|
Why can't Napster Just Move to Another Country?
I keep hearing people ask, why can't napster just move to another country and continue operations? - The answer is, it can.
That's right folks, if they find some remote country to move their operations to that doesn't have similar copyright laws to the U.S. they could open their operations right back up.
So the question is, why don't they?
First, it would mean that the company was admitting it was doing something wrong, which would kill the court case. But who cares right? They'd be able to operate it somewhere else! - Well no, they'd have to monetize it somehow, at least eventually, and this kind of a move would scare all advertisers away from it. Not to mention investors, probably.
But even if they didn't have the investors, who cares? They could move to a subscription model and charge for use of the service and they'd be home free! Err of course I'm not sure if that would really work.
Well, that's radical thinking for ya. Chances are this won't happen, but to answer the question at hand, yes, it is possible. It's just not a very smart move, for political reasons. They'd basically isolate themselves on some beautiful island surrounded by hot natives who'd fan them all day long just to gain free access to the service.
Hank Barry probably wouldn't go for all that, which is too bad, but I'd bet Shawn would love the idea!
| Links: |
link(www.islandream.com/island/photos/condbeach.jpg,Picture of new Napster HQ)
link(software.dmusic.com/details.php?id=12,Napster)
link(www.napster.com,Napster website) |
User Comments
(These do not necessarily reflect the beliefs of this site)
|
jark
|
Date: July 28, 2000 @ 3:48 PM
They should move to sealand...then they will never have to worry about another lawsuit. |
|
Anonymous
|
Date: July 28, 2000 @ 4:09 PM
speaking of other countries, audiognome is getting released today (within the hour).
check it out at http://www.napster.org.uk or go to irc.ctcp.net:6667 #naphoria |
|
jark
|
Date: July 28, 2000 @ 6:05 PM
Nice domain name considering the product is not named napster. Except to see that domain taken away from you... |
|
Slacker
|
Date: July 28, 2000 @ 7:29 PM
sealand? ur kidding right? |
|
Anonymous
|
Date: July 28, 2000 @ 10:26 PM
Why run from the problem...the only way anything is ever solved is to stand firm on your ground. Napster has a lot of supporters ... enough that the Riaa would be crippled if there is a boycott of 20,000,000 people. Let's see...If 20,000,000 people bought on cd valued at $17 dollars...that would be a phenominal $340,000,000. See how much they stand to loose if 20,000,000 decided not to buy? The Revolution War would have been lost had our Washington's army decided to look for a new land and just let the British have America. Welcome to the new Revolution. |
|
Anonymous
|
Date: July 29, 2000 @ 8:44 AM
I have nothinig to say about napster but in fact about the program that will defeat napster, and has all of napsters things and more, the program is AUDIOGNOME and was released Friday July 28 at http://www.napster.org.uk/ This Program is a thousand ways better than napster and the good thing is it cant be shutdown, unlike gnutella gnutella sucks it has no help and hard to understant well this is wat better with chat search up to 3000 songs per search and log on into the napster servers with your password and name and use napster on AUDIOGNOME. http://www.napster.org.uk/ |
|
Anonymous
|
Date: July 29, 2000 @ 10:18 AM
FUCK OFF SPAMMER! |
|
Anonymous
|
Date: July 29, 2000 @ 12:21 PM
yeah, shawn and his buddies can all move to another country, and the feds will be right behind them. |
|
Anonymous
|
Date: July 29, 2000 @ 12:37 PM
Nob. At least use some fucking grammar! |
|
spyed
|
Date: July 29, 2000 @ 3:32 PM
Please stop spamming on dmusic's message boards.
I'm asking nicely. |
|
Anonymous
|
Date: July 29, 2000 @ 4:07 PM
So, now we're talking about a company that may need to move out of the US to an obscure location to continue to do business.
Just that fact alone says a lot of the kind of "business" that company is involved in, doesn't it? |
|
spyed
|
Date: July 29, 2000 @ 5:26 PM
Actually I made a mistake with this story.. what I meant to say is they'd have to SELL the company to themselves in another country. |
|
Anonymous
|
Date: July 29, 2000 @ 10:09 PM
If napster did move to some out of legal reach country the riaa then would sue the users of napster. Better shawn and his buddies than me. |
|
rob_n
|
Date: July 29, 2000 @ 11:54 PM
the riaa would sure the 20 million users of napster? uhh...okay. |
|
rob_n
|
Date: July 29, 2000 @ 11:55 PM
I can see why gnutella is so hard to understand for you. |
|
rob_n
|
Date: July 30, 2000 @ 12:00 AM
Steve....!? Steve case is that you? |
|
Anonymous
|
Date: July 30, 2000 @ 12:35 AM
Hi,
I was the person who posted the above post. I really didn't mean any harm and I'm sorry that you are all so angry about this. I was really only mentioning a program. I'm a fan of your site and have been coming here for as long as I can remember.
I'm sorry for the confusion, I don't understand why you are all so angry. When I posted here there were no other AG posts and... it's a new piece of software so I thought I would let everyone know. I can't speak for the person who posted after me but I really didn't realize that I was "spamming." Do you hate these people or something? I didn't know. |
|
Anonymous
|
Date: July 30, 2000 @ 10:50 AM
Seriously? I don't get the point in suing the makers and distributors of Napster.
They should start drawing some paralell against gun-producers, I'm gonna sue them if I get shot some day. Or perhaps sue the crap out of headphone manufacturers when I get tinnitus.
My point is, why try to file a lawsuit against makers of screwdrivers because their brand was used when my car was stolen?
This whole case is absurd and should be dropped ASAP. |
|
Anonymous
|
Date: July 30, 2000 @ 5:12 PM
I cannot believe that this has raised so much international interest. All Napster is doing is effectively promoting a huge breach of copyrighting. Ask yourself the question would it be OK for HMV to copy Sony CD's and then give them away for free. That is what this is about piracy, not freedom of speach, it is about not getting paid for working hard. No I am not a musician, nor in Metallica (lol), I am a person in Australia with an opinon. |
|
Anonymous
|
Date: July 30, 2000 @ 7:45 PM
Napster is a revolutionary type of software. I love the ability to search for any song that I can think of and listen to it in a mere few minutes.
The problem is that the files are copyrighted, whether we like it or not. The RIAA is correct in their position. Perhaps there could have been a comprimise between the two parties before this suit went this far. Maybe it's not too late to work out some sort of deal.
The RIAA must realize even if Napster goes down in flames, there will be more programs like Napster that will come along. IMHO (in my humble opinion) the recording industry needs to get their heads out of their collective asses, and make the internet work for them instead of trying to fight the tide of technology.
Stop screwing the consumer with high priced music. Stop screwing the artists with paying pennies on the dollar per cd/cassette sold.... |
|
Anonymous
|
Date: July 30, 2000 @ 8:02 PM
The idea about moving Napster out of the U.S. is just crazy...yeah, they can move to Canada with Microsoft LOL
How about this: Rewrite Napster to be serverless, peer to peer transfer...just a program like IRC. Take the servers out of the picture.
Think the music industry pukes would sue mIRC programmer for producing a program that can transfer music files?? |
|
Chad
|
Date: July 30, 2000 @ 10:28 PM
Right.
I doubt Napster has the coding power/time to do something like that.
And.. this already exists. See Gnutella and Freenet(I think..).
"A program like IRC".. you know, IRC uses servers. Bad analogy.
`Chad
|
|
Anonymous
|
Date: July 30, 2000 @ 11:25 PM
How much of an idiot are you. You must be one of those people that say, it is not the importers of heroin that kills people, grow up.
Napster is completely agreeing with the breach of copyright that it promotes. Maybe a better analogy would be a fence, you are not the person that broke in to somebodies house and stole there stuff, that they worked hard for, nor are you the person that brought it for next to nothing. You are the person that brought those people together.
Oh that sounds like Napster. They don't create the music, they haven't purchased distribution rights for the music, alll they do is suck the blood from the people that they are suggesting we steal from.
Grow up you are promoting theft. Imagine if you are a stuggling songwriter, and then your income stream is suddenly removed. Think about it. |
|
Anonymous
|
Date: July 31, 2000 @ 12:29 AM
Hey idiot above...
If you are a struggling songwriter Napster is THE
thing for you. It is a super easy way to spread your fresh unknown music around. It's only the famous bands like Me-dumb-ica that bitches about it. They are already famous thus one of those that might come up short.
Why don't you ask a "struggling" musician if he would mind if his/her music would be spread all over the world for people to check out? "... income suddenly removed"? Blah... have you lost your marbels??
Mr. Rock |
|
Anonymous
|
Date: July 31, 2000 @ 1:26 PM
This is kinda obvious but i think i'll state it anyway, the RIAA and the music companies are the ones doing the ripping off here, artists get crap. If nobody bought music through the usual channels instead buying direct from the artist's website in mp3 or mail order CD or whatever then this nasty problem would just go away. Piracy has always been around and it always will be, have the audio cassette, cdr and minidisc felled these multibillion dollar conglomerates? No they still have ludicrous amounts of money to stifile change via law suits. I hate to even consider the fact that one day the net will be run by these corporations in some way or another. I believe that artists could charge a small fee for downloads of music and cds and still make more money than in their present situation. If only..... boycott the music industry write an email to the riaa and explain why you refuse to buy cd's (from an internet kiosk using a hotmail account) hell send them virii as well, the time for change is now before you americans lose all your rights to big business.
I apologise for any spelling, grammar or punctuation errors.
azza :) |
|
Anonymous
|
Date: August 1, 2000 @ 8:10 PM
This argument is really hollow. How many people do Napster searches for "unknown" artists that they have never heard of, and therefore don't know the names of?
Very few. The vast majority of people on Napster are searching for artists or songs that they know. Simple fact.
Napster (despite its chat functions) does very little to promote the music of new, unknown artists.
Same thing with Scour and Gnutella. You search for what you know.
|
|
|
Navigation
