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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)

#141
post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You know, Soulseek exists.

I'm impressed soulseek exists and is popular. I think it is the only centralized p2p network which survived.

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

#142
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

what.cd was the high point IMO

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

#143
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, Hotline… 1998…

Fond memories of Hotline too. Is there a replacement or equivalent for Hotline today?

Many times i've dabbled with recreating it, but with a more modern approach. Is anybody out there also interested in this?

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

#144
post #2

Back then we were moving a terabyte a week on one Hotline Server alone. Napster was already way way more popular (and accessible).

I tried really hard to get into Hotline, I still remember the "welcome to Hotline" girl. Every hotline server I tried was either terrible or so full it was impossible to connect or use. Never had a good experience with it. Guess I wasn't in the loop enough.

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

#145

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…

> I have access to far more content now (music on Spotify, shows and movies on streaming services, tutorials, online classes, etc)

I don't. I am tired of looking up a movie in some service I pay for and getting nothing. It doesn't matter what streaming company I choose, there's always something that just isn't there.

Music? If you stray from the mainstream path, you're on your own. Mercifully YouTube is still a respectable repository of music. There are often gaps in the playlists now but what can you do?

Back then we had instant access to everything humanity had ever created. The monopolists ruined it all and replaced it with their garbage services.

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

#146
Circa 2002, Penn State limited each on-campus student connection to (my memory is fuzzy so don't hold me to exact numbers) 1.5GB combined upload and download per week. But, anything transferred within the Penn State network did not count towards the cap. This is where I should say that Penn State has 12+ campuses spread throughout the entire state of Pennsylvania so we could transfer stuff between Erie, PA and State College, PA for no penalty.

This lead to the rise of an internal Direct Connect network that allowed students to form our own internal file sharing network that was approximately functionally equivalent to Napster and the like.

This also lead to the complete and total network saturation of some parts the dorms where we clearly had clusters of students trying to get their download on. It's just really hard to try to understand how people will respond to available incentives; not just here but in all areas of life.

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

#147
post #65

Earlier 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…

> "If it ever gets too bad, they'll just steal again" Is it as easy to steal as it used to be? I'm not even sure I know where to get torrents reliably atm. Last I knew pirate bay was always being disrupted. And is it easy to rip stuff when the source is streamed? Like dvds, music, software is easy to copy and distribute when it was just a cd to copy and some authentication to work around. Im totally out of the piracy…

As the sibling comment pointed out, it is SO much easier than it was.

I hopped back into it about 3y ago. I’ve got a NAS running on my local network with sonarr to snatch new tv shows and radarr for new movies.

In practice, if I decide I want to watch a movie I can reliably pull down something high quality within 2-10m (depending on how esoteric it is) and then be watching it on our tv.

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

#148

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.

respectfully disagree. i remember also things before the internet of 2000, like TV, but not fondly at all. and in my mind somewhere around 2004 things strayed from the linear progress i had in mind for the future of the internet. what has changed culturally is pseudonymity became real names, with all the baggage that comes with it, and that makes people more conservative. If you want an objective measure of that, loo…

Yes anonymity on the internet is gone. And with current "social justice" you can be crucified for something that you posted somewhere 10 years ago.

On the other hand most people wouldn't want a completely free internet. 4chan versus Reddit and the public chose Reddit.

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

#149

Circa 2002, Penn State limited each on-campus student connection to (my memory is fuzzy so don't hold me to exact numbers) 1.5GB combined upload and download per week. But, anything transferred within the Penn State network did not count towards the cap. This is where I should say that Penn State has 12+ campuses spread throughout the entire state of Pennsylvania so we could transfer stuff between Erie, PA and State…

Fuck I remember this!!!! There was dc hub off campus in 2003 because they had shut them down internally. It was a genius solution. The hub was dc.kicks-ass.net! You connected to this url to get the file lists and then no penalties to transfer the data in between dorms!

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

#150
I recall circa 1999? Tape recording a live performance of Britney Spears, "Hit Me Baby One More Time" from the Mark & Lard BBC radio 1 show by the UK indie band Travis.

I later shared this on Napster after digitising from the phono in on my cyrix 333MHz PC.

I often wonder if that exact MP3 file still exists somewhere

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