Feelings on Napster?

Nobody ever bitches about people trading tapes. This is the same as tape trading or loaning your cd's to your buddies, but done over the internet. I have bought more cd's this year than any other year because of Napster. I hear something I like and I go buy it. Out of the 3000 cd's I own I have definitely bought more than a few lemons. Now with Napster I can see what it's like before I spend my money on cd rack filler. Maybe I should write Napster and tell them to charge the record companies for the "advertising" that they provide. These big companies always cry foul and bitch about new technology until it helps them turn a profit. If they had their way we wouldn't own VCR's, cassette decks, minidiscs, DAT's, etc. It sure is funny how the movie industry cried like little babies until they started selling more tapes than they ever imagined, then they quit their crying. This is only my opinion, but give it some honest thought.

Right ON Grumpy!!

Hi Grumpy, I agree with what you say about swapping CD's between friends, etc. I think the idea here though is that Napster is making a profit. Someone's paying for the server space, the salaries AND their legal fees, right? I read a relevant article in today's paper about this very issue. It was a stance that the Greatful Dead has taken. We all know the Dead have always allowed people to record their concerts and have had one of the most "open" policies regarding music sharing of any established band. I think these brief comments may put the issue in more perspective: "Although the Dead officially remains neutral in the Napster controversy, the service violates a policy the band established a few months before the immensely popular Web site started last year. As digital audio files such as MP3 emerged as a viable format, the Dead reiterated its long-standing commitment to allowing fans to trade recordings of the band's 2,300 concerts. Under the April 1999 policy, though, the Dead declared that "no commercial gain may be sought by Web sites offering digital files of our music, whether through advertising, exploiting databases compiled from their traffic, or any other means." The reason is clear, why should a "service", such as Napster make a buck they didn't earn? They shoudn't, because it's wrong and it's theft. I think justice will prevail in the end but it's a shame Napster will be fighting it in court, paying the attorney's with money they never earned!!!!

C'mon people!! "Thou shell not steal..." is ANOTHER lie, you've being told! You've been "riped-off" by your employer, your dentist, plumber, garage mechanic, insurance agent, lawyer...ex wife or girlfriend, every day of your life!! And you are worry about some "poor" spoiled-ass rock "star", getting paid?

Napster Doesn't make money for the people who run it. Do you see any advertisements? NO. They make there money by getting hired to do other jobs and they get payed big time. Napster gave these guys a name and put it out there. Now everybody wants to use them for something. That's where they get there money. If they actually made a penny directly from napster say from ads then there is no way the judge would have been kind enough to allow napster to stay up. There arguments would have meant dirt because everybody would see that they would be using napster out of plain greed like the record companies greed. Also I would never buy most of the songs albums I downloaded anyway. there just one hit wonders. But when I find good stuff I'll buy the CD. I dicovered terry bozzio's music and I'm going to buy some of his cd's. I would have never known about his own albums if I didn't search his name on napster and get to hear what he does.