
MTV News covers "The Internet", video from 1995 - fourspace
http://www.openculture.com/2011/07/time_capsule_the_internet_in_1995.html
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redthrowaway
I found MTV's coverage of "piracy" (which of course didn't exist back then) to
be particularly enlightening. They clearly showed websites where people could
listen to their favorite band's songs, and yet there was no mention of theft
or the poor artists who won't get paid. Instead, they, and the artists they
interviewed, cast it as a great way for fans to gain exposure to their music
and interact with them. Dave Matthews comparing it to how "bootleg tapes
spread the word about us" was particularly telling.

~~~
ugh
Maybe because it wasn’t really practical to download music from the web? What
you could get was of obviously inferior quality and it was just not possible
to download a lot of it. I think the music industry would be quite happy with
a world in which every music file is a 32kbit/s MP3 and it’s not possible to
download more than three or four songs per week.

It was no threat to anyone. The reaction at the time is not all that
surprising, what might be surprising is that no one seems to have predicted
the development.

I’m not even sure whether Frauenhofer’s (then still relatively new) MP3
encoder was already pirated in 1995 and quickly spreading through the web.
That might not even have happened at that point in time.

~~~
pero
Organized music piracy (mp3 scene) began in the summer of '96 when 3 of the
major groups were formed (of which RNS was the most famous and long-lived). By
'97 it was 'adopted' by the software (warez) scene, and also borrowed its
supply and distribution chains--there was now competition for having the
fastest releases, as well as means for getting these ahead of official release
dates--precipitating popularity.

According to mp3scene.info, there's was mp3 piracy on usenet as early as '95.

~~~
encoderer
I downloaded my first few MP3's in 1998. I was either on 33.6 or 56k. It took
like an hour.

So the problem was clearly limited to university networks. The existence of
MP3's doesn't indicate the advent of modern "piracy."

No, that began a couple years later of course when everybody began getting
cable modems. And napster was written.

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vonSeckendorff
I was shocked by two egregious prosecutions mentioned in the video:

 _Jake Baker Arrested for posting rape/murder fantasy on the internet case
dismissed_

 _Robert Thomas Tried for transmitting porn on the internet sentenced to three
years in prison_

We must remain guarded against such assaults, even to this day. I don't think
there has been much of a shift in politicians' technoliteracy or indeed their
ulterior motives.

~~~
fourspace
That kind of blew my mind too. Three years in prison for "transmitting porn",
prosecuted in a state in which he didn't even reside? WTF.

Here's some more detail from the US Appellate Court:
<https://www2.bc.edu/~herbeck/cyberlaw.thomas.html>

~~~
aidenn0
The main subtlety is that they took personal information when they charged for
their content (the decision specifically says there's no squashing of freedom
of speech, since they could have screened out people from TN).

Someone signing up with an account from TN is therefore analagous to someone
mail-ordering porn from TN, which would also be illegal under this law.

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sneak
"Some people would be strongly advised to avoid the Internet: the
hypersensitive, the humor impaired, and Puritans of every stripe." -- Kurt
Loder (MTV), 1995

Great quote.

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jfruh
HEY EVERYONE 1995 NEWT GINGRICH SAYS INTERNET PORN IS CONSTITUTIONAL

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mrb
I still get a laugh at Hulu's 1996 index.htm page:

<http://www.hulu.com/index.htm>

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oggz
In a sense, Moby was years ahead of his time. He identifies the social
underpinnings of the internet which went on to flourish in the form of
Facebook etc.

"we all have this basic deep need to communicate with other people, so I think
that explains the popularity of something like this" Moby

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null_para
I love all the websites! Flashy and totally original. Anyways, its interesting
to see lot of people were referring to Internet as "cyber space", which was
prevalent during those days. Surprisingly, nobody refers to Internet as
cyberspace now a days.

~~~
antiterra
Except they do. At the moment, search results on Twitter are largely polluted
with the article in question, but you can still see plenty of everyday folk
using the term. News outlets still use it all the time, and it's something a
regular news.yc reader should see quite often:
[http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aycombinator.com+cybers...](http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aycombinator.com+cyberspace)

~~~
profquail
Sure, the word 'cyberspace' is used everywhere these days, but I don't think
it carries the same meaning it did back then. Virtual reality was "becoming" a
thing of the present in 1995, and whenever the word cyberspace was used, it
seemed to mean "sure, you're stuck in 2d now, but just wait a few more years
and you'll be totally immersed in a 3d cyberspace." I guess I'm a little
nostalgic about the old "cyberspace" :)

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WXMA
I think the most interesting thing about this video is that MTV didn't use to
be crap.

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ladon86
David Bowie's stance at the end is interesting - just a few years later he
launched his own _ISP_ called BowieNet.

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petercooper
Best part..

"If you ain't on the information super highway baby then where is it?" -
Coolio

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kaeluka
"almost as cool as - well - television!"

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georgieporgie
I find the cyberpunk and mind-altering culture of the very early 90s Internet
(referred to briefly in the video) to be fascinating. I wish I'd been a few
years older so I could have properly witnessed it.

Random things I remember from the time:

* Billy Idol's strange Cyberpunk album <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberpunk_(album)>

* Mondo 2000 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondo_2000>

~~~
GHFigs
I found Doug Rushkoff's _Cyberia_ to be an effective substitute for having
properly witnessed that era. It has the advantage of not being a look back,
but a look around. I get the sense, in flipping through it again now, that a
historical look at the era would leave out so many things that seemed
important at the time but didn't subsequently flourish beyond the fringe.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberia_(book)>

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bkaid
"Whats attracted many of them is the World Wide Web, with its proliferation of
special interest truck stops called websites". Oh Kurt Loder.

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m0wfo
I didn't realise Coolio used to moonlight as an IT consultant.

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nvictor
i wonder if we've made progress at all...

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NickKampe
Thanks, but this is 16 years old.

