People were converting vinyl and tape to digital files as early as the 70s, and swapping them with others after floppy disks were a thing. And BBS systems existed in the proto-internet age before the WWW and commercial ISPs were created in the 90s.
People were not trading music on floppy disks. Digital music trading only became feasible and widespread with the introduction of the MP3 codec in the mid-90s.
You can fit a single heavily compressed mp3 song on a “modern” 1.44 MB floppy. Floppies had much less capacity back then, and mp3 wasn’t invented, so the idea that people would be passing around ripped vinyl music on floppies makes absolutely no sense.
That’s why you either used multiple disks for a single file, or you converted it to a very low-fidelity format; sometimes both. My dad has tons of old floppies with music on them. It’s absolutely horrendous quality or MIDI from the 80s.
So do you claim that this is the earliest form of digital piracy? Because it’s not really piracy until you share the ripped files, and you say that people were “swapping them with others after floppy disks were a thing”.
People were converting vinyl and tape to digital files as early as the 70s, and swapping them with others after floppy disks were a thing. And BBS systems existed in the proto-internet age before the WWW and commercial ISPs were created in the 90s.
People were not trading music on floppy disks. Digital music trading only became feasible and widespread with the introduction of the MP3 codec in the mid-90s.
You can fit a single heavily compressed mp3 song on a “modern” 1.44 MB floppy. Floppies had much less capacity back then, and mp3 wasn’t invented, so the idea that people would be passing around ripped vinyl music on floppies makes absolutely no sense.
That’s why you either used multiple disks for a single file, or you converted it to a very low-fidelity format; sometimes both. My dad has tons of old floppies with music on them. It’s absolutely horrendous quality or MIDI from the 80s.
So do you claim that this is the earliest form of digital piracy? Because it’s not really piracy until you share the ripped files, and you say that people were “swapping them with others after floppy disks were a thing”.
You are clearly mixing up the timeline here.
What about the people who put wax on records and took it off and they could play that?
Still a form of piracy, just not digital.
Wouldn’t that be the answer to the second part?
Is that what you meant by “off the net?” Cuz I thought you meant it as in “downloaded from” 🤣