Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Napster sparked a file-sharing revolution 25 years ago

torrentfreak.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 350 posts

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

#71

Post by temporarely »

ethbr1 wrote: post #46
jl6 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I would think symmetric bandwidth is baked into switched circuit networks by definition.

A bit earlier than 2000 /g https://lineofsightgroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/phon...

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

#72

Post by steve1977 »

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.

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

#73

Post by bloopernova »

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... !

I've definitely discovered less new artists as I've aged. I'm near 50 now and last year only added Röyksopp, and Sleaford Mods, to my regular listening playlist. But I'm also still listening to new stuff by many artists like Aesop Rock, Orbital, and The Chemical Brothers.

I don't follow radio or popular music at all. However if I hear something I like, the supercomputer in my pocket tells me just what it is so I can discover new music that way.

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

#74

Post by skydhash »

ethbr1 wrote: post #51
echelon wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'd phrase it as: pop art and culture have been optimizing themselves against the human psyche for so long (much longer than engineering and law and planning) that we have a pretty firm bead on what an every-person will like (mathematically-speaking). There's tons of avant garde art, but on average it's less popular (because that's not what it's optimized for). I wouldn't be surprised if GenAI commoditizes pop art, b…

By its nature, pop art and culture reduce itself to the common expectations of everyone. And as such has only few knobs to tune. But humans can appreciate a wide range of qualities and the more you play on these dimensions, the more reduced the people that will "get" it and appreciate it.

GenAI can be great for pop art, but try to create something unique to you or another person, and it will fail miserably.

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

#75

Post by QuarterReptile »

39896880 wrote: post #53
sumedh wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steve Jobs was able to use their fear to sign up most publishers on itunes.

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

Mostly, yeah. My dad, brothers, and I (all one household) had probably 200 CDs between us that we ripped and listened to repeatedly. Paid once per person? Doubtful, but yes, we paid.

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

#76

Post by bloopernova »

mmh0000 wrote: post #22
im3w1l wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

You wanna LAN party in the old people's home? Although I was better at Unreal Tournament, I like the weapons more.

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

#77

Post by steve1977 »

bdowling wrote: post #33
jjtheblunt wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What rights did you used to have?

We used to have the right to copy whatever we wanted and be accountable to no one. That all went away in 1790 when the U.S. government passed the first Copyright Act. https://www.copyright.gov/timeline/timeline_18th_century.htm...

And what exactly would you have copied with your rights in, say, the year 1789? And how would you have done that?

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

#78

Post by neilv »

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 for free.

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

#80

Post by romanhn »

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.
Post reply on HN