Aquarian Weekly 2/21/01
REALITY CHECK

WHO KILLED NAPSTER?

Appeals will come and go. They inevitably do. But for the record, at least the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals version of it, the freebie cyber music fest known as NAPSTER is history. You'll eventually pay a fee for the service of downloading music, unless you scramble to the countless other places popping up daily. However, life on NAPSTER, as we have come to know and love it, is over.

I say love for I too have enjoyed its guilty pleasures, and despite being an artist who sells his wares online and elsewhere, I have used the excuse that I shouldn't have to spend nearly $20 for one song, or I'm searching for out-of-print stuff some company has deemed unworthy, or I dig getting bootlegged material that the artist would never get a penny for anyway. It's trading, after all. It's just trading with millions instead of a few.

Industry types always panic when technology comes calling. Television was supposed destroy the movie industry. The audiotape sent big wigs from record companies to every court in the land trying to put a stop to that egregious threat to profit and power. Then it was the VCR and its looming danger to everything holy. All the clichés about money should be thrown into the mix now with NAPSTER. Somewhere someone is getting something for free, and goddammit what are we even here for?

There are certain realities that rear their ugly head when people get happy at rebelling against evil corporations, who arbitrarily jack-up the prices of items because they know damn well you'll pay it. Artistic endeavors, however silly they may seem to the average American, are difficult enough without "free" being added to the equation. Musicians are told most of their lives they won't amount to shit, so when they are the shit, they don't let go of it easily. Despite Limp Bizkit's wild and crazy apathy about NAPSTER, they're in the same boat as Metallica - crusaders against NAPSTER for artists' rights - because if no one pays them, they have to get real jobs or steal car stereos.

Yes, artists take a hit, at least established ones, because many unknowns now cheer NAPSTER for putting them on even ground with the huge bottom line distributors who need only the latest fashion and Britney Spears and could give half a fart about some punk outfit in Wyoming or a funk band in Greenwich Village. Sure record companies pony up the cash on nobodies (studio time, videos, limos, drugs, groupies), music publishers protect their rights (undermining, suing and threatening) and distributors have to take their cut (bullying, paying off teamsters and squeezing every cent from moguls) and music outlets, both online and in stores, need a little taste (protection against thievery, advertising and sandbagging the locals), but eventually the consumer takes the financial hit. No company is in business to lose money, at least those not run by the Beatles, and when a compact disc costs three cents and is being retailed at $17.99 it's hard to feel any sorrow.

So we download like crazy people, to the tune of 50 million to date, and an estimated 250 million songs were downloaded the day before the second ruling last week. Programs and cd burners make it all-too easy to get this stuff from Lil' Johnny's collection into our car stereo; no stores, no annoying people telling you what you have to like and none of your money going bye-bye. You don't have to listen too hard to hear the fear burning through the heart of the record industry, although, ironically, their collective profit margins broke records last year. The vocation of making tons of money off of someone else's talent may be in serious trouble, but the present statistics don't bare it out.

Perhaps like free-agency in sports, the new landscape will seem like a victory for human rights, but may end up screwing us in the long run. NAPSTER, and all it stands for, feeds our insatiable appetite for immediate gratification. Think about it, if you could anything for free that isn't technically stolen, wouldn't you consider it?

Right about here I usually start spouting rude comments about how the whole phone system in this country is fucked thanks to the dismantling of the evil Ma Bell, but instead I'll use the space to remind those in need that anytime the government gets involved in matters of mammon stuff will be broken, and not easily fixed. Regulation is a horrible word in big business, until the public starts getting too much value, and then someone has to put a stop to it. Of course, it's that type of thinking that eliminated cocaine from Coca-Cola's ingredients.

But I digress, because all we're really talking about here is rapacious talent sluts taking the fall for literally a tune. Now those seven-figure agents tooling down Hollywood Blvd.and mainlining Ajax for the right to rape some kid rapper on the East coast will have to give up the condo on the Virgin Islands because some poor sap wanted to download a dumb ass Metallica song. Meanwhile the same agencies are trying to subvert the right to even make those records in order to allay the fears of mid-western PTA drones, who spend quality church time riling up senators to halt the work of Satan.

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