--- To: Nina.Bhatti@private Cc: Declan McCullagh <declan@private>, gnu@private Subject: Nominating Shawn Fanning for the ACM Lawler Award In-reply-to: <6.0.0.22.2.20031021232341.0223a308@private> Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 00:09:26 -0800 From: John Gilmore <gnu@private> Candidate for award: Shawn Fanning co-founder of Napster (I don't have his current contact information handy.) Why: Mr. Fanning, while a freshman student, built an application that for the first time since Internet e-mail was invented, energized millions of people to use the end-to-end capabilities of the Internet to create a huge social benefit. His Napster was "the ultimate music server", offering the public a copy of every song ever recorded, instantly accessible -- through the cooperative efforts of the music lovers themselves. More out-of-print, rare, and otherwise unavailable music was suddenly made available to the public than at any other time in history. Also, virtually all in-print music was also made available, at a distribution cost orders of magnitude lower than in previous systems. Napster offered to pay royalties to musicians and music companies, but was rebuffed. Quirks in copyright law and in the architecture of the system made it possible for the predecessor music distribution oligopoly to strangle Napster in court, despite its obvious social utility. But its energy lives on in dozens of subsequent thriving million-scale peer-to-peer information sharing networks. And Shawn Fanning's energy lives on in the hearts, minds, and computers of more than 60 million music sharers. This rabble now refuses to merely nibble the hobbled dribble of hardscrabble babble cobbled together by the squabbling rubble of the music oligopoly. I think this nomination goes in the category of "creative research concerning intellectual property issues". A side benefit is "application of computers or computing techniques to problems of developing countries". Nominator: John Gilmore PO Box 170608 San Francisco, California, USA 94117 +1 415 221 6524 voice gnu@private Others who agree with the recommendation: None yet, but I'm cross-posting to politech (Declan willing), partly to inspire other interesting nominations, and partly so those who agree can email their support for Shawn Fanning's nomination to Nina.Bhatti@private _______________________________________________ Politech mailing list Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon Nov 17 2003 - 07:32:06 PST