Talk:Napster
"Surely if Gnutella develops into a viable (and free) alternative, but with no central server to take the legal heat, Napster's proposed business model (paid access) will fail."
The dispeller of myths cannot see Napster’s future, but still believes and forges ahead. [email protected]
- I would like to differ here; BearShare for instance is a Gnutella client which is free as in speech and free as in beer, and the reports are that it is stable so I would call it viable. From what I've heard, though, it's still not popular and so is somewhat vexing to use since many songs are not available.
"Another potential competitor or successor to Napster is OpenNAP. Since most existing Napster clients can select what server they connect to, and since there is a free software clone of Napster server, anyone on the Internet can theoretically open up a small competitor or successor to Napster."
- One link I skimmed on I think slashdot said that Napster had banned OpenNap clients from its servers somehow. I'm trying to find it again now. http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/06/28/079211&mode=thread But I'm thinking now that maybe I'm missing something. . . .
there are other server networks than napsters own. napigator finds them, amongst others.
No disrespect, but what is the dispeller of myths, and does it fit with an encyclopedia (rather than, say, an MTV gossip program) Verloren
The following has no business in an encyclopedia article. Perhaps a fact or two can be extracted from it that does, though, so I'll leave it here and let someone more familiar with the present state of Napster do that.
The dispeller of myths will now channel the Napster FAQ. “There will be a small monthly fee to join Napster. We understand that you're itching to know exactly how much membership will cost -- but we haven't yet settled on a price. We can tell you that it will depend on the agreements we reach with the copyright holders who license their music for sharing by the Napster community.” The dispeller of myths says it will be between $5.00 and $10.00/month
The dispeller of myths on why to pay for Napster, “We know that there will always be a lot of alternatives. Ultimately, the choice will be yours, but we feel that file sharing communities that pay copyright holders and provide simple, useful tools to help you do what you want with your digital music collection are going to prevail.”