Napster : Right or Wrong?
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English 11
Words: 1302
12/ 20/ 00
Napster : Right or Wrong ?
“As an artist, there are so many ways that we can be taken advantage of. To have yet one more way to stip an artist of making an honest living is just to much. Thats why I sued.” ( Levy, 51 )
– Andre Young ( Dr. Dre)
Rapper/Producer
There are many ways that an artist can be stripped of making an honest living, Napster, one
of the many Mp3 services online, is the latest. An Mp3 ( short for ISO-MPEG Audio Layer 3 ) is a digital
compression of a music or video file so its easier to send to one another over the internet ( Levy, 51 ).
Napster is an online music source where you can search for a song and download it absolutely free, with just
one click from your fingertips.
The Napster program, created by 19 year-old college drop out Shawn Fanning, is the fastest
growing site in history. It recently passed the 25 million mark in less than a year since it was released
(Greenfeld, 62 ). His program allows you to download copyright music, and thats why he is being sued by a
number of corporations. Napster is being sued by RIAA ( the Recording Industry Association of America ),
record companies ( BMG, the holder of lables like: Arista, Bad Boy, RCA, LaFace ), and artists ( Rock band
Metallica and Rapper/Producer Dr.Dre).
“Im down for a parallel business even if its parasitic. Napster is the new radio. Its the most
exciting thing since rap, disco and the Beatles.” said rapper Chuck D, and it did it is ( Levy, 51 ). Napster is
like a radio. You can listen to music and preview it for free. Some artists are actually for Napster like Chuck
D. , Neil Young, and rock group Limp Bizkit, who headlined a free tour sponsored by Napster along with
Cypress Hill. Napster is like a new radio. Its been said that people use Napster because they feel so
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ripped off that compact disc prices are so high. They would rather just download the whole album online,
then burn it on to a cd spending only three dollars for a burned cd instead of the seventeen dollars spent for
buying the actual album. The generalized public that use Napster are young ( teenagers and college
students, it was even banned in some colleges because they used school resources for the wrong reasons,
instead of using it for eduacation they used it for Napster ) it sort of means that young kids dont money,
having no money leads to no buying cds, so their instinct is just download it of Napster and burn it.
Everyone knows that radio and network television are public domain. They think that its alright to download
broadcast media from network television or radio on Napster. For example: You missed an episode of Jay
Leno last night and Christina Aguilera performed. You want to hear the performance so you decide to go to
Napster, search for it, and download it because you cant get the song anywhere else, but its okay anyway
because that performance was on network television, public domain. In other words, do you pay for MTV,
VH1, HBO? Yes, but do you pay for radio broadcasting, NBC, ABC, Fox? No, its public domain, therefore
its free.
Imagine that there was a Christina Aguilera made for television special on ABC, and you
record it for your own enjoyment, thats okay. If you record it, make one hundred copies of it, and sell it on
the street is wrong and thats why many are against Napster. There are some people that I know personally,
that download albums off the internet and sell them to their friends, and that is where the line is crossed. You
are taking copyrighted music and selling it to other people. Its something called copyright infringment,
which is a federal law. Its an obvious abuse of new techonology like high speed internet access ( the higher
the speed, the higher your connection is online, the faster you can download Mp3s), cd burners ( burn all
your Mp3s on to a disc and make a little profit by selling it to your friends) , and Napster itself as well as
other programs of its kind. The counterfeit cds only benefit the bootlegger because the artist gets ripped off
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and the consumer gets ripped off because they get a low quality product that will last up to 6 years at the
most. So why buy a blackmarket cd that wont last forever, when you can buy the real deal in stores for a
couple