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To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: Declan McCullagh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Nominating Shawn Fanning for the ACM Lawler Award
In-reply-to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 00:09:26 -0800
From: John Gilmore <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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