5 ms·

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 li

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 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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 15y ago
    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.
jimmyhchan 15y ago
Funny how it comes around again but in circa 1995 everything was streaming using RealAudio so the music industry was pretty eager to have it available since the user never actually had the files. http://books.google.com/books?id=wAcEAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA107&pg=PA107#v=onepage&q&f=false http://books.google.com/books?id=wAcEAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA107&...
nextparadigms 15y ago
Hearing about that guy getting arrested for "transmitting porn online" makes me wonder how many people are going to jail right now because of Internet-related laws that will be proven to have been absurd, 15 years from now?

ugh 15y ago

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 15y ago
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 15y ago
  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.

jimmyhchan 15y ago

Funny how it comes around again but in circa 1995 everything was streaming using RealAudio so the music industry was pretty eager to have it available since the user never actually had the files. http://books.google.com/books?id=wAcEAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA107&pg=PA107#v=onepage&q&f=false http://books.google.com/books?id=wAcEAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA107&...

nextparadigms 15y ago

Hearing about that guy getting arrested for "transmitting porn online" makes me wonder how many people are going to jail right now because of Internet-related laws that will be proven to have been absurd, 15 years from now?