone else out of a chatroom and he was so impressed and wanted to know how to do it.

    No shit. Friends of mine terrorized the Lambda MOO back in '92-94 or so (Mr. Bungle, Dr. Jest) and had more programming 5ky77z writing satanic dolls and scheissheims than this h@x3r..

    Your Working Boy,
  • Cassettes have goshawful noise and reliability problems. The motion system is designed to be cheap to implement and good enough for recorded voice, and it's too slow for high fidelity; I doubt the designers of the first audio cassettes ever imagined that someone would do something as horrible as putting _music_ on them.

    Cassettes are fiendishly expensive to produce, too: a CD or LP is just pressed (stamp, done), while any kind of cassette tape is recorded, serially (playing...playing...playing...(15 minutes later) playing...playing...done).

    If you really doubt that cassettes are more expensive than CD's, count the number of pieces: a CD has maybe three (plastic, aluminum foil, plastic), while a cassette has dozens in a variety of different metals and plastics.

    I can't imagine why cassettes are cheaper than CD's at music stores, unless the market is such that you just can't sell a cassette for any higher price, or the recording industry truly _is_ evil. A cassette costs nearly a buck, a CD costs ~10 cents.

  • In the specific case of artists represented by RIAA, the record company is the legal owner of the copyrighted music, so you (the freeloading consumer ;-) pay the record company. The artist is not involved in this transaction, and in the U.S. probably has no rights of any kind other than what is explicitly provided to them by the record company.

    In the case of artists who are independent of any record company...they usually have a legal corporation or sole proprietorship anyway just for tax purposes, even if the "record company" has no employees that are not also musicians or their accompanying roadies.
  • Maybe you should explain what System 12, since I don't know and neither does Google.
  • A greedy pirate is just plain dispicable.


    That's a good observation!

  • thank you for making me think

    Upon reflection, that's probably one of the most welcome compliments I've received on Slashdot...

    D.
    Making People Think since 1993

  • Give it up. Napster's only use is to distribut emusic you've already heard of. The "starving artist" gains no benefit from napster, only the artist who has already been heavily promoted by the labels. Yes, of course,there are exceptions, but by and large, the Napster as a distribibution channel argument is rather bunk.

    Yes, artists need to pay for studio time from their own pockets. But the difference is that the labels fill their pockets with money for things such as studio time, new instruments, producers, and engineers. And the thing is, it's not abank loan. If the record flops, it doesn't negatively effect the artists' credit rating, they simply don't need to pay back the money loaned.

    The difference between if major labels exist or not is that of they're the ones that give teh artists the money to record their albums in the first place. And they're the ones that paid the money to make sure that your heard about those artists. For every Courtney Love, Limp Bizkit and Smashing Pumpkins type band that's rejecting the labels, there's a Courtney Love, Limp Bizkit and Smashing Pumpkins that would have never achieved the position that they're in had it not been for those "evil record labels".

    But, you know, you're right. Artists should be paid. Neither shoud sysadmins. Or DBA's. Or help desk personell. All they're doing is trying to make money form the fact that the data enterers aren't smart enough to develop databases themselves. As soon as you're willing to give up[ your pay for your profession, then maybe it'd add some credence to "artists don't need to get paid either"...
  • Wow, this got me thinking about 'back in the day'. So I pulled up the old source archive from when I [thought i] was 'leet'. Sure enough... 'napster' gets greets in a bunch of the old sources for things like pepsi (which was the foundation for.. just about everything after it.. including smurf from what I recall). Course pepsi was based on echok.. and so on. Anyways, the group was actually Havok I believe.. there was another group Havoc, but they were a bunch of sucks from what I can remember.

    ...Old school... wow... I knew the same people Shawn knew... creepy...
  • I think the term 'music industry' is an oximoron. The model where bands come down off the silver cloud every two years, make a record and collect all the cash is done. Now perhaps the music won't suck as bad. If we don't get the calculated slick crappy music that is just made for the money, great. Good music comes from the heart and MONEY HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH IT!
  • All that does is introduce a middle man where there doesn't need to be any, whose only job is to take a cut of the money your music makes in exchange for extorting money out of consumers for something that doesn't cost anything to distribute. That's like poisoning the world's drinking water so bottled water companies can get a monopoly on drinkable water, and then installing credit card activated sinks that charge 50 times what your normal water bill woudld be in every home once they buy the water utilities and put in their own filters. We wouldn't need to pay them anything if the water wasn't poisoned in the first place
  • The terms "distributed" and "peer-to-peer" are halfway between marketing and concrete tech, and both are used when desired.

    In the case of Napster, there is a head to the system. But clients only register that they're online (IP) to the Napster HQ, and the info about the files they're sharing. Searches all go through that HQ's list. When a client finds a file on someone's machine that they want, Napster HQ points that client at the other guy's IP (and the Napster app). That's all. Everything else is just chrome and twinkles.

    In Napster's case, they want to emphasize the point that mp3s don't ever pass through their wires. Just the link info. Technically, this stuff should be lumped into the hyperlinking laws, since it's just a link index.

    Gnutella, on the other hand, works just like how everyone thinks Napster works; namely that it's "headless". :) File searches actually get propogated across many clients. This is a lot hairier, technically. I hear that this works pretty well under small loads (aka current load). My friend is doing a small research paper for grad school about how gnutella totally broke down under the high volume of new clients when Napster was briefly shut down.

    Anyway, hope this helped.
  • I'm not saying Napster's model is ideal for everyone, because it's not, just that there is a need for something other than the current method. I agree, in a perfect world it would definately be better it artist could have a *choice* to use Napsters services, or not, and that in it's current form, the rights of artist/copyright are being abused. I'm just trying to say that the fact Napster exist, and has become as popular as it is, illustrates the that there is a need for affordable (current cd prices are *far higher* than what they should be), and easily distributable music, and that the RIAA should get their head out of their asses, and stop twiddling their thumbs and wake the hell up and *provide* a service to people *now* rather than try to work on a solution (SDMI) that is always going to be under extremely heavy pressure to be the next thing hacked, similar to how DECSS was.
  • Anyone mind posting the article or mirroring it? My university still blocks the napster.com domain so I can't access it. Pretty sure I am not alone in this matter.
  • Yes, along with Charles Petzold :>.
  • If Napster went away, even thought there'd be alternatives, I think the industry would breath a big sigh of relief and then take their sweet time about implementing their own scheme.

    Possibly. But you have to weigh that against the downside of as long as Napster (the most heavily publicized and easiest to use of these type of distribution technologies) is functioning, more and more people are becoming accustomed to the idea that "Music is free". Not to mention it is currently hindering those legit services that do exist and are trying to get steam. (Such as Emusic [emusic.com] to name but one)

    I think I'd rather take the risk that the large record labels won't move on their own. Especially when you think that some smaller labels are already doing their own foray's into e-publishing their collections. The majors being slow just helps those minors that are moving with the technology rather than against it.

    KWiL

  • Shawn did a good job at the hearing. Before I went to it I thought napster was just for punk kids who wanted music for free, but after hearing Shawn's testimony and what Senator Hatch had to say about the technology and the benefits it could have to the music industry and many other industries as well, I changed my mind. I believe the copyright issues will still need to be worked out, but the technology is good and should not be banned. All in all, Senator Hatch seemed to really like Napster and will fight to keep it up and running.
  • Bowie,

    Day after day I read Slashdot and if you aren't posting an offtopic comment in every single story about how everyone should visit your site, you're throwing derogatory and unprofessional remarks in the general direction of some open source luminary or another.

    Now, I don't know everything that occurred between VA Linux Systems, or any of the other open source mecca sites that have been gobbled up by them, but no matter how justified your ire is, your conduct is pathetically unprofessional.

    I'm disappointed to see such bitterness going on in the open source community, but I suppose this sort of behavior is inevitable once big money comes into the picture. The ones who are just dying to get enough recognition so that they can sell out and get some stock options somewhere get jealous because they were late to the party.

    Please, stop this nonsense. Journalists from all over visit slashdot.org for source material and quotes from the geek community, and one of them could make quite a smear campaign out of petty stuff like this.
    --
    NeoMail - Webmail that doesn't suck... as much.
  • And as for this imposter Bowie, I'm not quite sure what his/her aim is, but if it's humor, hope he doesn't quit his day job.

    Besides, the real Bowie does a fine job of making himself look like a jerk, without the fake one's help.

    --
    NeoMail - Webmail that doesn't suck... as much.
  • How about this.....

    Napster embraces PKI in a big way and decides to alter their system so that it will only distribute files that are signed with a band's private key. They partner with a CA that charges a lookup fee for the public key. This allows them to provide opt in for the bands since they would have to release signed MP3s and gives them a revenue model since you would pay to "unlock" the file.

    Encrypted files could be freely distributed and unencrypted files would not be allowed on the system.

    Could it be cheated, sure but so can your bank's ATM with enough effort. It might be good enough, just like ATM security is good enough. Besides, if the plan helps to convert some of those 23 million Napster users into PGP users along the way, so much the better!
  • Imagine a app thats a cross between Ask Jeeves and Gnutella. You ask a questoin, other people see it, if they know the answer they might answer you with it.

    You mean just like the question exchange [questionexchange.com]

  • so now because of his looks you're saying this? you're just as bad as the people you're talking about
  • Well I think the open-source nazis should back off on this. It has always been napster's policy to "look the other way" regarding open source clients connecting to the service.. Which means They are a company and probably won't open-source the napster server or client.. but they will not do anything to anyone who open sources their own napster-type server, or client which interfaces with napster.. no matter which way the napster client goes from what I've heard, they'll never stop others from connecting to their servers via 3rd party web/pc based clients. I don't think it's an open source issue. I think we won't have true freedom for music until there are anti-trust lawsuits brought up by all member companies of the riaa, and those companies are forced to give back rights of music retroactively to all artists.
  • First off I disagree with your statement entirely. I think this world needs more specialists.. people who can become obsessed, fall in love with something then pursue it.. there are too many "social" beings who contribute nothing but more sniveling snotty-nosed brats.

    Second, Shawn fanning is a fucking jock. Shawn gives hackers a bad name. He's big burly and looks like the kinda kids who used to harrass us back in high school for being overweight geeks.
  • Too bad Napster.com is blocked out by my college's censorware. We can connect to napster servers and share music all we want, but can't view Napster.com's website. No MP3.com either.
    Any mirrors?
  • I believe I read a while ago that Napster wasn't open sourced because of security issues with the server code.
    I honestly can't decide what's better, open source and exploitable for a while (til its fixed). Or closed source and not exploitable.
    Either way... at least it works =)
  • the potential security nightmare from releasing the napster client code is terrifying. let's see here, millions of clients, lots of bandwidth, and a program that blindly sends files around and launches other programs to use said datafiles. all it takes is one clever exploit and every client running on win9x suddenly has a BIG problem. i'm for open source software as much as anybody else, but i shudder to think of what could happen with this situation.

    B1ood

  • Here [time.com] is another good article of Shawn Fanning in Time Magazine. -----------
  • Read this book: Geeks : How Two Lost Boys Rode the Internet Out of Idaho by Katz, and you'll understand that some people are bored and uncomfortable with sports and many types of social activities. The Internet and computers are a way of life and an unending source of intrigue and education for many people.Frankly, I'm sick of people saying what other people should do, as if playing sports is a priority in life and a tried and true way to become a "well-balanced" person. Personally, most jocks and/or die-hard sports fans are, IMO, the ones with their priorities backwards. They're just games. People writing programs, hacking computer systems to learn, and gleaning information from the web are bettering themselves intellectually. Sure, a little exercise, going out with friends, or dating is good now and then, but so is striving to learn more and more, and being totally swept up in a challenging project. If you asked me, you could take all the basketball, baseball, football players and fans and send them to some freakin' remote island and let them play games to their hearts' content and our national average I.Q. (US) would probably rise 50 points!
  • "If people think information should be free, they should make some free information."

    If I had moderator powers I'd push you up :)

    Isn't amazing how its always the OTEHR guy's stuff most people think should be free??

    I liked Courtney Love's comment... now shes getting screwed by the record company AND her fans.

  • I DO have moderator powers! You got my vote :)
  • Sorry, my friend. I just read the rules. Since I posted here before I discovered I was a moderator, it wont count :(
  • Has anyone posted mirrors of the articles from Napster, so those who are at universities who have blocked access to www.napster.com can read what was said. I tried to access the articles, but knew that I wasn't going anywhere because my university has blocked all traffic going to www.napster.com
  • I think this sounds nice, but why would every artist get the same amount of money? I mean if I started releasing music on Napster all of sudden i start getting a $10,000 check in the mail? If so why would even write worthwhile music, and thats only if i was required to release something every so often to maintain getting payed that amount... -Brian
  • Sometimes I've had scratches on heavily used CD's. It is nice that I can get the song on CD in some other format, and make another CD, without having to buy a new one. Now that must be legit, because I own an CD with that specific song. Another good, though not legit use is to find rare versions or songs. This is not encouraged though!
    --
    when everyone gives everything,
  • Of course the record industry is pissed at and scared of Napster. Napster is giving away for free something that costs the industry hundreds of millions of dollars to create. If Napster's allowed to flourish, that means that really, in the short term, cool, everyone gets free music, but in the longer term, how much more music do people think will actually come out? And how much of that will actually sound okay, recording wise? If labels aren't to exist, then there goes the money that artists would have used to pay for recording their albums in a nice studio rather than in their basements with one microphone set up in the middle of their setup...

    Almost... I'll tell you what will happen if Napster is allowed to flourish, and the recording companies get screwed: The musician wins, the music affectionado wins, record labels still get money.

    Honestly now, how many of you people actually KNOW how the recording process (when dealing with a label) happens? Show of hands?

    Anyone?

    Thats what I thought.

    Recording equipment IS NOT so expensive that you need to get a big big loan from a record company to produce an album. A decent 8-track is usually more than the average band needs (excluding prefab teeny bopper bands), and coupled with computer software capable of mixing and editing, you can have a very nice recording rig for approxamately 2 grand. (includes the price of the PC to run the software on, BTW).

    Yeah, 2 grand seems like a lot to spend on recording equipment, but its really not. An artist can spend nearly twice that much just for stage equipment in order to do a live show (which is what MOST real bands do first before recording anyway). There are many cd-recording companies throughout this area (which happens to be in the middle of nowhere), that are more than happy to press, package, and help you distribute for the price of $1.50 per CD. If record labels go belly up, artist have to try harder and be more dedicated to win praise. The music will have to have soul. We'll have a throwback to the old days when thats ALL music was about... expressing one's self, and not for the love of money. Being Bassist/Guitarist/Vocalist and Co-Writer for a band, I can stress how important this really is.

    Record labels actually harm artists in general, whether its by stealing the spotlight with thier Next Greatest Thing(TM) prefab groups, or actually signing us and then screwing us over (signed artists make a penance on CD sales. The real moneymaker for an artist is by doing live shows and selling merchandise).

    Just in my band's experience, Napster and MP3.com have helped us out, not only to get the word out, but to let people try before they buy, so to speak. Real life example:

    Fan - "Hey DP, that song "S.N.E" rocks... I can't wait until you guys release your CD..."
    Me - "Well thanks," *aw-shucks look* "but you can just check out our site on MP3.com and download it, or search Napster."

    Fan - "You mean for free..."
    Me - "Yeah, and have other people who might like our stuff check out the site too"

    Guess who's friends I saw at our last show?

    I doubt they would have been there if it weren't for exposure like MP3.com or Napster!

    (BTW, tix for our shows are $9 a piece. Our CD will go for $4.50. I'm willing to trace a CD sale for a ticket sale anyday, thank you.)

    Oh, and a gratuitous link [geocities.com] to the lyrics for our first album ;-)
  • He may be wrong but his line of reasoning is hardly vague. He's trying to justify Napster's existence.

    If you've followed this issue for any length of time you should realize by now that restricting Napster only benefits corporate interests and has little to do with protecting the rights of the artists.

    Why do you think Prince (he got his name back) sells his CDs online? It's because he makes more money on the sale of each CD. And he make no bones about this.

    Fanning' arguement has long been that Napster actually helps established artist and give new artists exposure they wouldn't oridinarily have.

    I agree with him on this.

  • Is there any way we could get a Napster section so we could exclude these stories?
  • That's all well and good and I'll probably do that but there are many 'music' topics that I would like to see; SDMI, mp3 in general, to name a couple. There are ePlus, TurboLinux and GNUStep topic areas, and Napster stories probably outnumber all three of those areas together. I for one was very thankful when Anime was finally given its own topic section so I could hide all those stories. It might be too late for a Napster topic though, but I have a feeling there'll be another deluge of stories in the next month or so.
  • I like grovelling before the almighty dollar. The almighty dollar will be getting me a Playstation 2 as proof that it loves me more than anyone else :)
  • but that doesnt make what we're doing any less illegal. Stop trying to justify it.

    i will no longer attempt to rationalize it as legal, however, i think it can be justified as economically feasible, and/or moral. what is being argued is whether the law is justified, or should be changed.

    the fact is, i the record companies would just license napster like they do for commercial radio (note: non-commercial radio does _not_ need a license), and then napster incorporated some advertising to pay for things, we might have a workable system within the bounds of current record company distribution.

    i'd like someone do justify their decision... russ
  • So, if I, the perfect example of an unsigned musician, wouldn't want my music distributed over Napster, please fucking explain to me what possible legitimate purpose Napster has, apart from breaching copyright.

    It's a legitimate source for all the artists that do want to use it as a distribution method. Look, you may be against people mailing concert bootlegs around, but that doesn't mean the mail's, or audio tape's, non-infringing uses are invalidated. You go after actual lawbreakers, who are trading _your_ stuff, not Napster.

    Not that I don't think this:

    Don't fucking expect me to support something just because some naive assholes think it's making a stand against Evil Big Business.

    isn't a great (and motive-checking) statement. thank you for making me think.

    russ
  • Basically, if you want your work distributed by Napster, Napster will act according to your wishes, but if you choose not to want your work distributed by Napster, Napster will ignore your lack of consent and happily continue to help distribute your work around the Internet with no payment to you.

    So what you're saying is that artists who don't want to sell their works will be abused?

    I'm legitimately trying to see the artist's POV, but i don't think this is it. If there's a business model where the artists get paid (perhaps better than current contracts allow for, even?), why would they not want to use Napster? Are there artists out there who refuse to allow put their work on CDs? if there are, their getting less money than they might, i'm sure.

    there's a level of artist control that might be violated, but take concert taping as an example. for the most part, cool artists don't worry about tapes, as long as they don't get sold for the caysh. the same applies for, say, a demo track the artists doesn;t want out there.

    what we need to ensure is that the little guy can still make it. that, i think is the one and only priority going forward.
  • However, I think that any attempt to *JUSTIFY* things like Napster is foolish. Having MP3's of copyrighted material that you haven't purchased, irregardless of what your ultimate intentions are, is illegal.

    could the same be said of someone who only listens to radio, and doesn't own any recorded material of their own? record companies license radio stations, but i bet the amount they pay is _way lower_ as it is an incentive for purchase thus an advertising avenue.

    it sure looks like the only issue for the companies is control.

    russ
  • Long live the script kiddies. You can take the script kiddie out of the ghetto but you can't take the ghetto outta the script kiddie.
  • The college probaby fixed their dns servers to make napster/mp3.com point to 127.0.0.1 or something similar and the napster ports are probably blocked at router level.
  • This guy is just a script kiddie. I read a while ago what he had written about how he got interested in computers. He says he was in IRC and someone was able to kick someone else out of a chatroom and he was so impressed and wanted to know how to do it.

    Of course, his napster "testimony" says nothing of this (even though it does mention IRC). napster was just another way to extend his 3r337 script kiddie reputation.
    ---

  • Fanning has written

    He didn't write it. Do you really believe that? A team of lawyers wrote that shit.
    ---

  • Thank you, very informative -- this is what I have been saying all along.
    ---
  • Currently, anyone can share song files on Napster, both artists and fans. And you can't enforce a royalty every time a song's downloaded, because there's no way to tell if the user has downloaded the song before and is just making 'fair use' of the service. And it should be kept that way (do you *want* some central database keeping tabs on when and what and how often you listen to music for your entire lifetime? I sure don't!)

    But what you can have is a central, voluntary, verification/micropayment registry, that you can ask to identify the artist who created a song (various methods left as a thought exercise).

    So if you like a song, you can click a button and it 'tips' the artist a dollar from your account (whether your main bank account, an escrow account, or whatever). Click as often as you like - or not at all if you don't like the song. Combined with word of mouth, good artists will get money, bad artists won't - which is what is supposed to happen now, but minus the excessive middlemen.

    So how does Napster Inc make money out of this? Well, I can see various ways. They could take a percentage of the tip. They could manage the escrow micropayment accounts and run on the interest generated by the collective stored amount. They could offer banner advertising space at the top of their client program's interface to people. And so on.

    Eventually, what we could end up with are napster-esque services for every conceivable artistic form of digital media, relying on the collective wealth and honesty of earth's five-billion-plus population to support those who create this art. And since, really, our society is built upon such mutual support, I'd think this isn't far-fetched at all.

  • Re:Congrats Shawn, but... (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The Napster protocol has been reverse engineered up the wazoo. For all intents and purposes, the protocol is Open Source now. Ever heard of OpenNap? Ever heard of Napigator? Do you guys even know what you're talking about?
  • Shawn Fanning was a piglet in a little hacker crew called "Havoc". Anyone who can find the obscure sources to some havoc work will see his sig in a couple. He didn't go around looking to program. He grew up a skript kiddie, using the power of smurf (when it was new) among other stuff to pull down sites and create netsplits. He learns how to copy the basic structure of a C program using berkley sockets and touting the superiority of linux over winblows. His uncle, John, is a friggen millionaire. Starts giving him shit left and right, first a computer, then a friggen bmw, all while he's still in high school. Just adding to the ego that was blowing up with his skript kiddie exploits. Then he goes to Northeastern. Guess what? It's real world coding time and he can't cut it. His grades start sucking real hard. He doesn't leave northeastern because he wants to develop Napster. He leaves because he's an inch away from being kicked out. BTW, Napster was originally a console-based program developed on linux and it was crap. Without even some kind of a real database backend. Just a dam hard-coded proprietary (sucky) db format of sorts. But while at NE, he starts getting a clue about CPP and MFC. And berkley sockets work just as well under MS as they do linux (except for the holy of holies, the IP_HNDRCL or whatever it is flag to let the kiddies sniff. But oh well). So now he gives napster a gui, shows it as its being developed to his uncle. His uncle, who didn't realize what crap it was at the time, says "okay, let's try this as a biz". They go out to california and continue development. Along the way shawn joins up with an old havoc buddy in CA. Together they get the first bits of napster up. Then people let shawn know what crap it is, but help him develop it further. Such as using hash functions to help db searches faster. Eventually working his way into a commerical db backbone rather than his proprietary crap. Then Metalica gets wind of this whole "MP3" thing and gets their first introduction to it via Napster. Whoever was the first person to show Metalica napster is the _REAL_ person responsible for Napster's success. So Metalica gets pissed, they create a lot of press. Now the Napster/Metalica case becomes a microcosm for the whole dam "Hackers on the net / Authority" battle. Enter in more publicity from Doc Dre and Eminem, plus the fact that the DOT-COM industry is SCREAMING right now and ALL news agencies are looking to be the first to crack the next "BIG" dot-com story and you have a media frenzy. Not because the program is any good. But because Metalica sues them. Now all the teeny-boppers out there, the 14 year olds who listen to Britney Spears, they start feeling this "napster" thing is the new "hip" thing since its what everyone else is trying to stop. So for no other reason than because adults in society said it was wrong, they start moving to napster. And thus we have the napster of today. There is no teen-genius here. This is not the next bill gates. The whole scenario was shaped and paved by the media. Is my opinion biased? yeap.
  • You do realize that labels 'loan' the money to make these recordings, they do not 'give' it. The only thing that comes close to a benefit to a contract with a recording label is nationwide/international distribution, and advertising. Everything else (and I mean *everything*) is just a raping.

    Internet == free distribution, and to an extent, free advertising.
  • This will be ignored, but I've gotta say it 'cause it's finally annoyed me enough:
    1. Making copies of CDs and sending them to totally fnarking strangers is illegal. Period. There is absolutely no ambiguity here.

    2. The people who think otherwise are either letting their passions cripple their understanding of law and reality, or else they are hopelessly ignorant or somehow mentally impaired.

    3. That being said, it certainly looks like MP3 in general and Napster in particular are actually boosting CD sales, which is hardly surprising since MP3s are only substitutes for CDs for people with either shitty speakers or even shittier hearing, and because fnarking radio has been doing the same damn thing for years with the same effect.

    4. Ergo, the RIAA should just roll over and be happy for the increased sales instead of getting greedy and killing the goose that laid the golden egg. This would have the added benefit of leaving all the "copyright law doesn't apply to me" crowd with nothing to spew bullshit about.
    Please note that I'm in favor of reducing copyright to its original duration, and I think both the RIAA and most IP laws are monumentally stupid. But it irritates the bejesus out of me seeing people lose the ability to understand blitheringly simple laws because they're having a gimme-fit. "Wanting it real bad" isn't a legal argument.

    --
  • That's the way I always envisioned the Internet should work. Ideally we all need hard-core 24x7 links and more sophisticated firewall software at home and things will be just swell.

    The average PC is a very powerful machine but it's usually thought of as a "low end system". Really it's more hardcore than any of the old systems that ran on arpa.net etc so if you think of your home machine in terms of a "node", rather than just a client or server, we could build a much cooler, more user-oriented Internet.

    Lots of good free DNS services would help too. I guess these will come in time, just as free email and free hosting services etc are now available (in the peer-to-peer Net, services like outsourced hosting and email would, of course, be totally redundant - we can do all that on our own machines)
  • No... i think it'd only be the very vocal minority that would attempt to spark an outcry. The rest of the users would just go "Oh, they got shut down? Bummer..." and move on with their lives. Kind of like when you get a bonus you weren't expecting, you're all psyched to spend it because it's money that you wouldn't have had in the first place, but once it's gone, oh well.

    Of course the record industry is pissed at and scared of Napster. Napster is giving away for free something that costs the industry hundreds of millions of dollars to create. If Napster's allowed to flourish, that means that really, in the short term, cool, everyone gets free music, but in the longer term, how much more music do people think will actually come out? And how much of that will actually sound okay, recording wise? If labels aren't to exist, then there goes the money that artists would have used to pay for recording their albums in a nice studio rather than in their basements with one microphone set up in the middle of their setup...
  • Correction, it costs the record industry hundreds of millions of dollars to distribute and promote their product. The Internet has reduced the cost of distribution to mere bandwidth and storage, and Napster has improved even that by utilizing users' own bandwidth and storage that would otherwise go idle, and included a forum for word-of-mouth promotion to boot.

    Believing that artistic expression would somehow disappear if people didn't get paid is preposterous; Art was around long before anyone got paid for making it. If anything, cutting off the profits of obnoxious industry engineered pop stars will make room for true artists who are dedicated enough to make a living form what they do by making good music that people will pay for whether its free or not.

    The cost of distributing music and media in general got a whole lot cheaper. Railroads were the evil corporations of a century before because they controlled the only means to move goods over long distances. With the advent of the automobile, people could move their own goods without paying the robber barons, and the railroads went to the brink of ruin.
  • Aint that Slashdot's Business Model?

    Are either making *that* much on advertising?

    -Ben
  • I think it will do the same to the movie industry as it will do to the music industry, make it much more competitive. And I'm pretty dang sure as "consumers" that's what we want and totally sure that it's exactly what the consortiums don't.
    --
  • but that makes it too complicated. Napster's biggest asset is how simple the whole process is (and all that music). I think the simplest thing to do is have the judge rule that individuals sharing music with other individuals without any monetary exchange whatsoever is perfectly legal, just like it is now. The market will adjust, and the whole point of record companies (telling people what to buy, i.e. the largest part of the cost of CDs) will be reduced back to what it was originally, making good recordings.
    --

  • Re:wow (Score:2)

    by Malto ( 46836 )
    As far as recording in a nice studio goes, I've done some recording before for a band that I did sound for and it does not take hundreds of thousands of dollars to have an awesome studio. You can have more than enough studio for under $10,000. The recordings I made were made with equipment that totaled under $3000 (not counting the band's instruments), and honestly the sound quality is cleaner than some of the mainstream bands' cd's that are out today. The only thing that record labels do is distribute. If an alternative distribution method came up, then record labels wouldn't even be needed. Just people that were willing to work in a small private studio, and bands could hire people (not companies) to do that easily.
  • >I ordered a Windows programming book over
    >Amazon.com to learn what I needed and wrote the
    >client software.

    Does this mean that the RIAA will now be suing Amazon.com?
  • don't blame him being fascinated by programming, but it would be good if kids like him were finding time in their lives to do sports and other social
    activities, not just hacking.

    Why do we never hear 'I don't blame him for being fascinated by sports, but it would be good if kids like him/her were finding time in their lives to do some hacking and intellectual activities, not just hacking.'
    What is the fascination with physical = good, mental = not as good that some people seem to have? Why should he play a sport or socialize? I apparently finds no internal desire for such activites.

    Kintanon

  • The PR firm that wrote the speech for him must suck... if they honestly wanted people to believe the Fanning was speaking his mind they would not have put such gems as:

    This synergy of technologies created a platform..

  • You do realize that labels 'loan' the money to make these recordings, they do not 'give' it.

    Labels only recoup monies paid out if the albums sell. If the band doesn't go anywhere and they get dropped from their contract, they don't have to pay back money for recording time.

    Stop listening to Courtny Love, it isn't all a rape.

  • Unlike traditional web-based search engines, the Napster system cannot index files based on their content and organize them in a meaningful way for the users.

    and...

    When Napster is able to implement a business model, there will be other benefits for artists as well, including payments to rightsholders.

    So, there is no way to know if it's copyrighted, but if it is we'll pay the guy...

  • I'm afraid Fanning makes it clear that his vision was the sharing of Copyrighted materials (in other words-- piracy). He basicly admits, multiple times, that he wanted to assist people in sharing their MP3 files with others.

    Now a question.. he claims napster is peer-to-peer. Why then is there a central site? he makes it sound like Gnutella but I've heard its quite different. Can someone whose looked into both explain?

  • Actually, its befasue Napster makes money that its in trouble. Theres lots of money to be amde, as i udnerstand it, off of ad space on the central site.

    You don't see Gnutella under legal attack. Thsi is because of two things:

    (1) No central point to attack
    and equally
    (2) No money chnaging hands. Where there is no money ,ther eis only "amature priacy' and its a lot harder to get any recompense from the courts.

    Its the for profit nature of Napster that has them in the hot seat. And IMO that's as it should be. Tehy shouldnt be allwoed to make money off of the acto of stealing someoen elses work, even if they aren't the hands doing the stealing. They ARE the monetary benenficiaries.
  • or HyperG.

    **sigh**

    There was proof that just having the right answer doesn't mean you'll win the war. (Ofcourse, there's lots of other proof, VHS tapes for instance...)

  • Testimony from other witnesses at the hearing is available here [senate.gov].
  • You can exclude most Napster stories by going to your preferences [slashdot.org] and checking "Hide 'Music' stories". Granted, some Napster stories make it into topic: Technology, but most are in topic: Music.
  • in the short term, cool, everyone gets free music, but in the longer term, how much more music do people think will actually come out

    oh come on. that's a weak argument - even though its constanly being used by the record industry. if the profit stream from selling rights to listen to past performances (ie, those plastic discs with music on it) dries up, they'll seek a new business model and stream.

    its inevitable - the only question is WHEN, not IF.

    its right and fair to charge for the distribution of the plastic discs, the store space to shelve them, the wages to have folks sell them to you and put them into pretty plastic bags; but when music has near-zero overhead in the new Inet distribution model (ftp's cost next to nothing) its not right and fair to aply the 'sell physical plastic' rules to the 'download in a few minutes and store on your own media' rules.

    --

  • I have a comment.
    Why must the record companies be involved at all?
    In your idea, they don't even have to do anything to get paid, so why ARE they being paid?
    I think you made the mistake that 'in order for an artist to make money, a record company must first make money and take a cut of it'.

    --
  • Napster is a throwback to the original structure of the Internet. Rather than build large servers that house information, Napster relies on communication between the personal computers of the members of the Napster community

    Honestly i think that is the best line for ANY of the P2P applications out there right now. The internet has become rather vast and company orientated. finding just something amusing or some odd bit of information is a pain in the ass. Just think of what could be accomplished by merging a newsgroup style listing with P2P applications. Finding your music would be a snap, finding that odd ball info would be as ez as connecting to a group that might have it. the scaling problem of Gnutella might even have a chance of being fixed. There is no greater resource than people and P2P applications take advantage of this. Imagine a app thats a cross between Ask Jeeves and Gnutella. You ask a questoin, other people see it, if they know the answer they might answer you with it.

  • This discussion seems to be wandering between two separate topics. On the one hand we have the "piracy" question -- does Napster promote illegal copies and what's their legal liability? On the other hand we have the question of Napster's business model -- how do they propose to turn a profit? These are clearly separate issues.

    It's tempting to see Napster as a counterstrike against the media monoliths and their misuse of the intelprop laws. Napster is certainly playing that role, but that's not their purpose. They're a for-profit company too, and their investors didn't put up all that money just to make life difficult for Time-Warner-AOL-Turner-EMI-moretocome.

    Will Napster try to make money by collecting royalties? Don't be absurd. Napster can't make money off of the distribution of copyrighted music for the same reason they can't prevent said distribution: they don't know what specific tracks their users are sharing, and have no way of finding out.

    (I'm suprised somebody hasn't suggested filtering software. But I guess it's too clear that you can't filter music. Of course, you can't filter web pages either, but it's easy to pretend you can.)

    So how will Napster make money? You got me. Fanning's statement is, as falloutboy points out, very vague about their business model. I'm sure that was deliberate. If you wear an electronic badge to work, you know (or should know) that the main purpose of all that security is usually not to hide your technology from your competitors. Usually, your competitors have much the same technolgy. What you don't want your competitors to know is what you plan to do with that technology.

    __________

  • How come Napster didn't publish any of the questions and answers from the hearing? Did Fanning get reamed and end up looking bad or stupid or something? Since the recording industry no doubt fed a lot of the questions to their favorite Senatorial stooges, I think it would be interesting to see what was said to him and how he reacted.
  • ...if noone listens. Money talks. If Napster isn't lobbying the committee, they can kiss their company goodbye.
  • The Music Industry (TMI), is afraid of losing control of distributions. What they aren't realizing is, Napster is a way for them to make more money. They are worried about losing control, just like they were for radio, the vinyl record album, the tape recorder, then the video recorder, digital tape recorder, and now digital. Every step along the way, they produced some excuse on how, in the consumer's hands, would mean the end of TMI, which got its start in publishing music printed on paper. When Napster comes up with a solid means of revenue, (if they don't blow it), it would mean independent artists, and independent distributors, are more on an even keel with the big 3, or is it 4.

    It hasn't stopped growing since. Today the Napster community numbers over thirty-two million; for the past four months, it has been growing at the rate of one million new users each week.
    Now, if they shut down Napster, not all of those said 23 million users would rebel, but a good lot of them would, and have already.

    The way I see it is Napster, and especially streamed mp3's, are the radio broadcasting of the new millenium. and Lars, when you read this, I see you sitting up on your mighty drum riser, with your mighty record company. We may use the same headphones, but I am the one down here, in the band, playing at the corner bar, breathing much more cigarette smoke than I care too, standing on a stage that barely fits the guitar amps. Remember what its like to be without money, not being able to feed oneself, cause the drunks sitting at the bar, are too drunk to notice the tip jar? Ending the night, owing the bartender more money than you made. Rolling up your own beer stained guitar cords, and mic cables.
    If you and your mighty attorney's manage to kill Napster, will be keeping the status quo, as it grows into one big behemoth AOL-TimeWarner media megalopolis. Yes, the future with Napster may be scary to you now, but wait till the $$ starts flowing in.

    I want equal access to the 'airwaves', and to the distribution channels. Napster SHOULD be the way to get it. Now get out of the way, Lars, because I will kick over your drum set on my way out.

  • Sitting right next to Shawn Fanning was an independant musician Peter Breinholt [peterbreinholt.com]. I personally don't like his music, but he's fairly popular in the region. Anyway, he made a point that Napster is his alternative to Radio. He said that being indy means that he has no chance of radio time, and doesn't appreciate his competition (the labels) trying to shut down a potential distribution channel of his.

    Sen. Orrin Hatch seemed to be very impressed with Fanning, and his "collaboration without litigation" speech. Still, everybody but Fanning at the hearing lauded the DMCA and the protection it grants corps to do business on the net.

  • Or, if you're in a silly mood, see the Napster webpage [askjesus.org] through the eyes of Jesus [askjesus.org]. =^)


    (well, i thought it was funny.)
    -legolas

    i've looked at love from both sides now. from win and lose, and still somehow...

  • can be found here [mtv.com].
  • >negotiated royalties is certainly difficult,
    >if not impossible, to implement using the
    >technology Napster has introduced

    Unless i'm mistaken Napster isn't new techology. It's glorified IRC. People have been putting MP3's on BBS's for years, with searching, albeit centralised storage. But prior to Napster's sucess there were many peer-to-peer systems (DCC anyone?).

    Now Napster doesn't allow people to break copyright anymore than the phone system allows criminals to break laws. When telephone systems came out many politicians wanted the things dismantled as criminals could use them to coordinate their devious plots. It's the devious plots that are wrong, not the telephone.

    Napster doesn't "allow" as that's the wrong word - it's completely agnostic. Wrapster showed that it doesn't even have anything to do with MP3's necessarily, Napster just involves a searchable database of filenames, chat, and direct connections.

    Now as for piracy being your definition of "illegally make use of resources without paying for them". Well, "illegally" is the word at play here - and that's very different to empowering the artist for what they want.

    Radio stations, for years, have been playing music regardless of whether the artist wants their music distributed. Artists are powerless in this regard. Radio stations pay some fee to the government, the artists don't get a cent.

    AFAIK, Artists have never been able to "track the authorship of the clips" and it's unreasonible to expect such a thing. From minstrels singing each other's tunes, to someone just playing music loudly, to our local radio stations having "TAPE THIS!" nights. Artists have never been able to track it once it goes out of their hands.

    I prefer the web for music too. But if only servers weren't so scared of hosting the evil MP3 format. My friend's band had to move to MP3 dot Communist [mp3.com] after the free host kept deleting that files. She should have just gave them the .pdf extension and asked her audience to rename the bloody things.

    ps. The AC who's talking about swashbuckling parrots and eyepatches and such - don't be such a wanker - Arrr! arrr! ARRR!

  • and before long I gave up sports so I could spend more of my spare time at the computer learning about programming.

    I don't blame him being fascinated by programming, but it would be good if kids like him were finding time in their lives to do sports and other social activities, not just hacking.
    --meredith

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • I would like to posit that Napster actually limits music piracy. I myself can be considered a MP3 pirate. I have downloaded hundreds of gigabytes in the past 4 years. I am unscrupulous about my d/ling. I will not claim to only d/l stuff I own or d/l to just test out an artist before I buy. I d/l to keep. If I like it a lot, I burn the music to CD so I can listen to it in my car, etc.

    My favorite thing to d/l is full albums. This is the best. I would go on IRC, chat to some people, find a good site (which are usually themed by musical genre) and d/l until my heart's content. If I wanted to pirate Top40 singles I could tape the radio. The full album is where the best music lies. A full hour of music.

    Since the advent of Napster my available resources have decreased dramatically. The majority of Napster's content is singles. Sure this is great if you want to own "Karma Police" or "Hit Me Baby One More Time." But without listening to the full album, one misses out on songs like "Electioneering" and those hidden gems on !N'Sync's album that never made it to TRL. Few people share full albums on Napster. A full album is what one pays for when they buy the music from the retail store.

    To make things worse, the largess of ftp sites that existed in the past have almost vanished. Napster has taken all of their business, so to speak. The ones that remain are consumed with making money, and require each to user to apply to various internet pyramid schemes in order to make them money. A greedy pirate is just plain dispicable.

    So to sum things up: Napster is actually benefical to the recording industry in some aspects. Listeners still need to pay money if they want to buy the whole album. Due to MP3's inferiority to CDs (by a slight margin), buying a CD is still a better option if one really likes an artist's music. And with Napster's excellent promotional aspects, it is, if anything, a boon to the RIAA.

  • Shawn Fanning's role in Napster now (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 14, 2000 @02:07PM (#705853)

    WTF are Shawn Fannings opinions being given importance? He is simply the cute mascot of Napster.

    He owns very little of the company. His uncle owns a huge chunk of the company. CEO Hank Barry (a "suit" just like the music industry execs he is supposedly battling on the people's behalf) owns a huge chunk. Shawn Fanning doesn't even have a role to play in the day-to-day running of the company. 1 He doesn't set long-term policies for the company.

    Extract from Businessweek: John got 70%; Shawn got 30%. ''We all knew from the beginning that this would be huge,'' recalls John Fanning. While Shawn is the public face of Napster, today he owns less than 10% of the upstart and is not involved in the company's business decisions. Shawn Fanning has no senior management position and isn't on the board. Mostly, he works on developing the company's software.

    the Businessweek article [businessweek.com]

    WTF is he trotted out all the time (with his trademark baseball cap)?

    They are using SF simply to portray the impression that the big bad music industry execs are trying to squash the "innovative" company run by a 19-year old. And remember there is not a single article which doesn't mention SF's age.

    Give me a break. This company Napster is run by suits (I'm sure they have more lawyers than programmers there) backed by huge sums of venture capital.

    Note to Napster suit reading this: Stop pimping SF to win sympathy from the geeks.

  • What a crock of shit. (Score:3)

    by The Dodger ( 10689 ) on Saturday October 14, 2000 @04:01PM (#705854) Homepage

    the recording companies/RIAA that have a stranglehold on the US music industry

    Oh, for fuck's sake, please give me a break. Anyone who wants to can release their own music on the 'Net, as an mp3. Christ, I've done it myself, courtesy of BladeEnc.

    Wannabe chart-toppers do NOT need Napster. In fact, I would rather NOT have my choonz distributed over Napster, because I'd rather that people came to my website and downloaded the mp3s from there.

    So, if I, the perfect example of an unsigned musician, wouldn't want my music distributed over Napster, please fucking explain to me what possible legitimate purpose Napster has, apart from breaching copyright.

    D.
    ..is for Don't fucking expect me to support something just because some naive assholes think it's making a stand against Evil Big Business.

    PS: Who's paying Fanning's legal bills? And why?

  • The real issue (Score:3)

    by _dewman_ ( 24216 ) on Saturday October 14, 2000 @10:45AM (#705855) Homepage
    Hopefully by Shawn speaking to Congress on this issue, people will realize that it's not Napster that's the *real* problem, but the recording companies/RIAA that have a stranglehold on the US music industry. Do you honestly believe that Napster would be as big a deal if the recording industry monopoly had priced CD's half-ass reasonably to begin with? Or instead of the industry going into a fuss over the use of mp3 technology, simply embraced it. They can't maintain their monopoly and cd price fixing forever.

  • He did a great job speaking. (Score:3)

    by discore ( 80674 ) on Saturday October 14, 2000 @10:47AM (#705856) Homepage
    I wasn't lucky enough to be able to see Shawn speak where I live, Salt Lake City, Utah. But a few friends of mine were. They said he presented himself very professionally, and made a good speech. Everyone listened to him and seemed to respect his ideas.
    If you read about what Napster is, it sort of brings the whole thing into perspective. This isn't a giant plot to put the music industry out of business, nor is it going to make Ulrich's kids go hungry.
    It's a well designed program for sharing information, specifically music of all kinds.
    Good job Shawn

  • Re:*cough* bullshit - the *real* origins of napste (Score:3)

    by mlogan ( 81677 ) on Saturday October 14, 2000 @04:36PM (#705857) Homepage
    i go to northeastern university. I knew Shawn, somewhat. Trust me, he was smart. bored, not stupid.

    -mark

  • Re:The True beauty of the internet (Score:3)

    by DrWiggy ( 143807 ) on Saturday October 14, 2000 @01:33PM (#705858)
    Imagine a app thats a cross between Ask Jeeves and Gnutella. You ask a questoin, other people see it, if they know the answer they might answer you with it.

    Yeah, that would be cool. It would be like people would suddenly start Useing the Network at last. In fact, hey, let's call it Usenet. I'm amazed nobody has thought of this before!

  • Re:wow (Score:3)

    by mad_clown ( 207335 ) on Saturday October 14, 2000 @02:16PM (#705859)
    Welp, I'm the first to admit that I have ALOT of MP3's, and I'm also absolutely willing to admit that a good, if not overwhelming portion of them are indeed illegal. However, I think that any attempt to *JUSTIFY* things like Napster is foolish. Having MP3's of copyrighted material that you haven't purchased, irregardless of what your ultimate intentions are, is illegal. Unfortunately, Napster has turned a pretty minor issue into an all-out witch-hunt, with the music industry and various recording artists declaring Jihad against MP3, programs that facilitate trading of MP3's, and people who have MP3's. I think we've passed any point where the music industry and the illegal music scene can ever find any "common ground." There is no "solution" to how Napster has affected the music industry. Sure the record companies are dirty price-gougers, and sure a huge number of people end up purchasing the albums of MP3's they have, and sure lots of artists support MP3, but in the end, all there is to do is accept the fact, if we're playing the illegal music game, that we *ARE* breaking the law in most cases, and stop trying to justify our actions.

  • He's been in the news a lot (Score:3)

    by Anne Marie ( 239347 ) on Saturday October 14, 2000 @10:34AM (#705860)
    Shawn made Business Week's E-Biz 25 [businessweek.com], and he had some Q&A with ZDNET.au [zdnet.com.au] not too long ago. It's fun to watch his public discourse over only a couple months when he himself is only a handful of dozens of months old himself.

  • The Underpants Gnomes' School of Business (Score:4)

    by Admiral Burrito ( 11807 ) on Saturday October 14, 2000 @12:56PM (#705861)

    What kind of business model could be implemented here?

    They can just use the standard dot-com business model:

    • Phase 1: Collect underpants.
    • Phase 2: ?
    • Phase 3: Big profits.

  • Re:I'm sure he's a good programmer, but... (Score:4)

    by stevarooski ( 121971 ) on Saturday October 14, 2000 @11:33AM (#705862) Homepage
    Ok.

    In reply to everyone who is looking down the end of their noses at Shawn due to his age:

    SHUT UP.

    Shawn Fanning is young, sure. But at the same time I know hundreds of adults--including professors at this institution--who would not and could not handle themselves with the same control and poise as he has.

    I'm not supporting his ideas (thats for other posts), but I am going to defend attacks on his ability through his age. Senators seem to be taking him seriously--can't you too? Instead of making snide remarks about how 'kids like him' need to go out and play, think about how, despite the handicap of being a 'teenager' in a society conditioned to look down on young people, he has managed to become on of the most influential people in two spheres of computing.

    -s

  • Webcast of the field hearing... (Score:4)

    by flagrass ( 147355 ) on Saturday October 14, 2000 @10:58AM (#705863) Homepage
    can be found her e [byu.edu]. It was an excellent hearing, and Shawn did a good job of explaining his position.

  • eloquent, informative, WTG Shawn! But... (Score:4)

    by falloutboy ( 150069 ) on Saturday October 14, 2000 @10:30AM (#705864)
    Fanning has written a really excellent piece here, and hopefully it will not fall on deaf ears. The only flaw in the writing is the following:

    When Napster is able to implement a business model, there will be other benefits for artists as well, including payments to rightsholders.

    This is vague, at best. At worst, its a good reason for Napster to be shut down until the business model is a reality.

    What kind of business model could be implemented here? Royalty payment to the copyright owner for each instance of a song being downloaded? Ambiguous filenames could be a big problem there. What if the file is the song name, and happens to be the same as a song by another artist? Who gets paid?

    Anyone know a better way?

  • Re:eloquent, informative, WTG Shawn! But... (Score:5)

    by John Jorsett ( 171560 ) on Saturday October 14, 2000 @10:37AM (#705865)
    This is vague, at best. At worst, its a good reason for Napster to be shut down until the business model is a reality.

    Actually, shutting Napster down would remove a lot of the pressure on the industry to get off the dime and make online music distribution a reality. Given their druthers, they'd just as soon keep everyone buying CDs from stores until there's ice-skating in hell. If Napster went away, even thought there'd be alternatives, I think the industry would breath a big sigh of relief and then take their sweet time about implementing their own scheme.

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