Will Napster follow MP3?

You can write off MP3.com and any company that touches copyrighted material.

There appears to be little or no legal argument to overturn the massive verdict

against MP3.com. So what about Napster? Aren't they doing the same thing as

MP3.com, which lets Internet users log in and listen to music CDs they own? No!

Napster has never touched a single song and put it on its Web site. It only

makes software that allows its members to exchange the music they copy to their

hard drives.

Napster doesn't have any control over what members put on those drives and

cannot be punished for any copyright offenses on the part of its members, even

though the company knows full well that the software will enable consumers to

engage in potentially illegal distribution of copyrighted material. On Napster's

side is a powerful US law that lets consumers copy music and video for their

personal use, like putting a CD onto cassette in order to play it back in a car.

Or copying to CD to play it on a computer at work. Shutting Napster down would

be the legal equivalent of halting VCR sales.

Has anybody ever recorded anything that was not copyrighted beside their

baby's first steps? Of course not. And bringing a homemade audio CD with

copyrighted disco tunes to a dance party for all to enjoy is not a crime unless

I start selling copies of the CD. So for me to share my favorite Stones/Pink

Floyd titles with some dope in Tibet over the Internet should be my legal right.

Ironically, MP3.com went through a lot of trouble to minimize copyright

infringement by forcing members to put a legal copy of the CD into their CD-ROM

drive in order to be able to listen to the music from somewhere else. By not

allowing this, the record industry is in effect shooting itself in the foot.

Chances are the recording industry will settle with MP3.com in a way that the

industry will end up owning the company and its technology. It's all about

control, and MP3.com's mistake was to develop a business model that tried to

take away some of control over copyrighted music from the almighty record

labels. Let's hope the California Court of Appeals will let reason prevail over

industrial might and grant Napster its right to life. I have a feeling it will.