Oh God. Anyone remember "Napster Bad"?
Napster.com banned at some universities for clogging networks (2000)
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Re: Napster.com banned at some universities for clogging networks (2000)
#12I was working in IT at a large British university when Spotify launched, and we had to block certain ports because early versions of Spotify used a peer to peer swarm to reduce the load on their servers, and it was so popular with students that it was completely jamming up the network.
Re: Napster.com banned at some universities for clogging networks (2000)
#13There was something about piracy in the times of Napster, emule and the like. It really made you feel like you knew some incantation to get access to the whole world's information. In practical terms, I have access to far more content now (music on Spotify, shows and movies on streaming services, tutorials, online classes, etc) and yet our reach doesn't seem as wide as it seemed in those times. Perhaps it was just th…
Arguably without Napster the major music labels would never have accommodated the iTunes Store and then Spotify. We’d still be slinging physical media around as the only non-radio option. If you didn’t live through that time I think it’s hard to appreciate how necessary the disruption was for moving the industry forward.
Re: Napster.com banned at some universities for clogging networks (2000)
#14Yes piracy is bad and all but as a college student, Napster was such as life saver. You could literally download any song you wanted to listen to. I also remember another application called Kazaa that was popular as well (circa 2000-2002ish)
And Limewire. I remember using Limewire to pirate Limewire Pro
On Windows, Audiogalaxy.
And on Mac, Poisoned! With support for FastTrack (Kazaa), Gnutella (Limewire), OpenFT, OpenNap, and eMule.
But dial-up was too slow, so it was usually quicker to repair a friend's iPod and make a backup using iPodRip or Senuti.
Re: Napster.com banned at some universities for clogging networks (2000)
#15I was like, “Is Napster still a thing?” Then I saw 2000.
Napster is still a thing as a brand, it's what RealNetworks' Rhapsody streaming service was renamed to when it was spun out of Real.
It's just another streaming service now, but I don't know anyone who uses it.
Re: Napster.com banned at some universities for clogging networks (2000)
#16Napster chat was pretty neat as well. Pure nostalgia
Re: Napster.com banned at some universities for clogging networks (2000)
#17There was something about piracy in the times of Napster, emule and the like. It really made you feel like you knew some incantation to get access to the whole world's information. In practical terms, I have access to far more content now (music on Spotify, shows and movies on streaming services, tutorials, online classes, etc) and yet our reach doesn't seem as wide as it seemed in those times. Perhaps it was just th…
We are busy keeping it! Join us in groups like data horders and snahp.it forums.
Re: Napster.com banned at some universities for clogging networks (2000)
#18When I was an undergraduate student at a conservative university back circa 2001 I had the Napster binary in my home directory because I was curious about how it worked and was doing some packet analysis in my spare time. About halfway into the semester I tried logging into my account on a lab computer to do an assignment only to get an access denied.
When I asked the lab assistant about it, he pulled up my info and then proceeded to lecture me on the spot about how bad I was for having that file. Note that I didn't have a single MP3 file on any school computers. "I see you have Napster. We scanned for Napster and disabled all the accounts that have it. Don't you know that stealing is wrong? You're totally in violation of school policy, are abusing our lab, and should be reported to the administration for disciplinary action. I guess I can re-enable your account if you promise to delete Napster right away."
This same school freaked out when I wrote a buffer overflow lab for a computer security class. "We will NEVER teach students how to undermine the security of computer software in THIS department!!"
This same lab assistant went on to accidentally delete everybody's home directory in the entire department with 3 weeks left in the semester (a failed attempt to write a script that correctly deletes core files from a cron job at 1:00 in the morning). And he also failed to make sure that backups were being done (they weren't).
Re: Napster.com banned at some universities for clogging networks (2000)
#19When I was an undergraduate student at a conservative university back circa 2001 I had the Napster binary in my home directory because I was curious about how it worked and was doing some packet analysis in my spare time. About halfway into the semester I tried logging into my account on a lab computer to do an assignment only to get an access denied. When I asked the lab assistant about it, he pulled up my info and…
Do you now work in blockchain (a descendant of P2P) or cybersecurity? That would be the best vindication :)
Re: Napster.com banned at some universities for clogging networks (2000)
#20Napster is one of the two or three products that spawned a completely different world, entirely tossing established and antiquated rules on their head.
Of course, very directly, Spotify would not exist without Napster.
But a step further, it opened the eyes to end-users about their collective power, and the beauty of distributed distribution. It was the first proof that "regular" users would buy into such a thing. Napster, in many ways, gave birth to BitTorrent, Bitcoin, and all of the derivative work thereof.