# Nabster's Achilles' Heel?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nabsters-achilles-heel/34627
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [September 26, 2000, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nabsters-achilles-heel/34627 "2000-09-26T17:13:59Z")
**Posts on this page:** 14
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Jinx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jinx)
#### Post date: [September 26, 2000, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nabsters-achilles-heel/34627/1 "2000-09-26T17:13:59Z")
As I understand it, Nabster relies upon the ability to share files from one user’s hard drive to another. BUT! Suppose I start deleting these MP3 files from off my hard drive. What is the impact on Nabster??? Are these MP3 files gone for good - wiped out of the Nabster world???
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### Author:  [@KarlGauss](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KarlGauss)
#### Post date: [September 26, 2000, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nabsters-achilles-heel/34627/2 "2000-09-26T17:23:07Z")
Wouldn’t it just be equivalent to you not being logged in? Would that break Napster?
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### Author:  [@jk1245](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jk1245)
#### Post date: [September 26, 2000, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nabsters-achilles-heel/34627/3 "2000-09-26T17:29:52Z")
All that would happen is your copy would not show up when someone searched for that particular song. Now if you had the only copy of a song among all Napster users, then yeah it would be gone.
All Napster is is a browser that lets you search for MP3s on othere people’s computers, so yeah Karl it would just be like not being logged on.
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### Author:  [@Jinx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jinx)
#### Post date: [September 26, 2000, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nabsters-achilles-heel/34627/4 "2000-09-26T17:33:49Z")
KarlGauss, it does seem that you could be correct, but it is a more extreme scenario - like if we held a Superbowl and no one came. Possible, but not probable.
However, I believe your scenario arises on a smaller scale.
If you hold a particular MP3 file on your hard drive, that file may not always be available for anothers to download if you are not logged on. …As I understand it.
So, if you deleted that particular MP3 file, what then?
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### Author:  [@Jinx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jinx)
#### Post date: [September 26, 2000, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nabsters-achilles-heel/34627/5 "2000-09-26T17:38:40Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by jk1245 \*
> **A…if you had the only copy of a song among all Napster users, then yeah it would be gone.**
How did all these MP3 files come into existence in the first place, and how did they get scattered amongst the millions and millions of hard drives? Was [MP3.com](http://MP3.com) (I believe it was) once the keeper of all the files until they got shut down? Then what happened? A big bang?
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### Author:  [@Hotaruna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hotaruna)
#### Post date: [September 26, 2000, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nabsters-achilles-heel/34627/6 "2000-09-26T17:52:37Z")
There were MP3s long before Napster came into popular use. It was less convenient to obtain MP3s, but they could still be found. What Napster does is bring together many users trading MP3s easily in one place.
MP3s tend to be created by being ‘ripped’ from an audio CD. Someone who has or borrows the CD will make an MP3 out of the songs from the CD and upload them somewhere. [MP3.com](http://MP3.com) was sort of a repository for MP3s, but it certainly never had all the MP3s in the world. I have MP3s on my computer that don’t exist anywhere else.
If you’re sharing MP3s over Napster, it’s not a big deal if you delete them. You’re just not sharing them anymore. If it’s a song like _Music_ by Madonna, there are thousands of other people that the song can be downloaded from. If it’s a song like _What’s Inside Me_ by Liars Inc. (which, by the way, I’ve been looking for for a while) and you’re the only one logged onto that particular Napster server with the MP3, then no one can download it anymore.
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### Author:  [@Johnny\_Angel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Angel)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2000, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nabsters-achilles-heel/34627/7 "2000-09-27T01:13:41Z")
**Jinx** wrote:
> [@](#):
>
> As I understand it, Nabster relies upon the ability to share files from one user’s hard drive to another. BUT! Suppose I start deleting these MP3 files from off my hard drive. What is the impact on Nabster??? Are these MP3 files gone for good - wiped out of the Nabster world???
Is this a troll?
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### Author:  [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2000, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nabsters-achilles-heel/34627/8 "2000-09-27T01:39:19Z")
No, Johnny, and don’t just sling that term around like mud. Jinx had a valid question, so we gave Jinx a valid answer. Sometimes, it’s the utter newbies that give us the most insight on a system.
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### Author:  [@Garfield226](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Garfield226)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2000, 2:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nabsters-achilles-heel/34627/9 "2000-09-27T02:10:21Z")
Actually, you can also set your file server (number of simultanious uploads) to 0, or you can move all your mP3s to another directory. Same result: You can download but no one can upload from you.
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### Author:  [@Johnny\_Angel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Angel)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2000, 2:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nabsters-achilles-heel/34627/10 "2000-09-27T02:13:21Z")
**Derleth** wrote:
> [@](#):
>
> Jinx had a valid question
So did I.
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### Author:  [@headshok](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/headshok)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2000, 7:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nabsters-achilles-heel/34627/11 "2000-09-27T07:18:32Z")
**jinx** -
When you dial up to Napster you connect to a server, along with however many other people happen to be logged in at the time. When you search for a particular song, a request is sent to the server, which then looks for users with the song you are looking for. It posts a list of them on your screen, and when you click on one a connection is established between you and the other user. So naturally, if you delete all of the songs off of your hard drive, or move them to a different folder than the one you specified when you originally set up Napster on your computer, than they will not be available to other users. That is a major difference between Napster and a site like [Mp3.com](http://Mp3.com). Napster’s server’s don’t hold any mp3 files, which I believe is part of Napster’s defense in court; their rationale is that they are just providing a file-sharing service and have no control over what their users do. :rolleyes:
As for how mp3’s came into existence in the first place, mp3 is an audio compression algorithm called MPEG Audio Layer-3 that was originally developed by a German company called Fraunhofer-IIS. The story I have heard (which may be apocryphal) was that the compression program was cracked and managed to find its way onto the Internet against Fraunhofer’s wishes, and soon after that mp3 sites started popping up. I’m sure we all remember the pre-Napster days, when you had to search every crappy Warez site on the web just to get a couple of songs. With Napster it’s quick, easy, and soon to be illegal. 🙂 Gnutella, anyone?
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### Author:  [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2000, 12:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nabsters-achilles-heel/34627/12 "2000-09-27T12:44:44Z")
I thought the problem w/ Napster (or the major leagal one) is that they did store the mp3 on their servers. Services (well programs) like Gnutella allowed direct connection to one’s HD and has no centlized server.
The main conmplaint w/ Gnutella was that people’s upload speed was very slow and it took a long time to get what you wanted (even cable and DSL (ADSL) which is much faster then dialup limit upload speeds). If Napster just provided a link through their server, then wouldn’t it take just as long to DL from Napster. 😕
Also what happens if I put something in post subject when I submit a reply? 😕
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### Author:  [@Joe\_Malik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joe_Malik)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2000, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nabsters-achilles-heel/34627/13 "2000-09-27T14:39:04Z")
Reply text appears here.
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### Author:  [@Jman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jman)
#### Post date: [September 27, 2000, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nabsters-achilles-heel/34627/14 "2000-09-27T17:07:54Z")
k2dave: No, the MP3s are NOT stored on Napster…that’s why they have a shot to win the appeal. The songs are stored on your own HD, and all the other HDs. Where Napster’s servers come in is here: The users all log into a central Napster server, which then is able to link your search with other users’ hard drives. You then download through that other user. Napster’s servers only facilitate the search. Gnutella (and others like it) are purely peer-to-peer solutions, so every person is a server, and you basically just look for other servers, then search the drives, then decide if you want to download. That’s why it takes longer…has to connect to all those users to search them.
Jman