Anyone using Napster?

Jim Cohen · Post by **Jim Cohen** » 12 May 2000 7:05 am

Have downloaded Napster, and run the install program, but it didn't create any icons and when I navigate to the directory where it is, and click on the application file, it just runs the installation again! What am I doing wrong? Anybody know?
Thx
jc

Jack Stoner · Post by **Jack Stoner** » 12 May 2000 9:20 am

I've avoided that site. It's legality is questionable and the fact you have to install their software to access it turns me off too.

Adam · Post by **Adam** » 12 May 2000 2:23 pm

I went through the whole rigamarole to download everything,all excited having just purchased a cd burner,only to discover that there is no good music available through Napster!I like a lot of rock,punk,alternative music too but still couldn't find anything that I don't hear on the radio seventeen times a day anyway.In addition to a poor selection of music,the songs that you download are only labeled as such so that you don't get any detailed information about the track you are about to download like the year it was released or whether it is a live or studio recording.Sometimes complete song titles are not even listed.Maybe I'm doing something wrong,but I don't see what the big deal about MP3's is.

erik · Post by **erik** » 12 May 2000 2:33 pm

I try to make sure i pay for my music, unless it is OOP.

Jim Cohen · Post by **Jim Cohen** » 12 May 2000 2:37 pm

For the record, I'm trying to post my own music on Napster, not steal somebody else's, so we can dispense with the morality stuff, ok?

erik · Post by **erik** » 13 May 2000 1:39 pm

OK Jim,
Sorry for jumping to conclusions. I have never even heard the idea of propagating your own work. Every published report i read seems to be about stealing. Again, my apologies.

Jack Stoner · Post by **Jack Stoner** » 13 May 2000 2:21 pm

Jim, me too, as far as the legality issue is concerned. From what I read it's primarily rock oriented and not really original material oriented. I've been wrong before but that's what I get out reading articles on it.

Jim Cohen · Post by **Jim Cohen** » 13 May 2000 5:29 pm

Well, guys, I could be wrong about this too. My understanding is that it is like mp3.com where new artists can post their own songs for others to hear. My band has an mp3 website running and I wanted to see whether we should participate in Napster too. But it seems I can't even check out what the heck it is without using their software (as Jack stated above), and I can't get their software to run! So, I guess I'm S.O.L. Haruummpph!<FONT SIZE=1 COLOR="#8e236b"><p align=CENTER>[This message was edited by Jim Cohen on 13 May 2000 at 06:30 PM.]</p></FONT>

Graham · Post by **Graham** » 13 May 2000 5:50 pm

You guys are way off base on the whole Napster question.

1. The legality of it IS in question right now, but it is not Napster posting the material, it is people just like us all over the world.

2. It IS NOT rock oriented. Download the program, install it and sign up, run the program and in search type "classic country" or "gospel" or "old rock", then tell me it's rock oriented.

3. You most certainly can have your own material on-line, Jim. The way it works is you put what you want people to be able to download in a directory of your choosing. Only drawback, they can only view and/or download your material while you are online on Napster.

4. The whole idea of Napster is this:
As most of you know, judging from my Rebel™ and Ricky Real Audio site, I have a lot of classic country music on Records, cassettes and CD's. I could record them all as MP3's, save them in a directory on my hard drive called "country" as an example. I would make that directory available thru Napster and if I was online and you were also and you happened onto the server I was on and did a search for "country", you would see my directory listed and you could then download as many songs from my hard drive as you wanted, as long as I stayed on line.

In a nutshell, that is how Napster works, but, it is only the program being used, no songs are stored in or by Napster.

------------------
Rebel™
ICQ 614585
http://users.interlinks.net/rebel/steel/steel.html

Mark Ardito · Post by **Mark Ardito** » 16 May 2000 10:42 am

The way that Napster works is it allows other users who have this software search other users hard drives for MP3 files. Did you understand that.....IT IS ALLOWING ANYONE TO LOOK AT YOUR HARD DRIVE!!!! NOT THE BEST THING TO BE DOING IF YOU HAVE ANY IMPORTANT INFORMATION SAVED ON YOUR HARD DRIVE!!!! My advice is avoid it like the plague!!!

Jeff Agnew · Post by **Jeff Agnew** » 16 May 2000 5:40 pm

Excellent point, Mark.

Napster is popular with the college crowd because they can typically post MP3 files to one of their institution's servers. For the rest of us, it means you turn your own computer into a server. Be certain you know all that entails before doing so.

It's a little ridiculous to set up a server if you have a dial-up connection to your ISP. The files would only be available when you have an active connection to the net and remote users are restricted to the modem's connection speed. If you have a cable modem or xDSL connection, it becomes practical, yet still inadvisable. Here's why:

<ul>[*]You must enable Windoze file sharing. That's the single biggest security hole on the net today. Give me an IP and a Wintel machine with file sharing enabled and I can give you eleventy-three different ways to break into your computer and wreak havoc. Every twelve-year old script kiddie with a port scanner knows how to do this; it ain't rocket science.

[*]Whatever bandwidth you currently have will be significantly reduced. You're sharing your connection with all those who want to download your files. Compressed though they may be, how many simultaneous 400K MP3 downloads will it take to choke your bandwidth? Cable modems are generally restricted to 128Kbps uploads. DSL can handle more but you can do the math and figure that it wouldn't take much to take the bandwidth you're paying for to surf the net and turn it back into 56K modem territory.

[*]You're also sharing your computer's CPU cycles since it now must listen for incoming requests, process them, and deliver the file for download. Again, multiple users trying to download MP3s will bring the average home user's machine to its knees. That's why web hosts and FTP servers use special server software to handle the traffic. Ask b0b what it took to set up this forum on his own server running Linux, and get enough bandwidth to handle the average daily load.[/list]

I'm not trying to dissuade anyone from posting their MP3s to the net. I'm merely trying to convince you that doing so from your own computer is fraught with risk and expense. The security implications alone are so severe that you really should look elsewhere. If you have free space on your ISP's server you may be able to post them there. It beats having your own PC turned to mush by some malcontent with nothing better to do.

Regards,
Jeff