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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

#201

Post by bawolff »

coretx wrote: post #182
bawolff wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with current generation DHT? They work. They are secure (depending on how you define that). They are reliable. Why would we want to replace them?

Anyone with mediocre skills can take it down; ( And more ) that's the problem. I'd rather not mention the specifics because that might give people ideas but they can be found in academic papers.

Not discussing security vulnerabilities helps attackers and hinders defenders.

The obvious question here is - if its so easy, why hasn't anyone done so? When was the last time bit torrent's DHT went down? As far as i know never.

It should be noted that current generation DHTs aren't the same as the original and do have some mitigations from certain attacks.

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

#202

Post by bigfatfrock »

pavlov wrote: post #83
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.

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…

Spotify is a prime example of an amazing service (yet still no FLAC equivalent) offering with a highly developed customer base ruined by the love of money.

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

#203

Post by lotsofpulp »

hinkley wrote: post #95
luuurker wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now there's Taylor Swift and... I can't name anyone else. Ariana Grande, Adele, Billie Eilish, etc. I believe someone called Kendrick Lamar has been popular recently? Are they rock stars? No, people tastes are a bit different now, but they are stars and they are rich. You not knowing them is a different problem.

Even Lily Allen is worth $4 mill and I only know - and own - one of her songs.

How is someone’s “net worth” determined, especially someone with no significant publicly traded, liquid assets whose ownership is public information?

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

#205

Post by shepherdjerred »

wavewrangler wrote: post #199
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…

[flagged]

> How can it be better than the OFFICIAL version!? How nexactly is that possible?

Some content, e.g. Netlfix, has DRM that limits the quality that you can view in certain browsers/operating systems.

As another example, a DVD/blu-ray sources are often significantly higher quality than what streaming services offer, so if you have a choice to watch some movie on Netflix or a pirated blu-ray copy, the pirated copy will often be higher quality than Netlify while being more convenient than blu-ray.

It in unclear though how you could possibly get higher quality than the best quality that the source offers.

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

#206

Post by Forbo »

sargun wrote: post #153
radley wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

My device is perfectly capable of playing 4K media, but Netflix has decided that Linux doesn't deserve it.

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

#207

Post by neilv »

0xcde4c3db wrote: post #159
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…

Yep, that's why I said "helped". Obviously software piracy was a problem in some corners. And we knew the kinds of moves that were being made (not just on this, but on things like surveillance and censorship). Then comes things like Napster, serving up on a silver platter a high-profile pretext -- and increased legitimate need that couldn't be ignored.

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

#208

Post by a1o »

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…

About quality, it's weird it doesn't matter how much bandwidth I seem to have (currently with 1Gbps fiber), the streaming keeps the quality varying down without explanation. If I just pirate the highest quality in less than five minutes I can download the best version of a movie at around 20 GB and watch it in the best quality from start to end without any degradation. Why can't the paid streaming services deliver at the same quality as the pirates?

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

#209

Post by lotsofpulp »

hinkley wrote: post #92
xhkkffbf wrote: post #40

And now rock stars who were once as rich as, well, rock stars, are largely forced to get by on a pittance from either Spotify or YouTube. It used to be that there were hundreds of stars getting rich. Now there's Taylor Swift and... I can't name anyone else. But, hey, the quasi-communists who thought they were somehow liberating the music from the evil rich people ended up dragging all of the music industry down into…

David Bowie was a billionaire when he died. It’s true that in the top 50 richest musicians, most of them were already rock gods before Napster. But they all are rock gods. But then you have people like Swift, Robbie Williams, Dave Matthews and Dave Grohl, most of which were on the cusp. But Grohl for instance worked hard for more than a decade after Nirvana broke up, and I would be very surprised if a lot of his mone…

>Commentary on one of those net worth sites: the Foo Fighters “have consistently been one of the highest-grossing touring acts in the world for more than two decades.” So yeah.

Data about “net worth”, especially on free clickbait websites, is garbage speculation with no evidence or basis in reality. It’s not like those website makers have any access to someone’s brokerage accounts and list of assets they have title to or the debt they have.

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

#210

Post by coretx »

bawolff wrote: post #201
coretx wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone with mediocre skills can take it down; ( And more ) that's the problem. I'd rather not mention the specifics because that might give people ideas but they can be found in academic papers.

Not discussing security vulnerabilities helps attackers and hinders defenders. The obvious question here is - if its so easy, why hasn't anyone done so? When was the last time bit torrent's DHT went down? As far as i know never. It should be noted that current generation DHTs aren't the same as the original and do have some mitigations from certain attacks.

Sybil attacks if i'm not mistaken ;-)
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