Notes from the Epicenter: Facing the Music
I used to think the Internet was the closest thing we have these days to anarchy (and perhaps the closest thing we ever had, despite what the Sex Pistols said). I used to think the Web was a place where idealists could set up shop, unfettered by capitalist restraints (even purported money-making ventures don’t have to actually make money on the Web, thanks to venture capital). I used to think the Internet, and especially that latest crop of file-sharing services, was our last chance to undermine big money interests and their hold over art in its various forms. Turns out I was wrong.
Pressure Cooked
Napster, the giddily subversive, music-for-the-people, free file-sharing service has, it happens, finally sold out. To be fair, Napster is embroiled in some nasty legal trouble, and may well be shut down within weeks pending resolution of a lawsuit that charges the site is abetting copyright infringement. The suit in question has been lodged against the fledgling company (it was founded in 1999 by a 19-year-old college freshman named Shawn Fanning) by recording industry giants Bertelsmann (owner of BMG), Time Warner, Sony, Universal Music Group, and EMI. As you can imagine, these folks have expensive lawyers. But even as the suit rages on, Napster appears to have caved.
Rather than stand up for Internet anarchy, and its 38 million users’ ability to share music files with each other (heck, no one’s suing me and my friends for dubbing CDs onto those cute mix tapes we give each other for our birthdays), the folks at Napster have made a deal with the enemy, in this case Bertelsmann. The media giant has lent Napster the money to convert its free file sharing system into a pay file sharing system, under which artists and their masters (meaning the big media companies) will be compensated for every music file downloaded or shared using Napster (never mind that one of Napster’s major arguments in the ongoing lawsuit is that it doesn’t have the technology to track individual files across its system). Though the companies haven’t disclosed how much the new service will cost to join, Napster interim CEO Hank Barry (actually a partner in the San Francisco venture capital firm Hummer Winblad) has suggested that $4.95 a month might be a good price.
Sure, $4.95 isn’t bad for unlimited music downloads. It’s way cheaper than actually buying CDs, and even the college kids who are Napster’s heaviest users can afford this much. But who’s actually getting the deal here? Bertelsmann, despite seeming to make nice, is still suing Napster along with its big media cohorts. As numerous analysts have suggested, this agreement seems to be nothing more than insurance in case Napster actually wins the court case. Internet file transferring is not going away (indeed Napster look-alikes Gnutella and Freenet, as well as a host of others are still in operation, and it would clearly be wise for the recording industry to embrace it as a legitimate outlet for its wares.
Join the Club
Napster, at least, is lucky enough to be at the fore of the file-sharing hoo-ha. Scour, a Los Angeles-based file exchange site that counts Hollywood uber-agent Michael Ovitz among its investors, has fared significantly worse. The site has been forced into bankruptcy by a lawsuit similar to the one afflicting Napster, and last week announced it is selling its assets to San Francisco-based Listen.com, which will use its technology to operate a fee-based service. Listen.com is backed, if only nominally, by the five record labels suing Napster. Hmmm…
But, more than anything else, the continuing Napster debacle attests to the kind of scenario that generally befalls young, idealist programmers who stumble upon a technology that is actually new, and that actually changes the face of the Internet (anyone remember a young idealist named Marc Andreesen?). They end up embroiled in the capitalist establishment and their pioneering technology becomes just one more bargaining tool for a major media player. The Web these days is as organized, and as capitalist, as the rest of our culture (perhaps ironically, the Web has been fueling the increasingly capitalist idealism of our popular culture). And it’s no place for upstart individualists, for visionaries, and for artists; at least not for long. Although I wouldn’t mind if someone out there could prove me wrong.
Read more by Andrea Dudrow.
This article was last modified on January 8, 2023
This article was first published on November 6, 2000
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