[ Thanks to Cvetan
Pavloski for this link. ]
“When looking at the Napster vs. RIAA (Recording Industry
Association of America) battle, it’s easy, as a user, to side with
Napster about the whole case. It’s also easy to side with the RIAA,
as this song sharing can be seen as stealing. With a closer look,
though, this case has no black or white area at all. It’s totally
in a fog of grey.”
“The truth is that neither side is right.”
“A long time ago MCI had a great commercial on television, which
in a nutshell showed several people of different races and
different cultures in different parts of the world. This commercial
showed the fundamental idea of the Internet itself. That is the
sharing of ideas without the boundaries imposed by society, like
color, race, and your physical look. The “Net,” in it’s basic and
most complex form, is made of ideas. Every website you visit, every
thought you read, everything you buy is an idea. In this same way
Napster shares ideas. Napster gave people a way to share their
music libraries with others, but it ballooned into something that
capitalist society was not ready for, the free exchange of music
and ideas. Any way you look at it, every song, and every note is an
idea, whether they be written by Metallica, or my friend’s band.
To shut Napster down would be a slap in the face to the people
who traverse this thing we call the “Net.”