Is the free ride over for Napster fans?

It's easy to use, doesn't require much disk space and gives users access to more songs than any music store on the planet.

The music industry has never been the same since college student Shawn Fanning first developed the Napster software program less than two years ago. Fanning wanted an easier way for people to download CD-quality MP3 music files onto their computers.

Any recorded piece of music can be converted into an MP3 file and downloaded from Napster. This is why millions of people have installed the free Internet program on their computers. This is also why the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) filed a major lawsuit against Napster just days after the program was officially launched.

The RIAA, most major music companies and several recording artists say Napster violates copyright law and costs them a fortune. Napster users and several other musicians say the program helps artists promote their material and major record labels cheat their clients out of more money than fans who download songs for free.

Music lovers hoped the controversy would die down after Bertelsmann AG, the world's second-largest music company, entered a partnership with Napster last fall. Bertelsmann would drop its lawsuit against Napster as long as Napster charged user fees to its members and used the money to pay musicians and songwriters.

The RIAA and most of the major record labels rejected this proposal in favour of a filter-based system last month. The record labels handed Napster a list of millions of songs they didn't want users to download and Napster was required to somehow block those songs so fans could no longer access them.

A month later, the Supreme Court says Napster isn't working hard enough to block those titles, fans are still downloading as many songs as they please and many musicians who use Napster to promote and distribute their material find their songs have been blocked. What happened?

As anyone who's tried to install a V-chip knows, filtering programs aren't always foolproof. Downloading a program to translate song titles into Pig Latin or deliberately misspelling a singer's name to escape Napster's new filtering service doesn't require a computer engineering degree.

Musicians and songwriters deserve financial compensation like everyone else, but the industry needs to work with, not against, the new technology if they want more money. Most people can't afford to shell out $19 for a 12-song CD every time they hear one song they like on the radio they like, which makes them more likely to turn to programs like Napster.

Closing Napster won't stop MP3 technology. People who want free music badly enough can always find it on one of the dozen other Napster-like programs available on the Internet. But if record companies would attempt to make music more affordable to fans, fans would be more willing to part with their money.

Why not lower CD costs? If a blank CD only costs a few dollars, where does the extra $18 required to buy a commercially-made CD come from? Why not play a more diverse variety of songs on the radio? Not everyone is a fan of boy bands or scantily-clad blonde female pop singers.

Too bad the accepted Napster and Bertelsmann's offer. Imagine what would happen if 40 million Napster users paid between $2.50 and $9.50 a month to use the service? Musicians would receive the compensation they deserve, fans would still have access to the songs they love, and yes, record companies would make a bit of money.
KLF