41 new of 134 responses total.
Stanford University, where I work, has instituted network routines to put Napster and several other such services at the bottom priority of network processing. They've been eating up so much network resources it slows everybody down. There is no prohibition, and in fact they recommend certain times of day when other network traffic is low. As I suspected, it's the bandwidth. Response among students has been mixed. Some whine that they can't get everything they want RIGHT NOW. Others suggest that perhaps this move will improve the dating scene on campus, as students will be impelled to go out instead of spending all their evenings downloading music from the Web. A list of things that _I_ would prefer doing to watching little completion percentage bars crawl across my computer screen would be a very long list indeed.
At Michigan Tech they banned Napster use because they found the usage pattern it created was aggravating a problem with their backbone switch. (A problem that the switch's manufacturer had, at the time I left, been utterly unable to fix over a period of two or three months.) It wasn't a bandwidth usage problem, exactly; something about the rapid-fire way Napster makes connections was triggering the switch to drop whole network segments for ten or fifteen minutes at a time.
News item: http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20010215/tc/belgium_napsster_1.html "Belgian Cops Raid Music-Sharers." The raids of users homes were primarily aimed at a web site. However, the prosecution spokesman says, "four cases against Napster users were currently under review."
I much preferred the hysterical Slashdot extrapolations (jackbooted Belgian stormtroopers conducting mass arrests) to the actual story, which involves police seizing computers from several people who operated an MP3 download site, but this could indeed turn into a trend to watch..
www.inside.com has the best explanation I've seen of how a Digital Rights Management Napster is supposed to work. Grab the story quick before they move it from the "free" section to the "members" section. New Scientist has a piece on SDMI and watermarking. http://www.newscientist.com/features/features.jsp?id=ns22782 Like most good stuff, this is indexed from the http://www.mp3.com/news index page.
And the latest news is Napster wants to try to settel with all the record companies including the indies for a cool billion dollars. This works out to 20 dollars a subscriber for napsters current 50 million subscribers, assuming most of them stay signed up for a subscriber service which is a big if, with open nap, guntella, etc, available for free. Seems like a sketchy business model, but it could way to reach the win win solution of unlimited aqccess to music while assuring the record companies and more importantly the artisits their cut.
The artists? Doubtful even in the most optimistic model.
resp:96, resp:97 :: ZDnet(UK) runs a story that the IFPI (the global version of the RIAA) is pushing hard for raids on Napster users in Belgium. "The head of IFPI in Belgium, Marcel Heymans, claimed Thursday that Belgian police were poised to raid the homes of hundreds of Napster users." http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2687923,00.html?chkpt=zdhpnew s01 or some URL like that. As for the billion dollar settlement offer, it smacks of desperation to me. If the four major labels (other than BMG) wanted Napster to continue to exist, and if they thought it could produce a billion dollars in revenue, then they could just continue their lawsuit, win, and collect all Napster assets in the judgement; then they would own Napster and its potential revenues forever. Several of the pieces I read yesterday -- there was a huge flurry of them prompted by the billion dollar offer -- suggest the most likely outcome will be that someone sets up a Napster-ish directory server in one of the countries which currently host off-shore gambling sites. Revenue? One could probably get millions of Napster users to pay a small monthly fee for access to the directory server if the files traded were unrestricted MP3 files, rather than the restricted-use files planned for Napster II.
#110, 99> Even fairly optimistic lil ol' me isn't naive enough to think any noticable amount of Napster's settlement with the RIAA and the Majors will go to the artists. (er, that was 100, not 110)
Couple of fascinating (to me, anyway) news items. Slashdot's "YRO" (Your Rights Online) section links to a story at www.law.com about Dave Powell and Copyright Control Services, who hunt down copyright infringers on the net. So far his business has been mostly defending expensive software packages for pro audio, but he's just chomping at the bit to start working over Napster users. What's holding him back, so far, is the PR concerns of the record labels. The www.law.com URL is just too mindboggling to transcribe, sorry. And Congress, most notably Senator Orrin Hatch (R, Utah), continues to make noises. A story I missed at the Washington Post last Thursday quotes Hatch as raising the possibility that Congress could enact a "compulsory license" for the Internet sale of music. A compulsory license would mean that the copyright holder would lose veto power over the ability of a company to use or sell its music; it's similar to what exists today for radio, I think. The record company screams would be heard for miles. Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Va) criticizes the record labels for their reluctance to allow sales of individual songs, rather than complete albums. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12511-2001Feb15.html Non-original thoughts: Hatch, in particular, seems particularly irked because he was a principal author of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. The act, which gave the copyright industry just about everything it wanted, was supposed to speed the arrival of an online music business, but here we are, years later, and there's no real online music business, just lawsuits galore. I've lost the essay which claimed that the major labels are still in "deep denial" about the Internet and its implications for their business. And I haven't mentioned a piece from www.musicdish.com, which put forth the proposal that the promotion and distribution sides of the music business converge on the Net... later this afternoon maybe.
(Side note. question: I'd also heard about ten years back or so that there were laws drafted or transcribed that would allow anyone who wants to *cover* a song to do so despite the wishes of the copyright holder, so long as they pay a royalty fee. Is that accurate, or was some media source confused about what was going on?)
I thought that was already the case..
That's essentially correct, as I understand it. The right to make a first recording is under the control of the copyright holder, but to make subsequent recordings, all a performer has to do is pay the statutory licensing fees, and the copyright holder has nothing to say about it. I am not aware that there was any recent change to these rules.
News item: "Next on record industry's hit list -- Napster clones"
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2689187,00.html
(or find it at http://www.mp3.com/news)
With the Court of Appeals ruling against Napster as a precedent,
the RIAA has fired off 60 legal notices to the ISPs of people who
are running "Open Napster" servers. Presumably this is the
DMCA "notice and take down" form letter, in which the ISP has to cut
off the user to protect its own immunity from copyright lawsuit.
What's not mentioned in the story, but what I think I remember from
the Scientology cases, is that the copyright holder has to follow
up with a lawsuit against the user within a short period of time,
or else the ISP and the user are free to continue as before.
The story mentions the difficulties with Open Napster servers located
outside the USA.
The RIAA's lawyer says they have ideas about how to attack Gnutella,
but he declined to discuss them.
Sounds like a losing battle to me. As soon as one program or service is beaten down, two will spring up to take its place. And that's not even taking into account websites outside the US.
Napster's next court date with Judge Marilyn Patel is tomorrow. She's supposed to be working on the injunction to force Napster to cease exchanging copyrighted material, under the direction she was given by the appeals court panel. Does this mean Napster will shut down tomorrow? Seems iffy, since Napster would probably appeal the ruling just to play out the string. But don't be surprised if the survival of Napster-as-we-know-it is measured in days or weeks. Watch online news media for breaking reports of whatever happens. Napster has urged its users to take its cause to Congress, and in response the RIAA has been stocking up on Republican lobbyists. Their most prominent signing is Bob Dole, and this one brings warmth to my heart: I can think of no better Republican representative of the Old Regime, the pre-Internet years, than Bob Dole, Yesterday's Man. The RIAA has also signed up Governor Marc Racicot, who is quoted in a wide variety of news stories that he sees his role as educating Congress as to the role of intellectual property. He specifically names Sen. Orrin Hatch as someone who needs to be educated; I hope Hatch, who co-authored the last major revision of copyright law and who is also a independent songwriter in his spare time, bops Racicot on the head. :)
This isn't directly a Napster-related news item but I'll stick it in here anyway, since some of the players and arguments have figured in the Napster arguments: http://www.latimes.com/business/updates/lat_love010228.htm Lead paragraphs: "Just as actress Olivia de Havilland brought down the Hollywood studio system in the 1950s and outfielder Curt Flood fought for free agency in baseball in the 1970s, rock star Courtney Love is determined to radically redefine the nature of the music recording business for the next century. "Love is seeking to break her contract with Vivendi Universal, the world's largest record conglomerate, and expose what she calls the 'unconscionable and unlawful' tactics of the major record labels." Summarizing: The basic argument seems to be that the standard record label contract is a servitude-for-life kind of deal, and courts have held those to be unreasonable. California has a law which limits entertainment contracts to seven years, but the law has never been tested in the music business. The record companies have settled similar suits with other artists, but Love has strong financial resources, since she controls the Kurt Cobain estate, and she has already fired her previous attorney for trying to settle the suit.
She may have a point. It's entirely possible that seven years exceeds Courtney Love's life expectancy..
There was a similar suit filed within the last six months or so, and my mind has gone vague on the details. It was by the leader/songwriter of Foreigner, or some similar hard rock hair band of days gone by. The plaintiff's argument went like this. Under the contract, he still owes two albums to the record label. However, the label has lost all interest in his style of music, which he admits is now out of fashion, and so the label won't accept or release anything he turns in. There is still a minority interest in his music, and he would like to be free to look for an independent boutique label or maybe market himself; but the label refuses to release him. So essentially he is in permanent bondage and can never earn money through recording music again. He asks the court to terminate the contract because it cannot be fulfilled. I've heard nothing further about this.
He should change his name to a symbol, and wait out his record contract. It worked for Prince, sort of....
Breaking news items on today's court hearing: Judge Patel "concluded the hearing by saying she will rule at an undisclosed time." Napster says it will block one million songs from being traded, starting this weekend, in an attempt to pacify the record companies. (from www.sfgate.com)
According to Britney Spears, there are nine million wonderful songs in the world, so that doesn't seem too bad for Napster. <cough>
Aaron, do you have a cite for that "statistic"? Seriously, it sounds like something which would be a pretty funny read. :)
http://www.mtv.com/sendme.tin?page=/news/gallery/s/spears00_2/index3.htm l
(the "l" wrapped)
Amusing little interview: "MTV: People always think, "Oh, this whole teen pop craze is only going to last five minutes." How is it important for you to show that that won't happen to you? Britney: I think it really boils down to good music. If you do that, I think you'll be around for a while." Hee hee. :)
News media reports differ on whether Napster is going to block "one million songs" or "one million file names;" the RIAA says that one million file names could be as few as 100 songs, since the users pick and mispell the file names as they wish.
So presumably users could get around any blocking based on file names, simply by renaming files. Is such an approach likely to satisfy the court?
Dude! Heard the latest mp3 from Meta11ica? ;)
In the original preliminary injunction order from Judge Patel last July, Napster was directed to halt all trading of copyrighted material involving their service, even if it required Napster to shut down. In contrast, the directions of the appeals court seem to be saying (this is based on press reports and fallible memory, remember) that Napster has to stop the exchanging of copyrighted files to the extent that their technology allows them to do so, while not unreasonably hampering lawful file transfers. All Napster HQ ever sees is the file names; the actual transfers of binary song files take place directly between the users. So the file names are all Napster Inc. has to work with.
Interesting. Thanks for the clarification.
Napster was supposedly going to install filters this weekend to cut down on the copyrighted song traffic, statistics right now are: 2075980 songs 10350 users 8874GB of data. So much for filtering.
Judge Patel's new injunction came out this morning. Reports on it are in most online media sources. The New York Times and inside.com have pretty opposite analyses of it.
regarding Napster song blocking, a friend sent me this.. > I love this idea, from a headline blurb on Slashdot. It can't see it > holding up, but it's a truly inspired idea. :-) > >> AIMster is offering a Pig Latin encoder that will encrypt your mp3 titles. >> They state that, under the DMCA, it would be illegal for the RIAA to >> reverse engineer their encoding scheme and try and filter the encrypted >> filenames from Napster. I have to concur with his assessment that it's unlikely to prevent much of an impediment to the RIAA, but I love the ironic angle..
remmers in resp:124 :: a good article on the injunction and what it requires of Napster is at the Washington Post: http://www.washtech.com/news/media/8141-1.html My guess is that what happens is that the RIAA goes back before Judge Patel in a week or two and says, this is not working.
"The Music Business Thinks Like Napster:" Found at Borders tonight is a sampler from the Verve label's new reissue program of old jazz classics: Ella, Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Antonio Carlos Jobim, and so forth. It's supposed to be free if you buy one album from the series: but if you want to buy it on its own, Borders will sell it to you for a penny. So far, pretty standard promotional stuff. The twist: for your penny, you get two identical CDs. "Music so good we made it twice," reads the package. "Keep one and pass it on!" This is actually the second time I've heard of this gimmick, though the first I've seen it in the store. (Note to Twila: the package also says there is a bonus new Diana Krall track in here, so you might want to scoop this up.)
a penny for a new Diana Krall song? I'm there..:)
resp:128 :: I lost the news story where the record labels are complaining that Napster is still allowing many song files to be traded. The LA Times reports that Napster is asking Judge Patel to appoint a technically competent monitor to verify that Napster is doing everything possible to comply with the injunction crafted under the guidance of the 9th circuit appeals panel.
I just found out that e-music is having a free promotion (through March 18th) -- they'll let you download fifteen songs (or a whole album, as you choose), for free. They do pay royalties to the artists, and it is a trial to allow you to see how good their for-pay service is, but I found some pretty cool artists on there, and some groups I wouldn't have expected (lots of Cooking Vinyl artists, Ken, and some Shanachie, too...). The url for those who might be interested is: t http://www.emusic.com/index.html#promoanchor (without the t at the beginning, of course)
As a law librarian, I've just had the privilege of cataloging a videotape recording of the appeals court arguments from last November by David Boies (for Napster) and other lawyers (for N's nemeses). My private personal conclusion: They're all idiots, every one.
I've started a new Napster item to be linked between Music and Spring Agora. It's item:music,304 in the music conference. Discussion here should probably stop, though I won't take the step of freezing the item.
You have several choices: