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Napster sparked a file-sharing revolution 25 years ago

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Re: Napster sparked a file-sharing revolution 25 years ago

#41

Post by echelon »

HeatrayEnjoyer wrote: post #38
gedy wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, but don't discount media lobbying gov't, and trying to generate moral outrage about AI stealing from artists, deep fakes, AI safety, etc to make sure only big corps control AI.

>AI stealing from artists, deep fakes, AI safety This isn't generated outage, it's genuine, and objectively justified. Trying to find clients was hard enough for artists to begin with. We should be automating hard labor so we can focus on art and human interaction, but instead we're automating art and interaction so we can focus on slaving away even harder. This is somehow worse than any traditional dystopia story. G…

It's not a conscious choice. It's the fact that the convolutions that create human visual and auditory pleasure are simple signals relative to logic and reasoning.

Nature itself is somehow shaped such that it is easier to create beautiful patterns than it is to engineer complex logical deductions.

It is a fundamental aspect of physics and reality. Beauty is just simple patterns.

We figured out that art is simple math. Engineering and law and planning not so much.

Re: Napster sparked a file-sharing revolution 25 years ago

#42

Post by bawolff »

brabel wrote: post #37
bawolff wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure, but i think it was napster's succesors that introduced that. I dont think napster had that sort of thing.

Too long ago, you could be right, maybe KaZaA?

I think so. KaZaa was somewhat famous for implementing that feature using the non-cryptographically secure UUHash algorithm (instead of something like sha1) for better performance, which allowed trolls to insert fake file parts into your downloads.

Re: Napster sparked a file-sharing revolution 25 years ago

#43

Post by vlovich123 »

bradleyjg wrote: post #10

Napster was a big part of it, credit where credit is due, but faster networks were the critical ingredient. I was in college at the time and it blew up on campus, but for my friends still in high school on DSL or even still POTS it was far less useful.

I was on 56k and Napster was the best and fastest thing around for a while, but more importantly had the largest library. Gnutella/Kazaa took over but only once Napster shut down and people started making their libraries available there. Torrents came in short order but that was more coupled to when broadband became much more widely adopted

Re: Napster sparked a file-sharing revolution 25 years ago

#44

Post by eisa01 »

nvarsj wrote: post #29
mmh0000 wrote: post #15

Napster was such an improvement over what it replaced, but, it’s funny by today’s standards Napster was so “basic”. I remember waiting 3+ hours for a single song to download. Then discovering it wasn’t what I wanted but a troll who renamed the `Barney The Dinosaur I love you` song. Then I’d spend another 3+ hours downloading a different song. Ah 56k internet, what fun. Today, TPB and a quick search can give you an ar…

> What I find most strange about the modern day piracy is quality. For a lot of pirates, it's a niche hobby to preserve the best quality version of some media / art. I see it as an underground librarian archivist movement. In 100 years iTunes may be dead, but there will be some person with every album available in high quality lossless FLAC. Same with Netflix and it's bit starved encodes.

In addition, quite a lot of the backlog has never been released on iTunes

I wanted to complete a set of DJ mixes, and had to purchase them on Discogs to as there were no digital copies, one cost me EUR50 for one CD...

Re: Napster sparked a file-sharing revolution 25 years ago

#45

Post by sophacles »

jjtheblunt wrote: post #26
washadjeffmad wrote: post #24

I remember how out of control the lawsuits got by the mid-2000s. A friend had to drop out of college and move back home over some multi-million dollar claim on behalf of the RIAA that his family "settled" for $40K. It wasn't even clear he was responsible (the lawsuit was based on IP), but he was scared and admitted to using "file sharing services", and that was that. I'm still disappointed that laws against barratry…

What rights did you used to have?

The big one is: when you bought a thing you owned it. The anti-circumvention clause is ultimately the root cause of the right to repair movement.

The anti-circumvention clause also means it might be illegal to make a back up copy of media you bought, a thing that always used to be ok.

Re: Napster sparked a file-sharing revolution 25 years ago

#46

Post by ethbr1 »

jl6 wrote: post #25
mmh0000 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look. It was 25 years ago. I’m an old man now. My memory of that time is a haze of multiplayer Quake strategy. How about I rephrase it: it FELT like 3+ hours.

It could still have been 3 hours as you would have been constrained not only by your own download speed, but also the peer’s upload speed, and they might have been on an even crappier dial-up line or sharing their bandwidth with other uploads.

Curious to hear more informed thoughts from old ISP folks, but afaik one of the things that made Napster possible was that 56kbps connections were roughly symmetrical (~33kbps up?).

By capitalizing on the oft unused upload bandwidth, Napster provided a benefit at little cost.

Would be fascinated to hear what this looked like on the PSTN backend load side, ~2000.

Re: Napster sparked a file-sharing revolution 25 years ago

#47

Post by narag »

scarface_74 wrote: post #31
tiahura wrote: post #2

[flagged]

Every generation thinks that the next generations music is crap. Studies show that people stop discovering new music when they are 30. https://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2023/03/study-shows-why-we-s... !

Last study I've seen, that stopped being... I won't say true, but I'd say that it stopped being a valid counterargument to that particular complaint. Now that young people can access music from any time in YouTube, their choices are more atemporal and certain remote decades keep getting much love.

If you combine that fact with current music being more marketed and aired, there's seem to be something at play here. I don't think new music is crap, but it's less catchy.

Re: Napster sparked a file-sharing revolution 25 years ago

#48

Post by bratwurst3000 »

eisa01 wrote: post #44
nvarsj wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What I find most strange about the modern day piracy is quality. For a lot of pirates, it's a niche hobby to preserve the best quality version of some media / art. I see it as an underground librarian archivist movement. In 100 years iTunes may be dead, but there will be some person with every album available in high quality lossless FLAC. Same with Netflix and it's bit starved encodes.

In addition, quite a lot of the backlog has never been released on iTunes I wanted to complete a set of DJ mixes, and had to purchase them on Discogs to as there were no digital copies, one cost me EUR50 for one CD...

Hahahaha I had the same problem. Had to buy a vinyl for 80€ and digitilize it. Did upload it then. Now the artist has a bandcamp with the collection for free so sharing is caring

Re: Napster sparked a file-sharing revolution 25 years ago

#49

Post by skeeter2020 »

bradleyjg wrote: post #10

Napster was a big part of it, credit where credit is due, but faster networks were the critical ingredient. I was in college at the time and it blew up on campus, but for my friends still in high school on DSL or even still POTS it was far less useful.

Universities & Colleges have been ground zero for establishing pretty much every major advancement, from the internet itself to Doom, file sharing and Facebook. Lots of resources combined with young, rich people with big ideas and energy who get the benefit of knowledge & wisdom while almost universially staking out a position in opposition to the established "way things are".

Re: Napster sparked a file-sharing revolution 25 years ago

#50

Post by brabel »

bawolff wrote: post #42
brabel wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too long ago, you could be right, maybe KaZaA?

I think so. KaZaa was somewhat famous for implementing that feature using the non-cryptographically secure UUHash algorithm (instead of something like sha1) for better performance, which allowed trolls to insert fake file parts into your downloads.

I found a post talking about KaZaA and Napster, and that's right: I forgot but Napster had a central server to provide files, that's why it was so easy to shut down...

https://computer.howstuffworks.com/kazaa.htm

KaZaA didn't store the files itself so it was thought they wouldn't be possible to shutdown. From the site above:

"While Kazaa claims to be "completely legal," there are those who disagree: The free-to-download blue files are controlled by Kazaa users and include copyrighted content."

"Later that year, Kazaa was sued again, this time in the United States by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association (MPAA). As of February 2005, the decision in that suit is still pending."

I remember they started suing individual users at that time... I found an article explaining that:

https://www.videoproc.com/resource/what-happened-to-kazaa.ht...

"In September 2003, the RIAA filed lawsuits against over 250 individuals, accusing them of illegally distributing about 1,000 copyright music files each, using P2P networks. RIAA sought an average compensation of $3,000 per case."

The result of the first case:

"In July 2006, the MGM Studios, Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd. caused Sharman to settle for $100 million, the amount to compensate the loss of four major music labels – EMI, Sony BMG, Universal Music, and Warner Music. The company also agreed to pay an undisclosed amount to the studios in the industry."

It's unclear exactly how Kazaa got down, the article concludes with "In August 2012, the Kazaa website was no longer active."... "the rise of legal streaming services such as iTunes, Spotify, and Netflix further compounded Kazaa's demise.".

Looks like the music industry managed to scare people away from pirating instead of actually succeeding in bringing them down directly, which is more or less what I remember.

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