It's more than likely that the days are numbered for music consumers using absolutely zero-cost distributed digital music networks -- and I'm not just talking about Napster, I'm talking about Scour, Gnutella, and Mayor McCheese (okay, there's no "Mayor McCheese").
Working musicians aren't going to be as interested in burning that promotional mp3 of a new track because, once slurped up into the Napster databases, that song has lost potential energy for producing revenue. This is a giant step backwards for music technology and will squash the fantastic opportunities the Net offers as an alternative to the "Big 5" record companies' way of doing things. That is, unless a specific population of music consumers, the folks who love music but don't actually make it, find some legal ground rules to be in their best interest.
Does it make sense to give away a sample of your product to generate buzz when that product can be limitlessly and very easily duplicated? For many multi-hundred-selling artists ("Dude! Our CD's gone double particle-board certified!") it sure does make sense. But the two plateau system of either Big 5 hardwired distribution or all-for-free all-the-time distributed digital music network model is about to crumble down into a blob of baking dough and reform into...well, reform into what exactly?
With the help of multi-platinum recording artists like Limp Bizkit,
is attempting to rally against the avalanche of lawsuits and bad press heaped upon them recently. But it looks like they've lost round one in the courts.
The Washington Post reported on May ninth: "The company, which faces a separate lawsuit by the heavy metal band Metallica, also sought to define itself as an Internet service provider to limit its liability under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. However, U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel refused to grant Napster's request that the lawsuit be dismissed, ruling Friday that it was not entitled to "safe harbor" under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act because it 'does not transmit, route or provide connections for allegedly infringing material through its system.'"
So now let's talk about You: You are a Napster proponent who does not know what it's like to make music, to take the song in your head, compose it, and through a lot of time and expense somehow document that bit of fluffery onto a piece of media. At the risk of sounding heavy-handed, this point cannot be underscored too heavily. Just getting the tones of instruments to sound okay coming back from tape can take a really long time (for instance, take the famous story about Metallica's Lars Ullrich taking an entire day to get the sound of one crash symbol right).
You, the non-music producing Napster proponent, are being counted amongst an increasingly prevalent profile of music consumers "weighing in" on the Napster issue who think they are experts on digital music simply because they have installed a software application. And frankly the skills required to assemble a recorded song more closely resemble those needed to assemble an automobile than to write a Slashdot post.
I don't know how to make movies, but I love them. If there were no laws in our society and the free technology to do it, I might not have reason to worry too much about the morality of supporting a distributed digital film network that offers 70mm film-quality movies for free. Because I like movies I download the films and probably would be happy as a clam, however many thousands of hours it took to make them is impossible for me to understand. I like movies; I don't make movies.
It is particularly irksome to read some of Napster CEO Eileen Richardson's comments in a recent Salon interview. She makes the case for Napster actually helping the music industry the same way it's turned out that VCRs have enlarged the film industry pie. One flaw within that clumsily co-opted analogy is that the fight between movie-makers and the VCR industry was settled only when the people who make VCRs and video tapes agreed to pay a levee to assuage piracy worries. By Richardson's own reasoning, Napster doesn't work for people who put out music, and most importantly the courts will see it that way, as well. So in my hypothetical dream world where left to my devices I download movies for free, there would have to be a system that taxes digitally distributed media networks.
And then there's that smaller population of non-musician Napster consumers I was talking about. "Either the record company is going to rip them off or the fans are going to rip them off. I'd just as soon cut out the middleman," said one music consumer to me recently.
Aimee Mann, Dr, Dre, Metallica, and a host of others all feel that the users of this distributed network are ripping them off. There will be a sea-change in the relationship between the fan and the artists, one that requires trust and goodwill. Taking Napster out of the picture, despite the multitude of functional clones, should create a healthier, more optimistic environment.
An anti-Big 5 position does not necessarily equal a pro-Napster position; nor does a pro-technology position equal a pro-Napster position. Anyone that rallies behind Napster, the corporation, after last week are simply mis-informed. One way for the distributed digital music network to enhance the music industry in the music business' next iteration is for the Napsters of the world to pay some sort of tax, the proceeds of which going into a slush fund. Similar to the case of blank audio and video cassettes, that money would be administered by some sort of new publisher's rights organization either as a part of, or as a new form of current publisher's rights organization, like ASCAP or BMI.
Fans pay for what they like to hear because they are passionate about music. Many of them, having been given they opportunity not to pay, have taken that option. Seeing as how fans seem to be willing to buy music when it's a requirement, and nobody will get paid if they don't -- neither record company nor artist -- shouldn't we encourage a scenario in which payment is garnered when a product is distributed?
