Jun 06, 2001 03:05 AM
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The question has been asked, “Should Napster be banned?”
My answer in a word is YES! If it’s purpose is to allow people to get copies of copyrighted music without the copyright owner’s permission.
If members of the public are willing to pay the going rate for a piece of music and the money goes to the musicians, etc. then Napster is providing a useful service to all and they too should get paid for that service. By whom does not come into this argument.
Napster and many clones now springing up are facilitating and aiding and abetting software piracy. It is theft and in every country in this world theft is wrong and a crime.
It is only technologies lack of ultra fast download speed that is preventing the on-line copying of DVD’s.
Every single person on this planet can claim the copyright to anything that they write, draw, paint, photograph or compose or play. If anyone copies their work they can sue and they will win. It is their creation and they have a right to have it protected from others copying it. This copyright exists for the entire life of the author/creator and then for the next fifty or a hundred years(I can’t remember which) for the beneficiaries to the creator’s will.
Let us just stick to the music side of copyright. The argument for the retention of Napster and others is that if someone doesn’t hear one track of a CD then they won’t be able to find out if they like it or not and thus will not go out and buy the full CD. That is perfectly true but they can go and listen to a track of a CD in a music shop but they do not end up owning the track that they have listened to. Via Napster they end up with an unauthorised copy of the track and that is still theft. Whether they buy the full CD or not is not relevant.
If all those people who agree to Napster’s existence would look at the situation from the musician’s point of view they would change their minds about Napster. But we like to get something for nothing and we think that well they make enough money anyway so why shouldn’t we. But there is no excusing THEFT. And please don’t try and bring the starving beggar stealing a loaf of bread into the argument. He is not stealing a copy of the loaf.
Imagine that you are a musician in a band and you have spent the last six or twelve months slaving away in a recording studio to produce your latest CD. The CD is released for sale to the public and a couple of tracks as singles and you sit back to get your just rewards. You have put the effort in and now you want to be paid for doing so and your payment is based on unit sales. You may well have received an advance or a retainer but the bulk of your income is based on how many CD’s are sold.
Then someone buys your CD and puts it onto their own computer and with the aid of Napster and the like, people from all over the world come and download one or more of the tracks. They go home and play the tracks to their hearts content and maybe even give copies away to friends. You the hard working musician do not get the royalties that bona fide sales would bring. You have been robbed of some of their livelihood. The fact that the band may be rich beyond avarice does not come into the argument. Nor does the argument that CD’s are overpriced, which they probably are. Two wrongs have never made a right. You cannot get away from the fact that copying someone else’s work without their permission or payment to them is THEFT and as such is WRONG.
Don’t tell me that in this computer age anyone can buy a CD and make a copy of it, which is identical to the original and sell it, because they can. It still doesn’t make it right, although if the copy is purely for yourself then it can be argued that making a copy preserves the original. A disco club has to pay a licence fee to the music industry to play the records and CD’s to a paying audience or even a none-paying audience. Ever since the invention of the wire recorder people have been able to record their favourite music from the radio or friend’s records but it still doesn’t make it right. If a person wants to own a particular recording then they should buy the record/CD. This rewards the artists for their efforts in producing the work.
We’ve all spent time making a cassette tape of our favourite records to play in the car or at a party, but at least we have bought the records to do so, but it still isn’t right.
Oh! Yes there is the argument that an up and coming band can get huge amounts of publicity via Napster and therefore many sales of their recordings. They can, but unless they give their permission to offer free sample tracks to whoever wants them, then they are likely to lose the royalties on the sales that are never made because their new CD is being pirated.
The only way that Napster and the like can be justified is if the artists give their permission for specific tracks to be available for copying for a fee. And yes you can go and borrow your next door neighbour’s CD and copy it, but would your travel 100 miles let alone 10, 000 miles to do so?
