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To: maverick61 who wrote (30687)	7/28/2000 6:30:27 AM
From: appro	Read Replies (1) of 57584

Thank goodness for >>various points of view<<. Your message touches on the complex legal and ethical issues of protecting intellectual property. We want to encourage its development and beneficial uses for society. Saving Napster may be one way to do that. Music industry spokesmen have concluded that this "preliminary injunction" pending trial is all the evidence needed to begin burning everyone at the stake. The fact is the legal proceedings are hardly over. It is easy for some to revel in self-righteous descriptions of how we should not commit illegal or unethical acts just because we can. No one can argue with that. But just as in the Salem witch trials, all is not necessarily what it first appears to be. Personally I think the music industry is using this "no-brainer" self-righteousness to crush new technologies until they can control it. No one including Napster argues against the rights of copyright holders to be compensated legally and fairly, but peer-to-peer sharing really makes it difficult to say how it should be done. Radio presented a similar problem at one time and after much controversy (as well as blatant attempts by the music industry to secretly control what could be played) a system was developed whereby ASCAP collects the royalties and distributes them. Radio pays and so should Napster. Radio argued that it was impossibly cumbersome to log every single airplay so I think it is done by surveys and sophisticated statistical analysis. A similar royalty payment plan with Napster would actually be much easier to implement because computers provide much more accurate logs of which files are accessed and how many times. But I think the music industry wants to crush this technology for now because they have to play lip service to record stores until most people have wideband access to digital distribution - ten years away(?). I think it is the same reason Microsoft crushed Netscape. They needed time to create the same technology shift under their control. Killing Napster will be like prohibition in the 1920s in the U.S. It will simply make it harder to police and regulate file sharing. Anyway, that is why I am glad to see more than the music industry lobbist's point of view presented. As Judge Roy Bean said, let's give 'em a fair trial. And then we will hang 'em! <VBG>

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