Napster : Right or Wrong?
Napster : Right or Wrong?
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
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