

Napster: The Heavenly Jukebox (2000) - nkurz
https://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/2000/09/mann.htm?single_page=true

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ersii
_Edgar Bronfman Jr., the head of Universal, the world 's biggest music
company, predicted in a speech in May that soon "a few clicks of your mouse
will make it possible for you to summon every book ever written in any
language, every movie ever made, every television show ever produced, and
every piece of music ever recorded." In this vast intellectual commons nothing
will ever again be out of print or impossible to find; every scrap of human
culture transcribed, no matter how obscure or commercially unsuccessful, will
be available to all._

It's 2015, 15 years later since that was said by Edgar Bronfman Jr. I find it
interesting that we're still not there. It seems that it's getting harder to
find out of print publications/books/records, especially if they were somewhat
obscure or rare from the beginning.

I don't know why, but I would guess that it's because those works are drowning
in the vast and seemingly endless supply of others works. That, combined with
it not being digitalized and that the physical representation might have
rotted away or on the verge of rotting away.

What do you make out of this?

~~~
octaveguin
Ironically, Bronfman's vision is closest still only in the piracy world as
legitimate licensing requires too much organizational buy-offs to ever be
universal.

Interestingly, services like spotify could have only come about after pressure
from piracy because the industry would never have conceded such control and
monetary loss unless forced to.

Now comes the next wave: video which popcorntime will help force the path.

It's remarkable that progress can be achieved mostly through breaking
regulation theses day - there's something these services have in common with
uber and airbnb.

~~~
hoopd
Of course piracy better solves the distribution problem, distribution is easy.
Copyright helps solve the problem of artist compensation. That problem's hard
but ask any artist* who isn't living off a trust fund and they'll tell you how
important it is. If you skip the hard part by definition you've made things
easier on yourself.

If the community of music listeners took better care of musicians then they
wouldn't run to the arms of the music industry. Unfortunately music listeners
want and expect free or near-free.

> It's remarkable that progress can be achieved mostly through breaking
> regulation theses day

Not to be offensive but I think it's completely uninteresting. Human decency
has always slowed progress. Which empire obeyed the laws of the lands it
invaded? Think of how our medical knowledge would progress if we abandoned all
ethics, or how efficient our criminal justice system could be if we abandoned
due process, how much oil we could drill or ore we could mine if we abandoned
environmental regulations.

We don't do these things because local actors pursuing locally optimal
solutions don't always benefit the group. In fact it's possible for the
opposite to happen like in _The Tragedy of the Commons_.

IOW I dislike regulations too but they solve problems we don't have better
solutions for.

*who you know well enough to ask personal questions

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ersii
Heh, now that's something to think about: Over 20 million users shortly after
launch in 1999/2000\. That's not insignificant growth at that time.

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michaelpinto
Confession: I would kill to hang out with Justin Timberlake pretending to be
Sean Parker for just one day.

I really, really wish they'd make a Napster film.

~~~
cjdulberger
It would be cool to see a Napster film. There was an entertaining documentary
about it, titled Downloaded, that was released in 2013. Link to full
documentary: [http://on.aol.com/video/downloaded---full-documentary-
film-5...](http://on.aol.com/video/downloaded---full-documentary-
film-517844258)

~~~
michaelpinto
Thank you!

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chinathrow
Never forgetting those times when each file was truncated over and over again
at like 99% each time it was transmitted.

Couldn't find a reference right now.

