The Great Napster Debate

Great Debates
1

Welcome to the Great Napster Debate!

First things first (so that you understand my stance). I am:

  1. A musician

  2. A Capitalist

  3. A Libertarian (at least it seems like it)

Those things in the clear, let us proceed. As a musician, I would love to receive every cent that I could from the distribution of my music. As a Capitalist, ditto ('nuf said?). As a Libertarian, I want to see law applied CORRECTLY, and not with a sole view to profit.

An example: I record a song off of a radio transmission. I make a copy of that song and mail it, at no cost or charge, to my friend. Where has the law been broken? Should the post office be charged with, or estopped for, abetting a crime?

As difficult as it may be to accept, Napster is merely playing the part of a post office. They do not store any of the music on their servers, just as the post office does not have a catalog of music for sale. Where is the violation? Remember how Hollywood howled about the VCR (not to mention the dual deck VCR), remember the fuss over the compact disc recorder? Also, so far from what I can see, Napster does not profit from the distribution of this music. I am not subjected to advertising banners while at their site. If they have them in their chat rooms, that is their privilege (some debate might be appropriate on this count). They do not profit from their traffic, unless they provide demand profiles to the music industry (anybody know about this?). If they did perform this survey function, then maybe they should pay a broadcast tax to the artists.

All in all (time for a really lame argument), considering the protracted download times (for now), Napster is not an attractive site to accumulate a music collection from. This may change when the “Last mile of copper” is finally replaced with fiber optic conductor. Until then, most people will probably buy CD’s after listening to samples acquired THROUGH Napster.

ARTISTS, please weigh in with well thought out arguments, either pro or con.

SELLERS, please weigh in with your thoughts as well.

COUNSEL, for all of the above, please provide your legal viewpoint.
If this one doesn’t start a regular donnybrook, I don’t know what will.

2

Oh great. I get to play the part of the evil corporate music business guy who makes his living by immorally ripping off poor, unsuspecting musicians and their art.

Well, we’ll see about that, actually. I do work for a record company, and have been in the music biz for over a decade. That said, I think I am very pro-artists rights for the moat part even though I think “the biz” has got a bad rap.

Now then, I think that the music you create is yours. If you want MP3’s circulating around the internet willy nilly, this is no different to me than an artist giving away tapes and CDs at shows. And some artists do this, and even more would if it didn’t mean major costs.

That said, if you do NOT want your music circulating around the internet unless you are getting compensated, then I think you have every reason to dislike that it’s happening to you.

As such, while I think Metallica are idiots, they have every right to protect their interests.

The problem is that everyone seems to have forgotten some things about the market-place. New technologies that made art more acessible never hurt it, even though people said it would, it has only helped it.

I still have old vinyl LPs with “Home Taping Is Killing The Music Industry” emblazoned on the inner sleeve, which is what the music biz honestly felt when cassette tapes took off. Sony was sued by the movie industry that worried VHS and Beta would kill the movie biz. Both technologies wound up helping their respective industries immeasurably.

That said, I do think that this could have the potential to hurt the business as none of the previous things meant you could have the equivalent of 100 CDs on something the size of a walkman. So being pragmatic and trying to make this technology work for them is a must.

Instead, they are overreacting and essentially doing their best Saul Rosenburg by saying, “Sue everybody!”

In a nutshell, ultimately the rights of the artists and the profits of the music business will be protected by hook or by crook. This might hurt the consumer to a degree, but the main consumer anything that is done would hurt would be those who are not consumers but people who are content to get everything for free, and try as they might, there is no way those people can convince me that they have a RIGHT to screw the artists.

After all, don’t they usually accuse me of doing that?

Yer pal,
Satan

TIME ELAPSED SINCE I QUIT SMOKING:
Four months, three weeks, two days, 22 hours, 5 minutes and 8 seconds.
5836 cigarettes not smoked, saving $729.60.
Extra time with Drain Bead: 2 weeks, 6 days, 6 hours, 20 minutes.

3

And I’ll be the bastard that points out how many Napster threads have already been done.