The Null Device
2002/9/5
A business model for the post-dot-com age: online begging, where people set up web sites with sob stories about dodgy spouses or crippling credit-card bills and wait for soft-hearted suckers to PayPal them money. The difference between a pockmarked junky begging on the street for heroin money and a woman in Brooklyn asking for money to pay off her Prada bills comes down to presentation; well, that and the social acceptability of the addiction.
After a long, debilitating illness, Napster is finally dead; as opposed to having the "virtually dead" state it was in for the past year or two. It's still something to look back on fondly when we're languishing in the Black Iron Prison of mandatory total digital rights management.
