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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)

#81

Post by sandworm101 »

torben-friis wrote: post #7

There 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…

>> ... to digital abundance.

Really? Spotify and Netflix pale in comparison to what Napster was. For all the content you think you have access to, Napster gave us the ability to see what other people had stored on their drives, stuff that they wanted to share rather than whatever media Spotify has a license for. That opened a world of discovery unmatched by any streaming service, or all of them put together. Want a club track from an unknown Russian group that only existed for a few nights back in 1998? That was on Napster. Netflix cannot deliver classic Simpsons episodes.

Re: Napster.com banned at some universities for clogging networks (2000)

#82

Post by sillysaurusx »

hellbannedguy wrote: post #76
sillysaurusx wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because you were younger. It happens to everyone. You think younger people now don't feel the same way you did? And that they won't wistfully be talking about the times that Youtube gave them all the content they could ever dream of? Maybe. But I wouldn't count on it.

We were stealing, and it felt good at the time. It would probally feel better now, but the consequences are too stiff. It felt good to be a gangster at a time when the laws were grey, or enforcment was not as easy as today?

Eh? How can you steal something that's infinitely copyable?

Ahh never mind, I don't feel like getting into it.

Re: Napster.com banned at some universities for clogging networks (2000)

#83

Post by mcfedr »

peterburkimsher wrote: post #19
steelframe wrote: post #18

When 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 :)

Maybe inspired to be a competent sysadmin

Re: Napster.com banned at some universities for clogging networks (2000)

#84

Post by rhn_mk1 »

grensley wrote: post #32
ianlevesque wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"If it ever gets too bad, they'll just steal again" should hang on the wall of every media distribution company. Consolidation efforts like Netflix prevented piracy, but the splintering of streaming services has encouraged it, and sports (and especially football) has become the great fulcrum. Pirating sports is huge right now, because their distribution is an anti-consumer mess. Cable is using them to cling for dear…

> steal again

Can we avoid the conflation of piracy and stealing? Stealing under the pre-internet definition has very different consequences from the duplication of copyable resources.

Re: Napster.com banned at some universities for clogging networks (2000)

#85

Post by nitrogen »

sandworm101 wrote: post #81
torben-friis wrote: post #7

There 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…

>> ... to digital abundance. Really? Spotify and Netflix pale in comparison to what Napster was. For all the content you think you have access to, Napster gave us the ability to see what other people had stored on their drives, stuff that they wanted to share rather than whatever media Spotify has a license for. That opened a world of discovery unmatched by any streaming service, or all of them put together. Want a c…

No streaming site will ever have licenses for the bizarre remixes of video game themes, or the Sesame Street theme, that made their way around Napster.

More than the music, though, Napster had chat rooms where you could get legit recommendations of new music that far exceeded the recommendation engines of today.

Re: Napster.com banned at some universities for clogging networks (2000)

#86

Post by ativzzz »

geoduck14 wrote: post #50
veg wrote: post #20

Napster 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. Na…

>Napster, in many ways, gave birth to BitTorrent, Bitcoin, and all of the derivative work thereof. You say that, but before Napster, there was Seti(?), a program that would search for extra-terrestrial life - by distributing the work load on top your personal laptop

sounds like bitcoin mining without making money

Re: Napster.com banned at some universities for clogging networks (2000)

#87

Post by nitrogen »

geoduck14 wrote: post #50
veg wrote: post #20

Napster 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. Na…

>Napster, in many ways, gave birth to BitTorrent, Bitcoin, and all of the derivative work thereof. You say that, but before Napster, there was Seti(?), a program that would search for extra-terrestrial life - by distributing the work load on top your personal laptop

SETI@home: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SETI@home

That was distributed computation, but all the data was coordinated and stored centrally.

Re: Napster.com banned at some universities for clogging networks (2000)

#88

Post by nitrogen »

ativzzz wrote: post #86
geoduck14 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Napster, in many ways, gave birth to BitTorrent, Bitcoin, and all of the derivative work thereof. You say that, but before Napster, there was Seti(?), a program that would search for extra-terrestrial life - by distributing the work load on top your personal laptop

sounds like bitcoin mining without making money

SETI@home and Folding@home at least provided intrinsic value from their computations. It'd be nice if we could have a coin based on protein folding or climate simulations or something.

Re: Napster.com banned at some universities for clogging networks (2000)

#89

Post by mdturnerphys »

I have one memory of Napster. My senior year of HS, 2000-2001, one of my teachers told me I could skip an assignment in exchange for helping her install it on her (school-owned) computer. It would make a better story if the class was Ethics, but it was pretty close--World Religions.

Re: Napster.com banned at some universities for clogging networks (2000)

#90

Post by rcpt »

hellbannedguy wrote: post #69
torben-friis wrote: post #7

There 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…

Napster, and The Pirate Bay, were my best years on the internet. I still think The Pirate Bay was the best website ever, but for degenerate disenfranchised Pirates like myself. I learned Watchmaking from that site, and I doubt 90% of the stuff I downloaded was copy written. Oh yea, I ended up buying all the books I downloaded over the years. My horology library has probally 40 books, and I ended up with a side occupa…

Silk Road tho
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