August 25, 2006

Social Networking Via Napster? I Laugh

Eliot Van Buskirk at Wired's music weblog Listening Post wrote something so out-of-wack, so bizarro that I immediately yelled, "BS!" to my computer monitor. What did he write? This,

With all of the RIAA's bellyaching about the volume of files shared over these networks, it's easy to forget that one of the reasons people were so excited about Napster back in the day was the social networking aspect. I'm sure I'm not the only one who used to search for a few key, obscure band names and then add anyone who was sharing them into my Buddy List. To find new stuff to listen to, all I had to do was browse these buddies' collections.

People didn't give a damn about the "social networking aspect" about Napster 1.0. Napster was popular because you could download lots of music for free. The buddy list was to easily find sources of free music. Napster users could have cared less about making friends with those on their buddy lists. If they never talked to them but got access to lots of cool music they were happy.

Napster wasn't like weblogs, social news sites like digg, and MySpace are where people with common interests do more than let each other know they could download the new CD they just ripped to their computer.

To claim Napster 1.0 was ahead of its time is just a way for Eliot to justify Napster 1.0's existence and ignoring the massive copyright-infringing used with the technology.

"RIAA-Proof Music Sharing" [via Scripting News]

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