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FROM THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
The battle over Napster
By David Gewirtz
At the moment, there's no bigger technology news than the battle over Napster. If you've been living under a rock, here's a short summary of the issue: Napster is a service/program that allows users to share music over the Internet. So far, so good. What makes it interesting is that it allows users to share MP3 files on their hard drives with anyone else on the Internet running Napster. So, for example, if I want to find a song by The Grateful Dead, I'd type in the name of the song (say, "Casey Jones") and Napster would show all the connected machines that had copies. I could then download the copy to my PC, play it, download it to my MP3 player, or even burn it to a CD.
This is obviously sending the music industry into a wig-out fit of epic proportions. And, so, with a lawsuit brought by the music industry, a judge ordered Napster shuttered. (Napster was subsequently granted a temporary reprieve against the injunction.)
But the battle is far from over. First of all, Napster has something like 20 million loyal users. That makes 20 million people seriously pissed off at the music industry. Secondly, Napster has a serious brand name (although severely tarnished by this battle). And third, the idea of easily sharing decentralized digital files is too easy to implement and too good an idea with too compelling a value proposition, resulting in Napster being easily and eagerly cloned.
So, for all intents and purposes, legal system or not, free, shared music is here to stay.
The challenge is now for the music distributors (who make up the bulk of the music industry) and the artists to figure out how to make money in this new paradigm. The fact is, people will continue to buy CDs, so that business isn't toast. One study says that CD sales around colleges have nose-dived, pointing to Napster use as the culprit), while another study says Napster users tend to buy more music. In other words, the studies don't mean diddly. People who want to buy will buy, and people who don't, won't--and a court judgment in this Internet economy isn't going to affect that.
On the other hand, public opinion and creative marketing might. Right now, the Napster guys have an interesting idea. They're advocating a "buycott," suggesting that Napster supporters go out and buy CDs from artists that endorse Napster. There aren't a lot of these artists, but here's who Napster currently lists: Chuck D, Limp Bizkit, The Offspring, Ben Folds Five, Sunny Day Real Estate, Social Distortion, Face to Face, Get Up Kids, Less Than Jake, Nextmen, The Coup, Cypress Hill, Dr. Octagon, Billy Corgan (Smashing Pumpkins), DJ Keoki, The Pilfers, Elwood, Anti-pop Consortium, The Grateful Dead, Eve 6, Mix Master Mike, and Marianne Faithfull.
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