Free & Easy - Napster

Unfamiliar rap music blares from the computer in my home office. I grit my teeth. I don't want all those "F-ing" words to have a place in my house. My teenage son, lounging back in the ergonomic, black-webbed desk chair, explains to me how he downloaded this song free from the Internet with Napster, the most popular on-line service for this purpose. Not only is the music free, but there is no charge for the software. It is distributed on the company Web site--only a browser slurp away.

Although Napster deals in entertainment, its purpose is not light. It uses music as a vehicle to challenge the copyright laws of the United States and the rest of the Western world. In fact, Napster technology promises to liberate intellectual property from the forces of capitalism in a manner that makes third-world software piracy seem trivial. Judging from the heavy print and television coverage it receives, Napster's music liberation movement is taken seriously in the music business, financial markets, and government.

To better understand the depth of feeling--we are not talking about the presidential election here or the African AIDS epidemic--a service like Napster generates, I visit Napster's Web site by clicking the icon my son has placed on our Windows desktop. Napster quickly opens, revealing an extremely intuitive interface that anyone familiar with the basics of the Internet can quickly master. At the top of the window are six commands with four major choices: chat, library, search, and transfer. Napster users, after a simple enrollment, can build an unlimited personal library of downloaded MP3-formatted music that can be played off-line on audio software built into the Napster package.

To download a song, you merely direct Napster's search engine by filling out a desired title or artist. Your fill-ins are treated as orders that guide the browser in its cyberspace exploration of the large database, whose size is dependent on the number of users on-line at any given time. Often, there is a selection of over seven hundred thousand music files residing in the individual computer libraries of the users who are on-line--an estimated 20 million to choose from. Some of the downloadable files are identical, or the same files are available at different connection speeds.

Napster responds to searches with a 0 to 100-item list of artists and song titles along with the Internet names of Napster users who agree to allow music to be uploaded from their computers. From among the choices offered, users select a file, double-click, and let it rip.

I have a cable modem, so unless Internet traffic is heavy, a piece of music seven minutes in length can be on my computer in only a few minutes. Using my CD recorder, I can then create my own personalized CDs. All this means that Napster is superlative entertainment technology. What a treat it was to dig up songs that I had not heard since I was a teenager and drift into exciting and wistful reminiscences. And, although I listened mainly to rock music, I scouted out a host of other possibilities including a twenty-seven-minute Beethoven sonata, a Caruso recital, Al Jolson singing "Swanee," an Andrews Sisters' boogie-woogie, a Charlie Byrd and Stan Getz duet, and Glenn Miller's "Moonlight Serenade."

While taking advantage of cable's capacity to download a large amount of separate music files simultaneously, I noticed someone uploading a Meat Loaf song from my computer. From Napster's own public relations material, which is composed of equal portions of rationalization for practices of questionable legality and genuine business insight, I knew that sharing occurred, but I really didn't understand the significance of it until that moment. I was part of a community--a true community of music lovers that is comfortable with technology and delights in getting it free and easy.

This last part troubles me. Without a doubt, Napster users are mainstream Americans as fine as anyone else. I also believe that they are so trapped in the pleasure of downloading their favorite music for free that they are prepared to skip payment for a commodity known to have marketplace value. These words may be the protest of a middle-aged "have," rather than a youthful "have not," but unless access to unlimited recorded music of all types is now regarded as a basic entitlement in our society, those who use Napster are participating in a type of petty white-collar crime.

How shall we respond to the addictive call of Napster? How much does withdrawal from Napster challenge our ability to remain "masters of our domains"? To be sure, I am not yet at peace with my urges to go back on-line and download music whenever it pops into my head. Yet, I believe that until we are prepared to revise the legal and social contracts that exist between artists and their audience or devise a system for paying royalties on downloaded music files, Napster endangers those who use it with the corrupting belief that you can get something for nothing.

Harvey J. Lieberman is a clinical psychologist. He lives on Long Island.

COPYRIGHT 2000 Commonweal Foundation
COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group