Life After
Napster...
What happens
after the
Napster apocalypse? Here are some alternatives!
 NEW!
June 27, 2002 -
Companies crack down on MP3s
- By Lisa M. Bowman, Special
to ZDNet News, Stash those
headphones and trash that
file-swapping software:
Companies are cracking down on
employees who use streaming
media and swap MP3s at work.
Companies increasingly are
blocking access to Internet
music and video at firewalls and
are issuing sweeping initiatives
that ban workplace media usage.
The trend is a result of two
developments: media usage
hogging enormous amounts of
corporate bandwidth and threats
of legal liability as the
entertainment industry
aggressively pursues copyright
scofflaws...
NEW!
July 07, 2002 -
File swappers expose themselves
- By Steven Musil, Special to
ZDNet News, Users of the
popular file-swapping program
Kazaa frequently expose personal
data to other network users by
mislabeling the files that can
be shared, according to research
released by HP Labs. The
research, which was published
Wednesday on Hewlett-Packard's
Web site, found that a
significant percentage of Kazaa
users have accidentally or
unknowingly designated private
files to be shared with everyone
who has access to the popular
Kazaa network...
June 03, 2002 -
Napster: Gimme shelter with bankruptcy - By Jim Hu,
Help.com, Napster, the struggling online music company, filed for
bankruptcy protection Monday. The filing comes just weeks after
Redwood City, Calif.-based Napster agreed to sell its assets to German
media conglomerate Bertelsmann for $8 million. As expected at the time
of that transaction, Napster said Monday that it has filed under
Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court
in Delaware...
April
25, 2002 -
Dr. Damn cleans house for file-swappers - By John Borland,
Special to ZDNet News, The record companies had their Napster, and
the stream of file-swapping companies that followed. The file-swapping
companies now have their "Dr. Damn." For the past several weeks, the
pseudonymous programmer, who says he's a male college student and
declines to give his real name, has been releasing versions of popular
file-swapping programs online with the advertising and user-tracking
features stripped out...
March 26, 2002 -
Web radio's last stand -
By Katharine Mieszkowski, Salon.com, A new ruling
involving the Digital Millennium Copyright Act is set to wipe out
independent online music stations...
March 25, 2002 -
Dead Napster Gets Deader - Associated Press, SAN
FRANCISCO -- A federal appeals court said Monday that Napster may not
resume its free online file-swapping service. The decision by the 9th
U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upholds a federal judge's July ruling
that ordered the Redwood City company to keep its free service offline
until it can fully comply with an injunction to remove all copyright
music...
January 29, 2002
-
Goodbye
Napster, hello Morpheus
- By Erick Schonfeld, Special to ZDNet, March 18, 2002, 4:10 AM
PT - COMMENTARY--It's happening again. No sooner did the music
industry effectively kill Napster than a dozen imitators started vying
for its vacated throne. And now they're not swapping just music, but
movies, software, and any other content that can be condensed down
to 1s and 0s...
 February 01, 2001 -
Tables turned on labels in Napster case -
By John Borland, Special to ZDNet News, A day
before the major record labels asked for a one-month
halt in their lawsuit against file-swapping start-up
Napster, a federal judge told them she would turn
close scrutiny on their online practices. According to
transcripts of a Jan. 16 meeting, released Wednesday,
Judge Marilyn Hall Patel was about to open a process
examining whether the big record labels had "misused"
their copyrights in their dealings with online rivals.
One day later, the labels asked for a 30-day halt to
the case to pursue settlement talks more vigorously.
"I decided there are some significant issues with
respect to (copyright) misuse that (Napster) ought to
be able to pursue," Patel told lawyers from both
sides, according to the transcript. "The case law is a
bit murky. But...if we can see it, maybe we'll know
it."
November 29 2001 -
Judge throws out free speech suit - By
Robert Lemos, Special to ZDNet News, A New Jersey
judge on Wednesday threw out a lawsuit brought against
the music industry, saying that threatened legal
action didn't keep a computer-science professor from
publishing research on anti-copying technology. The
judge dismissed charges brought by Princeton
University professor Edward Felten, who said legal
threats stopped him from publishing a paper outlining
the weaknesses in the industry's technologies for
protecting digital music. Felten had sued the
Recording Industry Association of America, which
represents major music labels, because the association
sent him a letter threatening legal action if he
published his research...
December 18, 2001 -
A Call to End Copyright Confusion
- By Declan McCullagh and Ben Polen, Wired News,
WASHINGTON -- Jack Valenti predicts that Congress will require
copy-protection controls in nearly all consumer electronic devices and
PCs. The lobbyist nonpareil for the Motion Picture Association of
America delivered a stark warning to technology firms on Monday: Move
quickly to choose standards for wrapping digital content in uncopyable
layers of encryption or the federal government will do it for you...
December 19, 2001 -
Warez groups wracked by FBI raids - By Robert Lemos,
Special to ZDNet News, The informal community of Internet software
pirates has been ripped apart by the recent international
law-enforcement raids on many of its elite crackers, members of the
shadowy scene said this week. "This is a bad hit for warez," one
self-described 18-year-old programmer, who has been a member of the
community for four years, wrote in an online chat with CNET News.com.
"Right now, every scene is at a standstill. Every one of them."
December 12, 2001 -
US confiscates computers in software piracy probe - By Judy
Rakowsky and Douglas Belkin, Globe Staff, Globe Correspondent,
Federal authorities seeking to shut down a massive international
software pirating ring seized computers in dozens of US and foreign
cities yesterday and questioned several individuals, including a
23-year-old systems administrator at Massachusetts Institute of
Technology who allegedly ranks in the ring's upper echelon, law
enforcement officials said...
December 11, 2001 -
Multiple Enforcement Actions Worldwide Snare Top "Warez" Leadership
-
FEDERAL LAW ENFORCEMENT TARGETS INTERNATIONAL INTERNET PIRACY
SYNDICATES TUESDAY,
WWW.USDOJ.GOV, WASHINGTON, D.C. –
Attorney General John Ashcroft announced today that in three
separate federal law enforcement actions federal agents executed
approximately 100 search warrants worldwide against virtually every
level of criminal organizations engaged in illegal software piracy
over the Internet. The three Operations, codenamed "Buccaneer,"
"Bandwidth" and "Digital Piratez," struck at all aspects of the
illegal software, game and movie trade, often referred to as "warez
scene."
December 03, 2001 -
MUSIC SITES OUT OF TUNE - NYPOST.COM, By
LAUREN BARACK, - In this post-Napster world, Toby
Slater has one message for the subscription music
sites about to launch this week: No thanks. "There's
no excuse to the limitations they're putting on the
sites," said Slater, 22, a digital artist and musician
once featured on Napster. "They know in their heart of
hearts this will not be exciting for consumers..."
November 30, 2001 -
How the music industry blew it - By Richard
Barbrook, Salon.com, John Alderman's "Sonic Boom"
recounts the history of Napster - and the unstoppable
rise of file trading. "They just don't get it." During
the dot-com boom of the late 1990s, this catchphrase
was a popular way of dismissing anyone who expressed
doubts about the world-historical significance of the
Net. How could someone be so out of touch as not to
realize that this technology was transforming
everything: business, politics, culture and even
personal relationships? The future would belong to
those who did "get it..."
SPECIAL May
24, 2001
-
Gallery
of CSS Descramblers -
"On January 20, 2000, United States District Judge
Lewis A. Kaplan of the Southern District of New York
issued a preliminary injunction in Universal City Studios
et al. v. Reimerdes et al., prohibiting the defendants
from distributing computer code for reading encrypted DVDs.
The defendants had been sued under 17 USC 1201(a)(2), also
known as section 1201(a)(2) of the
Digital
Millennium Copyright Act..."
October 11, 2001 -
Napster trial twist: Labels 'smell bad' - By John
Borland, Special to ZDNet News, Record company attorneys
seeking a quick end to their copyright suit against Napster on
Wednesday instead found themselves fielding pointed questions
from a federal judge over planned music subscription services.
Prompted by arguments presented by Napster's legal team, U.S.
District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel grilled music industry
lawyers about antitrust concerns related to MusicNet and
Pressplay, joint ventures between two groups of major record
labels to distribute their music online. "I'm really confused
as to why the plaintiffs came upon this way of getting
together in a joint venture," Patel said. "Even if it passes
antitrust analysis, it looks bad, sounds bad, smells bad..."
September
26, 2001 -
Napster's cost of living--$100 million - By Jim
Hu and John Borland, Special to ZDNet News,
Bertelsmann's quest to keep the controversial Napster
alive has cost the media giant more than $100 million--and
it could become even more expensive. Napster's deal with
music publishers announced earlier this week will cost the
company $36 million up front--$26 million to settle the
publishers' ongoing lawsuit, and another $10 million as an
advance on future licensing fees...
September
11, 2001 -
The Napster legacy could be a problem - By
Erick Schonfeld, Special to ZDNet, COMMENTARY--Napster
proved that music wants to be free. The music industry, on
the other hand, wants to be profitable. To that end, Web
consumers will soon be offered two new digital services:
Pressplay (backed by Sony and Vivendi Universal) and
MusicNet (backed by AOL Time Warner, EMI, Bertelsmann's
BMG, and RealNetworks). This will be the first true test
of whether anyone is willing to pay for streaming music
and downloads off the Web. Here's why both services will
find it difficult to pass that test. (Full disclosure: AOL
Time Warner owns Business 2.0.)
September
11, 2001 -
IceRadio
- "IceRadio.ca is a revolutionary and innovative
web site that lets music lovers listen to their
favorite songs and CD's right on the web. Listeners do
not need to download any special software, or use up
their precious hard disk space to listen to their
favorite music. They simply search for their favorite
music, point, click and enjoy..."
August
28, 2001 -
AudioGalaxy
Satellite - "The
Audiogalaxy Satellite is a small and simple program
that allows you to share your music with friends and
other users on Audiogalaxy..."
August
28, 2001
-
Morpheus
- "Morpheus is a full-featured P2P file-sharing
application that allows users to search for all types
of digital media across the MusicCity Network.
Morpheus is neither central server-based, like
Napster,
nor based on the Gnutella file-sharing protocol. The
program uses a proprietary peer-to-peer protocol to
share files among users on the network..."
July
16, 2001
-
Lime
Wire - "Gnutella Network has the potential to
move far beyond simple file-sharing, replacing much of
the functionality currently found on the World Wide
Web. NO COMPANY OWNS GNUTELLA... "
February
26, 2001 -
ugo.com
- UnderGroundOnline (www.ugo.com),
the largest entertainment content site in Silicon
Alley, has compiled a comprehensive guide to all the
new contenders to the Napster throne in a
user-friendly feature entitled "Napster
Alternatives." UGO has created a list of the
most worthy contenders, including, among others,
Aimster, Audiogalaxy Satellite, Hotline, and Imesh.
Each contender's page includes a detailed
description, its pros and cons, as well as a
thorough guide to downloading, installing or using
it.
Sep. 18, 2000 PDT,
GPulp
Opens Up Web Searches
- by
Michelle
Delio
The
Gnutella Next Generation development team announced
that they are developing a new open source technology
for search engines. The group believes that "gPulp"
(general Purpose Location Protocol) will eventually
become the standard search tool on every network and
computing device. "GPulp
will be a ubiquitous, open, free, and powerful tool
that lets users find anything –- anything! -- on any
network," promised Gnutella Next Generation (Gnutella
NG) team manager Sebastien Lambla...
Swapoo!
-
Very cool little file swapper.
FilePool
- Offers to allow users to share files in any format.
Pointera
-
Sells itself as a "legitimate" way
for people to share files.
The Timeline
- ZDNet Music has dutifully reported as Napster rose
from fledgling application to global phenomenon. Here
is the comprehensive Napster chronology.
•
Napster plays dodgeball with music biz
(October 11, 1999)
•
RIAA sues Napster (December
8, 1999)
•
USC refuses to unplug Napster
(February 25, 2000)
•
Napster has Net music all shook up
(February 29, 2000)
•
New program mimics Napster
(March 15, 2000)
•
AOL announces faux-Napster release "unauthorized"
(March 16, 2000)
•
Gnutella continues to spead
(March 22, 2000)
•
How does Gnutella stack up against Napster?
(March 23, 2000)
•
Napster changes tune to appease colleges
(March 23, 2000)
•
Napster and the RIAA meet in court
(March 29, 2000)
•
Metallica dings Napster, colleges with lawsuit
(April 13, 2000)
•
Metallica's site hacked by Napster fans
(April 14, 2000)
•
Dr. Dre demands Napster ban users
(April 18, 2000)
•
Napster loses support of SAUC
(April 19, 2000)
•
Indiana U. bans Napster after Metallica lawsuit
(April 20, 2000)
•
Universities ban Napster
(April 21, 2000)
•
Napster to sponsor Limp Bizkit tour
(April 24, 2000)
•
USC lets students keep using Napster
(April 24, 2000)
•
Dr. Dre sues Napster, and possibly users too
(April 26, 2000)
•
Offspring goes on record as pro-Napster
(April 26, 2000)
•
Chuck D behind Napster 100 percent
(May 1, 2000)
•
Metallica plans to demand that Napster ban users
(May 2, 2000)
•
Metallica drummer begs "Stop ripping us off!"
(May 3, 2000)
•
Metallica fans protest band's treatment of them
(May 3, 2000)
•
Metallica drummer visits Napster's offices
(May 3, 2000)
•
Napster agree to ban Metallica fans from service
(May 5, 2000)
•
Brazilian teens develop Mac Napster
(May 7, 2000)
•
Napster loses early legal skirmish
(May 8, 2000)
•
Dr. Dre prepares to deliver list of fans to Napster
(May 10, 2000)
•
Napster boots 317,377 users
(May 10, 2000)
•
Napster offers banned users a chance to counter
(May 11, 2000)
•
Banned Napster users find workaround
(May 11, 2000)
•
Napster shuts down "workaround" forums
(May 12, 2000)
•
Napster.com wins Webby Award
(May 12, 2000)
•
The Future of Napster: DVD-sharing
(May 12, 2000)
•
73% of college students admit to using Napster
(May 15, 2000)
•
Napster users to face prison time?
(May 16, 2000)
•
Metallica's lawyer accuses 30,000 fans of "lying"
(May 16, 2000)
•
Napster gets funding, new CEO
(May 23, 2000)
•
Chuck D goes to Capitol Hill
(May 24, 2000)
•
Is Napster taking a toll on CD sales?
(May 25, 2000)
•
Napster reloads Metallica fans
(June 1, 2000)
•
Napster CEO Calls RIAA Liar
(June 14, 2000)
•
Napster says it's OK to share MP3 files
(June 14, 2000)
•
New survey says Net spurs CD sales
(June 15, 2000)
•
Napster: The next star-maker?
(June 16, 2000)
•
Confessions of a Napster Fanatic
(July 10, 2000)
•
Who's Suing Whom? (July 10,
2000)
•
MP3s are Totally Obsolete
(July 10, 2000)
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