That was awesome. You would think of an song and right there you could download it, even more obscure stuff. Information right at your fingertips or something like that.
Napster sparked a file-sharing revolution 25 years ago
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Re: Napster sparked a file-sharing revolution 25 years ago
#142Earlier 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…
> We should be automating hard labor so we can focus on art and human interaction
We have being doing that for over 100 years now. Look at industrial productivity per worker, it skyrocketed throughout the 20th century. It has plateaued only because all the low and medium hanging fruit was long ago picked and now engineers are busy doing incremental improvements.
I am genuinely curious what sacrifices would have to be made of we went with a fully automated community, from growing food to putting it on store shelves, to running the store, cleaning it, everything. Obviously not all foods are possible to automate end to end, but I wonder how far we could go.
Re: Napster sparked a file-sharing revolution 25 years ago
#143Earlier 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.
Indeed. Many of these pirates are the most devoted fans of the music they store and distribute. They go to gigs, buy merchandise and vinyl editions, and otherwise support the artists directly. In contrast companies like Spotify don’t care about the music at all. They would just as well sell you white noise if it would somehow give them the slightest improvement in growth or margins. Daniel Ek, CEO of Spotify, regular…
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Re: Napster sparked a file-sharing revolution 25 years ago
#144I think the biggest thing Napster did was get everyone onto a computer. I don’t know if folks here remember, but before Napster, desktop computers at home were largely the destination for folks who worked at home, nerdy kids or the occasional school research. AOL changed _some_ of that but not as profoundly as Napster did. Not everyone had a reason to socialize online but everyone loved free music.
I remember a friend of mine coming to _me_ telling me about Napster. He was definitely a lot more socially adept than me and I knew he didn’t hang out on computers much so it was quite the shock that he knew about this thing that, by all accounts, was quite nerdy.
Re: Napster sparked a file-sharing revolution 25 years ago
#145Napster 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…
> Ah 56k internet, what fun. Unless you were young and on a college/university campus where your dorm room probably had Ethernet jacks.
>> Ah 56k internet, what fun.
> your dorm room probably had Ethernet jacks.
One 64k T1 channel, so 14% more fun.
Okay to be fair the modem was probably averaging closer to 32k so double the fun.
Re: Napster sparked a file-sharing revolution 25 years ago
#146Napster 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.
We had rural phone lines with lots of noise. I think I got 3kB a sec max on those things even with 56k.
Re: Napster sparked a file-sharing revolution 25 years ago
#147Napster may have started the file sharing revolution. But the exciting part for me was Gnutella and later Bittorrent, peer-to-peer technology in general, and the realization that we could use technology to liberate ourselves. Needless to say, I was young and naïve. That spirit is long dead, and the only remnants are crypto currencies and the community around them, which has tossed all lofty ideals in favor of blind greed.
Re: Napster sparked a file-sharing revolution 25 years ago
#148Earlier 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.
Indeed. Many of these pirates are the most devoted fans of the music they store and distribute. They go to gigs, buy merchandise and vinyl editions, and otherwise support the artists directly. In contrast companies like Spotify don’t care about the music at all. They would just as well sell you white noise if it would somehow give them the slightest improvement in growth or margins. Daniel Ek, CEO of Spotify, regular…
For indie artists, the vinyl release frequently comes with a download code for a digital version. Some bands even include lossless versions.
Re: Napster sparked a file-sharing revolution 25 years ago
#149Earlier 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 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. Yeah, nah. WhatCD’s full catalogue has never been recovered.
But the successors still have stuff iTunes don't have, and there's even new uploads of old releases that What didn't have ;)
Re: Napster sparked a file-sharing revolution 25 years ago
#150Napster 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…
Quality? I can rarely find FLAC files.
Private trackers are great for FLAC files.