Re: Napster

["Michael LaMeyer" <mlameyer@hotmail.com>]

*spider sense is tingling*

Unfortunately, Napster is just the first baby steps of a phenomenon that 
is 
not going to go away, and is going to dominate eventually - in 2 years, 5 
years, whatever.  As much as I abhor the thought of artists of any ilk not 
getting the credit/profit they deserve (graphics designers are feeling the 
pain too, for other reasons), it's the wonderful Internet we're using 
right 
now, coupled with increasing bandwidth and new creative implementations of 
distributed computing ideas, that is making things like this possible.

Like any tool, it's not so much the tool that is good/bad (morally), but 
the 
use the tool is put to.  Stuff like this is going to come out of the 
woodwork that is going to make older physical distribution and profit 
models 
obsolete.  I'm sorry, I don't think we can avoid it or stop it, we just 
have 
to adapt to it.  And if Napster scares you, forget it, the cat's way out 
of 
the bag and it's almost obsolete anyway.

Right now, napster requires a central server to index all of the files the 
various hosts have that are attached to it.  These servers can be shut 
down, 
or filter the content they index (which can be circumvented through simple 
file renaming, but anyway).  Napster the company can be sued and shut 
down.  
But what about Gnutella?  This is an open source (i.e. there's no one to 
sue) and completely client based distributed file sharing application (not 
just mp3's, any file).  Unless you want some authoritive entity to attempt 
to monitor all file transfers on the Internet (yeah, right), what are you 
going to do?  Software like Gnutella is so simple to design and implement, 
stuff like this is only going to proliferate.  And there's going to 
eventually be encryption, multiple paths blah, blah, blah.  And there's 
plenty of practical, respectable uses for software of this kind apart from 
music distribution (which is only a subset of the types of files that 
could 
be shared).  Do you think anyone can stop progress like this?  All you 
need 
are fat pipes and some common standards and *WHAM* digital media 
everywhere.

The answer is not going to be to attempt to preserve the decades old 
distributing and profit models that many of us might be comfortable with.  
It's going to be to learn and adapt to the new possiblities that no one is 
going to be able to derail through legislation or lawsuit.

Michael


----- Original Message -----
From: "steve lawson" <steve@steve-lawson.co.uk>
To: <Loopers-Delight@annihilist.com>
Sent: Wednesday, April 26, 2000 11:01 AM
Subject: Re: Napster


> >>>A bit off topic, but I just got Napster from my friend and it is
>spectacular!!  Basically, Napster is a program which establishes a network
>of mp3 users.  Since everyone is sharing, you can get pretty much 
>anything!
>Completely free, no hassles, search by artist.  It is simply amazing.<<<
>
>Hey, save yourself the bother - just break into people's houses and steal
>their CDs - amounts to the same thing.
>
>If napster catches on, you can say goodbye to anyone making any money out 
>of
>recording music, and therefor having any money to invest in getting 
>better..
>
>thanks very much for hammering another nail into the coffin of the
>collective careers of all the world's musicians.
>
>Steve
>
>
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