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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Aug. 10, 2000
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------Musicians' union should control distribution
Napster & the right to free music
By Greg Butterfield
Napster, an Internet-based software program that allows users to share digital music files, received a temporary reprieve from a two-judge appeals panel in San Francisco July 28. The appeals court said Napster could continue to operate.
Two days earlier, on July 26, U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel had ordered the site shut down. Patel ruled in favor of the Recording Industry Association of America, which sued Napster last year.
The owners of the recording industry are angry because millions of people use Napster to swap popular music for free instead of buying pre-recorded compact disks. Napster's network also makes available many out-of-print recordings and the works of musicians who don't have recording contracts.
The RIAA charges Napster with aiding and abetting "wholesale copyright infringement." Napster's lawyers argue that the service's more than 20 million users are engaged in lawful trading for personal, noncommercial use, as defined in the 1992 Audio Home Recording Act.
Basically, Napster users do what music fans have always done: they share copies of their favorite songs with friends. The difference is that music lovers now have a pool of millions of friends to trade with, instead of a handful.
In its legal fight, Napster's owners try to portray themselves as underdogs fighting the recording monopolies to keep music free. It's true that Napster provides a free service right now. But its investors want to build it into a profitable business based on controlling the distribution of artists' work--just like the big recording companies do now.
Napster CEO Hank Barry said he wants to come to an agreement with the RIAA. Barry hinted this might entail charging users a subscription fee or per-song fee for copyrighted music.
The controversy over Napster raises important issues for the international workers' movement. Chief among them is, who will control the revolutionary new technology that allows the free exchange of music, art and all kinds of information?
Will it be dominated by capitalists seeking profit? Or will workers and oppressed people control it?
'Intellectual property rights'
On Capitol Hill, in the media and in corporate boardrooms from Wall Street to Hollywood, the Napster controversy is portrayed as a defining challenge for preserving "intellectual property rights."
Intellectual property rights is a concept by which monopoly capitalists try to enforce their control over the production and distribution of drugs, software, movies, music--just about anything they can copyright.
This issue goes way beyond the right to copy and listen to music. For millions it's a life-and-death issue.
Take the case of AIDS drugs. Pharmaceutical companies claim to have "intellectual property rights" over the cocktail drugs used to prolong and improve the lives of people with AIDS. These companies keep their profits high by jacking up the prices of their drugs.
Recently the government of South Africa, where some 4.2 million people are infected with HIV/AIDS, tried to produce a generic version of these drugs so it could cheaply treat the population. The U.S. government and Vice President Al Gore, representing the interests of the drug monopolies, threatened to impose sanctions on South Africa.
Any country that seeks to join the U.S.-dominated World Trade Organization must agree to abide by strict laws protecting the "rights" of capitalist companies to control the fruits of socialized human labor.
No bosses required
Music that's been digitized in the MP3 format can be shared over the Internet like any other kind of file. CDs are easily converted to digital format using a "ripper" program.
For years it was mainly college students who swapped music via computer. College campuses were among the few places with the fast connections necessary to download the large music files efficiently.
But the growth of high-speed Internet connections in homes and offices and easy-to-use sharing programs like Napster have brought millions of new music aficionados into the digital world.
Since Napster came on the scene in 1999, some 20 million people have downloaded the software and shared music files.
While college students were the main audience for MP3 technology, the record industry grumbled. But then it became a mass phenomenon, as more and more people chose to bypass paying outrageous markups for CDs and cassettes.
So the monopolies decided to try to suppress the new technology--at least until they can figure out how to control it profitably.
There's lots of hand wringing in the corporate media about what it all means. Even if Napster is eventually shut down, how can the profiteers put the genie back in the bottle?
Already many Napster fans are switching their allegiance to other, so-far non-commercial sharing programs. These programs, using "peer-to-peer" technology, connect individuals directly to one another's computers, rather than a central server like Napster's. That makes them a much harder target for a legal crackdown. These peer-to-peer programs offer additional capabilities because, unlike Napster, they are not limited to distributing MP3 music files.
In the near future, this technology could offer amazing tools for education, culture--and political organizing.
Leaflets, speeches, petitions, videos and more could be made instantly available worldwide to the international workers' movement.
The technology could also open up a whole new epoch of artistic expression as the world discovers the works of artists who have been marginalized or ignored because they aren't considered "commercial": workers, people of color, women, lesbian, gay, bi and trans people, the disabled, youths, etc.
Musicians who champion the new technology, like rapper Chuck D of Public Enemy, argue that artists can use it as a basis to struggle for new rights from the music industry and other corporate arbiters.
In a commentary on the Public Enemy Web site, www.publicenemy.com/terrordome/, Chuck D wrote, "In the past, most artists had little say over how their product would be marketed anyhow. This is a prime opportunity for artists to understand that they can operate beyond the naïve slave or limited employment positions of the old music business templates."
In fact, the musicians' union should be put in charge of Napster. That way the musicians can control the distribution in a way that would insure they would get paid for their work.
At the same time, while this new technology is shaking up old industries, the capitalist class is scrambling to find ways to harness it for profit. New laws will be passed. New restrictions will be put in place. New fees will be imposed.
What Napster shows is that there's no need for a boss to intervene in the exchange of music or any other information. In their efforts to make profits, they can only get in the way.
It will take a struggle--not just at the keyboard, but in the streets--to push back the capitalist monopolies that want to control the flow of information and culture in order to profit from it.
Ultimately, the international working class must expropriate the parasitic boss class and bring this tremendous socialized technology into harmony with socialist ownership.
This article is copyright under a Creative Commons License.
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