June 2, 2000

4:41 PM

HA!How could I have found out about this through something other than Metafilter? You people are slacking!

Anyway, The Offspring are selling bootleg Napster merchandise.
posted by peterme (11 comments total)

If they were bootleg it would be an Ironic slap to the face of Napster

I thought Offspring was Pro-Napster?
posted by Mick at 5:08 PM on June 2, 2000

If I looked at their site better I would have seen the link "The Offspring and Napster"

Yep, Pro-Napster.
posted by Mick at 5:11 PM on June 2, 2000

How do we know it's bootleg? And even if it is, that's just further proof to the direction all this is heading. Whether artists realize it or not, their music appearing at Napster is FREE ADVERTISING and is not going to rob their mouths of any food. Any music that appears on Napster means *someone* thought it was good enough to share with others. This is actually something they should put on their other advertising; "Madonna's latest album! With the hit song "whatever it's called"! Traded on Napster!" It's like an automatic positive review.

If people are selling Napster merchandise illegally, by applying this same model, Napster can view this as free publicity, and people who don't know much about the 'Net will see other people walking around with Napster crap. They'll know the name Napster before they even get on the 'Net. That's only positive.

I don't see why people are having such a problem with this.

posted by ZachsMind at 5:15 PM on June 2, 2000

It's bootleg because the band is pocketing the money. I guess it's only illegal if Napster objects, which appears unlikely.
posted by harmful at 6:39 PM on June 2, 2000

I love that Peter referred to MeFi readers as "you people." I don't know why, but that cracks me up to no end.
posted by mathowie at 9:01 PM on June 2, 2000

Quoth the Napster, nevermore.
posted by hijinx at 9:05 PM on June 2, 2000

We the MeFi People, in order to form a more perfect Web... *smirk*

I do find this annoying. What Napster's doing to Offspring is something they have to do to protect their copyright, but they're blatantly disregarding other people's copyrights.

Okay. They're not doing it directly, but their software makes enforcing copyright legislation regarding music obsolete. Or at the very least, if ALL the cars on a highway are speeding, and there's only one copcar to catch it, he can only stop one of them from speeding at a time, which makes enforcement heinously unfair and in the end irrelevant. It doesn't stop people from speeding.

Enforcing copyrights with today's technology is laughable and silly.

Recently mp3.com did a similar thing to me. I had on THEIR website a station page which included their logo graphic. I chose to put the logo into a graphic I made myself, cuz I thought it looked sporty. It was on THEIR website. I didn't see a problem.

Some months after I did this, their art department got wind of it and asked me to take it off. Which begrudgingly I did. Turns out they have in the fine print of their site a disclaimer saying that one can only use their logo graphics on any site including their own if you use it without changing it in any way.

Otherwise, and get this, you're infringing on their copyright. This is mp3.com talking. The same guys being sued by RIAA for copyright infringement.

However, after I made the change, they removed the 'offending' page anyway. Then they made it look like I took it down voluntarily, which I most certainly did not do.

I found the entire thing laughable, as the page in question was one I had stopped updating and didn't care about, but it's the principle of the thing. I can't support a company that fights a law when it's to their advantage, and then embraces that same law when it's to their benefit.

You either abide by the copyright laws or you don't. I'm sure their lawyers can go, "but it's not the same thing." And when you look at the details I'm sure there's loopholes. I don't care.

I just stopped using mp3.com, and I haven't used Napster in months. They can play their games. I don't care. I just won't support their future efforts.
posted by ZachsMind at 9:33 PM on June 3, 2000

I guess Lars was right - Napster really is bad. Oh well... Fuck Napster.
posted by attitude at 10:42 PM on June 3, 2000

I thought the Ticket Stub project was coming in "Late May" So no it's "early June" and there's still no Ticket Stub project. I personally can't stand it when a site promises to upload at a specific time and then they're too lazy to even acknowledge that the site is late. Even better, upload as promised.
posted by hugh at 11:30 PM on June 3, 2000

um, hugh? Putting that comment here? Real appropriate. I was going to start a metatalk thread about it today, but I think I'll just make a new section too. Go here to talk about it.
posted by mathowie at 11:46 PM on June 3, 2000