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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)

#151

Post by marcodiego »

TheFreim wrote: post #129
marcodiego wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't like the use of the term "piracy". Piracy is taking a vessel. Common crimes committed by pirates are homicide, kidnapping, rape... It is all very different from copying a file to someone. Of course, "the industry" doesn't care equating one with another.

I don't like this sort of argument against using the term "piracy". Words change meaning over time, what you're saying is like saying that we shouldn't call people "nice" because it used to mean something different (formerly an insult, apparently). When I hear "piracy" having grown up with computers the first thing that comes to my mind is not pirates taking control or a vessel on the high seas, but rather what pops…

I appreciate your comment and your sibling, but I still don't think it is the same thing.

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

#152

Post by alberth »

I was at college during this time. My roommate was downloading various Linux distributions and the campus IT department came to our room asking why we were using so much bandwidth and to please stop.

I don’t recall Napster.com being an issue but P2P sharing sites (limewire etc) was definitely huge. And even bigger, was people setting up local file shares to allow fellow classmates to download files off your desktop.

I think our entire campus ran off of a T3 line (45 Mbps) which was stupid fast back in the day to connect to public internet.

Off topic: what ever happened to “Internet2”. There was a ton of talk about this back around this time.

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

#153

Post by flatiron »

blackearl wrote: post #142
yboris wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pinnacle of sharing music was Audiogalaxy

what.cd was the high point IMO

Redacted is still very good. Sadly spotify makes it too easy so I stopped pirating music.

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

#154

Post by cblconfederate »

MomoXenosaga wrote: post #148
cblconfederate wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Reddit is still pseudonymous.

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

#155

Post by pc86 »

alberth wrote: post #152

I was at college during this time. My roommate was downloading various Linux distributions and the campus IT department came to our room asking why we were using so much bandwidth and to please stop. I don’t recall Napster.com being an issue but P2P sharing sites (limewire etc) was definitely huge. And even bigger, was people setting up local file shares to allow fellow classmates to download files off your desktop.…

This was just a bit before my time, but I was in early HS. I still remember being curious and looking up what it would cost to have a single T3 line installed, and it was tens of thousands of dollars.

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

#156

Post by midasuni »

tayo42 wrote: post #65
grensley wrote: post #32

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…

When paramount decided not to let lower decks season 1 outside the US, I went to pirate bay and got it. Also had to get some torrent software having not used one for years. Worked flawlessly.

The risk of companies that literally refuse to take money for their products is people will just get them elsewhere, but once you force people to open that door, you knock down a major barrier.

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

#157

Post by fumar »

yboris wrote: post #103
nitrogen wrote: post #85

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

I loved Audiogalaxy but Soulseek was the best in its prime. Either way I miss those days. It felt like the whole world was open to sharing.

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

#158

Post by r3trohack3r »

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…

Torrent Roulette (rebranded to Taboo and disabled download by default) scratched this exact itch for me:

https://github.com/retrohacker/taboo

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

#159

Post by alberth »

pc86 wrote: post #155
alberth wrote: post #152

I was at college during this time. My roommate was downloading various Linux distributions and the campus IT department came to our room asking why we were using so much bandwidth and to please stop. I don’t recall Napster.com being an issue but P2P sharing sites (limewire etc) was definitely huge. And even bigger, was people setting up local file shares to allow fellow classmates to download files off your desktop.…

This was just a bit before my time, but I was in early HS. I still remember being curious and looking up what it would cost to have a single T3 line installed, and it was tens of thousands of dollars.

You’re not alone. I did the same and recall the cost being similar to what you mentioned.

Also brings back memories of movies like Swordfish that made being into computers cool, even though in hindsight these movies were super cheesy.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swordfish_(film)

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

#160

Post by washadjeffmad »

ihusasmiiu wrote: post #101
mustacheemperor wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

https://interviewfor.red/en/index.html

You know, the only reason I've never joined a music tracker was because until this thread I'd forgotten what it was like to have a pure, limitless, non-commercial library of everything audio.

Not that many years before the dawn of BitTorrent, I was making, mixing, and trading APEs and FLACs of self-recorded tapes (dubs, live, local) and record collections in niche communities and channels that no longer exist- bullied off the net because they didn't make money for someone else. I lost everything to hardware failure a few years later and left the scene, but I'd be thrilled to find anything from back then still circulating.

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