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On Napster, record companies

Started by elendil67 Nov 6, 2002 at 8:59 PM 30 replies 1.3k views

Original Post

Nov 6, 2002 at 8:59 PM

I'm sorry if you guys have heard about this quite a lot already, and I'd like to remind Michalson that this is not, in nature, a flame war. Note that even though I say Napster, I mean Napster, Morpheus, Gnutella, KaZaA Lite, etc. ------------------------------- I will admit that before Napster was released, I was not an avid music listener. I have trouble thinking of the bands that I enjoyed, or even the CDs that I have owned. I was then-and I am now-a computer geek. I did not have much regard for music. However, my view has been wholly changed in the past year or two. When Napster came out, I did not know too much about computers. I did not understand the fact that Napster had fundamentally changed the architecture of the internet-I just saw it as a way to get free music. Even with this advantage, I had taken it little. I think that the only band I have listened to until recently was the Beastie Boys. On the contrary, in the past year or so, I have started to really listen to this music. I discovered music that I would never had discovered if my main source of music was the radio: Bands such as the Beastie Boys, Run DMC, The Who, the Beatles, Joan Jett & the Blackhearts, and many more have captivated me. I have downloaded music like a madman in the past few months. Nothing could stop my thirst for these great songs. I gradually started to take more of an interest in this peer-to-peer technology that changed the way we look at things. If I recall correctly, I remember seeing in a Wired not too long ago an article about how the makers of Napster created a peer-to-peer plug-in for Outlook Express to help stop spam. But then it hit me: my music sounded dry and grainy: the measly 128kb/s mp3 files that I was downloading sounded bad. I have recently started to download the wav file wherever possible and converted them into 500kb/s ogg vorbis files, but it is very difficult to do this, as a wav file of a song is often as large as the corresponding music video would be for it. I ripped my Beastie Boys CD to 500kb/s ogg vorbis files, which took me all of 20 minutes. I thought to myself: would it not be great if I could just get all of my music this way? I would have a lot of songs, each one would be perfect quality, it would not be a hassle to get them, and it would be legal, too. The only downside is that I have to pay a small fee for a CD, which unfortunately is rather large for me-I am not sitting on a stackload of money or anything. I am going to buy CDs of all my favorites soon, probably buy a stereo-I used to use my computer-and rip some files to 500kb/s ogg vorbis files to give back to the Napster community. My question is: what are the record companies making so much fuss about? Even though it takes away from their potential market at a birds-eye view, it indirectly benefits them. Do they not realize that even if you have a fast internet connection, many downloads will be extremely slow, songs will sound dry, and it is very hard to get full albums? Napster indirectly affects them because it lets people sample different kinds of music, makes them more interested in music in general, and a lot of the penalties of Napster are compensated for in CDs. ------------------- The saddest part about Microsoft bashing is that it's all true. [edited by - elendil67 on November 6, 2002 10:02:55 PM]

DarkHamster

Nov 6, 2002 at 9:08 PM

I agree with everything you said -- in fact studies show that people who share music with peer to peer networks are on average 10 times more likely to buy CDs in the store. Now for the off topic part: this was on the gamedev news section a while back.... Napster was bought by a porn company; it is no longer the peaceful music sharing software you know... (actually I dont think its anything right now, but the company has plans nonetheless)

elendil67

Nov 6, 2002 at 9:26 PM

Hehe. I realize that. That kinda sucks, becuase now we''re left with spyware harborers...

Hase

Nov 7, 2002 at 3:39 AM

The thing that puts me off buying many records now are the crazy copy protection policies... BMG has just announced that all their cds will be shipped copy-protected... making them useless for any PC, car radio or high-end stereo.
And quite frankly, I don´t see why I should shell out that much money for a product which to all likelyhood I will not be able to use properly. I have mp3 rips of most of the CDs I own, not because I am a rabid filesharer, but because it is much more convienient, as well as the fact that the dvd drive is often occupied.

Le0

Nov 7, 2002 at 6:07 AM

i agree also, i think its a lot better listening music on the comp, my hifi sux too so thats maybe why

but i like the way i can do anything listening to music and i dont need to change CD etc..

"The bible is probably the most genocidal book ever written!" Noam Chomsky

elendil67

Nov 7, 2002 at 7:30 PM

I wish I were in college. I would buy some good CDs, a quiet fan and a big heatsink, and I would rip them all to 500kb/s ogg vorbis. Then I would leave my computer on 24/7 and serve files to others on me T3. I would also host me website with great tutorials on it. Without college, people would get probably 56k speeds from me. I also want to buy myself a minidisc player, they sound pretty cool. Anyone have one? Are they good? Also, just wondering, but how do cd players play mp3 files? Is all mp3 does is reduce the number of bits, specifically the ones that is impossible for the human ear to hear, no encoding or anything? Would this work with ogg vorbis? I''m trying to see if ogg vorbis would work on an mp3 player, a stereo, or a minidisc player.

Zorak

Nov 7, 2002 at 7:36 PM

The CD sales has risen in sweden the past year. Even though the recordcompanies constantly whine about mp3''s here. So yes, you are right. They should shuddit.

- Zorak - Neat Fella.

Mithrandir

Nov 7, 2002 at 7:44 PM

interesting statistic:

this is the first year that CD sales have fallen since Napter was released in 1998.

This is the first year the stock market, the value of the dollar, and overall economy of the united states has fallen since 1998.

coincidence?

Conner McCloud

Nov 7, 2002 at 8:21 PM

quote:
Original post by Mithrandir
coincidence?

No. If the economy turns south, people purchase fewer luxury items. Like CDs.

CM

clrscr

Nov 7, 2002 at 9:17 PM

I think that was the point he was trying to make

-----------------------------
Anything worth doing is worth doing for money

elendil67

Nov 7, 2002 at 9:58 PM

How stupid are those people at the RIAA anyway? From what I have heard in my newly-recieved free edition of CPU (BTW, anyone have any comments on how good/bad this is? I''m trying to decide between CPU and PC World) They are currently considering hosting bogus music files that are simply megabytes of nothing. I find this one of the stupidest things I have ever seen.

For someone who the least bit knows what they are doing, these should be simple to spot. I am sure that the randomly-generated names will be easy to spot, and if the majority of music on your search field, for say the song "Let it Be", is 3.26 megabytes, a 4 megabyte file will look out of place. Since the RIAA probably has fast servers, it won''t take long for someone with half of a brain to start playing the first three seconds that they have downloaded, and if it is bogus, just cancel it.

Also, trying to subdue networks like this is just a bad tactic. I am predicting that maybe some kind of sub-networks will show up. Maybe they will be more organized, and will be networks for only a certain subdivision of file sharing. I''m still fleshing out the details, so it may sound kind of wierd.

Mithrandir

Nov 7, 2002 at 10:22 PM

The funny thing about the dummy files is that they cannot possibly reach the kind of saturation they want;

on a p2p network, usually the highest quality songs get passed around quite quickly; if someone downloads a junk song... they delete it...

So you''ve got, what, 10 RIAA servers sending out phony songs... and... 100000 other servers with the real songs? I can think of tons of better things the RIAA could be doing with their money (you know, like giving some of it to the artists for once... *ba-zing*)

seanw

Nov 8, 2002 at 4:02 AM

To be fair to the record companies, what you are doing is illegal. The law says that it is wrong to do so and yet people still trying to justify it.

It''s only a matter of time until more people have the facilities to download music and the quality, availability and the ease of downloading full albuumns increases. Also, I''ve never seen any convincing reports about how facilities like Napster increase CD sales. I think they''ve got a right to be worried that their property is being stolen.

elendil67

Nov 22, 2002 at 3:02 PM

When I gave more thought to it, if P2P spamming becomes common, then there would be an easy way around that. Rating. Not that integrity rating stuff on Kazaa. I mean something like:

Excellent
Good
Poor
Abysmal

The difference is that if you download a file through the network, the rating would come along with the file. If there were enough Abysmal ratings to a file, it would be cut off from the shared files. It would also be a good way to filter searches.

Michalson

Nov 22, 2002 at 4:03 PM

First I would like to say that I do not agree with any vigilante actions (I am very strongly opposed to it). I will also say that I do not find anything wrong with any technology that has fair use (for instance mp3 is certainly not evil as some at the RIAA think, it is a simply a format that is sometimes used for criminal purposes, just like a crowbar could be used for bad things). However it is very obvious that P2P networks are being used for piracy and not much else save the free distribution of porn (which is likely stolen as well). Any files that don''t need to be hidden from the authorities are far better served on the web, where there is at least some trust as to what the file is and who it is from. P2P networks are already the best place to distribute trojans and other bad data. The solution I think would best work for both the copyright holders (RIAA) and internet users is to simply make it as inconvenient as possible to download copyright material. To do this all the RIAA needs to do is start devoting some networks to spoofing copyright files on P2P networks. Now the important thing here is that there are no viri, no trojans or other attempts to "punish" people trying to download copyright material. The only thing that happens to little Johnny criminal is that their time is wasted downloading a bogus file. I would suspect that when it requires effort (as it did when people pirated by copying tapes and records) that large scale piracy will be significantly reduced, as anonymous pirating becomes far more effort than it''s worth.

quote:
Original post by elendil67
How stupid are those people at the RIAA anyway? From what I have heard in my newly-recieved free edition of CPU (BTW, anyone have any comments on how good/bad this is? I''m trying to decide between CPU and PC World) They are currently considering hosting bogus music files that are simply megabytes of nothing. I find this one of the stupidest things I have ever seen.

For someone who the least bit knows what they are doing, these should be simple to spot. I am sure that the randomly-generated names will be easy to spot, and if the majority of music on your search field, for say the song "Let it Be", is 3.26 megabytes, a 4 megabyte file will look out of place. Since the RIAA probably has fast servers, it won''t take long for someone with half of a brain to start playing the first three seconds that they have downloaded, and if it is bogus, just cancel it.

Why would they randomly assign sizes? There are already many free databases on the internet that list the file details for ripped mp3s. They could also browse the P2P networks themselves. They would locate a real file, download it, then replace everything after the first 30 seconds with garbage (or a message from the artist telling them to buy the real thing) and upload it to 20 of their servers. It is also a trivial matter to cap download speed (many sites do it already to control bandwidth use). Just set it slightly higher than the threshold for people to look for a faster file (ie at 8k/s people would go looking for another copy).

quote:
Original post by elendil67
When I gave more thought to it, if P2P spamming becomes common, then there would be an easy way around that. Rating. Not that integrity rating stuff on Kazaa. I mean something like:

Excellent
Good
Poor
Abysmal

The difference is that if you download a file through the network, the rating would come along with the file. If there were enough Abysmal ratings to a file, it would be cut off from the shared files. It would also be a good way to filter searches.

This could easily be overcome. With the large networks at their disposal they could easily spoof good ratings for their files, and bad ratings for the real ones. Since the majority of P2P downloaders are leaches (don''t upload anything) it would be next to impossible to create any kind of "karma" system to combat this, it would easy for a single RIAA network to spoof itself as thousands of leachers.

Michalson

Nov 22, 2002 at 4:18 PM

quote:
Original post by Mithrandir
The funny thing about the dummy files is that they cannot possibly reach the kind of saturation they want;

on a p2p network, usually the highest quality songs get passed around quite quickly; if someone downloads a junk song... they delete it...

So you''ve got, what, 10 RIAA servers sending out phony songs... and... 100000 other servers with the real songs? I can think of tons of better things the RIAA could be doing with their money (you know, like giving some of it to the artists for once... *ba-zing*)

There aren''t 100000 servers, the vast majority of nodes of the P2P networks are 0 file leaches looking for pirated music. Most of the files are concentrated in places where bandwidth is plentiful and free (largely university dorms and servers).

elendil67

Nov 23, 2002 at 10:56 AM

Hehe, I''m not going to quote your first post Michalson, because of that crazy nested quote stuff. But I guess I should do this:

Reply to Michalson

I realize now that, yes, they could do that with the file sizes and the first thirty seconds of a song. But about the rating system: I don''t know if you have heard about this or not, but the makers of Napster made a peer-to-peer plug-in for Outlook Express to help stop spam.

If you have the plug-in and you get spam, you report that peice of spam. Now, just because you report a peice of e-mail, doesn''t mean it will get blocked. You have a rating, and the more you vote with the majority on what is spam and what is not, the higher your rating will go. The higher your rating is, the more influential you are.

I am pretty sure this would stop the RIAA, if this were implemented with songs. If the RIAA had 1,000 different log-ins, and each reported a song that should not be shared anymore becuase it is a fake, when it actually is the real thing, and vote for their own fakes as the real thing, now that would reek havoc on the peer-to-peer community. But maybe the users would out-vote them.

In order to out-vote them, maybe after you listen to a song or watch a video you are required to vote on it. That would be a bit of a hastle, but I think it would work for the best of the peer-to-peer community. What do you think?

[code matrix]

tuita

Nov 24, 2002 at 12:59 AM

quote:

What are the record companies making so much fuss about?

They''re fussing because people are stealing their products. But for once, people should stop using the bulls**t I''m against the Record Companies excuses and think about the bands themselves and how they are suffering because of this.

Here is an example. In Australia, we had a young group by the name of Sunk Loto. This group found that they''re songs were amongst the most highly downloaded on Napster, yet, they''re album sales were pitiful.
Now this was not a band that has already made millions of dollars. They were young kids trying to make a living.
You notice that the only bands that supported Napster were those that had already made their fortune, and those whose music was so extremely alternative (i.e. crap) that no-one bought it (or even downloaded it for that matter) anyway.

How would the people here feel if they put so much time and effort into developing a commercial game, only to find that everyone obtains copies of it from a Warez site rather than buying it?

aegrimonia

Nov 24, 2002 at 3:12 AM

The fact of the matter is, bands don''t make all that much money off of record sales... Bands make most of their money from touring.. which isn''t affected by P2P in the least...

I don''t remember the exact numbers, but A band''s take per CD sale was counted in Pennies.

superpig

Nov 24, 2002 at 10:53 AM

quote:
Original post by aegrimonia
The fact of the matter is, bands don''t make all that much money off of record sales... Bands make most of their money from touring.. which isn''t affected by P2P in the least...

I don''t remember the exact numbers, but A band''s take per CD sale was counted in Pennies.

That''s a point. P2P is free publicity...

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