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Saturday, Nov 22, 2008
The Napster wars continue Plus: Can vegetarians and meat eaters get along? Do you really want to live forever?
Apr 3, 2000 | Napster -- friend or foe?
BY SCOTT ROSENBERG
(03/30/00)
Kudos to Scott Rosenberg for stating the obvious: A market is driven by its customers. As more and more people desire free MP3s, both the artists and the industry will simply have to adapt or perish. Whether they choose to do so graciously or to go kicking and screaming, that doesn't affect the reality of their changing market.
-- Gabriel Golden
Like any technology, Napster can be used or abused. To artists who fear Napster as an evil force, I'd like to offer a little story. The day I installed Napster I went in search of something by Guided by Voices. They were scheduled to play Tokyo, I'd never heard them, and was curious what they sounded like. I downloaded "Teenage FBI," flipped, and went out and bought the album it appears on the same day. In the next week I saw GBV live and now have five albums by that band.
-- Dave Biasotti
Yokohama, Japan
I woke up from a terrible dream in the middle of the night. In this dream, the recording industry had failed and we were left with only Napster to guide us. The trouble was, with 80,000 garage-and-dorm bands listed, I had no way to sort through the garbage to find the occasional gem.
The music industry, problematic and imperfect as it is, might be likened to a consultant who helps you find the information (music suited to your tastes) you need. Napster, on the other hand, is more like a search engine which spits up thousands of irrelevant links at each turn.
-- Mike Martin
Even if your hoped-for "easy-to-use micropayments scheme" becomes a reality, who will use it when people can get the music for free instead?
-- Jon Lackman
The piracy of digital content is a technological problem, and it has technological solutions. Big record companies realize this, and they are working with Digital Rights Management (DRM) companies to develop technology that allows them to control the distribution (and superdistibution) of their music while minimizing the risk of piracy.
The future brought to us by Napster is therefore this: the major labels will have digitally protected content. The majors will make their profits. On the other hand, independents will be increasingly unable to make money by digital distribution, and many will withdraw, leaving all of us the poorer.
It is precisely the independent artists who most need to be paid for their work. These are the people who are really threatened by Napster. And if, in protecting the small guys, we allow the majors to make a profit, so what?
-- Knox Carey
No one (including the RIAA) is condemning the inevitable barrage of new, industry-altering technologies, but rather they are seeking to protect existing copyright laws. Rosenberg's opinion seems to be that everyone should just dumbly follow each new technological step, rather than question the legality and consequence of the product.
Piracy undermines all facets of recorded music -- from garage band to superstar -- and just because someone has dreamed up a business that runs off of copies of music (legal or illegal) doesn't mean we all should happily jump on board, without first wondering if the creators are at all accountable for the laws being broken with use of their service.
This is music, not water. It is a product and people are not automatically entitled to it. It's now a product that's being stolen easily and rampantly. This is OK? I, for one, am against a system that lets people break laws and guarantees them anonymity to do so with out consequence.
-- Brenden Cobb
Recording music costs money. Say Napster does eliminate the need for record companies -- both corporate and independent. How will artists fund the recording of their work if they don't have CDs to sell and infrastructure to support them? Any touring band knows it's impossible to make money just from playing shows alone.
Napster is a corporation, just like the major labels, that's hoping to make a lot of money when they go public. How is that money made? On the backs of artists, of course. And how much does Napster compensate them for being the reason why their IPO is bound to be tremendous? Not at all.
If Napster was shareware put together and maintained by dedicated music fans at no profit to themselves I would be more supportive. This is all money made from what's essentially bootlegging. How is that really bucking the system of abuse?
-- Jeff Barrus
Napster should simply agree to charge an industry scale for songs to be downloaded. Don't want to pay $17 for a CD of crappy music? Fine. Go on Napster, download the song you like and pay a couple bucks for it. Why is that wrong?
-- Tom Slater
Chicago
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