Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> ... 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…
What.CD is another unparalleled archive that is now gone for good. Rips of old beat tapes from the 90s, obscure electronica releases, all kinds of stuff that it seems won’t ever be found anywhere else.
Napster.com banned at some universities for clogging networks (2000)
101–110 of 189 posts
Re: Napster.com banned at some universities for clogging networks (2000)
#102There 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…
I don't use Spotify just because whole genres are not there. And I'm not talking about some obscure music from 150 years ago. Even Jungle Tekno from the early to mid 90s can't be found. The only sources are some 50 years old random guy fondly remembering their MDMA-fueled glory days and uploading their records on YouTube, vinyl from Discogs, or private trackers.
Re: Napster.com banned at some universities for clogging networks (2000)
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> ... 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.
The pinnacle of sharing music was Audiogalaxy
Re: Napster.com banned at some universities for clogging networks (2000)
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
"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.
At the individual level, you're denying the copyright holder and the dependency chain of rent extractors the money from a purchase transaction they're legally entitled to, if you were willing to pay and jump through whatever hoops were in place as a potential customer. Game of thrones streaming issues showed people don't like hoops or shitty service.
If you're not a potential customer, and don't share the media, copyright holder et al have lost nothing. If you do share, they're out whatever percentage of people who you passed the data to that were potential customers.
If I own something via other distribution channels or physical media, I have no compunction against downloading, nor if I know I will never pay for it otherwise. I have on occasion tried out software I've pirated and paid for a real license after continued use, or purchased physical media despite having the album or movie from a torrent. I have to assume that I'm not an outlier, so it occurs to me that piracy may actually be a net positive influence on media companies revenue. The marketing of content is good in terms of exposure, software reviews and recommendation, and so forth.
It may actually be a social good, depending on the culture at the time, creating more free channels of distribution and communication about content products, and services that otherwise wouldn't exist or would be stifled.
It's not theft. At worst it's cheating at the game of commerce.
Re: Napster.com banned at some universities for clogging networks (2000)
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
You got a brief, glorious whiff of what a world without artificial scarcity is like. We'll get another whiff when someone invents Star Trek style replicators, before they are also outlawed by the moneyed interests who benefit from lack of abundance.
We have already "Star Trek style replicators", at least for information. They're called "digital computers". But humanity isn't ready to handle that it seems.
But if people are free from scarcity, how will Apple and Google continue making trillions of dollars? Corporations are people, too! /s
Re: Napster.com banned at some universities for clogging networks (2000)
#106Earlier 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.
Granted what I'm talking about is far below the level of the major music labels, but I still buy music on CD. Then I rip it to my network drive when I get home. The reason is that my family is into music that's way off the mainstream, and we've asked the musicians directly: "Which way of buying your music nets you the most actual money?" The answer is still buying their CD. I'm a musician myself but have no interest…
>The reason is that my family is into music that's way off the mainstream, and we've asked the musicians directly: "Which way of buying your music nets you the most actual money?" The answer is still buying their CD.
I guess this depends on the genre, area, etc. But whenever I've talked to (low to mid level) musicians, live performances are basically the only way they make money.
The sale of music is so ridiculously low for them, particularly considering the low percentage of profit they get, that it might as well be considered an ad for the live performance.
Re: Napster.com banned at some universities for clogging networks (2000)
#107I vaguely recall there was some kind of chat built in to Napster and it was the era when people did sometimes turn off their computers and/or where in some countries they paid by the minute for internet. I recall getting a message from a German on the other side of the world that I was able to read and respond to because I just happen to speak German letting me know he was headed to bed but that he'd leave his comput…
μTorrent had(has?) a chat feature as well. Quite sad that on public trackers like mininova it was basically the place where everyone would write SEED PLS and not much else.
Re: Napster.com banned at some universities for clogging networks (2000)
#108When 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…
This has something to do with your university being conservative?
Re: Napster.com banned at some universities for clogging networks (2000)
#109Napster 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…
Without blank CDs and burners, Napster wouldn’t have happened.
I'm not sure if that's true. It's more likely that without MP3 players, Napster wouldn't exist.
Re: Napster.com banned at some universities for clogging networks (2000)
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
Grooveshark came close, but it was always going to get shut down
Hotline was pretty exciting. Did anyone else here get involved with this? [0] Back when broadband had just hit Seattle I ran a server on an old PowerPC IA paraphrased quote from a user: > I am actually signed to TVT records but it this server’s contents that enables my creativity. These days I pay for everything, but that testament to digital freedom sticks with me. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotline_Communica…
Yes! Hotline was wild.