Re: The Freedom of Digital Information

From: Zero Powers (zero_powers@hotmail.com)
Date: Sat Jul 29 2000 - 00:28:22 MDT


>From: QueeneMUSE@aol.com

>It's not about people wanting to keep their music from being passed around.
>
>There seems to be no problem with people passing around free digital
>formats
>of all kinds in private. The legal action only recently arises when other
>parties (software companies, servers, or whoever) are making a profit off
>the
>artists without the obligatory residuals: which usually amounts to a teeny
>small percentage of sales.

Seeing as how Napster never sold anything, even its own software or ad
space, its pretty much a stretch to say that they made a "profit" off
artists or otherwise. But then they were able to get some dimwits to cough
up venture capital, so I guess in a sense they were able to raise some
short-lived capital off artists' backs. But whether they made a profit or
not was *not* what irked the RIAA (or Metallica or Dr. Dre). What pissed
them off was that Napster was making music available for free, bypassing the
"middlemen" entirely.

I attended a seminar recently where a RIAA representative showed up and said
that their strategy was to shut down anybody making music available for
free. At this point in the game they are loathe to prosecute the individual
fans/pirates because of fear of the backlash they would face if they started
prosecuting their own customers. But my guess is it won't be long before
they start making "examples" out of a few people just to get the point
across.

-Zero

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