| Vol.
I, No. 6 | Sugaring
/ Spring Equinox | Mar.
16th, 2001 |
Computers
& Technology
Tech Bytes . Nap
Time for Napster?  | Napster's
© Notice
Click on it to go
to the Napster site |
The
fight had been going on for a while, but finally, a federal judge has ruled that
Napster, the on-line music swapping phenomenon, must block all downloading of
any copyrighted music. Does this spell the end of free
music downloads? ...
.
Not
hardly. ... A Little Memory Goes a Long Way ...
Years
ago, in the world of 'vinyl', you bought your 45's or LP's, listened to the new
clean sound, then listened again and again as the inevitable pops, crackles
& hisses developed as the record became worn. In those days,
whoever had the bucks could invest in reel-to-reel tape. But it wasn't
until the intro of cassette tapes that the home music enthusiast finally had a
way of making copies of his or her treasured music collection. You could
dub a copy from a master -- whether record or another tape -- then secret the
master away for the day when, almost inevitably in the early days of cassettes,
your copy would drop the head cushion, or the tape would get eaten. But,
no problem. You still had the master to make another copy from. Then
came digital audio and the now ubiquitous CD. The much-heralded quality of
the digital sound had many such enthusiasts rush out to get their CD player,
even if they would no longer have a ready way of making copies. But, lo
& behold, with the development of CD burners, copies of this medium, too,
became possible. But there was one other development that made making
copies of music more common than any Hi-Fi buff could have ever dreamed -- the
Internet. With increasing
bandwidth and network connections that spanned the globe, music fans now had a
means of exchanging songs on an unprecedented level. Napster saw the
proverbial handwriting on the wall and jumped in with both feet, providing a
useful interface and search capabilities that made finding the songs you were
after a mouse-click away. That's Copyright, Not
Copywrite ...
Needless to say, this arrangement made the music
publishing industry anxious. If fans could download tracks for free and
burn their own CD's, then how could intellectual property rights be
defended? And {Let's not kid ourselves here.}, where would the profits
come from? But now, with the judge's ruling, it seems, at least in theory,
that the music industry has had its day in court.
.
Whether the ruling
will actually be effective is another story. How one would go about
determining whether a particular copy of a particular file was, in fact, someone
else's intellectual property is pretty straightforward. But when the task
is to sift & sort through hundreds of thousands if not millions of such
copies, that is another matter. And, if you're not already aware of the
fact, you should understand, too, that Napster doesn't have tons of music tracks
sitting somewhere in a warehouse filled with servers and hard disks. The
beauty of Napster was that it was simply an interface, a means for facilitating
exchanges and searches. All the music is actually residing on the PC's of
millions of Napster users all over the globe. So how Napster is supposed
to effectively go about stopping such exchanges is pretty much a mystery. Aiding &
Abetting? ...
But, even supposing that the ruling can effectively
keep Napster from conducting or facilitating what the court has deemed to be
illegal practices, that will not stop music exchanges and downloads from
continuing. Just as reel-to-reel tapes ad cassettes came along to provide
the technology necessary for making copies -- like the photocopier made copies
of print media possible, Beta & VHS made copying those media possible, and
the home PC made copying to floppy disks possible -- now, digital audio and the
devices to record it are here to stay. There is no changing that. Long
before the high profile Napster case, then, there were other means and other
sources for free music copying and free music downloads. They
will, inevitably, continue. ... .. *******
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