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Tuesday, 12 June, 2001, 13:25 GMT 14:25 UK
End of free music on the web?
Napster has agreed to become a distributor for the music industry's own online service, MusicNet.
The deal means that Napster has effectively stopped being the free music swapping service that made it famous.
Three months ago Napster was forced to abandon its free service after a US court ordered it to ban copyrighted music from its website.
There are other music and media swapping systems out there. But none of them have been able to match Napster for size and ease of use.
So is it the end of free music on the web? Or will other systems fill the vacuum left by Napster?
This debate is now closed. Read a selection of your comments below.
What is the difference between taping off the radio and downloading off Napster? With listening posts becoming less available, the public want to sample what they are buying before they fork out £13 for an overpriced CD.
Roisin Macey, Sligo, Ireland
Don't the music companies get the fact that if they reduced the costs by lowering their huge profit margins then people wouldn't bother pirating music, videos, software etc? If they reduced the cost then people would pay for an original, they would sell more and still earn the same amount of profit.
I believe that copyright is used too often, and always for financial gain.
The big record industry doesn't care if you already own the song, paid for it before and are now downloading it, they want you to pay for it, again and again and again. I understand that piracy is a problem, but the way the record association attacked Napster helped create an uprising of angered
"netizens" so that even the mighty record industry will have no hopes of stopping all the new Napster wannabe's. In fact some peer-to-peer systems are larger than Napster and still growing.
Mark Harris, England
The fact that many people
now have MP3 encoders and
run FTP sites from home means
that the number of MP3s
available on the Net must be huge.
Saying that shutting down Napster
will prevent people from getting
free music is like saying cutting a
leaf off a tree will kill it.
More real music and less of that produced rubbish such as Hearsay boy bands etc and I might start buying CDs instead of copying them and taking them back, I resent having to pay x amount of pounds to some huge wealthy company that only puts it back into teeny rubbish and cheaper goods for the American market.
Napster opened the door.
Just because Napster has ceased
to be what it was does not mean that
file sharing and peer to peer networking
will stop. A previous comment from John
in Texas suggested that ISPs could prevent
usage of the Gnutella protocol by using firewalls.
Ooops ! Gnutella can work on any port, including
port 80 which is used for http. Think again John.
Jeff Scholey, UK
Even before Napster struck this new deal it's users had dropped by one third. There is absolutely no way that charging for songs is going attract more people, not when there are other alternatives better than Napster that provide free sharing of music. Only when the rest of the alternative companies are rooted out will people have no choice but to pay for their music.
End of free Napster - no problem! With the growth in peer to peer networking (plus OpenSource versions like Freenet), free music has a great long term future.
Napster: Thanks but no thanks. It has been 13 months since I bought an album and now I have three programs to download MP3's. Why should I pay Napster when I can get it for free? Music on the internet will be forever free. Unless the companies stop ripping us off, free music will shrink the sales.
They're just taking as much as they can as long as they can, ignore them.
I think what Napster should have done was limit the quality of the files it indexed. In this way, it could have served just as a preview, try-before-you-buy service.
John Simeone, United Kingdom
Pandora's box has been opened....
Napster may have sold out and become legal, but many others will step in to take their place. I already know of six others where the interface is easier and the database more complete. If they do not increase their profile they will be there for ever.
The existence of Gnutella and programs such as BearShare will ensure that music distribution on the net continues - and there is nothing the music 'industry' can do about that!
Ahmad , Indonesia
The music companies are finally getting what is coming to them from years of gouging consumers for CDs and other digital media. The big few have lost control over their greedy domain and are beginning to see capitalism and free enterprise at its best. I will gladly pay for music, either in the store or off networks such as Napster; however, I won't be taken for a ride.
Toby Woodwark, UK
Napster does not embody free music. It was simply the best-known site. Even people who had never seen an MP3 player had heard of Napster. What point exactly has the music industry proved? That it is naive? Free music is here to stay.
Ok, fair enough, ban Napster - Napster can be stopped because it requires central servers. As soon as a system is developed where there is no need for a central server - you won't be able to stop it - however many laws or legislations are passed.
What I don't see here is a sensible compromise. Let people share files, but charge downloaders a small amount (say around 30p) per file. Keep track of the downloads and pay the whole fee to the artists. If the artists can't be traced, use it to cover the admin costs of the service. Up-front payment for 20-50 songs at a time would avoid having to handle lots of small payments.
I think it's right to stop this theft of people's hard work. Musicians and record companies should be allowed to earn a decent living like anyone else. If I walked into a shop and stole something - I'd be arrested. What's the difference with this Internet nonsense? Ban Napster I say and let's hear no more about it.
Napster may well be dead and buried but alternatives such as openNap and Gnutella are already taking its place. And file sharing with these services means much more than just sharing music files. Other initiatives such as freenet assure that there is no central indexing service for the files and that makes it next to impossible to find out who is hosting a shared file. The record companies had better re-evaluate both their price policies and their contracts with musicians because the era of music sharing nirvana hasn't finished. It is merely beginning...
Closing Napster will achieve nothing, because not many people are still using it. Other people have set up their own Napster servers now, which are almost as large as Napster was at its peak.
Colin Cassidy, Scotland
I strongly agree that record companies don't have complete control over artists. Also I think that people like Napster are exploiting these same artists. Hooray to Metallica, for seeing off Napster. I think every music "fan" who supported Napster should be ashamed; without royalties going to the artists who write and record music, who would we be left with? Rubbish like Hearsay and the Spice Girls. Because anyone who isn't in the pocket of big companies would be out of a job.
If the greedy record companies priced CDs sensibly then we wouldn't bother spending hours downloading/burning etc. The fact that they put approx 1000% mark-up on a CD means they will now reap what they've sown. PS. The pop stars will have to start earning money at the level of the rest of us.. I've never seen one on a bike?
Napster has been used by big business as an example of something which in reality cannot be stopped. As one knows, behind every Napster there will always be another provider, which big business cannot stop. The case itself has been too lengthy to make the impact which it intended to, and they have therefore used Napster just as an example, which in effect only is a moral victory to the big commercial bands and record companies who already have too much of a market share for independent bands to share their artistic ability of making music.
I think some people are being naive about the legal difficulties that Napster's precedent has created. If a program can be restricted based on its ability to infringe copyrights (and I'm not necessarily arguing for or against this), then it probably won't be long before laws begin to appear that hold ISPs responsible for the traffic they allow. I hear some people hinting about Gnutella and other alternatives... as far as I can see, given a firewall and a simple list of rules for traffic, they could all be blocked rather quickly. Given a complex anti-infringement program (and these are in the works, I'm sure), ISPs everywhere could shut down those networks almost overnight if they were forced to.
Al Haigh, UK
Will the independent artists who used Napster as a legal distribution means still be allowed to continue to do so? Or will it become yet another closed shop where if you are unsigned, you get squeezed out of the distribution channel?
Gareth Jamieson, Swindon, UK
End of free music? What nonsense. Napster is just the tabloid-friendly face of the whole concept of free music for all, and their failure has made no impact on that.
Anyone who believes that no Napster means no free music is extremely naive and has been greatly misinformed. Remember that free music existed before Napster, and continues to exist after it - audio tapes in the past or MP3 files now, it's all the same, because Napster never was, and never will be, the alpha and omega of free music.
For about 3 weeks I was really sad about the end of Napster, now I have found a much better file swapping service easier to use than Napster and the software is much more advanced... Who needs Napster?
A sad day indeed. Napster was a great facility for music lovers. Alas, free music on the net will still survive, if not through Napster there are many other modes. Power to the people.
Napster made file swapping available to the masses and made it as easy as checking your mail. As the music companies can't close down a basic function of the Internet they can never stop file swapping. Lets face they haven't managed to stop the public copying audio tapes and CDs, have they? They have been scared as their lucrative distribution monopoly slipped through their fingers. Hopefully now they will readdress their business models and their attitudes towards consumers. I agree with the sentiment that Napster deprived artists of their rightful royalties but the majority of CD prices go nowhere near them. Maybe if artists were to sell directly to the public via MP3 they would be willing to pay the few pounds that make up the royalties on most hard-format album releases.
I will never forgive the record companies for charging extra for CDs. They were cheaper to make than records or tapes. They just wanted to cash in on what people didn't know. Free Art, there's enough of it.
Ryan Bastille, USA
I never found Napster that great. I've found most of the MP3s I've wanted form other sites as well as file sharing. Its also never stopped me buying albums when I already have the MP3's I'm just more selective now when I buy them. MP3s are no different than when everyone taped music, then CD burners came along and now we have MP3s. With all things new there are equal pros and cons.
There is plenty of free music still available from non-centralised services such as WinMX with its new WPNP network. On these there is no problem with copyright blocking as there is on Napster. The amount of material available is however less than there was through Napster at its peak, as the user base is not quite so large.
I can understand the hype about free material when it is recent. surely there has to be a point when a particular piece of music can become freely available, eg. after an artist or writers death or after 25 years.
I'm surprised that the record industry seems to think that one court case is going to stop this. Do they actually have any comprehension of what it's like outside their ivory recording towers? There are too many alternatives, most of which are better than Napster anyway! Maybe it just a case of the rest of the world getting its own back after being severely ripped off by the music companies in the past (I don't include the artists themselves - they have also been shamelessly exploited by these companies)
It is with a mixture of great sadness and anger that I watch what would appear to be the death throes of Napster, mainly caused by the greed and selfishness of multinational corporations such as Sony, TimeWarner and BMG, rather than that of individuals. My own belief is that their prime motivation for the current legal proceedings against Napster, mp3.com, and similar organisations, is CONTROL. The Internet offers the ultimate medium for musicians and writers to express themselves without the constraints of corporate-dictated fashion. Any musician, such as myself, now has the ability to allow works to be publicised, and downloaded by all who choose to do so, without being restricted by the "buying policies" of marketers, distributors and retailers. For each CD currently sold, only a tiny percentage passes to the original artist - the rest is creamed off by a plethora of "middle men".
The "industry" may win the current skirmish, but those of us who struggle for artistic freedom will surely win the war.
It certainly does not mean the end of stealing music over the net. There are so many other systems out there and many people will continue to put common sense and morals aside and continue to steal from the hard working artists by downloading the songs for free.
Will? There are already so many other ways to get free music. Napster was popular for its convenience and speed, not for its originality.
06 Jun 01 | Business
Napster signs deal with music industry
05 Jun 01 | New Media
Music chiefs consider 'life after Napster'
26 Apr 01 | Business
Napster use slumps after court order
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