Napster

[billfaceuk]

Should it stay or should it go?

[barrk]

STAY

[billfaceuk]

well, when the court told them to get rid of all the copyrighted stuff the courts have told them they didn't do a good enough job so are closing them down for good

[barrk]

SAN FRANCISCO, California (AP) -- Calling Napster Inc.'s failure to do a better job of blocking copyright works from its online music-swapping service "disgraceful," a federal judge said Tuesday she may consider pulling the Internet service's plug.

"Maybe the system needs to be shut down," U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel said in a heated courtroom moment.

Patel, who is hearing the copyright infringement case against Napster by the recording industry, stopped short of putting her thoughts into action, however. She said a court-appointed expert will review claims by the industry that Napster is failing to remove copyright material from its service used by some 70 million people.

The courtroom drama illustrated just how difficult it is to remove copyright works from the Internet site while allowing non-copyright materials to remain.

"You created this monster, you fix it," Patel said in a terse tone.

Napster attorney Robert Silver said "all you need is one file to get through" the song-swapping system's filters, which are designed to remove copyright material, and the protected songs will reappear on the site's search index.

Recording Industry Association of America lawyer Carey Ramos said that of 5,000 songs the record labels asked to be removed last month, 84 percent of them are still being downloaded free of charge via Napster.

"Whatever they're doing, it ain't working," he said.

Patel did not set a new hearing date, but ordered technology expert A.J. Nichols to study the issue and see if there is any existing technology available to help Napster abide by the court order to remove the songs.

In February, a federal appeals court in San Francisco said the judge's order for Napster to remove copyright works shifted too much of a burden on the Internet site. The appeals panel said the recording industry must first notify Napster of which works should be removed.

For nearly 30 minutes, the attorneys for both sides and Patel haggled over what type of notice the industry should provide.

[CiberTHuG]

To me it is the lesser of two evils. I'm not a big fan of Napster because now Joe Bob doesn't get paid for making music. But I'm less a fan of the recording industry because they make entirely too much money and re-invest entirely too little of it (how about some public school music programs). The recording industry has done little to nothing to make music available online for purchase.

I'm also pissed because they shut down the lyrics.ch site.

[parksie]

"You created this monster, you fix it," Patel said in a terse tone

It's obvious SHE doesn't know much about the Internet
a) It's not a monster
b) You can't shut it down! OpenNAP has obliterated any chances of that happening. As soon as something goes open-source it's beyond the court's reach, because it goes international which is out of their jurisdiction.

[barrk]

this is true but I do hate to see the Napster kid take it in the shorts!

[parksie]

Yeah...they shouldn't take it out on him. He may have written it, but they can't hold him responsible for the actions of others. The case of Phil Zimmermann comes to mind as well.

[CiberTHuG]

True, we shouldn't send the Napster kid to jail. But I don't see any choice but to shut it down and handle any OpenNAP copyright infringements on a case by case basis.

[Kzin]

Originally posted by barrk
this is true but I do hate to see the Napster kid take it in the shorts!

Katie - he is not just some kid in a back room - he raised fifteen million dollars of venture capital on Napster in 1999 - basically as a way to take artist's property from them without asking and distribute it free.

Napster now belongs to the largest publisher and content owner in Germany - Bertlesmann. I guess they gave him something for it and presumably they aim to make money from it.

[Kzin]

Originally posted by parksie
It's obvious SHE doesn't know much about the Internet
a) It's not a monster
b) You can't shut it down! OpenNAP has obliterated any chances of that happening. As soon as something goes open-source it's beyond the court's reach, because it goes international which is out of their jurisdiction.

Surely the Napster index is not distributed so if that shuts down that kills Napster itself (although not other P2P systems).

[Dreamlax]

Banning Napster is stupid (or trying to). You can't ban people from listening to the radio (well you can confiscate the radio). But if you ban Napster, you might as well ban all the other ways of distributing illegal files over the internet, i.e E-MAIL, a lot of MS's products etc...

[Kzin]

Originally posted by Dreamlax
Banning Napster is stupid (or trying to). You can't ban people from listening to the radio (well you can confiscate the radio). But if you ban Napster, you might as well ban all the other ways of distributing illegal files over the internet, i.e E-MAIL, a lot of MS's products etc...

Well of course they can kill it - just threaten to sue download sites that host it - once they make it illegal they can hunt down download sites for the software itself just as they would with makers of viruses or (at the other end of the scale - just to remind you they can do anything) guys who write code to let you look at DVDs on Linux boxes.

Napster is also vunerable to being forced to turn off the central index server
remember - they are already filtering songs there now.

So - the question is really - "is there a viable model that pleases enough of the right people to keep it alive and can that model be put in place right now?"

I'll take the risk with copyright on this graphic I guess

[billfaceuk]

To me it is the lesser of two evils. I'm not a big fan of Napster because now Joe Bob doesn't get paid for making music.

True but downloading it sometinmes makes you want to go out and buy the music if you've already got it on your computer or not.