OFF:<<== see? WARNING! the word NAPSTER appears in this post!-_-

[Paul Mather]

On Fri, 12 May 2000, Tom Clark wrote:

=> > I'm beginning to think that napster is not the utopian service people
=> > are having me believe... ;-)
=>
=> The way Napster works is that it is built on a network of individual Napster
=> program owners who specify locations on their computers from which files can
=> be downloaded.     If a Napster program owner is not on-line, then the files
=> he/she has made available when on-line cannot be accessed.

I understood that apsect of it.  I guess I just expected that Napster
themselves would have a hosting site of their own, for the poor starving
artistes and all that, but, reading further on artist.napster.com
reveals that they don't.

This leaves me wondering: what is the difference between Napster and IRC
w/DCC downloads (disclaimer: I am not an IRC user), other than its files
are limited to MPEG audio, and it is searchable in a crude fashion?
(I.e., what is all the fuss about?:)  I only tried out Napster very
recently, after all the recent brouhaha, but, other than a source of
getting pirated popular music, it doesn't seem all that up to much
(unless you are a fan of chat systems, and then it seems to be pretty
vanilla in that aspect).

It seems to me that outfits like www.mp3.com, and mailing lists like
BOC-L are much better bets at reliably locating out-of-the-way music.

Cheers,

Paul.

e-mail: paul at gromit.dlib.vt.edu

"Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production
 deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid."
        --- Frank Vincent Zappa