Good post, Mazer!
It is interesting to reflect back on the feelings and thoughts that we have gone through during the various phases of the Napster Era. It was really not that long ago in calendar time when those original posts were written (I can't believe I started posting on the Nappy board just a year ago!) but in psychological time it feels like ages ago. This feeling of distant past is not only due to time running more swiftly in cyberspace but perhaps even more due to the unfolding of consciousness and understanding - individually as well as collectively - that has taken place since those times.
There seemed to be something unique and almost magical to Napster - something worth fighting for and spending a great amount of energy to make better. And of course there
was something unique - the massive first-time coming together of millions of online music lovers. Napster was the Woodstock on Internet, and there will probably never happen something quite similar. There is always a special freshness to things that happen for the very first time.
In retrospect my greatest worry at those 'early' days was the possibility of the global filesharing community being permanently shattered by the hostility of the RIAA or the stupidity of Napster Inc. Well, we have seen plenty of both, haven't we. And now, being both stabbed and kissed to death by the RIAA, Nappy's prospects are gloomy indeed. The RIAA has also done a good job on preventing OpenNap from growing into a filesharing solution for the masses. These developments might look like a success for the RIAA and a fatal blow to the idea of a global filesharing community but I see it differently. By pushing the edge of software development into the field of serverless p2p the RIAA is quickly losing all control over it. And as the example of Morpheus shows (100k users in just a few weeks) people have learned to switch their p2p software and quickly reorganize themselves into new global communities. Not bad, not bad at all.
- tg
25-05-01, 09:13 PM
Threaded Mode