Napster – Be A Net Thief
Written: Jun 21 '01
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Free, chat facility, large community (once).
Cons: MP3 only, feels like stealing, just not right.
The Bottom Line: MP3 bah! Buy a CD, much better quality.
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| MichaelHatton's Full Review: Napster |
Napster was first released a fair while back during either 2000 or 1999 I downloaded mine on the first night of getting an internet connection last June 2000. I was fairly happy to spend something like 30 minutes to a few hours downloading on a 56k connection.
Later on we got a cable modem, and the 30 minute spell was cut to a superfast 5-10 minutes. What I did with my sehd of MP3s was simply burn them to CD to listen to on my PC.
Using a cheap micro system the rock music MP3s sounded great, and I could finally get the big band names for nothing.
What people have come to understand from Napster is that it is completely legal.
I have started to disagree, hence the low rating.
The reason for my disagreement is that it is illegal. While the service is still today running it has been to the court and prosecuted a number of times without punishment.
In the last few months the Napster service had to choose a legal way to share these MP3s. They came up with a service which is now to be from the members pockets, making members pay for the sharing. I haven’t seen this as yet, but still I feel the idea of uploading/downloading MP3s still questionable.
Firstly the whole industry of music compression is quite silly. As many people suffer with inferior recordings. Of course a pop record won’t be as bad as a opera for example. The MP3 system with take away the bits which many people can’t hear fully. Though this often leads to distortions within the music sample. Even more so if your filthy rich and own a hifi which can represent the movement of singers hand over their headphones in the studio while backing it up by a PC edited melody and such.
To add to this compression format is the way people convert the pure audio to the format. Remember the guys who do this will probably just use a free downloadable converter. The results are never up to the origional standard. Now I have realised the difference, as all my burned PC CDs (despite using an expensive writer) are full of quiet distortions and fuzziness. And makes the whole scene not worthwhile. I prefer spending my pocket cash on a decent CD.
Along with the download you have a full surfeit of features. Such as the chat room – still your unconfident to whether the person your chatting to are being serious like all other rooms. This chat room is still an unworthwhile feature as other software downloads are available such as MSN messenger and Yahoo messenger.
In short the whole principal is a silly attempt to gain free music. Which is in fact stealing.
A recording of an album will often take weeks or months of hard work, not only of the artists but the record company who spend oodles of cash on the professional people who spend hours and days making the recording as pure as gold, only to be dissected by a amateur ripper who then shares it with almost everyone on Napster. The whole idea is disgusting, and the effects are quite amazing.
I remember hearing a low CD sale in the year 2001, not only because of this Napster problem, and pirate CD coping which is another matter.
Although the idea springs to mind a pirate copier could have got his CD together from MP3s of the Napster service.
In my view there is no real good thing from Napster, it is quite simply a disgusting service, which affects the whole music industry. Not even the chat facility is worth the download.
The whole concept is not sharing but almost stealing a record companies CD.
As for borrowing a freinds CD that is OK, not so if you make a copy for yourself and sell it over and over again.
Recommended:
No
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MichaelHatton
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Location: Darlington, England
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