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The Napster manifesto--conceived
a year ago at NU--
is revolutionizing music distribution
By Dan Kennedy
You can be reasonably sure Rosemary Tedone, a sophomore advertising
major, would not walk into Tower Records, tuck a few CDs under her coat,
and leave without paying for them. Until recently, though, she saw nothing
wrong with jacking into the Internet, firing up Napster, and downloading
the songs she wanted for free.
Now she's starting to wonder.
"When I first used Napster last year, it seemed too good to be
true," she says. "My friends and I would download songs all the
time until we had an awesome MP3 list. Yes, technically it is stealing,
but I never saw it like that until now." So has she stopped? "I
guess I am really just saying that in a perfect world it is morally wrong,"
she says. "But this world isn't perfect."
Give credit to Tedone for at least thinking about the ethical implications
of Napster. By contrast, a classmate of hers who would prefer not to be
identified has this to say: "Basically, in terms of ethics and morality,
I see no wrong in what Napster does. I think the musicians who are starting
all this nonsense about copyrights are just greedy. Once an album is released,
it's public property one way or the other."
Welcome to the brave new world of digital music-a world created in a
Northeastern dorm room in 1999, when a freshman computer science major
named Shawn Fanning wrote a simple but revolutionary program he called
Napster. Once someone has installed the program on his personal computer,
he can search the hard drives of other Napster users (now numbering about
20 million) for songs he wants to add to his collection, from obscure Bob
Dylan titles to the latest hits. Click, and the transfer is made. From
there, the song-stored in MP3, a digital-compression format-can be played
on the user's computer or transferred to a CD or portable MP3 player.
A $15 million bankroll
Given that Napster's main purpose is to facilitate theft, you might
think Fanning would have been content to upload his program to the Internet
and get back to his studies. Instead, he decided to drop out of college
and start a business, Napster.com, headquartered in San Mateo, California.
Backed with $15 million in venture capital, Napster has been fighting for
its life since it opened for business in late 1999. The Recording Industry
Association of America (RIAA) is pursuing a high-profile lawsuit to put
Napster out of business, supported by prominent musicians such as Metallica
drummer Lars Ulrich and rap producer Dr. Dre.
Yet others, such as Public Enemy's Chuck D and the band Limp Bizkit,
have made common cause with Napster, arguing that the technology could
free musicians from the clutches of the recording industry, an industry
that-as Hole leader Courtney Love put it in an obscenity-laced speech this
past spring-makes billions while reducing artists to the status of "sharecroppers."
The Napster story nearly came to a tumultuous end in July, when the
judge in the case granted the RIAA's request for a preliminary injunction
that would have shut Napster down within forty-eight hours. The order was
stayed by a higher court pending the outcome of the trial. At press time,
Napster was still in business, though its future appears bleak.
Fanning, a graduate of Harwich High School, on Cape Cod, and the product
of a difficult upbringing that included a stint in foster care, declined
to be interviewed for this article. His spokeswoman denied an interview
request, and Fanning did not respond to either a call to Napster's headquarters
or a personal letter.
His legal woes probably have something to do with that. Before the
grown-ups he brought in to run his company gagged him, he came across
in interviews as both naive and overwhelmed. In an article in Rolling Stone
titled "The Most Dangerous Man in the Music Biz," Fanning expressed
hurt and defiance at the attacks he and his company have come under. "There
are so many bands we have to dislike now," he was quoted as saying.
Even slimmer pickings?
But, really, what did he expect? Despite the millions
of dollars pocketed by a few at the top of the heap, making music has always
been a terrible way to make a living. The current system may be exploitative,
but at least it leaves a few scraps under the table for the artists whose
work funds the feast. Napster endangers not just the obscene profits made
by record company executives but the scraps as well.
Few have witnessed more exploitation of musicians than Village Voice
columnist Nat Hentoff, LA'44, H'85, who edited the music magazine Down
Beat for much of the 1950s. Hentoff wrote about and befriended African-American
musicians such as Billie Holiday and Lester Young, great artists who made
record companies rich and yet were barely able to make a living. Though
Hentoff concedes he's less than conversant with the latest digital technology,
he knows theft when he sees it. "Who gets the royalties?" he
demands. "It's currently bad enough with jazz groups and others who
are on the edge. They get screwed already because they're not bookkeepers.
But this way, they get totally screwed. To be basic about it, it's stealing."
Yet it's also clear that Napster-or at least the technological change
it represents-is here to stay. Indeed, the RIAA is going to find it's a
lot easier to fight Napster than to stop the changes that are sweeping
through the recording industry.
Napster relies on a centralized database, which means there is something
tangible for lawyers to target. Last spring, for instance, Metallica demanded
that Napster cut off access to some 300,000 users for illegally distributing
the band's songs, a demand with which the company complied.
Napster offspring
Now, coming on the heels of Napster, is a program called Gnutella, which
lets users search the Internet without relying on centrally located servers,
and which includes not just music files but video and text as well. Coming
up: FreeNet, written by a young Irish anticopyright activist, which goes
Gnutella one better by hiding users' identities.
"The Napster case, along with a couple of other cases, is challenging
the basic distribution system for music in our country," says assistant
professor of law Stacey Dogan, an expert in intellectual property law.
"It's becoming increasingly clear that the existing distribution systems
aren't going to be around much longer. The question surrounding the Napster
and MP3 cases is, What is going to replace that system?"
Currently, Dogan notes, the recording industry comes under heavy criticism
because the industry itself makes enormous profits; the musicians, with
few exceptions, scrape to get by; and consumers pay far too much-$15 or
more-for CDs that cost just a few cents to manufacture. The problem with
Napster, she adds, is that, at least at the moment, it benefits the consumer
while making life even more difficult for the musicians. "If music
that has been sold can effectively be copied and shared freely by those
who purchase it, then neither the recording industry nor, more significantly,
the artists can ever expect to make any financial return on their music,"
she says.
Complicating matters further, Dogan adds, are cultural assumptions,
particularly among college students, that stealing music from the Internet
is perfectly ethical. Indeed, Napster use is so pervasive on campus that
a number of colleges and universities have had to ban the program in order
to keep their networks from getting clogged. The RIAA has also done a study
showing that CD sales near college campuses have plummeted. "There
seems to be a sense among college students and people among that generation
that the sharing of music files is okay," says Dogan. "The question
is whether we're going to move in a direction where people are going to
continue to have that sense of entitlement to other people's creations.
I think it's societal norms as much as it is legal responsibility."
Yet where there is change, there is opportunity. Associate professor
Bruce Ronkin, chairman of the music department and director of the music
industry studies program, believes if musicians play the hand that's been
dealt them in a sophisticated way, they could end up with more freedom
and a better financial situation than they have now.
"Napster can be a new opportunity for exploitation, but artists
are a lot smarter than they were thirty years ago," Ronkin says. "I
tend to maybe not have as much of a doomsday view as some other people
on the issue. It's never been an easy road for a performer to make a living.
To lose the status quo is not necessarily a bad thing. We might be able
to create a better system for artists."
Ways to go legit
Ronkin does not deny the problem of widespread piracy, but he faults
the recording industry itself for being too slow to embrace digital technologies.
Provide an easy, legal way to download music, Ronkin believes, and illegal
downloads will decline precipitously. Record companies could set up advertiser-supported
Web sites that offer free downloads, for instance, or subscription models
whereby, for a monthly fee, consumers could download as much music, video,
books, and other digitized product as they like. The analogy he makes for
the advertising model is broadcast TV; for the subscription model, cable
TV. "I think it's the only way we can work it out unless we create
a police state," he says. "If a legal, high-quality, convenient
solution is available, then most people will go there."
Moreover, the Internet provides at least a theoretical avenue for musicians
to bypass the recording industry's star system, in which a handful of artists
are heavily promoted, with the remainder falling by the wayside. Musicians
unable to land a big-time contract can record their own music and sell
it on the Internet. That's easiest for aging musicians whose audience has
shrunk yet who retain a loyal following, which is why David Bowie, Public
Enemy, and Roger McGuinn all have successful Web sites.
But, done right, the Internet can work for up-and-comers, too. "For
creative, clever-minded artists, there is a tremendous opportunity on the
Internet," Ronkin says. "You have potential worldwide distribution."
But, he concedes, "the challenge is getting people to know about you.
Major labels are marketing companies. A garage band with a Web site can't
do that."
Professor Richard Rasala, associate dean of the College of Computer
Science, goes so far as to say that Napster may prove to be the goad the
music industry needs to move into the digital age. Napster could be the
engine for "microtransactions"-that is, a user's credit card
might be charged a few cents each time she downloads a song. Napster, as
the broker, would be paid a percentage for each download.
The idea, Rasala says, is that the price of recorded music will come
down and the size of the potential market will expand. Like Ronkin, Rasala
believes such a system would prevail over underground networks powered
by the likes of Gnutella and FreeNet because "if the charge is not
great, most people are going to want to stay on the proper side of the
law."
"An interesting kid"
Rasala got to know Shawn Fanning slightly when Fanning
was a student at Northeastern. Asked how difficult a
programming feat Napster represents, Rasala demurs, ex-plaining that
he has not seen the source code. However, he notes that Fanning had a crucial
insight: that music files do not have to reside on one central server,
but can instead be stored on individual users' hard drives, with the central
server merely acting as a conduit for transfers. "This is a very interesting
idea," he says, adding of Fanning: "I didn't know him all that
well. We had a few conversations, and he was an interesting kid. He wasn't
going to be happy trying to do this part time while he was in school. I
think he made a wise choice."
But the predictions offered by Ronkin and Rasala are well away from
fulfillment. At the moment, there is no mechanism for anyone to make any
money from Napster-and there are those who say, approvingly, that there
never will be. John Perry Barlow, a fellow at Harvard Law School's Berkman
Center for Internet and Society and a former lyricist for the Grateful
Dead, has been quoted as saying that, inevitably, recorded music will be
free, and musicians will make their money from concerts. Yet that reflects
Perry's personal experience rather than any brilliant insight: The Dead
rarely entered the recording studio, preferring to tour constantly. The
band even encouraged its fans to make bootleg tapes. But if a musician
or band wishes to record for a living and eschew the concert scene, why
shouldn't they be able to?
"It's a lovely idea to say that all creative products ought to
be free to everyone. But that would make creativity a pretty difficult
thing to sustain for those who make a living from what they create,"
says associate professor James Ross, director of the School of Journalism.
"I think it stifles creativity if there isn't any source of income
for the creative process. The situation we're in now is that the person
who's willing to do the most damage is in charge of the debate, at least
for the moment."
Answering the ethics question
Which is where we started: with consumers, most of them young people,
who see a genuine ethical difference between stealing music from a record
store (bad) and stealing it via Napster (good).
Liz Matson, on-line managing editor for the Boston Phoenix and its sister
papers in Worcester, Providence, and Portland, had her eyes opened recently
when she taught a class at Northeastern in computer-assisted reporting.
It was she who asked her students whether there was any difference between
taking CDs out of Tower Records and downloading music from the Internet.
To her surprise, only about two of her twenty students thought the activities
were morally equivalent.
To be sure, a few students offered ethically acceptable (if not legally
valid) reasons for using Napster: sampling before buying, and obtaining
music not available on CD. "When I use it, it's more of an exploration
of what's out there. Then, if I like it, I go buy the CD," says Taylor
Wynne, a sophomore majoring in advertising and broadcast journalism. But
Matson says views like Wynne's, and like Rosemary Tedone's, are an exception.
"Some of them were funny, because it was really convoluted the
way they tried to justify taking music off Napster," says Matson.
"I don't think that they lack in ethics. But Napster is something
new. I think this just grew too quickly before there could be a discussion
about what it really means."
Indeed, it's far from clear what easily copied, easily distributed digital
music ultimately means. This much is certain: The revolution, born at Northeastern,
will continue regardless of what ultimately happens to Napster and its
creator, Shawn Fanning. The larger question is whether that revolution
can help balance the equation between greedy record companies and needy
artists-or if, instead, the rise of Napster will go down in history as
the day the music died.
Dan Kennedy, LA'79, the senior writer and media critic for the Boston
Phoenix, wrote about Eddie Andelman in the May 1997 issue. He can be reached
at <dkennedy@shore.net>.
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