Speaker 1: Get in text with technology with text Stuff from housef
Speaker 1: what Com. Hey there everyone, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: My name is Jonathan Strickland, I am a host, and
Speaker 1: my name is Lauren Vogelbaum. I am coincidentally also a host.
Speaker 1: It's fantastic that we have two hosts together because that
Speaker 1: means we can do a podcast. And today we wanted
Speaker 1: to talk about something we have. One of our listeners
Speaker 1: asked us about this. It's a it's an interesting story.
Speaker 1: It's a story about an internet company that had a
Speaker 1: meteorc rise and perhaps and even more meteoric fall. Uh,
Speaker 1: and then it was reborn into something completely different in
Speaker 1: a way Napster and Napster's um it's got a bad rap.
Speaker 1: It it's kind of becomes synonymous with at least the
Speaker 1: old Napster. The original Napster has become synonymous with things
Speaker 1: like piracy. Although in the lawless days of the Internet
Speaker 1: when everyone just stole from Lars Ulric, Yes, in fact,
Speaker 1: he honestly he ended up delivering a lawsuit by hand too,
Speaker 1: so full of ire he was, Yes, he took this.
Speaker 1: I think I don't know. I don't know that. I
Speaker 1: don't know that even a member of Metallica can carry
Speaker 1: a sixty thousand page maybe by hand truck, I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure by hand, but sure, series of CDs. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So anyway, let's talk about Napster and what it was
Speaker 1: and what it is today, because it's it's definitely changed
Speaker 1: quite a bit. So it's a it's it's all about really,
Speaker 1: it's all about music. It's technically it's about file sharing,
Speaker 1: but those files are were essentially music files MP three files.
Speaker 1: Napster limited itself to MP three files. Lots of other
Speaker 1: peer to peer sharing networks used, you know, you could
Speaker 1: you could get movies on their all kinds of stuff, games, everything,
Speaker 1: any kind of file. Well, Napster was all about all
Speaker 1: about MP three and and you have to understand, like
Speaker 1: the the days when we first start looking at this idea,
Speaker 1: that's way back in the late nineties. Back then, music
Speaker 1: was not something that you could easily get on the internet.
Speaker 1: It was first of all, anything that was on a
Speaker 1: web page was MIDI based or whatever it was, or
Speaker 1: mod based. It was just it was not anywhere close
Speaker 1: to CD quality. We didn't have an iTunes store that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. Yeah, there wasn't, you know, but there
Speaker 1: were people who what they would I just say completely,
Speaker 1: I just said that. When iTunes was founded, that's a
Speaker 1: different show. So anyway, there there's a whole you know.
Speaker 1: iTunes for a long time was just a jukebox type
Speaker 1: of program where you would manage the music that you
Speaker 1: already had. It wasn't a store where you would buy
Speaker 1: new music. It was it was a management system. So really,
Speaker 1: at this time, the way you would get if you
Speaker 1: were someone who wanted to get a music file, you
Speaker 1: would essentially have to search around for someone who was
Speaker 1: hosting music files on a website somewhere and then download them.
Speaker 1: And these these websites were very much unreliable, and uh,
Speaker 1: this is what got a certain guy thinking about different
Speaker 1: ways of going about it. The guy's name was Shan Fanning. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and as he got his first computer and very shortly
Speaker 1: after that created Napster. So that was yeah, it was
Speaker 1: within two years he had gone from getting his first
Speaker 1: computer to creating one of the most influential and notorious
Speaker 1: web services and programs of all time. Yeah. He got
Speaker 1: his computer from his uncle, John Fanning, who ended up
Speaker 1: being a big supporter. Yeah. Yeah, he he provided the
Speaker 1: seed money for for Napster in a couple of years.
Speaker 1: Yet he was also not just interested in programming right
Speaker 1: off the bat, but also interested in Internet Relay Chat
Speaker 1: i r S, which is, you know, one of many
Speaker 1: different protocols that allow you to communicate over the Internet
Speaker 1: and um in an instant instant messagery. Yeah, exactly, as
Speaker 1: opposed to like email or something along those lines. And
Speaker 1: he got interested in the field of Internet security. And
Speaker 1: uh he described himself at the time as a white hat,
Speaker 1: not a hacker. So the idea being that he was
Speaker 1: interested in finding ways to make internet security more robust,
Speaker 1: so and in helping people, not not stealing from people,
Speaker 1: right like, not like he might look at a system
Speaker 1: and say, oh, you have a vulnerability here, you need
Speaker 1: to patch it, as opposed to, oh, you have a
Speaker 1: vulnerability here, give me all your things. Um. That was
Speaker 1: kind of his his at least that's what he said,
Speaker 1: and I have no reason to doubt him. But he
Speaker 1: met virtually a fellow named Sean Parker online in those days,
Speaker 1: and Sean Parker also becomes important in the Napster story.
Speaker 1: So in ninety eight, he was starting to think about
Speaker 1: this thing that music files. And by the way, this
Speaker 1: kid is a teenager. I mean, you know, if I'm
Speaker 1: using the word kid, it's not just because I use
Speaker 1: that word for everybody. It's because he was literally like
Speaker 1: seventeen to nineteen at the time. Yeah, he was. He was, uh,
Speaker 1: well that was when he was eighteen turning nineteen. Uh,
Speaker 1: and he he was a freshman at Northeastern University in Boston,
Speaker 1: and he knew that there were a lot of kids
Speaker 1: his age really interested in music and they really wanted
Speaker 1: to find more music. But again, it was really tricky
Speaker 1: to find it online because these websites that would host files,
Speaker 1: they wouldn't last very long. Maybe someone stops um stops
Speaker 1: monitoring it or maintaining it and the links are all dead,
Speaker 1: or because of high traffic, you know, everyone finds out
Speaker 1: that this is where this one file is, everyone goes
Speaker 1: there and then it crashes the site. It was really
Speaker 1: really tricky to find a way to reliably get those
Speaker 1: music files. Also important to note that was when the
Speaker 1: Digital Millennium Copyright Act went into effect. Yes, very important.
Speaker 1: That's a Congress enacted that and uh that was that
Speaker 1: was essentially Congress's way of saying, we understand that intellectual
Speaker 1: property is important that copyright is in and that the
Speaker 1: Internet age has dramatically changed how easy it is to
Speaker 1: distribute material that is under copyright. So here are some
Speaker 1: rules to guide how we can how we can legislate
Speaker 1: this sort of stuff, and essentially criminalized the circumvention of
Speaker 1: any kind of digital rights management right. It also, however,
Speaker 1: created something called safe harbor, which was very important and
Speaker 1: would become extremely important in Napster's case. Safe harbor is
Speaker 1: a concept whereby it says, if your site or service
Speaker 1: is not actively engaged in copyright infringement, but the users
Speaker 1: are using your service in order to conduct copyright infringement,
Speaker 1: you yourself are not at fault. You cannot be held
Speaker 1: at fault for the behavior of your users because the
Speaker 1: users are behaving however they want to behave. You're providing
Speaker 1: a service. As long as your service is not actively
Speaker 1: meant to circumvent copyright protection or to distribute copyright write
Speaker 1: materials illegally, then you should be in the clear because
Speaker 1: you cannot be held responsible for what other people do.
Speaker 1: And that's an important concept. It's also one that ultimately
Speaker 1: you could argue was not held up in the case
Speaker 1: of naps Yeah yeah, uh yeah, other. While we're on
Speaker 1: the subject, other concept that became important in this argument
Speaker 1: was the Audio Home Recording Act, of which said that
Speaker 1: you are allowed to make unlimited copies essentially of any
Speaker 1: CDs and cassettes that you own for personal use and
Speaker 1: for your friends, as long as you're not receiving compensation. Right. So,
Speaker 1: again the idea being that if I own something, I
Speaker 1: can make a copy of it. Usually it's considered a
Speaker 1: copy for backup purposes. So for example, let's say I
Speaker 1: own a c D and I want to be able
Speaker 1: to make a second CD in case something happens that
Speaker 1: first one, because I mean I bought that c D.
Speaker 1: I feel that's mine. Uh. And this this is this
Speaker 1: is something, yeah, something that the music industry was not
Speaker 1: so pleased about. I mean every industry. Whenever any sort
Speaker 1: of uh invention has come up that allows people to
Speaker 1: copy material some way, for instance, VCRs and DVRs, the
Speaker 1: various industries get very nervous about it because they're afraid
Speaker 1: that well for multiple reasons, but one of the reasons
Speaker 1: is they are afraid that that's going to impact sales.
Speaker 1: That means that you're going to end up distributing stuff.
Speaker 1: And then you cut out the person or entity that
Speaker 1: is in charge of distributing that, and then they lose
Speaker 1: the copyright and that you know, and that that paid
Speaker 1: to make this thing happen essentially, and that they're going
Speaker 1: to lose money. Yeah, it's huge, huge thing. When VCRs
Speaker 1: came out in the in the early eighties, not but
Speaker 1: I remember. But why are you looking at me, Lauren?
Speaker 1: Is it only because I'm your co host? Is it
Speaker 1: because you actually know that I remember when VCRs came out.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna smile on her face, tells me the answer.
Speaker 1: All I need to know, folks, on all I need
Speaker 1: to know anyway. Um, but yeah, So so that that's
Speaker 1: kind of the state of digital copyright. So meanwhile, Sean
Speaker 1: Fanning is saying, maybe there's a better way of being
Speaker 1: able to find and get the music files that you
Speaker 1: really want, and he starts to come up with this
Speaker 1: idea where the idea would be to create a centralized
Speaker 1: server and that server's job would be to search for
Speaker 1: an index music files and uh, and the way it
Speaker 1: would work is that you would subscribe to the service. UH,
Speaker 1: you would essentially register yourself as a user with the service,
Speaker 1: and then as a registered user, You would get a
Speaker 1: folder that you would put on your hard drive, and
Speaker 1: that folder would be a share double folder. Anything you
Speaker 1: put in that folder could be seen by the service.
Speaker 1: The server, the centralized server could see whatever you put
Speaker 1: in there. Now, in the case of Napster, we're talking
Speaker 1: MP three files. So if you put if you had
Speaker 1: MP three files already on your machine and you put
Speaker 1: them in this folder, it would mean that those would
Speaker 1: be discoverable by that centralized server. So someone else who
Speaker 1: registers with it wasn't called Napster yet. But when they
Speaker 1: register with the service and they search for a particular
Speaker 1: music file and you happen to have that music file
Speaker 1: on your folder, you're a link to. Essentially, your machine
Speaker 1: would pop up and the server would facilitate a connection
Speaker 1: between the person searching and your computer so that the
Speaker 1: file transfer could complete. So, Lauren, let's let's use well,
Speaker 1: we'll use ourselves as an example. Lauren, Let's say that
Speaker 1: you've heard about this band called Common Rotation. All right,
Speaker 1: Common Rotation fronted by Adam Bush, former actor in the
Speaker 1: Buffy the Vampire Slayer series. La He was Warren nerd
Speaker 1: of Doom. So, Lauren, you've heard of Common rotation, and
Speaker 1: you're thinking, I really want to hear this one song
Speaker 1: I've heard about that common rotation does. It's called sit
Speaker 1: Down before I Fall Down. But uh, you know, I
Speaker 1: don't have access to a way of finding this this song.
Speaker 1: Otherwise I go into Napster. It turns out that I
Speaker 1: Jonathan happened to have that song and I have it
Speaker 1: in the share folder for Napster. And when you do
Speaker 1: the search, it put points a link towards my direction,
Speaker 1: towards my computer. You hit the download button. My computer
Speaker 1: uploads the file and your computer downloads the file, and
Speaker 1: it's a direct transfer between the two computers. The centralized
Speaker 1: server just access kind of a traffic monitor. Um. And
Speaker 1: the cool thing about this is that when my file
Speaker 1: gets to you, by default, it's going into your share folder.
Speaker 1: You can change those settings, or you could have changed
Speaker 1: those settings back in the day because the service doesn't
Speaker 1: exist anymore, right, or you can pull it out of
Speaker 1: that share folder you wanted to write, but you you don't.
Speaker 1: You don't have to share everything you get, but if
Speaker 1: you did, that would mean that now there's another instance
Speaker 1: of that file that there's two locations, so that if
Speaker 1: you can't, if you have trouble accessing the first location,
Speaker 1: or if if out, yeah, or if I'm not even online,
Speaker 1: like if if my computer is off, you cannot connect
Speaker 1: to my computer. But if Lauren is on and she
Speaker 1: still has that file on her folder, that means person
Speaker 1: number three could come in and get the file from Lauren.
Speaker 1: So every time that someone used Napster, they were actually
Speaker 1: increasing its utility. So it's a service that got longer
Speaker 1: the more people used it, and the more the larger
Speaker 1: the numbers joined, the more powerful this service became, right, right,
Speaker 1: And so so early Fanning was was developing this this
Speaker 1: program and coding everything along with Sean Parker, I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: And the story that he did sixty straight hours of
Speaker 1: coding without sleep. That sounds like one of those terrific
Speaker 1: Internet myths. Although with you know, with energy drinks which
Speaker 1: were which were new and the the red Bull was
Speaker 1: brand new and they were downing them in cases they
Speaker 1: were they were. But so they uploaded this beta to
Speaker 1: a website called download dot com and and it hit
Speaker 1: really big and people were so excited about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was very quickly became clear that this this thing
Speaker 1: that they had come up with was going really resonated
Speaker 1: really because there are a lot of people who are
Speaker 1: really interested in music, and there's also there was also
Speaker 1: this growing attitude of if I like one song, but
Speaker 1: I don't like the rest of the album, why should
Speaker 1: I the whole album for one song. And the problem
Speaker 1: at the time was that there was no real way
Speaker 1: to buy song by song unless the band had released
Speaker 1: specifically a single CD right. Other than that, you were
Speaker 1: pretty much out of luck. You had to buy the
Speaker 1: entire album, and so that was why a lot of
Speaker 1: people were turning. One of the reasons why a lot
Speaker 1: of people were turning to piracy because it allowed them
Speaker 1: the freedom to get what they wanted without getting all
Speaker 1: the other stuff. And one of the big arguments people
Speaker 1: have put forward about, you know, the piracy thing, is
Speaker 1: that if the music industry had moved faster to make
Speaker 1: it more of a accessible Yeah, Yeah, if the music
Speaker 1: industry had been moving ahead of the population at the time,
Speaker 1: or thinking ahead, or even just looking at the Internet
Speaker 1: at that time, which they really weren't, Yeah, then they
Speaker 1: could have They could have headed off the whole piracy
Speaker 1: issue to a large extent, Like if you make it
Speaker 1: easy for people to get your stuff, and then people
Speaker 1: will come and pay for your stuff. If, however, it's
Speaker 1: way easier for people to steal your stuff, don't be
Speaker 1: prized when it gets stolen. Yeah, I have I have
Speaker 1: ideas about HBO's content, like like this cable cable television
Speaker 1: in general, and yeah, that's one of those things where
Speaker 1: you know you'd be like, oh, HBO, go, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: get that, and then you realize, wait a minute, if
Speaker 1: I don't have the HBO subscription, I can It's only
Speaker 1: if I already have it. If I already have it,
Speaker 1: why do I any Why do anyway? That's a whole
Speaker 1: different show. Um. But so so back in back, so
Speaker 1: he had this cool idea. His uncle John, who had
Speaker 1: gotten him that first computer, gave him some seed money
Speaker 1: and I think maybe facilitated in an introduction to Eileen Richardson. Right.
Speaker 1: And this is also around the time Sean Fanning has
Speaker 1: decided to call it Napster, which was based off a
Speaker 1: nickname he had in junior high school based on his hairstyle. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's amazing. Yeah, that's just thought I have, Like I
Speaker 1: have to get this fact out there, and if I
Speaker 1: don't say it now, it's not gonna happen. So Eileen
Speaker 1: Richardson was a venture capitalist, une very funky one. All
Speaker 1: you know, all the pund hair right right, all the
Speaker 1: reports about her like, yeah, she goes to Amsterdam to
Speaker 1: listen to bands and just got pink hair. It's really cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But so really she's hardcore. She she invested in the
Speaker 1: company and signed on as the interim CEO. Exactly. She
Speaker 1: she was someone who had had a lot of experience
Speaker 1: in investing in internet companies. And you know, keep in mind,
Speaker 1: this is ninety nine, so we're still talking before the
Speaker 1: big bubble crash. It's the heady days of the Internet
Speaker 1: when everyone's trying to figure out, like, there's this incredible resource,
Speaker 1: how can we use it to our best advantage? And
Speaker 1: she was one of those people who was right there
Speaker 1: on the bleeding edge looking at the possibilities, and she
Speaker 1: got really excited. She was very much a passionate music fan,
Speaker 1: and so she was a music fan and a venture capitalist.
Speaker 1: Napster fell right into her wheelhouse, so she jumped in.
Speaker 1: She ended up making a very substantial investment, and then
Speaker 1: like like you said, Lauren, she began to interim CEO.
Speaker 1: By by September, there were forty registered Napster users. Um
Speaker 1: and it was connecting a few hundred people at a
Speaker 1: time at any given time. Right and by this time
Speaker 1: on Parker has gone from being an I r C
Speaker 1: buddy to a real life buddy and is working with
Speaker 1: Fanning on this project. Uh. And and it was also
Speaker 1: right around the same time that the Recording Industry Association
Speaker 1: of America also known as the r I double A,
Speaker 1: which represents five of the major music labels like we're
Speaker 1: talking like the big big ones, the ones that own
Speaker 1: everything else, essentially started to really tackle websites that were
Speaker 1: hosting music files that were under copyright. So the r
Speaker 1: I double A was actually actively seeking uh these sites
Speaker 1: being taken down. Now, keep in mind Napsters circumventing all this.
Speaker 1: It's no longer looking at websites that are hosting files.
Speaker 1: It's looking directly at people's hard drives where there's the
Speaker 1: shared folder. So while r I double A is going
Speaker 1: after all these websites, Napster's doing you know, business like gangbusters.
Speaker 1: And when I say business, it's not really business because
Speaker 1: they weren't making money. Yeah, they had revenue generating scheme
Speaker 1: at all. There was no way for Napster to make money.
Speaker 1: It just that wasn't part of what was going on.
Speaker 1: In fact, I'm not sure that was ever really part
Speaker 1: of their their their original plan. Yeah, Originally it was
Speaker 1: all just about sharing and that you know, they knew
Speaker 1: that the service had value, but not in a way
Speaker 1: that they could actually monetize. And although you know, they
Speaker 1: were looking even in the early days, they were looking
Speaker 1: at ways to to to get licenses from various music
Speaker 1: labels where they be able to do things like sell
Speaker 1: music files through napster Um as well as kind of
Speaker 1: you know, diffuse the growing problem of the r I
Speaker 1: double a looking out for or even later on they
Speaker 1: were talking about, you know, trying to find a way
Speaker 1: to count count these hits, count these downloads and and
Speaker 1: tally them up and pay the recording artists and the
Speaker 1: labels and all of that for the music. So, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's I think it's really important to mention that
Speaker 1: because these these kids really weren't out there going like
Speaker 1: we're gonna steal all the music, right. In fact, they
Speaker 1: were just thinking like, this is a way to share
Speaker 1: stuff and it's a tool for music discovery, which was
Speaker 1: a that was a big deal too, was the idea
Speaker 1: like it's it's getting harder and harder to discover music.
Speaker 1: Radio stations might play the same like a couple dozen tracks,
Speaker 1: technically obligated to pay the play the same like forty
Speaker 1: tracks by their contracts. So how do you discover new
Speaker 1: stuff If you don't have the luxury of flying off
Speaker 1: to Amsterdam every few months to listen to a band play,
Speaker 1: Then how do you discover new music? If you're not
Speaker 1: you know, you may not live in a city that
Speaker 1: has a vibrant music community. It makes it really difficult. So,
Speaker 1: you know, although the record industry was doing fine, It's
Speaker 1: profits raised eight percent over the previous year um by
Speaker 1: by the end of the year, UM the R I
Speaker 1: A filed lawsuit against Napster. Right right around that same time,
Speaker 1: Napster hired its first non founding member named ali idar Uh.
Speaker 1: And then right at right while that was going on,
Speaker 1: our I Double A was really looking at Napster as
Speaker 1: a true threat, like this was if if the websites
Speaker 1: hosting a few music files were bad, Napster was Darth
Speaker 1: Mader coming out to kill all the Jedi, and so
Speaker 1: R I Double A really started to concentrate on him.
Speaker 1: In fact called Napster a giant online pirate bazarre. That's bizarre,
Speaker 1: b a z a R not bizarre, isn't strange um.
Speaker 1: And so the thing was that as the R I
Speaker 1: double A began to focus on Napster and all this
Speaker 1: news broke about coming after Napster, that just made Napster's
Speaker 1: profile go up even more, which meant more people discovered
Speaker 1: the service, which meant that it actually got more popular
Speaker 1: than ever before. Meanwhile, the R I double A was
Speaker 1: specifically looking at charging Napster one hundred thousand dollars for
Speaker 1: every copyrighted work that was infringed, which which is a bunch,
Speaker 1: and that's a lot. And remember, this is a service
Speaker 1: that grows incredibly every time someone new joins in, especially
Speaker 1: if that person has files on their computer that wasn't
Speaker 1: already spread across the entire uh Napster landscape. So if
Speaker 1: you know, if I join on and I happen to
Speaker 1: have my Tibetan Throat Singing Magical CD that nobody else
Speaker 1: in the whole world owns, and it happens to be
Speaker 1: on my computer, then suddenly I am of more value
Speaker 1: than Napster because there's new stuff that no one had,
Speaker 1: no else has yet. If I happen to have Dave
Speaker 1: Matthew's greatest hits, there's a chance that was already covered
Speaker 1: on Napster. Um, I don't have that album. By the way,
Speaker 1: I'm very proud of you. I'm not I'm not passing
Speaker 1: any judgment. I'm just saying so, uh, yeah, well that
Speaker 1: was fun. But yeah. Here's something that Eileen Richardson specifically
Speaker 1: had to say about Napster, and this comes from an
Speaker 1: interview she did with Salon where this was after Metallica,
Speaker 1: after after Lars Alric himself, it came by and dropped
Speaker 1: off this this huge lawsuit because it wasn't just r
Speaker 1: I double A that came after Napster. Individual labels and
Speaker 1: bands also came after Napster. And uh and so she said,
Speaker 1: I think and then in brackets because this is not
Speaker 1: exactly what she said, but Metallica and the recording industries
Speaker 1: actions are based on a lack of knowledge and fear.
Speaker 1: When you're afraid of something that you don't understand, you react,
Speaker 1: usually with the lawsuit. But over time, and we see
Speaker 1: this absolutely every single day, everybody's learning. We're learning about
Speaker 1: the music industry. They're learning about the Internet. I'm confident
Speaker 1: that we'll get there together. Now. As it turns out,
Speaker 1: her words were not quite prophetic. She was giving a
Speaker 1: little too much credit, I think to all sides on
Speaker 1: this issue. I don't mean to paint the r I
Speaker 1: double A as being this evil uh entity. They were
Speaker 1: looking out for their interests in a very very passionate way.
Speaker 1: I meanwhile, Napster was looking out for their interests in
Speaker 1: a very way. I think that everyone involved was being
Speaker 1: a little bit shortsighted about exactly what needed to happen. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: but there is no doubt that the music industry had
Speaker 1: not really figured out the Internet yet, in fact, because
Speaker 1: no one had a music store that was really of
Speaker 1: any true utility at this point. And so that's why
Speaker 1: when you have a service that allows people to get
Speaker 1: what they want, they go to it. Whether that's piracy
Speaker 1: service or if it's one that's legitimate, doesn't matter. If
Speaker 1: you give the people what they want, that's where they're
Speaker 1: gonna go. And the music industry had not yet figured
Speaker 1: out how to give the people what they wanted, and
Speaker 1: so that was the problem. By the way, I still
Speaker 1: remember the days when I would actually want to buy
Speaker 1: an album because I like the album experience. But even
Speaker 1: at this point in the nineties, I was one of
Speaker 1: these people. I was one of the people saying, I
Speaker 1: don't want to buy an entire album. I just like
Speaker 1: this one song, and you know, and I can't think
Speaker 1: of the last time besides like a soundtrack to a
Speaker 1: musical because jazz hands, I can't think of the last
Speaker 1: time I sat down and listen and to an album
Speaker 1: from start to finish. That's that's actually how I kind
Speaker 1: of usually do it myself. If if I have like
Speaker 1: an artist well enough, I'll buy the album and sit
Speaker 1: down and listen to it several times through. Actually, but
Speaker 1: it's been a long time I've done that with They
Speaker 1: might be giants, I've done that with them, But it's
Speaker 1: Jonathan Colton but and Marian call but beyond like a
Speaker 1: few artists, I just don't like fun No, I just
Speaker 1: went out and bought the one, the one that everyone
Speaker 1: listens to. But anyway, getting back to to Napster, and
Speaker 1: around two thousand and they secured around of funding from
Speaker 1: Hummer wind Bald, which installed a man named Hank Barry
Speaker 1: as the CEO of Napster. Again, another interim CEO, so
Speaker 1: Hank Berry takes over for Eileen Richardson in two thousand
Speaker 1: and his main concern was to try and resolve the
Speaker 1: legal issues that had popped up between Napster and the
Speaker 1: r I double A. Uh and other people on his
Speaker 1: management team took over the day to day executive decisions
Speaker 1: of keeping the company going. So really, uh, Hank Barry
Speaker 1: was just looking at the legal issues, not not how
Speaker 1: to operate the company. Yeah, yeah, sure, but yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: it's when you've got people like Dr Dre talking directly
Speaker 1: to you about lawsuits, then you start yeah. Well, and
Speaker 1: there were some there there were some artists who were
Speaker 1: coming out in defense Limp Biscuit Offspring. I think Chuck
Speaker 1: d was, Yes, he was. He was also a big
Speaker 1: supporter of Napster um. Yeah, yeah, that was so, so
Speaker 1: there were artists on either side of the issue. Obviously.
Speaker 1: Two thousand was also when this was another thing that
Speaker 1: got Napster a ton of publicity, when colleges started to
Speaker 1: ban Napster. Yeah. Something I think that I read a
Speaker 1: figure that's something like colleges. It was around across the US,
Speaker 1: It was around in March of two thousand. By March
Speaker 1: of two thousand, it was about a hundred thirty universities,
Speaker 1: but more would join uh and and it was also
Speaker 1: their biggest period of activity. They had upward of seventy
Speaker 1: million registered users. Yeah, and around two and a half
Speaker 1: million people connected at any one time. So so keep
Speaker 1: in mind these servers could only handle a certain number
Speaker 1: of connections. They had more than one server. But in
Speaker 1: the early days, if you wanted to use the service,
Speaker 1: you would connect to the server, and then about up
Speaker 1: to around four thousand, nine nine nine other people could
Speaker 1: connect to that same server at the same time. Uh
Speaker 1: some of the service could handle larger loads than others,
Speaker 1: but you know, the more you would put in there,
Speaker 1: the slower the whole service would go. So you would
Speaker 1: you would be connected to a server along with thousands
Speaker 1: of other people, which meant that you were limited to
Speaker 1: whatever those other people had in their share folders. Right,
Speaker 1: so not every music file in the world is available
Speaker 1: at any given time. It all depends upon who is
Speaker 1: connected to the service at that moment. Uh And. Originally
Speaker 1: each server was kind of its own independent world and
Speaker 1: independent on you know, just when you signed in with
Speaker 1: what server you would hit rend and who else would
Speaker 1: be in there, you know. But at this time they
Speaker 1: were running about a hundred and forty servers I think
Speaker 1: it's the estimate. And ultimately what their goal was was
Speaker 1: to link all the servers together so that way, if
Speaker 1: I linked to server A and Lauren linked to server B,
Speaker 1: they we would still be able to exchange files. Now,
Speaker 1: in the early days, that was impossible. We would both
Speaker 1: need to be on server A or both be on
Speaker 1: server B for that to work. Uh So anyway, uh,
Speaker 1: the universities and colleges also began to notice that that
Speaker 1: uploads were the upload spies were really dying on campus
Speaker 1: because people people were using the service, and that, um
Speaker 1: I think I think that by it might have been
Speaker 1: in two thousand one of January, Indiana University noticed that
Speaker 1: up to of its network resources were being used by Napster. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And Oxford University really suffered because here's the thing about
Speaker 1: Oxford University. They had to pay for any data transferrals
Speaker 1: that were transatlantic, So any files that were passing over
Speaker 1: the cables that go underneath the ocean that can did
Speaker 1: Europe to North America. Yeah, so that they had to
Speaker 1: pay per bite, a certain amount per bite for that.
Speaker 1: So people on the Oxford campus who were using Napster,
Speaker 1: and we're downloading files directly from computers in the USA.
Speaker 1: We're really driving that up. Yeah, it would have been
Speaker 1: less expensive to have just bought the students the CDs,
Speaker 1: right if if if the college had gone out to
Speaker 1: a music store and just filled up four hundred carts
Speaker 1: with CDs and brought it back to the campus, it
Speaker 1: would have been less expensive. Um. Yeah. And and so
Speaker 1: this was also around the time when uh, this was
Speaker 1: mainly Eileen Richardson's influence here where they were looking at
Speaker 1: incorporating more social tools in Napster, things like instant messenger,
Speaker 1: chat rooms, yeah, irc stuff that they were also found out. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And again this was an idea to kind of help
Speaker 1: users discover new music and learn more about the stuff
Speaker 1: that they're interested in. Uh. And so it was really
Speaker 1: coming a social platform at the same time as it
Speaker 1: was under fire from the industry. Um. And so we're
Speaker 1: getting now to the point where we need to take
Speaker 1: a quick break. But before I say that, remember even
Speaker 1: at this point where Napster's going crazy with huge amounts
Speaker 1: of traffic, remember it, at this stage it's the most
Speaker 1: popular web service that has ever existed. It would be
Speaker 1: dwarfed by things like Facebook in the future. But this,
Speaker 1: this is before Facebook at the time, connecting you know,
Speaker 1: a few million people simultaneously. That was a big deal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so so huge deal. Still not any way to generate revenue.
Speaker 1: But let's take a quick break, all right, and now
Speaker 1: let's get back to naps here. Alright, So, so two
Speaker 1: thousand's coming gone. We're into two thousand and one, and
Speaker 1: Napster receives an order to shut down. Uh, this is
Speaker 1: an order core order to shut down its services because
Speaker 1: the r I double A has said that napster is
Speaker 1: complicit in copyright infringement suits. It's not just that it
Speaker 1: is a service, it is actively helping people copyright. That's
Speaker 1: essentially what it would have to be for it to
Speaker 1: get around this whole d m C a safe harbor issue,
Speaker 1: and that's a debatable thing. But the judge kind of
Speaker 1: sided with the music industry. Uh, there was a stay
Speaker 1: in the order to two days later. In fact, I
Speaker 1: think a stay was enacted, right, so they didn't have
Speaker 1: to shut down immediately. However, not that much longer, they
Speaker 1: would get another order to shut down and they actually
Speaker 1: would have to do it, uh, and they received right
Speaker 1: around the same time during that stay, they received like
Speaker 1: sixty million dollars investment money from Bert Bertlesman, of course,
Speaker 1: being a giant multimedia company that in fact owned a
Speaker 1: bunch of the companies that were participating in a lawsuit
Speaker 1: against Napster. Yeah, so you have to understand, Okay, So
Speaker 1: Burlsman is this mega multimedia company based out of Germany,
Speaker 1: all right, and it owns lots and lots of stuff,
Speaker 1: lots of different divisions, and these different divisions don't necessarily
Speaker 1: talk to each other. So one division sits there and
Speaker 1: sees Napster and sees lots of potential in it as
Speaker 1: turning it into a revenue generating service. Another division that
Speaker 1: has nothing to do with that first division is seeing
Speaker 1: Napster as the pirate that is killing its business and
Speaker 1: it needs to go after it. Well I think that really,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think it was extremely savvy of Bertlesman
Speaker 1: to be investing in them at the time, because they
Speaker 1: were looking at it and they were going, this is
Speaker 1: potentially the future. This is how they if you know,
Speaker 1: what they're doing right now is crappy for us. But
Speaker 1: if people people are excited about music, and that's great,
Speaker 1: I think, and if we can monetize that. I think
Speaker 1: Bertlesman would argue that retroactively, it was not a savvy
Speaker 1: move at all. Okay, well sure, but but you know,
Speaker 1: they saw that where the future was going. Unfortunately, was
Speaker 1: the wrong time to implement it, because it just turned
Speaker 1: out that the the the hornets Nest that had been
Speaker 1: stirred up was so great as to totally derail any
Speaker 1: efforts in turning Napster into a quote unquote legitimate revenue
Speaker 1: generator service. Right, yeah, Well they installed Conrad Hilbert's as
Speaker 1: so hank Berry steps aside. Meanwhile, like just just as
Speaker 1: Conrad Hilberts was taking over, hank Berry had just gone
Speaker 1: before Congress and asked Congress to to form some sort
Speaker 1: of industry wide license agreement for Internet broadcast similar to
Speaker 1: what radio has. And his his argument was that really,
Speaker 1: we're just another distribution platform just like radio, so really
Speaker 1: we should we should have the same opportunity to license
Speaker 1: music the way radio does. The problem with the problem
Speaker 1: with establishing a license for every single file is that
Speaker 1: it's impossible to do because take take a take a
Speaker 1: typical album, that album might have multiple producers, on it,
Speaker 1: and each producer has some level of ownership of the
Speaker 1: track that are on that album. Then you have the
Speaker 1: artists and they also have some ownership on the tracks
Speaker 1: on that album, the composition and of actual performance. Right,
Speaker 1: So securing a license from every single copy like everyone
Speaker 1: who owns part of that content, it's impossible, you know.
Speaker 1: He was saying that for one album, you might have
Speaker 1: to secure hundreds of licenses just to be able to
Speaker 1: have that one album, and then you multiplay that across
Speaker 1: the hundreds of thousands of albums that have always existed
Speaker 1: in the new ones that are coming out every year,
Speaker 1: and you have an impossible situation. There's no way to
Speaker 1: legally follow that rule. So what needs to happen is
Speaker 1: a new legal way. He wasn't arguing, He wasn't arguing
Speaker 1: for for piracy. He was just arguing for a new
Speaker 1: legal means to license music, and that was getting really
Speaker 1: bogged down in Congress. So then he ends up stepping
Speaker 1: aside and uh and Conrad Hilbert takes over. Um. Conrad
Speaker 1: didn't have a whole long time to operate Napster before
Speaker 1: it got shut down. That was an on June eleven,
Speaker 1: two thousand one, that's when Napster shut off its service.
Speaker 1: It still existed as a corporate entity, and it started
Speaker 1: to really concentrate on finding a way to create a
Speaker 1: legal music distribution service. And I say legal with air
Speaker 1: quotes around it, because Napster again would be arguing that
Speaker 1: what they did was they were safe harbor. They were
Speaker 1: only connecting people to do illegal things, right, and that
Speaker 1: that wasn't even the purpose of Napster. The purpose of
Speaker 1: Nabster was sharing music, and that that you know, it's
Speaker 1: the fact that people were using it to share music illegally.
Speaker 1: That wasn't Napster's fault. And you can argue whether or
Speaker 1: not that's naive or sincere. That's not really our place
Speaker 1: to do that. I mean you could certainly, you certainly
Speaker 1: could have used Napster in a perfectly legal means if
Speaker 1: an artist had given full full permission, like I want this,
Speaker 1: you can distribute this any way you like. I have
Speaker 1: no I release all claim to it otherwise I just
Speaker 1: want my music out there, then it would have been
Speaker 1: perfectly legal to to distribute that across Napster. It was
Speaker 1: the problem. The problem was there were people doing that
Speaker 1: with stuff where that what they didn't have that, They
Speaker 1: did not have that permission yet. Now you could ask,
Speaker 1: how is this different from taking my copy of a
Speaker 1: CD that I've bought, making a copy and giving it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all I've done is just changed the way that Lauren
Speaker 1: has has received that music. And is it my fault
Speaker 1: that Lauren and maybe two point four million people I
Speaker 1: don't know got that music track I don't know? Um,
Speaker 1: so it got really complex. Yeah. Yeah. So then the
Speaker 1: next note that I have is in two two when um,
Speaker 1: the you know, the company was was still shuttered but working,
Speaker 1: um and they entered into a beta test of a
Speaker 1: secure file trading network that January. Yeah, and uh, and
Speaker 1: that was it was something they were really seriously working
Speaker 1: on at the same time as trying to figure out
Speaker 1: a way to stay evolve the growing financial problems they
Speaker 1: were facing as a result of these lawsuits. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they were so serious. But as a February Burtlesman just
Speaker 1: kind of offered to buy the company I think for
Speaker 1: for like like twenty million, like not not a whole lot.
Speaker 1: It was it was in addition to it was addition,
Speaker 1: in addition to the money they had already invested into
Speaker 1: the company, which was million I think I could be,
Speaker 1: I could be. You know, there are a lot of
Speaker 1: interesting reports on this, so it's kind of hard to follow.
Speaker 1: It's a little bit timmy why yeah, exactly, whibbly wobbly.
Speaker 1: In May two thousand two, Sean Fanning and Conrad Hilbert's
Speaker 1: both resigned, right. This was John Fanning, you know, kind
Speaker 1: of tried to organize a coup. From the way that
Speaker 1: I read it, he was he was trying to oust
Speaker 1: uh Hummer and Hank Berry and all the venture capitalists
Speaker 1: and and there was all of this in fighting within
Speaker 1: the company going on. Fanning eventually filed a lawsuit to
Speaker 1: have Berry and Hummer dismissed from the board of directors.
Speaker 1: It was thrown out of court. But but but yeah,
Speaker 1: as of many things have gotten so bad that um
Speaker 1: that Sean Fanning he quits. Yeah. Yeah. And another interesting
Speaker 1: note is that Sean Fanning apparently never drew more than
Speaker 1: just a regular like paycheck. Yeah. Yeah. His paycheck was
Speaker 1: just it was like a middle of the company type
Speaker 1: of paycheck. After after founding it, he worked as he
Speaker 1: worked as a grant as a coder. Yeah. In fact,
Speaker 1: he apparently started getting into trouble because he was getting
Speaker 1: so many requests for interviews back when Napster was really
Speaker 1: in the news for all this this legal battle stuff.
Speaker 1: He was getting so many requests for interviews. He wasn't
Speaker 1: able to meet his his coding uh responsibilities, and he
Speaker 1: started getting in trouble from his boss. Keeping in mind,
Speaker 1: he's the guy who built the tool. Yeah, he's the
Speaker 1: guy who kind of technically hired his boss. So and
Speaker 1: now his boss is like, you kind of need to um,
Speaker 1: you kinda need to get back to work, buddy, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but but so so um Napster denied this sale to
Speaker 1: Bertlesman um, and it kind of just sort of dies there,
Speaker 1: collapsed like a flawn in a cupboard and nice and
Speaker 1: that it was trapped like a moth in a bath.
Speaker 1: At that point, there were also the major labels were
Speaker 1: trying to launch their own services. One of them was
Speaker 1: called press Play, which was launched in I think around
Speaker 1: two thousand two and it ended in two thousand three.
Speaker 1: Another one was called music Net, which was also a failure.
Speaker 1: And the problem was that buying music from these services
Speaker 1: was often more trouble than what people thought it was worth. Again,
Speaker 1: it was not. It became easier to pirate music than
Speaker 1: it was to buy it, and if it's easier, people
Speaker 1: will do it, and and other other companies like a
Speaker 1: Kaza and things like that were popping up. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: so you had new Tela as well, you had other
Speaker 1: file sharing uh services out there. They were picking up
Speaker 1: where Napster had dropped off. And so there were there
Speaker 1: were a lot of casualties in this whole rise and
Speaker 1: fall of Napster. And you'll keep in mind this is
Speaker 1: just to two thousand two, and um, yeah, yeah, it happened.
Speaker 1: I had no idea when we started doing this had
Speaker 1: happened that fast. Because of such a huge name, right,
Speaker 1: you just expect that it had at least a decade
Speaker 1: worth of life. And of course we'll get into what
Speaker 1: Napster is now in just a minute. But besides the
Speaker 1: fact that you had Fanning who never drew anything more
Speaker 1: than just a regular salary, Eileen Richardson had a huge
Speaker 1: career setback. Business Week ran an article that essentially said
Speaker 1: that all of the legal problems were mainly due to
Speaker 1: the way Richardson was running the company, which was not
Speaker 1: entirely accurate. I'm not very fair to her. Yeah, how
Speaker 1: she was running the company and how she was marketing
Speaker 1: everything because she was she was very like like free
Speaker 1: love about the music. And but yeah, apparently that that
Speaker 1: that hit her pretty hard. And also the Bertelsman CEO,
Speaker 1: Thomas Milhoff, was was replaced. He was replaced by another
Speaker 1: CEO when that Napster deal was went so sour, and
Speaker 1: plus the economy itself began to really crumble because keep
Speaker 1: in mind his post dot com crash and the ramifications
Speaker 1: of that are still unfolding in two thousand two. So
Speaker 1: you've got the the company just completely languishing. There's there's
Speaker 1: very little of it left. It ends up going into
Speaker 1: Chapter eleven bankruptcy, and then there's a a bankruptcy auction
Speaker 1: held in two thousand two. This is still happening like
Speaker 1: right after another, and a company called Rock CEO purchases
Speaker 1: the assets of Napster h in an auction in two
Speaker 1: thousand two. They also that same company purchased that failed
Speaker 1: music service called press Play in two thousand three, and
Speaker 1: so they decided to use the the kind of the
Speaker 1: cashet of Napster's name and the foundation of the press
Speaker 1: Play service and combine them together to form Voltron. Except
Speaker 1: by Vultron I mean a legal music service that everyone
Speaker 1: knows the name of, because everyone's heard the name now Napster. Yes,
Speaker 1: So they take some time to develop this, and the
Speaker 1: reason why it took so long is that they had
Speaker 1: to establish those licenses that Napster never could get hold of. Um.
Speaker 1: They had been Napster been trying to do that for
Speaker 1: especially the last two years of its existence. Uh and
Speaker 1: and failed and so yeah, And meanwhile, companies like Rhapsody
Speaker 1: UM which was another it wasn't a file sharing thing
Speaker 1: that it was a music music subscription plan. Yeah, we're
Speaker 1: starting to you started to see some early examples of
Speaker 1: other music subscription services. Uh Rock CEO would take years
Speaker 1: to develop this. It would actually not be until two
Speaker 1: thousand and six. So this is four years after they
Speaker 1: bought the assets of Napster that they launched the free
Speaker 1: Napster service. They place Chris Gorog as the chairman and
Speaker 1: CEO of Napster And in that time, what Napster did
Speaker 1: was it used ads to support a free web based
Speaker 1: streaming experience. Now, you could stream any song that was
Speaker 1: in Napster's catalog a maximum of three times. After that,
Speaker 1: you had to either purchase the song or never listen
Speaker 1: to it again, at least not on Napster. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: had to. You had to purchase the song. Now, nice
Speaker 1: thing about it is that you could purchase a DRM
Speaker 1: free version of the MP three of whatever song it was,
Speaker 1: so you didn't have to worry about Okay, well you
Speaker 1: can buy it this song, but you can only play
Speaker 1: it on three machines and after that that's it, because
Speaker 1: that was one of the big problems of early DRM
Speaker 1: music is that you could it would limit how many
Speaker 1: machines you could put it on. And you know, here's
Speaker 1: the thing about technology, folks. Our stuff gets out a
Speaker 1: date and we want to replace it occasionally. So if
Speaker 1: you tell me that I can only load this on
Speaker 1: three machines, I'm like, well, that's only gonna last like
Speaker 1: five years. Yeah, then I have to buy the song again.
Speaker 1: What's what's the deal. And this is where you bring
Speaker 1: into questions like all right, do you you don't obviously
Speaker 1: you don't own the song because you didn't make it,
Speaker 1: but you you own the opportunity to experience that song
Speaker 1: within the realm of a specific kind of license, and
Speaker 1: then you're their argument might might be, well, I want
Speaker 1: to use it at home, but none of the things
Speaker 1: I have will play it now. It's complicated. Uh and
Speaker 1: in fact, we could right do a full episode about
Speaker 1: that we've talked about in previous ones. Well. Uh, So
Speaker 1: two thousand six they launch, Chris Gore is the chairman
Speaker 1: and CEO. Uh and uh they try to get it
Speaker 1: moving but doesn't really catch on. For one thing, at
Speaker 1: this point, they're starting to to really come into a
Speaker 1: competition with iTunes. By now iTunes is really a thing.
Speaker 1: And so from two thousand and six to two thousand
Speaker 1: and ten that was Napster's existence. But in two thousand
Speaker 1: and ten, Gorg ends up stepping down and the president
Speaker 1: of Napster also steps down, and best Buy purchases Napster.
Speaker 1: So the Napster CEO, Christopher Allen, becomes the general manager
Speaker 1: of Napster. Because now it's owned by best Buy, it's
Speaker 1: no longer a thing that ROXYO has, and his reporting
Speaker 1: relationship is to a best Buy senior executive. So there's
Speaker 1: a new new sheriff in town in a sense. And uh.
Speaker 1: From two thousand ten to two thousand and eleven it's
Speaker 1: run as the best Buy company. And in two thousand eleven, Rhapsody,
Speaker 1: which Lauren mentioned just a minute ago, acquires Napster and
Speaker 1: folds it into its own streaming music service. So now
Speaker 1: Rahapsty and Napster are buddy buddy. Yeah, I think that.
Speaker 1: I think that Rhapsody had been in close affiliation with
Speaker 1: best Buy at the time. Anyway, I think that was
Speaker 1: the official service for the Best Buy line of MP
Speaker 1: three players back when that was a thing. Yep, and
Speaker 1: uh and and Napster still exists now. Granted, keep in
Speaker 1: mind the Napster we're talking about now. Really it has
Speaker 1: very little connection to the Napster that was in the
Speaker 1: first half of this podcast. Yeah, it's a it's a
Speaker 1: purely subscription service. Um. You can use it to download
Speaker 1: or stream music two different devices devices nobile, you know.
Speaker 1: It's got a sleek looking interface. Yeah, and you can
Speaker 1: listen to it like you can if you have a
Speaker 1: compatible home entertainment system, you can listen to it on that.
Speaker 1: You can listen to it on you know, like I said,
Speaker 1: like a MP three players of something like like Pandora
Speaker 1: or or Spotify. Although you have you have far more
Speaker 1: control than you would on Pandora right right, and when
Speaker 1: you subscribe to it, you um cut out all the
Speaker 1: ads and all that fans right. In fact, you have
Speaker 1: to subscribe to it. You can have a three fourteen
Speaker 1: day trials. I recalled in the United States. I can't
Speaker 1: speak for everywhere in the world. In the United States,
Speaker 1: the current subscription rate as of the recording of this
Speaker 1: podcast is nine dollars and cents per month. And um
Speaker 1: and yeah, they have apps for Android iOS, BlackBerry, Windows
Speaker 1: phone seven. Uh. They have extra features like tailored playlists
Speaker 1: have been formed by various either you know, sometimes their
Speaker 1: bands or an artist or sometimes it's like a like
Speaker 1: a music critic for a magazine will make a playlist
Speaker 1: and then they make it available on this so that
Speaker 1: way you can listen to the music that people cooler
Speaker 1: than you are listening to. Uh. And that, by the way,
Speaker 1: for me, that's everybody. I'm not I'm not saying like
Speaker 1: you are cooler than I am. I know you knew
Speaker 1: that already. I'm just let you know that. I also
Speaker 1: know that. So that's I'll go, especially music wise, I
Speaker 1: will let myself into that category as well. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: know that. I was not aware of Neutral Milk Hotel
Speaker 1: until years after they were a thing. That's that's the
Speaker 1: kind of guy, I am, but I was. I was
Speaker 1: on board with Mumford and Sons before any of you
Speaker 1: folks knew who they were besides, unless Mumford and Sons
Speaker 1: is listening to this podcast, in which case they probably
Speaker 1: knew about it before I did. But yeah, they also
Speaker 1: had the Rapsy radio stations, so that's more like Pandora,
Speaker 1: you know. And they have their own kind of discovery
Speaker 1: algorithms as well, so that you can find music that
Speaker 1: if you already like a certain kind of music, you
Speaker 1: can find about. But it is interesting if you go
Speaker 1: back all the way back to the beginning days of
Speaker 1: Napster and you look at some of the things that
Speaker 1: Eileen Richardson said, it's the very basis for music discovery
Speaker 1: and things like pen Dora. Yeah, the idea she actually
Speaker 1: says in that interview in Salon that if you like
Speaker 1: a certain artist, you should be able to find other
Speaker 1: music that's similar to that artist, which is exactly what
Speaker 1: Pandora is all about, that the Musical Genome project. So
Speaker 1: it was interesting that she was looking ahead and she
Speaker 1: was seeing a future that wouldn't really come to maturity
Speaker 1: for almost a decade. Yeah, I think in a lot
Speaker 1: of ways, Napster was was you know, it just was
Speaker 1: approaching the industry in in an aggressively incorrect way. Um yeah,
Speaker 1: well and and and the industry was reacting in a
Speaker 1: very uh like knee jerk way. So the combination of
Speaker 1: the two meant that you were going to have nothing
Speaker 1: but a collision. But but also yeah, just the internet
Speaker 1: infrastructure was not quite there yet to provide monetization for
Speaker 1: this kind of thing, and and so you know, all
Speaker 1: of the ideas that they had were really sound and
Speaker 1: just but really, what I think it is is that
Speaker 1: the interesting thing to me is that it really created
Speaker 1: the whole peer to peer approach. I mean, there were
Speaker 1: other peer to peer protocols that were coming into being
Speaker 1: it around the same time as Napster, but Napster was
Speaker 1: the one that thrusted into the spotlight. And you know,
Speaker 1: peer to peer is is is a completely legitimate way
Speaker 1: to get information from one computer to another computer. It
Speaker 1: doesn't have to be for nefarious purposes or piracy or whatever.
Speaker 1: And so I'm very thankful that Napster existed as a
Speaker 1: way to kind of get that as as an as
Speaker 1: as a thing. I mean, without it, we might have
Speaker 1: gone a few more years before anyone really realized the
Speaker 1: potential for peer to peer transmissions. So that was something
Speaker 1: very important in this whole napster business. Um I'm I'm,
Speaker 1: I'm napstered out or now that's about all I got.
Speaker 1: All right, excellent, So really we got to thank our
Speaker 1: listener for sending that in. I apologize I don't have
Speaker 1: your name in front of me. My computer gave me
Speaker 1: a little bit of a hiccup just before I came
Speaker 1: in here, but I wanted to thank you so much
Speaker 1: for that. That suggestions very interesting discussion. I think hopefully
Speaker 1: you guys thought so too, And if you have any
Speaker 1: topics that you think we should tackle in the future
Speaker 1: episode of tech Stuff, I highly recommend you get in
Speaker 1: touch with us. Let us know. We really value that
Speaker 1: input because it helps us shape the show so that
Speaker 1: you guys enjoy it even more. Let us know, send
Speaker 1: us an email our addresses tech stuff at Discovery dot com,
Speaker 1: or drop us a line on Facebook or Twitter or
Speaker 1: handle at both those locations. Is tech Stuff, hs W
Speaker 1: and Lauren and I will talk to you again really
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