Adam Powell is a pundit, a writer, and a musician. He appears frequently as an expert at industry events, including the San Francisco Internet Audio Business Mixer, North by Northwest, and Geekapalooza. He will appear on two panels during his return visit to South By Southwest 2000.

Time to Take a Nap from the Napster?

New Internet applications are giving some very smart legal minds brain cramps, and perhaps the trickiest of the recent batch of Internet case studies is Napster. If you too are on the fence about whether or not it's legal to use Napster, perhaps it'll help you decide for yourself if we look at how it actually works.

Napster is a software application that you download onto your PC. Once you have registered with Napster, the privately held company, the program searches your hard drive for all your files ending with the .mp3 extension. Napster then creates an index of these files, which is then sent back to the company's main database.

When you run the program, a file sharing connection is opened, allowing other people to download your mp3s and you to download mp3s off of others' hard drives. Then, when you search for your favorite artist, Napster checks their database for the mp3s that match your search and you can download the returns directly from someone else's machine.

The company Napster doesn't host the mp3s; they just host a bunch of links to mp3s. And this is where any legal debate on the subject grows fuzzy. Because Napster as a business entity does not actually host any of the files, instead merely hosting the database of pointers to the files, it's unclear whether or not they are legally culpable for piracy charges. But we'll find out: the RIAA (Recording Institute Association of America) has brought a lawsuit against Napster.

How will this play out? Well, it's reasonably clear that Napster enables crime in the form of piracy. Being an accessory to a crime means culpability. The probability that this can be effectively demonstrated in court is good. Furthermore, there is a lot at stake in terms of precedent. And while the courts don't yet do well with technologically-oriented issues, they certainly can handle basic copyright protection and intellectual property arguments.

What does this mean for the Napster user? If the case develops far enough, a good bet would be that a list of users, easily tracked by email or IP address, will be subpoenaed.

If you're waffling on whether you personally believe that Napster is legal or not, my advice is don't wait to find out. Demonstrate that you don't support piracy by uninstalling the application...or at least try to avoid making the top offender list.