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MTV News covers "The Internet", video from 1995

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Re: MTV News covers "The Internet", video from 1995

#21

Post by jimmyhchan »

redthrowaway wrote: post #11

I found MTV's coverage of "piracy" (which of course didn't exist back then) to be particularly enlightening. They clearly showed websites where people could listen to their favorite band's songs, and yet there was no mention of theft or the poor artists who won't get paid. Instead, they, and the artists they interviewed, cast it as a great way for fans to gain exposure to their music and interact with them. Dave Matt…

Funny how it comes around again but in circa 1995 everything was streaming using RealAudio so the music industry was pretty eager to have it available since the user never actually had the files. http://books.google.com/books?id=wAcEAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA107&...

Re: MTV News covers "The Internet", video from 1995

#22

Post by GHFigs »

georgieporgie wrote: post #4

I find the cyberpunk and mind-altering culture of the very early 90s Internet (referred to briefly in the video) to be fascinating. I wish I'd been a few years older so I could have properly witnessed it. Random things I remember from the time: * Billy Idol's strange Cyberpunk album http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberpunk_(album) * Mondo 2000 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondo_2000

I found Doug Rushkoff's Cyberia to be an effective substitute for having properly witnessed that era. It has the advantage of not being a look back, but a look around. I get the sense, in flipping through it again now, that a historical look at the era would leave out so many things that seemed important at the time but didn't subsequently flourish beyond the fringe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberia_(book)

Re: MTV News covers "The Internet", video from 1995

#26

Post by nextparadigms »

redthrowaway wrote: post #11

I found MTV's coverage of "piracy" (which of course didn't exist back then) to be particularly enlightening. They clearly showed websites where people could listen to their favorite band's songs, and yet there was no mention of theft or the poor artists who won't get paid. Instead, they, and the artists they interviewed, cast it as a great way for fans to gain exposure to their music and interact with them. Dave Matt…

Hearing about that guy getting arrested for "transmitting porn online" makes me wonder how many people are going to jail right now because of Internet-related laws that will be proven to have been absurd, 15 years from now?

Re: MTV News covers "The Internet", video from 1995

#28

Post by encoderer »

pero wrote: post #20
ugh wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe because it wasn’t really practical to download music from the web? What you could get was of obviously inferior quality and it was just not possible to download a lot of it. I think the music industry would be quite happy with a world in which every music file is a 32kbit/s MP3 and it’s not possible to download more than three or four songs per week. It was no threat to anyone. The reaction at the time is not a…

Organized music piracy (mp3 scene) began in the summer of '96 when 3 of the major groups were formed (of which RNS was the most famous and long-lived). By '97 it was 'adopted' by the software (warez) scene, and also borrowed its supply and distribution chains--there was now competition for having the fastest releases, as well as means for getting these ahead of official release dates--precipitating popularity. Accord…

I downloaded my first few MP3's in 1998. I was either on 33.6 or 56k. It took like an hour.

So the problem was clearly limited to university networks. The existence of MP3's doesn't indicate the advent of modern "piracy."

No, that began a couple years later of course when everybody began getting cable modems. And napster was written.

Re: MTV News covers "The Internet", video from 1995

#30

Post by leviathant »

georgieporgie wrote: post #4

I find the cyberpunk and mind-altering culture of the very early 90s Internet (referred to briefly in the video) to be fascinating. I wish I'd been a few years older so I could have properly witnessed it. Random things I remember from the time: * Billy Idol's strange Cyberpunk album http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberpunk_(album) * Mondo 2000 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondo_2000

The 'cyberpunk' thing always sounded cooler than any implementations actually were. You're currently living in an era where the contemporary, witnessable equivalent is steampunk.
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