14 February 2005
BoingBoing and Napster
Xeni Jardin over at BoingBoing presented a completely indefensible attack against Napster's pay model. I had been getting increasingly irritated at her fanaticism (fanatics should never ever ever exist!), but with the help of Blogdex found that many others felt the same as me--available despite BoingBoing's lack of comments.
Quickly, her absurd logic states that Napster is trying to rip you off because you pay $15 a month yet don't end up owning anything persistent. For that $15, you can download and listen to as much music as you'd like, but that music will "self-destruct" after you stop paying the monthly fee. Xeni is arguing that any model that excludes absolute ownership is flawed. This is absurd. Even more so because those authors at BoingBoing continually mock the old guard of the music industry as incapable of embracing new models that arise from Internet culture.
I have often see authors at BoingBoing address their critics. I hope they make no exception here.
Lack of commenting, although understandable (poker and p3n1s en.larg.men7 anyone?), is a huge flaw. Being forced to sit next to your critics is one of the best and most self-correcting aspects of the blog model. Thousands of other large-scale sites deal with it and BoingBoing should too.
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