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Napster sparked a file-sharing revolution 25 years ago

torrentfreak.com

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

#111

Post by heed »

grimgrin wrote: post #93
romanhn wrote: post #80

Best part of Napster was searching for that one song you were interested in, and then looking through all of that user's shared files. It was an amazing discovery mechanism which I missed dearly with all the subsequent P2P apps. Spotify now fills this void, but it's not quite the same.

Definitely enjoy browsing a user's shares, and even occasionally checking what's been downloaded from me. Soulseek goes strong https://nicotine-plus.org/

Whoa I totally forgot that Soulseek was a thing, thank you! I used to be able to find rare b-sides and live recordings of my favorite bands on it.

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

#112

Post by radley »

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.

> Same with Netflix and it's bit starved encodes.

Bitrates are tied to the subscription tier. If you do the 4K plan, it's visibly noticeable that 1080p video bitrates are higher. They don't have much 4K content, but the 1080p difference is worth it for my 4K projector.

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

#114

Post by bawolff »

brabel wrote: post #50
bawolff wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-downl…

bit torrent is basically the succesor to all this, and torrenting sites like the pirate bay are still going strong.

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

#115

Post by p3rls »

Back around in World of Warcraft around 2009ish, there was a rogue named Napster that someone invited to the guild I was in as a casual/friend.

I never found out if he was actually the founder for real but I always wanted to add "geared up the founder of Napster in Sunwell" to my resume somehow.

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

#116

Post by nostrademons »

im3w1l wrote: post #18
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…

3+hours? I remember being able to download roughly 10 songs in an hour.

Hah, my first MP3 took about 2 weeks to download, over ZModem on a 14.4KBps link. I had to work around my parents' Internet-time restrictions - they'd say "times up", I had to disconnect, then I'd pick up again the next time I was allowed on the computer. Then I needed to convince them to buy a ZIP disk to free up enough hard disk space so I could decompress it (my Centris 660AV wasn't fast enough for real-time MP3 playback), then it took another 2 hours to decompress once I'd freed up the requisite 40 MB of hard disk space.

It was 1995 and pretty magical to get CD-quality audio coming out of the computer, though.

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

#117

Post by neilv »

artninja1988 wrote: post #96
neilv wrote: post #78

Napster helped motivate and justify all sorts of nasty DRM and legislation, which has adverse implications for more than just piracy. And at the time of the MP3 frenzy, there were a relatively small number of people saying, "Wait, won't this mean a backlash of adversarial laws and technology that make things bad for everyone?" But that was ignored by the masses of newly-arrived Internet users wanting to take stuff fo…

Isn't this a bit like victim blaming? You should be criticizing the RIAA and lawmakers instead.

No, it is not.

I'm not blaming the artists whose work was stolen.

A bunch of people took up thievery. Someone said please stop. They laughed, and were complicit in creating a tech dystopia.

If you want to say they were dumb kids who didn't know any better, we can work with that.

So then the question would be how do they help fix the mess they helped create?

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

#118

Post by CaptainOfCoit »

smugma wrote: post #113

Paramount+ coming out with a two part documentary June 11 based on a book with the same name, How Music Got Free: https://www.paramountpressexpress.com/paramount-plus/shows/h...

1) What kind of domain is that? Looks like a domain for a tabloid or something

2) It redirects me to https://www.paramountpressexpress.com/location-not-allowed which says "Your geographic location is not allowed access".

Here is a mirror for others who happen to not live in the US (or whatever country it's restricted to): https://archive.is/AYgwj

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

#119

Post by jdenning »

echelon wrote: post #94
39896880 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And sell outrageously priced MP3 players. There’s no way people were stocking those things with music they paid for.

This is exactly what happens when a reverse salient collapses and opens up a new channel of distribution.

OT: thanks for introducing me to the term “reverse salient”! That’s a very useful concept.

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

#120

Post by TheAceOfHearts »

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…

Gosh this is such a throwback... One of my first experiences with Napster was trying to download Britney Spears' Oops I Did It Again and getting a shitty remix. The worst part was that I didn't check the song, so I ended up burning it to a CD only to find out after the fact that the song wasn't what I was looking for. And every song took so long to download because it was dial-up... It's crazy how much things have changed in a mere 20 years.
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