Re: [microsound] napster shut down

[Sean Cooper <scooper@xxxxxxxx>]

At 08:17 AM 7/27/00 -0700, you wrote:
>yesterday Napster was ordered to shut down its operations...what do the
>people on this list think about this?
>personally I think its really sad...

this isn't entirely accurate. napster was ordered to include safeguards in
its software against users trading copyrighted material through the
service. realistically, of course, this does amount to a kind of order to
cease operations (the doom'n'gloom response of napster to the ruling is
that it would probably have to shut down), since napster exists more or
less to trade copyrighted material. in this respect, the judge's ruling was
kind of comic, since napster has insisted from the start that the service
*in principle* does not exist to infringe copyright, only to have to turn
around and pull its own plug when it's told it can't infringe copyright
anymore. well, duh.

my own opinions are split. musicians have a right to make money off their
music, period. and to the extent that a technology exists that potentially
stands in the way of that, they are entitled to a certain level of
protection. this also means, however, that they are entitled to a certain
level of protection from the music industry itself, which has been raping
artists for decades. and love it or hate it, napster is the first real,
concrete, and efficient means of wresting a good deal of control of the
means of production and distribution away from the the corporations that
currently own them. terrible cliche, but to make an omelette, you have to
break a few eggs, and the structure of the music business isn't going to
change without a period of potentially painful adjustment, as the "music
industry as inadvertent protector of laws that mostly serve them" model
gives way to a more musician-centric one. a painless transition? not likely.

in this respect, david is very much right that this doesn't mean the end of
napster, only the end of a napster that isn't in the pocket of the music
industry. (a napster by any other name...) the music industry will do
everything within its power to destroy anything that stands in the way of
its ability to make as much money as possible. but neither is this the end
of it. indeed, this is only round one: decentralized file-sharing
technologies like gnutella and freenet obliterate many of the safeguards
that made targeting napster possible. the RIAA will be bumming it decided
to work against rather than with napster once napster is replaced by
something that can't, effectively, be shut down.

sc, who has never used napster (and who can't, for some reason, even use
hotline)