A Quarter Century on the High Seas
June 1, 2024 9:59 PM Subscribe
At the end of the nineties, technology and the Internet were a playground for young engineers and ‘hackers’. Some of them regularly gathered in the w00w00 IRC chatroom on the EFnet network. This tech-think-tank had many notable members, including WhatsApp founder Jan Koum and Shawn Fanning, who logged on with the nickname Napster. In 1998, 17-year-old Fanning shared an idea with the group. ‘Napster’ wanted to create a network of computers that could share files with each other. More specifically, a central music database that everyone in the world could access. This idea never left the mind of the young developer. Fanning stopped going to school and flanked by his friend Sean Parker, devoted the following months to making his vision a reality. That moment came on June 1, 1999, when the first public release of Napster was released online. Soon after, the software went viral.Napster Sparked a File-Sharing Revolution 25 Years Ago [TorrentFreak]
Cordcutting.com: The State of Content Piracy in 2024
As streaming services raise prices and crack down on password sharing, one in three Americans say they’ve pirated TV or movies in the past year.Billboard: Spotify’s Estimated $150M Songwriter Royalty Cuts: Music Industry Reactions
Wired: Musi Won Over Millions. Is the Free Music Streaming App Too Good to Be True?
The app’s fan base trends young, and it’s popular among high schoolers. In one classroom of sophomores that WIRED surveyed at a Chicago high school, 80 percent used it to stream music. When asked why they liked it, they noted it’s free, doesn’t interrupt the music to play ads as Spotify’s free tier does, and has a broad catalog. The app offers an alternative to the subscription-dominated world of streaming entertainment, one especially appealing to people too young for full-time jobs.
Yet while Musi has many trappings of a startup success story, a closer look raises questions about its unusual business model, which the company says involves sourcing music from Google’s YouTube. Fans on social media have often asked questions like: “Is Musi legal?” and “What is the catch?” And the legality of Musi is now being questioned by record labels and music industry groups, WIRED has learned, over whether it has the rights to distribute and monetize the music users stream on its platform. Musi did not respond to requests for comment.
a File-Sharing Revolution
it was always going to happen
posted by philip-random at 11:12 PM on June 1
it was always going to happen
posted by philip-random at 11:12 PM on June 1
my mp3 story from 25 years ago was discovering Tsutaya after living in Tokyo for a few years.
Unlike the US, in Japan it was legal to rent CDs for a weekend or by the week. I felt like a total criminal carrying 40 of my most-wanted CDs out of the store that week for a 320mbit ripping session to CDRs on my Mac, for something like $1 per CD plus cost of the CDR blanks.
When returning the CDs I joked with the desk staff that they should be selling CDR blanks to go along with the cassette tapes at the register.
posted by torokunai at 11:33 PM on June 1 [3 favorites]
Unlike the US, in Japan it was legal to rent CDs for a weekend or by the week. I felt like a total criminal carrying 40 of my most-wanted CDs out of the store that week for a 320mbit ripping session to CDRs on my Mac, for something like $1 per CD plus cost of the CDR blanks.
When returning the CDs I joked with the desk staff that they should be selling CDR blanks to go along with the cassette tapes at the register.
posted by torokunai at 11:33 PM on June 1 [3 favorites]
Another legacy of Shawn Manning, according to Ed Zitron on his podcast Better Offline, is that it's due to his actions that Mark Zuckerberg controls three out of five board seats of Facebook, making him unfireable despite ridiculous decisions like costly bets on a virtual reality metaverse.
posted by JHarris at 2:10 AM on June 2 [2 favorites]
posted by JHarris at 2:10 AM on June 2 [2 favorites]
torokunai, thanks for that thread! borrowing cds from the library was mentioned by a couple people thereon. that's my napster.
unfortunately, much hardware doesn't ship with an integrated cd/dvd player lately. the one device i have that still has the player function is "vintage" in the company's parlance (a technical term of art, meaning they've stopped supporting repair), so i use it much less heavily than previously; mostly for dvds. cds are also less available at libraries these days, either because they're less regularly manufactured or libraries don't have the budget.
for new music, i stream bandcamp. seems most fair to musicians
posted by HearHere at 2:18 AM on June 2 [5 favorites]
unfortunately, much hardware doesn't ship with an integrated cd/dvd player lately. the one device i have that still has the player function is "vintage" in the company's parlance (a technical term of art, meaning they've stopped supporting repair), so i use it much less heavily than previously; mostly for dvds. cds are also less available at libraries these days, either because they're less regularly manufactured or libraries don't have the budget.
for new music, i stream bandcamp. seems most fair to musicians
posted by HearHere at 2:18 AM on June 2 [5 favorites]
25 years! Damn I feel old. But no thread on Napster is complete without James Hetfield proclaiming that “Napster bad.”
posted by TedW at 5:22 AM on June 2 [2 favorites]
posted by TedW at 5:22 AM on June 2 [2 favorites]
I certainly have bought a shit-ton more music over the years than I would have in absence of Napster. So many genres and artists I’d never heard of. Just being able to sample them really broadened my tastes, and (as I went from poor-ass grad student to gainfully employed adult) that translated into me buying copies of albums that these groups released in the 25 years since.
I mean I’m one data point, but still
posted by caution live frogs at 6:25 AM on June 2 [6 favorites]
I mean I’m one data point, but still
posted by caution live frogs at 6:25 AM on June 2 [6 favorites]
On some level Napster turned a world of ratioed FTP sites into free-for-alls, by removing the gatekeeping of having to have something the site owner wanted before you could pull anything off the site. There was a plethora of music out there for free prior to Napster but the access was difficult, the search was frustrating, and you needed a seed pool of rare stuff to have any chance of trading for what you were seeking.
posted by caution live frogs at 6:28 AM on June 2 [1 favorite]
posted by caution live frogs at 6:28 AM on June 2 [1 favorite]
I remember when I moved into the dorms at my university in 1999. You would connect to the campus-wide LAN by ethernet, and you could share folders of whatever you wanted. People had folders full of their entire music collections and there were movies available as well. There was so much stuff shared that we had no use for Napster. Most people's web connections were too slow to download movie rips in 1999 but they were easy to get over the LAN. Initially, you had to just browse through folders and hope you came across something cool until a programming student wrote a search application. The university was either unaware or totally apathetic for a couple years--it was a free-for-all until they finally shut it down.
posted by TrialByMedia at 6:56 AM on June 2 [3 favorites]
posted by TrialByMedia at 6:56 AM on June 2 [3 favorites]
I wouldn't rely on that wired article for the nitty gritty on Musi's legality. They conflate timeshifting with piracy.
>many popular piracy sites allow people to download the audio from YouTube.
It is not "piracy" to download content from YouTube. Time shifting is a legal activity, as far as the US Supreme court is concerned.
posted by mrgoldenbrown at 7:07 AM on June 2 [2 favorites]
>many popular piracy sites allow people to download the audio from YouTube.
It is not "piracy" to download content from YouTube. Time shifting is a legal activity, as far as the US Supreme court is concerned.
posted by mrgoldenbrown at 7:07 AM on June 2 [2 favorites]
Solar was great for a while.
posted by wenestvedt at 10:29 AM on June 2
posted by wenestvedt at 10:29 AM on June 2
One of the bits from Brunching Shuttlecocks that has stuck with me through the decades is An Open Letter From Metallica, remarking on the band's lawsuit against Napster for sharing their music:
By now, you've probably heard our position on Napster: rebelling against authority and not letting anyone tell you what to do is all well and good as long as you're shelling out the headbanger dues. Freelance rebels, on the other hand, have no place in uncivilized society.posted by JHarris at 11:52 AM on June 2 [3 favorites]
We've gotten a lot of criticism over this. What hurts, though, what really hurts is the insinuation that we're just doing this for money. It's not just about the fast cars and the exotic pets and the lawyers with fast cars and exotic pets. All of us would be perfectly happy serving fried food or mopping the floors of adult entertainment establishments except for the fact that we'd be taking jobs from our fans. And that's what this is all about: the fans.
As ever, I'll point out that Napster was a key turning point for public opinion on whether content creators deserve to get paid and the right to decide what can be done with their work. Things Metafilter will generally proclaim they support but then don't actually do in reality. This is a key part of Metafilter's favourite new buzzword - enshitification.
posted by Candleman at 3:50 PM on June 2 [1 favorite]
posted by Candleman at 3:50 PM on June 2 [1 favorite]
Oh you're going to have to explain that one in more detail if you want buy-in.
posted by JHarris at 4:23 PM on June 2 [1 favorite]
posted by JHarris at 4:23 PM on June 2 [1 favorite]
It's pretty simple. The majority of consumers have demonstrated that if they have the ability to not pay the actual production cost of media, they won't, particularly if the person they hurt is an abstract internet concept rather than someone they see in the flesh. As a result, content producers and owners have turned to increasingly shitty ways to try to break even (and the individuals who actually produce the content at the individual level are the primary ones getting screwed over - witness the multiple, multiple articles on how little Spotify et al actually pay the musicians).
I have specific knowledge of media companies, for example. Journalists and media staff, as a whole, don't want listicals ripped off from Reddit and clickbait, spyware style apps that track users and violate their privacy in various ways, invasive video ads, popups, remnant ads, etc. But they're the only thing (barely) keeping the lights on.
Metafilter, on aggregate, will simultaneously bewail "low information voters," the decline of quality journalism, the beloved online sites and magazines that are going under, and so on and brag about refusing to pay for media, adblockers, post links that bypass paywalls, and so on.
Napster played a pretty key role in how the generation the defined how the internet was going to work financially thought of intellectual property rights.
I await your well thought out rebuttal.
posted by Candleman at 5:25 PM on June 2 [6 favorites]
I have specific knowledge of media companies, for example. Journalists and media staff, as a whole, don't want listicals ripped off from Reddit and clickbait, spyware style apps that track users and violate their privacy in various ways, invasive video ads, popups, remnant ads, etc. But they're the only thing (barely) keeping the lights on.
Metafilter, on aggregate, will simultaneously bewail "low information voters," the decline of quality journalism, the beloved online sites and magazines that are going under, and so on and brag about refusing to pay for media, adblockers, post links that bypass paywalls, and so on.
Napster played a pretty key role in how the generation the defined how the internet was going to work financially thought of intellectual property rights.
I await your well thought out rebuttal.
posted by Candleman at 5:25 PM on June 2 [6 favorites]
I'd disagree insofar as you're stretching the definition of the word a bit (which is pretty common at this point). "Enshittification" is meant to call out companies that attract customers with a popular loss-leader business model, then slowly reduce the quality and increase the monetization in order to wring profit out of a userbase that's hooked. Napster and piracy in general feels like the opposite, a utopian anti-capitalist model that's only harmful because it exists in a capitalist system.
posted by Rhaomi at 5:59 PM on June 2 [4 favorites]
posted by Rhaomi at 5:59 PM on June 2 [4 favorites]
Yes, the term has been stretched, particularly on this forum. But my statement was not that Napster was enshitification but played a key part in creating it, specifically creating the expectation that everything online should be free (which would be lovely in a utopian anti-capitalist model but will never happen in our lifetimes (please note I'm a leftie in favor of taxing the rich to create a living wage for everyone)) or priced below the cost of production. Which leads to . . enshitifcation, outside of a few lucky outliers (Doctorow, Palmer) or creators are passionate enough to do it as a hobby.
posted by Candleman at 6:13 PM on June 2 [1 favorite]
posted by Candleman at 6:13 PM on June 2 [1 favorite]
a utopian anti-capitalist model that's only harmful because it exists in a capitalist system.
Until that model is reached, it's parasitism, which is the opposite of utopian.
posted by Candleman at 6:16 PM on June 2 [1 favorite]
Until that model is reached, it's parasitism, which is the opposite of utopian.
posted by Candleman at 6:16 PM on June 2 [1 favorite]
Well Candleman, first off you led with an unnecessarily antagonistic statement. Metafilter is far from a monolith, literally anyone with five bucks can sign up for a membership, and any claims that the site has a unanimously held opinion are simply wrong.
Second, your comment was a non-sequitur. The term enshittification has absolutely nothing to do with whether artists deserve to be paid for their work. And it isn't "Metafilter's" new favorite buzzword, the statement didn't originate here, and actually gets heard far more in other circles. That was what I was asking you to clarify: what does music piracy have to do with enshittification?
Yes, the term has been stretched, particularly on this forum.
It seems to me that you're the one who has stretched it. This isn't at all what Cory Doctorow meant when he coined it.
It's pretty simple. The majority of consumers have demonstrated that if they have the ability to not pay the actual production cost of media, they won't, particularly if the person they hurt is an abstract internet concept rather than someone they see in the flesh.
But, have they? I feel like you're conflating the cases of your standard individual working musicians, and that of the vast exploitive music industry. Downloading an album made by a solo musician working from a self-funded studio without paying them is vastly different from doing so from the latest Conhugeco release. I think a lot of people who might not do the former would have fewer qualms about the latter. But this isn't what enshittification means.
As a result, content producers and owners have turned to increasingly shitty ways to try to break even (and the individuals who actually produce the content at the individual level are the primary ones getting screwed over - witness the multiple, multiple articles on how little Spotify et al actually pay the musicians).
That may be a case of shittiness that isn't enshittification. Spotify's always been that way, it's not a good service that became worse to cut corners and give people who have come to rely upon it a worse and worse experience, it started out bad. In any case, it has nothing to do with piracy, that I can see at least? Whether a small act gets nothing from someone torrenting their work, or literal pennies from Spotify, it seems like it hardly makes a difference?
But my statement was not that Napster was enshitification but played a key part in creating it
This is exactly the kind of thing you should explain, because Napster was 25 years ago, and it's a massive cognitive gap between that and Google and Facebook filling themselves with AI glurge, and all the other understood meanings of enshittification.
Your second comment is all over the place. I don't see what low-information voters or ad blockers have to do with anything about this. You seem to be expecting a rebuttal, but I don't even know what you're getting at to be able to rebut it, or even if I want to. Hence, my request for clarification. What are you going on about? It isn't obvious.
posted by JHarris at 6:30 PM on June 2 [3 favorites]
Second, your comment was a non-sequitur. The term enshittification has absolutely nothing to do with whether artists deserve to be paid for their work. And it isn't "Metafilter's" new favorite buzzword, the statement didn't originate here, and actually gets heard far more in other circles. That was what I was asking you to clarify: what does music piracy have to do with enshittification?
Yes, the term has been stretched, particularly on this forum.
It seems to me that you're the one who has stretched it. This isn't at all what Cory Doctorow meant when he coined it.
It's pretty simple. The majority of consumers have demonstrated that if they have the ability to not pay the actual production cost of media, they won't, particularly if the person they hurt is an abstract internet concept rather than someone they see in the flesh.
But, have they? I feel like you're conflating the cases of your standard individual working musicians, and that of the vast exploitive music industry. Downloading an album made by a solo musician working from a self-funded studio without paying them is vastly different from doing so from the latest Conhugeco release. I think a lot of people who might not do the former would have fewer qualms about the latter. But this isn't what enshittification means.
As a result, content producers and owners have turned to increasingly shitty ways to try to break even (and the individuals who actually produce the content at the individual level are the primary ones getting screwed over - witness the multiple, multiple articles on how little Spotify et al actually pay the musicians).
That may be a case of shittiness that isn't enshittification. Spotify's always been that way, it's not a good service that became worse to cut corners and give people who have come to rely upon it a worse and worse experience, it started out bad. In any case, it has nothing to do with piracy, that I can see at least? Whether a small act gets nothing from someone torrenting their work, or literal pennies from Spotify, it seems like it hardly makes a difference?
But my statement was not that Napster was enshitification but played a key part in creating it
This is exactly the kind of thing you should explain, because Napster was 25 years ago, and it's a massive cognitive gap between that and Google and Facebook filling themselves with AI glurge, and all the other understood meanings of enshittification.
Your second comment is all over the place. I don't see what low-information voters or ad blockers have to do with anything about this. You seem to be expecting a rebuttal, but I don't even know what you're getting at to be able to rebut it, or even if I want to. Hence, my request for clarification. What are you going on about? It isn't obvious.
posted by JHarris at 6:30 PM on June 2 [3 favorites]
Metafilter is far from a monolith, literally anyone with five bucks can sign up for a membership, and any claims that the site has a unanimously held opinion are simply wrong.
Yes, surely my use of clauses such as "in general" or "on aggregate" indicate that I believe Metafilter is a monolith. As such, I'm inclined to treat your statements as in bad faith.
what does music piracy have to do with enshittification
Supra. Clearly laid out several times already.
It seems to me that you're the one who has stretched it.
1. I never claimed that Napster was enshittification, so it seems you're in bad faith again. What I specifically said was about whether content creators should get paid and whether they should have the right to control access to their work.
Let's try a thought experiment on the permission part, shall we?
If I create a poem for myself, should you have the right to break into my house and copy it? Probably not.
If I send it to two of my closest friends via e-mail and ask them not to share it, should they? Probably not.
If I make 10 physical copies and sell them at the local zine store, are you now suggesting that they should become public domain?
What if I put it on Patreon but limit it to my first (non-existent) 100 subscribers. Do your ethics now say that it's A-OK to violate my wishes?
And now let's say that I hit the big time and sell it to Penguin or whoever. Now it's fair game, despite me striking a bargain with them?
At what point does my consent as a creator become irrelevant to you?
2. enjoy, there's plenty of "alternative" uses there. I'm barely active on this site at this point because of, shall we say, certain types of people.
Downloading an album made by a solo musician working from a self-funded studio without paying them is vastly different from doing so from the latest Conhugeco release. I think a lot of people who might not do the former would have fewer qualms about the latter. But this isn't what enshittification means.
1. Never claimed that it did. Show me a quote where I said that's what it means.
2. Having also worked in the music industry (easily verifiable by looking at my Ask answers), the question of "vastly" is more complicated than you make it out to be.
Suppose, for example that there's two albums, both of which cost $50,000 to record (prices have come down with digital technology, but that wasn't out of line for a high quality album in the Napster days). Let's say that Band A paid out of pocket for this and hopes to recoup the money through sales whereas Band B borrowed the money and hopes to pay it back through sales.
You're arguing (Trump style, "a lot of people say") that it's less ethical to not pay Band A than Band B. Which is pretty unethical IMO and, in fact, decreases the amount and quality of content in the world. Poor people shouldn't suffer for having to borrow money to create their art, because if the album doesn't recoup costs, chances are they won't get funded for another one, whereas Band A could scrape up enough money to do as many as they liked).
But that's not the end of the story. The way the music industry worked (for the most part, and again, I have personal experience with this and worked with hundreds of bands during the critical time - did you?) is that if Band B didn't recoup that $50,000, it was OK! They might not be allowed to release more albums under the same name but the debt was forgiven. The balance was that if you got lucky and struck gold, you helped underwrite those forgiven debts.
There was nothing stopping artists from self-funding in the old days, it was just a risk most didn't want to take, and the cost of that bargain was that you'd help out those who didn't make it if you did.
Whether a small act gets nothing from someone torrenting their work, or literal pennies from Spotify, it seems like it hardly makes a difference?
Permission doesn't mean much to you, does it?
I don't see what low-information voters or ad blockers have to do with anything about this.
Online news is one of the long burning carriers of enshitification, along the lines of the Doctorow definition, but a slow burn.
If you look at online news media from 2000 vs 2005 vs 2010 vs 2015 vs 2020 vs now, it's gotten progressively worse with all of the bad things I listed. News/reporting has (with few exceptions) has always been a loss leader - advertising carried the day for decades.
During that time, the quality of reporting declined and the aggressiveness of shitty advertising tactics increased.
The cost of this is that we have more low-information voters because news is harder to get to.
And the proliferation of ad-blockers has decreased what little revenue media has, leading to more enshittification and worse media.
You seem to be expecting a rebuttal
I was hoping for one, but again, you don't seem to be acting good faith and if you are, we're in the territory of a borrowed Heinlein quote. Pity, I'd actually respected you before this.
posted by Candleman at 7:21 PM on June 2 [1 favorite]
Yes, surely my use of clauses such as "in general" or "on aggregate" indicate that I believe Metafilter is a monolith. As such, I'm inclined to treat your statements as in bad faith.
what does music piracy have to do with enshittification
Supra. Clearly laid out several times already.
It seems to me that you're the one who has stretched it.
1. I never claimed that Napster was enshittification, so it seems you're in bad faith again. What I specifically said was about whether content creators should get paid and whether they should have the right to control access to their work.
Let's try a thought experiment on the permission part, shall we?
If I create a poem for myself, should you have the right to break into my house and copy it? Probably not.
If I send it to two of my closest friends via e-mail and ask them not to share it, should they? Probably not.
If I make 10 physical copies and sell them at the local zine store, are you now suggesting that they should become public domain?
What if I put it on Patreon but limit it to my first (non-existent) 100 subscribers. Do your ethics now say that it's A-OK to violate my wishes?
And now let's say that I hit the big time and sell it to Penguin or whoever. Now it's fair game, despite me striking a bargain with them?
At what point does my consent as a creator become irrelevant to you?
2. enjoy, there's plenty of "alternative" uses there. I'm barely active on this site at this point because of, shall we say, certain types of people.
Downloading an album made by a solo musician working from a self-funded studio without paying them is vastly different from doing so from the latest Conhugeco release. I think a lot of people who might not do the former would have fewer qualms about the latter. But this isn't what enshittification means.
1. Never claimed that it did. Show me a quote where I said that's what it means.
2. Having also worked in the music industry (easily verifiable by looking at my Ask answers), the question of "vastly" is more complicated than you make it out to be.
Suppose, for example that there's two albums, both of which cost $50,000 to record (prices have come down with digital technology, but that wasn't out of line for a high quality album in the Napster days). Let's say that Band A paid out of pocket for this and hopes to recoup the money through sales whereas Band B borrowed the money and hopes to pay it back through sales.
You're arguing (Trump style, "a lot of people say") that it's less ethical to not pay Band A than Band B. Which is pretty unethical IMO and, in fact, decreases the amount and quality of content in the world. Poor people shouldn't suffer for having to borrow money to create their art, because if the album doesn't recoup costs, chances are they won't get funded for another one, whereas Band A could scrape up enough money to do as many as they liked).
But that's not the end of the story. The way the music industry worked (for the most part, and again, I have personal experience with this and worked with hundreds of bands during the critical time - did you?) is that if Band B didn't recoup that $50,000, it was OK! They might not be allowed to release more albums under the same name but the debt was forgiven. The balance was that if you got lucky and struck gold, you helped underwrite those forgiven debts.
There was nothing stopping artists from self-funding in the old days, it was just a risk most didn't want to take, and the cost of that bargain was that you'd help out those who didn't make it if you did.
Whether a small act gets nothing from someone torrenting their work, or literal pennies from Spotify, it seems like it hardly makes a difference?
Permission doesn't mean much to you, does it?
I don't see what low-information voters or ad blockers have to do with anything about this.
Online news is one of the long burning carriers of enshitification, along the lines of the Doctorow definition, but a slow burn.
If you look at online news media from 2000 vs 2005 vs 2010 vs 2015 vs 2020 vs now, it's gotten progressively worse with all of the bad things I listed. News/reporting has (with few exceptions) has always been a loss leader - advertising carried the day for decades.
During that time, the quality of reporting declined and the aggressiveness of shitty advertising tactics increased.
The cost of this is that we have more low-information voters because news is harder to get to.
And the proliferation of ad-blockers has decreased what little revenue media has, leading to more enshittification and worse media.
You seem to be expecting a rebuttal
I was hoping for one, but again, you don't seem to be acting good faith and if you are, we're in the territory of a borrowed Heinlein quote. Pity, I'd actually respected you before this.
posted by Candleman at 7:21 PM on June 2 [1 favorite]
Google and Facebook filling themselves with AI glurge, and all the other understood meanings of enshittification.
And if you really want to be pendantic, that's not the Doctorow definition of enshittification - his essay doesn't have the terms AI or Artificial Intelligence. They don't line up (yet) because while the big companies are underwriting costs, no one really cares or is locked in at this point. Spotify is a much better representation of his original concept.
posted by Candleman at 7:34 PM on June 2
And if you really want to be pendantic, that's not the Doctorow definition of enshittification - his essay doesn't have the terms AI or Artificial Intelligence. They don't line up (yet) because while the big companies are underwriting costs, no one really cares or is locked in at this point. Spotify is a much better representation of his original concept.
posted by Candleman at 7:34 PM on June 2
Spotify's always been that way, it's not a good service that became worse to cut corners and give people who have come to rely upon it a worse and worse experience
Last note, that is literally Doctorow's definition:
posted by Candleman at 7:59 PM on June 2 [1 favorite]
Last note, that is literally Doctorow's definition:
Surpluses are first directed to users; then, once they're locked in, surpluses go to suppliers; then once they're locked in, the surplus is handed to shareholders and the platform becomes a useless pile of shit.Consumers, labels, and bands are all bent over the barrel at this point while the quality of the service keeps going down.
posted by Candleman at 7:59 PM on June 2 [1 favorite]
Geez, you're really trying to make this into an argument. I'm not going to bite on this one, I don't think you can be convinced, and I don't think you're going to convince anyone either going on like that.
posted by JHarris at 9:10 PM on June 2
posted by JHarris at 9:10 PM on June 2
Mod note: One removed. Candleman, if you want to continue discussing here, please cut out the personal digs and insults. You can just say what you think (that's why we're here!), and let others say what they think (also why we're here!), without trying to turn it into a silly flamewar (not why we're here!).
posted by taz (staff) at 1:13 AM on June 3
posted by taz (staff) at 1:13 AM on June 3
I think you are being disingenuous it's pretty clear that advertising money is needed to support online music artists and journalism. We as Internet punters are complicit when we use ad blockers or avoid pay walls.
posted by Narrative_Historian at 3:31 AM on June 3 [1 favorite]
posted by Narrative_Historian at 3:31 AM on June 3 [1 favorite]
We as Internet punters are complicit when we use ad blockers or avoid pay walls.
Complicit in what? Felonious interference with a business model?
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 5:58 AM on June 3 [3 favorites]
Complicit in what? Felonious interference with a business model?
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 5:58 AM on June 3 [3 favorites]
So I've glancingly mentioned this before, but back when Napster and Kazaa and it's ilk first appeared I was a young punk of 25 working in the R&D division of a major entertainment company. I was, for a period of time, that company's "official pirate" - as in I was the only person authorized to have a machine running all this software to better understand it. What it was enabling, how it worked, what was available, what risk factors it created, etc.
I helped prepped our CEO for testifying before Congress (Interestingly, they didn't like the media examples I found online because they weren't high quality enough - but it's what was available to most users)
When asked about response strategies, it was pointed out that Napster was an easy and actionable target because of the centralization, but that wouldn't do diddly against Kazaa and other decentralized services.
I pointed out that the then much beloved twin ideas of "let's make the software illegal" and "we'll sue our customers" were both doomed to failure and would piss off the customer base. Somehow, despite them all agreeing that the most fruitful course of action was to make better, more convenient and reasonably priced services to enable the same consumer desires, they still wanted to pursue lawsuits and laws as a delaying action. (And now they're undoing the reasonably priced aspect of things, because profits must go up)
Unsurprisingly, I ended up sidelined in those discussions as a "free information radical" and left the role shortly thereafter.
posted by drewbage1847 at 9:30 AM on June 3 [7 favorites]
I helped prepped our CEO for testifying before Congress (Interestingly, they didn't like the media examples I found online because they weren't high quality enough - but it's what was available to most users)
When asked about response strategies, it was pointed out that Napster was an easy and actionable target because of the centralization, but that wouldn't do diddly against Kazaa and other decentralized services.
I pointed out that the then much beloved twin ideas of "let's make the software illegal" and "we'll sue our customers" were both doomed to failure and would piss off the customer base. Somehow, despite them all agreeing that the most fruitful course of action was to make better, more convenient and reasonably priced services to enable the same consumer desires, they still wanted to pursue lawsuits and laws as a delaying action. (And now they're undoing the reasonably priced aspect of things, because profits must go up)
Unsurprisingly, I ended up sidelined in those discussions as a "free information radical" and left the role shortly thereafter.
posted by drewbage1847 at 9:30 AM on June 3 [7 favorites]
The majority of consumers have demonstrated that if they have the ability to not pay the actual production cost of media, they won't
In reality it’s pretty clear that most people will take advantage of the ability to not pay some of the time, but by no means all of the time. Napster and torrents shifted the equilibrium - there have been subsequent shifts, too. There are things to be said for the old model, as far as curation and the ability to carve out a sustainable niche in the middle, but a shortage of content hardly seems like the problem with the new model.
What if I put it on Patreon but limit it to my first (non-existent) 100 subscribers. Do your ethics now say that it's A-OK to violate my wishes?
I think there’s a generation gap here. I have a fair number of friends at the intersection of “tech savvy” and “creative,” who are just the right age to have been downloading poorly labeled Weird Al songs from Napster, and I just can’t imagine many of us getting particularly upset about this. When you’re in your 30s and have some money it’s a little unseemly to pirate stuff (except when it is difficult to find by other means) but if some kids do, so what? We did, and in fact there’s a good chance it’s part of what got us into/familiar with the tools of the field in the first place. It kinda just works out.
posted by atoxyl at 10:55 AM on June 3 [2 favorites]
In reality it’s pretty clear that most people will take advantage of the ability to not pay some of the time, but by no means all of the time. Napster and torrents shifted the equilibrium - there have been subsequent shifts, too. There are things to be said for the old model, as far as curation and the ability to carve out a sustainable niche in the middle, but a shortage of content hardly seems like the problem with the new model.
What if I put it on Patreon but limit it to my first (non-existent) 100 subscribers. Do your ethics now say that it's A-OK to violate my wishes?
I think there’s a generation gap here. I have a fair number of friends at the intersection of “tech savvy” and “creative,” who are just the right age to have been downloading poorly labeled Weird Al songs from Napster, and I just can’t imagine many of us getting particularly upset about this. When you’re in your 30s and have some money it’s a little unseemly to pirate stuff (except when it is difficult to find by other means) but if some kids do, so what? We did, and in fact there’s a good chance it’s part of what got us into/familiar with the tools of the field in the first place. It kinda just works out.
posted by atoxyl at 10:55 AM on June 3 [2 favorites]
When it comes to online journalism, I think one can argue that there’s a vicious cycle between ads and ad evasion, but it feels dubious to assert that the ad evaders were the first movers in making shit shittier, and less than clear that online ads were every such a great or sustainable model. And classifieds were killed by Craigslist and arguably ultimately by the very existence of the Web as an inexpensive means to share text.
posted by atoxyl at 11:06 AM on June 3 [2 favorites]
posted by atoxyl at 11:06 AM on June 3 [2 favorites]
In reality it’s pretty clear that most people will take advantage of the ability to not pay some of the time, but by no means all of the time. Napster and torrents shifted the equilibrium - there have been subsequent shifts, too. There are things to be said for the old model, as far as curation and the ability to carve out a sustainable niche in the middle, but a shortage of content hardly seems like the problem with the new model.
Yeah, I think this is pretty accurate. As soon as Apple and Amazon came out with ways to legally download music, the vast majority of the population shifted to legal downloads - they can offer stuff regular people like - integration, security, etc.
And now most younger people don't even care to own music, but I don't see a shortage of new music or any change in the major industry model. Napster was ultimately just a footnote, and the extreme strategy (sue a few people and sue the systems out of existence) worked out ok.
posted by The_Vegetables at 11:47 AM on June 3 [2 favorites]
Yeah, I think this is pretty accurate. As soon as Apple and Amazon came out with ways to legally download music, the vast majority of the population shifted to legal downloads - they can offer stuff regular people like - integration, security, etc.
And now most younger people don't even care to own music, but I don't see a shortage of new music or any change in the major industry model. Napster was ultimately just a footnote, and the extreme strategy (sue a few people and sue the systems out of existence) worked out ok.
posted by The_Vegetables at 11:47 AM on June 3 [2 favorites]
This is undoubtedly going to sound a smidge old-school Californian Ideology but the fact is technology fundamentally changed the possibilities and economics of media distribution. One can look at some of what people have done with that through a moral lens but realistically I don’t think the long-term impacts are strictly dependent on a path that runs through Napster. It’s more a symbol of the moment where the underlying changes became widely visible.
posted by atoxyl at 12:49 PM on June 3
posted by atoxyl at 12:49 PM on June 3
with anti-filesharing arguments, I can't help but fall back to a simple but firm position put into words (sixteen of them) many years ago by somebody who'd done way more thinking about it than I had.
"So deep down inside, you think rich people deserve more and better music than poor people."
posted by philip-random at 1:02 PM on June 3 [2 favorites]
"So deep down inside, you think rich people deserve more and better music than poor people."
posted by philip-random at 1:02 PM on June 3 [2 favorites]
Wow, this thread really gives new meaning to the phrase, "Coming in hot!!"
posted by kensington314 at 1:42 PM on June 3 [1 favorite]
posted by kensington314 at 1:42 PM on June 3 [1 favorite]
I think you are being disingenuous it's pretty clear that advertising money is needed to support online music artists and journalism.
Wait, what?
I mean, I guess there are folks out there that make most of their money from sync licensing off of Youtube, and some of the folks that are paying them the money might be getting that from their monetized YouTube channels, but that's not most online music artists by any stretch. Unless you're talking about folks getting paid for streams by Spotify, which uses ads as part of it's own revenue stream, but... streams aren't paying anyone but the big name's bills, and even then, at that point the merch/other licenses/and income streams are gonna be much bigger.
I've been sitting here for awhile trying to come up with a way that the kind of ads that are blocked by my little ad-blocker would have any effect on any musician's income, and I've got nothing other than a couple of edge cases.
posted by Gygesringtone at 4:28 PM on June 3 [1 favorite]
Wait, what?
I mean, I guess there are folks out there that make most of their money from sync licensing off of Youtube, and some of the folks that are paying them the money might be getting that from their monetized YouTube channels, but that's not most online music artists by any stretch. Unless you're talking about folks getting paid for streams by Spotify, which uses ads as part of it's own revenue stream, but... streams aren't paying anyone but the big name's bills, and even then, at that point the merch/other licenses/and income streams are gonna be much bigger.
I've been sitting here for awhile trying to come up with a way that the kind of ads that are blocked by my little ad-blocker would have any effect on any musician's income, and I've got nothing other than a couple of edge cases.
posted by Gygesringtone at 4:28 PM on June 3 [1 favorite]
(Seriously folks, if you want to support musicians go to live shows and\or buy physical merch)
posted by Gygesringtone at 4:29 PM on June 3 [3 favorites]
posted by Gygesringtone at 4:29 PM on June 3 [3 favorites]
And classifieds were killed by Craigslist and arguably ultimately by the very existence of the Web as an inexpensive means to share text.
I’ve said it before but the NYT, in their ongoing project of becoming a puzzle game company with a newsroom attached, is one of the only major print media entities that seems to have come up with a clever way to bring the old model up to date.
posted by atoxyl at 6:53 PM on June 3 [2 favorites]
I’ve said it before but the NYT, in their ongoing project of becoming a puzzle game company with a newsroom attached, is one of the only major print media entities that seems to have come up with a clever way to bring the old model up to date.
posted by atoxyl at 6:53 PM on June 3 [2 favorites]
(queues up 128kbps mp3 of "Stuck in the Middle With You" from Bob Dylan.)
posted by porn in the woods at 5:05 PM on June 4
posted by porn in the woods at 5:05 PM on June 4
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Then the government finally heard about Napster. They weren't shut down for a while, but the first big change is they de-centralized the network. The lightning-fast searches and downloads were suddenly gone, never to come back as it turns out. Afterwards searches and downloads were much, much slower.
posted by zardoz at 10:34 PM on June 1 [6 favorites]