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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

#151

Post by EvanAnderson »

WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #145
throw0101c wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> One 64k T1 channel, so 14% more fun.

A ton less latency, though. T1 connectivity still felt snappy for web browsing long after cable modems pushed up average available bandwidth because the latency was so much better.

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

#152

Post by localfirst »

echelon wrote: post #12

> According to the RIAA’s former CEO, Hilary Rosen, a few months after Napster’s release, the music industry shifted into full panic mode. In February 2000, all major label executives discussed the threat during an RIAA board meeting at the Four Seasons Hotel in Los Angeles. > “I will never forget this day. All of the heads of the labels, literally the titans of the music business, were in that room. I had somebody w…

I was reading parents comment with a bit of cynicism

until I tried suno and I believe we are going to see significant garnishing of wages in creative field

https://suno.com/song/dc950e10-6bbe-4649-8cdb-7a4d81762aae

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

#153

Post by sargun »

radley wrote: post #112
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.

> 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.

Subscription tier and device. If your device isn’t capable of playback, there’s no way to get the content.

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

#154

Post by satvikpendem »

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.

Yep, that is why I pirate as well, movies and shows are simply lower quality when streaming than via direct downloads. Plus, I can play them with my own media player and use software like SmoothVideoProject to interpolate the frame rate and use upscalers for sub-4k content.

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

#155

Post by rickdicker »

listenallyall wrote: post #143
pavlov wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

[flagged]

Presumably if you're pirating music you aren't "completely detached" from the music - otherwise why would you do it?

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

#156

Post by Cockbrand »

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.

My personal favorite was Audiogalaxy, which had a fairly decent recommendation engine. I discovered a lot of excellent music (which I subsequently bought) through this.

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

#157

Post by CyberDildonics »

localfirst wrote: post #152
echelon wrote: post #12

> According to the RIAA’s former CEO, Hilary Rosen, a few months after Napster’s release, the music industry shifted into full panic mode. In February 2000, all major label executives discussed the threat during an RIAA board meeting at the Four Seasons Hotel in Los Angeles. > “I will never forget this day. All of the heads of the labels, literally the titans of the music business, were in that room. I had somebody w…

I was reading parents comment with a bit of cynicism until I tried suno and I believe we are going to see significant garnishing of wages in creative field https://suno.com/song/dc950e10-6bbe-4649-8cdb-7a4d81762aae

I believe we are going to see significant garnishing of wages in creative field

A wage garnishment is any legal or equitable procedure through which some portion of a person's earnings is required to be withheld for the payment of a debt. Most garnishments are made by court order.

You think because of auto generated music there are going to be court orders to take money out of the paychecks of people in 'creative fields'?

Garnish wages means taking money out of what someone has already earned.

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

#158

Post by mmh0000 »

steve1977 wrote: post #72
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…

> And they’re so good at it, that the pirated product is usually substantially better than the official version How so, when most of these products are digital to begin with? If you have the quality of the studio master, then there’s nothing to improve.

Well. No unskippable ads for shows I don’t care about.

No FBI warnings.

But, I think theoatmeal sums it up best:

https://theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones

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

#159

Post by 0xcde4c3db »

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…

An argument could be made that Napster contributed to the acceleration of that trend, but it was well underway already. The Software Publishers Association was coordinating raids of businesses for pirated software at least as far back as 1991. The WIPO Copyright Treaty was ratified in 1996, and the DMCA was passed in 1998 to implement it. CSS was introduced with DVD in 1996. United States v. LaMacchia was decided in 1994, leading to the passage of the NET Act in 1997. The first versions of SecuROM and SafeDisc were released in 1998. The same year, the Secure Digital Music Initiative was formed.

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

#160

Post by Fezzik »

miah_ wrote: post #91
steve1977 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And they’re so good at it, that the pirated product is usually substantially better than the official version How so, when most of these products are digital to begin with? If you have the quality of the studio master, then there’s nothing to improve.

There isn't always a studio behind a videos release. Sometimes the only remaining copy of a show is found in somebodies VHS collection and its filled with static and audio pops. These often get a standard 'as-is' release and then somebody in the community will clean it up, upscale the video, and fix the audio for a 'proper' release. Same goes for audio, sometimes its a old bootleg tape of a show that gets digitized a…

For a great example of fan edits, compare Harmey’s Despecialized Editions of Episodes 4, 5, and 6 to the butchered final copies that George tried to make be the only available versions; the Despecialized versions are astonishingly superior in content and audio/video quality.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmy%27s_Despecialized_Edit...

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