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Strategies & Market Trends : Piffer OT - And Other Assorted Nuts -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rich1 who wrote (53641)	9/23/2000 7:18:12 PM
From: Atin	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 63513

But see, that's the problem. This isn't "personal use" -- anyone can access Napster, meaning one person buys the CD, makes it available over Napster servers and all Napster users get copies for their personal use. Personal use isn't defined as "everyone in the world with access to Napster" <g>. It isn't illegal to copy for yourself, but distributing it crosses lines and only the artists and their agents can decide whether they condone it or not. Maybe the artists and agents allow radio stations to talk over the music, sample it, etc -- but to have the CD verbatim on Napster is still a violation of copyrights and until a new way of compensating artists is figured out (I like OMD's suggestion of making people put up credit cards on Napster, and get charged for downloads), Napster users are doing something illegal that isn't being enforced because it is too hard to enforce. As far as winning the case, Napster may come off as a web hosting type company that is not responsible for the content hosted on their servers. But if it is found that they knowingly abet the illegal distribution of copyrighted material, they'll lose. As far as I can tell, they know this is what is going on. -A