"The New Napsters" - Fortune Magazine Covers Peer-To-Peer
 

By Melanie Warner
August 2002, FORTUNE

To the big record labels, Napster wasn't just a nuisance; it was their worst
nightmare--the online equivalent to everyone storming into record stores and making off with armfuls of CDs. So when an appeals court issued an order last July forcing Napster to shut down, there was a sigh of relief throughout the recording industry. It was the day free music died.

Or so it seemed. Napster as we knew it is gone. But what's taken its place is a lot scarier for the music industry--and perhaps unstoppable. They're called file-sharing services, or P2P networks in geek-speak, and the three most popular ones--Kazaa, Grokster, and Morpheus--have a combined 70 million active users, compared with only 20 million for Napster in its heyday. Oh, and it's not just music being zapped across the Internet anymore. The new Napsters house videogames, software programs, and movies, including ones now playing in theaters.

Not surprisingly, the big labels and the movie industry are trying to do to Kazaa, Grokster, and Morpheus what they did to Napster--litigate them out of existence. Only this time the outlaw networks may not be so easy to shut down. Kazaa, Grokster, and Morpheus work much the same way Napster did, but they're technologically smarter and, in a legal sense, a lot more amorphous. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), representing eight record labels, and the Motion Picture Association, working on behalf of 19 movie studios, are suing the companies that own Kazaa, Grokster, and Morpheus--Sharman Networks, Grokster, and StreamCast Networks, respectively. (All three deny the charges.) But those entities don't run their networks the way, say, Sony does its record label; they have little control over what they created and can't tell who's downloading what file, whether it's an Eminem song or Grandma's recipe for blueberry pie. Thus the legal question becomes: If you can't control or see illegal activity, how can you be liable for it? In a memo leaked last December, the RIAA's legal team acknowledged that its claims against Kazaa, Grokster, and Morpheus "are not as strong as those against Napster."
http://www.fortune.com/indexw.jhtml?...&doc_id=208834

- js.

Good article JS!!

:tu:

I this partially replied thread

Great story, but basically a variation on the same story that's been done dozens of times.....I wish someone would do this story and present it in the larger context vis-a-vis draconian copyright laws, the industrial/entertainment complex's attempts to control all artistic content, totalitarian legislation designed to strangle technology, the lack of choice available through conventional media outlets etc etc. There is a larger picture here than just P2P...file-sharing is just the battle in the streets.

Thanks for the link, Jack. :tu:

Ditto. Well put, theknife. :ND:

P2P as a technology is capable of empowering people to much more than just sharing and trading mp3s, movies and software online. It is socially explosive technology. Online communities are already approaching the population sizes of small nations. Their shared resources keep growing and their internal connectivity keeps getting better. Who knows what all these people are willing and able to share and to do tomorrow? :SB: :SD: :att:

- tg ;)

I myself am surprised how many p2p users do understand the situation in Hollywood; we're not just out to better ourselves, we're out to better the situation for musicians and artists as well. As the community matures people will move beyond simeple civil disobeidance and take an active part in the development of the laws that affect them. The DMCA won't abolish itself, we'll have to make the push to get rid of it, and more and more the p2p community is becoming a force that could make that push. Until that happens news articles like this one will never address the issues theknife addressed.

yes, the story is old but the venue is new. it helps to remember that what's been around us p2p veterans awhile may be fresh to millions of people trying it out or hearing about it for the first time.

so the news in the p2p community is when fortune magazine (an old aol time warner property) does a fairly balanced piece on the subject and does it in the midst of this hysterical firestorm brought on by the congress and the riaa/mpaa...there's nothing more establishment than fortune and nobody more protective of copyrights than aol time warner. so as well written and laid out as the article is, it's not the content that i find interesting but the place – and the reason why - it appears. why fortune and why now?

hi tg, those avatars are moving faster than hellys!:W:

- js.

Yes, Mazer. :tu: It takes time for the civil disobedience of millions to develop into political power but the signs are already there, and the p2p communities are not the only collectives that have started to fight against DMCA. Academics, librarians and civil libertarians are among the groups that have raised their voice against the dragonian measures of DMCA. For the p2p communities, the battle is hardly over until all non-commercial p2p is classified as fair use.

Yepyep, Jack. :ND: Active and well-informed p2p communities like Napsterites look at things from quite a different perspective than the masses. When the mainstream media starts to change its perception of p2p and question the propaganda fed by the content industries, times are indeed changing. :sup:

It's all Helly's fault. :SP: She and her cool avatars have inspired me to start playing with them too... :CG: :BL:

- tg ;)

well whatever the reason they are indeed cool, especially since i notice that your avy is now off the butts. if that goes for you too it's way cool indeed! :tu:

- js.

this part sounds like a call- for help/to arms aimed at their consevative readers

if they can hack anybody(or US residents only?) now, It seems to me they are looking at useing a whole new game plan,



TG is cold and dark in here.....:eke: :SP: ouch! :kiss:

Of course it is cold and dark there... it is supposed to be! Just keep focusing on topical posting and we might even remove the probe... :CG: :dom:

- tg ;)