If you pay a visit to the famous napster.com website you will be presented with a bright yellow pop-up box which exclaims Napster is under fire! The recording industry wont stop until theyve shut down file-sharing. Were not going to let them. You can make a difference. Join the Napster Action Network now!
Dramatic stuff, but what is Napster and why is it being shut down?
Napster was created by Shawn Fanning, a 19 year old college dropout with no formal computer training. Like the Internet itself, his initial motives were not profit. He says of the creation of Napster It was rooted out of frustration not only with MP3.com, Lycos and Scour.net, but also (the desire) to create a music community.
Napster is an Internet-based service that allows users to access collections of MP3 files stored on their computers. With millions of subscribers Napster users have access to almost any piece of music ever recorded. For free. Just type in what you are looking for into the Napster search engine and you could be listening to it a few minutes later.
MP3 is a way of compressing sound files, so that they are high quality but with a relatively small file size. This makes them ideal to exchange on the Internet. MP3 and Napster have been seen as a major threat to the multinational companies who run the recording industry.
Now Napster has been taken to court by recording companies Vivendi Universal, AOL Time Warner, BMG, EMI, and Sony. Claiming copyright infringement they are demanding that Napster is shut. It seems likely that they will get their way. Napsters financial backers, media giant Bertelsmann are getting cold feet and may withdraw support if Napster does not get a legal service running again.
"Young people... need to be educated about how the record companies have exploited artists and abused their rights for so long. Online distribution is turning into a new medium which might enable artists to put an end to this exploitation." - Prince
So we have a new capitalist giant being squashed by a cartel of more established capitalist giants. Some artists have joined in this fat-cat lynch mob. Corporate metal band Metallica attacked their own fans, handing over the names of 350,000 Napster users who had downloaded Metallica songs, demanding they be barred from the service.
However many musicians like Courtney Love have hit out at the hypocrisy of the record companies. Love said: There were one billion downloads last year but music sales are way up, so how is Napster hurting the music industry?.
Others have seen Napster as little more than payback for decades of record company exploitation of artists. Prince made the comment that Young people... need to be educated about how the record companies have exploited artists and abused their rights for so long. Online distribution is turning into a new medium which might enable artists to put an end to this exploitation.
Anarchist pop band Chumbawamba released a free MP3 Pass It Along packed with copyright-busting samples of corporate artists, not to mention Noam Chomsky and the Dead Kennedys Jello Biafra. You can download it free from "><http://www.chumba.com/_passitalong.htm>. Their press release blasted Napsters critics in the music community If (Metallicas) Ulrich, Madonna and Eminem had never sold any records and were worried about entering a poverty-stricken old age, then their determination to stop their music being passed around would be understandable - but what were seeing is some of the richest popstars in the world making the biggest stink about not being able to screw every last penny from their adoring fans.
But what is clear is that, as Christina Aguilera might say, the genie is out of the bottle. Napster cannot be uninvented and there are already alternative services popping up and new implementations of the technology being developed which will quickly outstrip Napster if it is reduced to a subscription service.
Remember the days of fanzines? Often based around football clubs or music scenes like punk, these were publications produced by, well, anybody. From the ground-breaking punk zines like Sniffin Glue to the plethora of football fanzines for sale at every ground, the quality was often poor, but sometimes the writing was sharp and hilarious. Not reliant on advertising, zines could tell it like they saw it.
Some political publications started as essentially fanzines, although not all of them were left-wing it should be said. Music scenes like riot-grrl produced a wealth of feminist and radical publications, pasted up in teenagers bedrooms.
The net has made it easier for the new generation of fanzine producers. You no longer have to slave over a hot photocopier when a few lines of html will reach a greater audience.
Check out <http://www.factsheet5.com/> for a guide to the scene and the best web based zines around.
If you want to know more about this hidden history of self-publishing have a look at Below Critical Radar from Brightons Slab-O-Concrete books.."><http://www.slaboconcrete.com/>.
Better still, hit the keyboard and make your own zine.