[tw]

Again you are asking questions that a Congress, more interested in Clinton's penis, should have been asking. If I can photocopy are article for another but not Napster a music recording - why the different standards? IOW it is never stealing, legally, until the law defines what is stealing and the lawmakers have, as usual, chosen to let reluctant courts make the laws. This whole Napster mess and even the China copyright problems are directly traceable to reactive laws made because of what our Congressman are more interested in. My god, Intel had to get into an expensive, silly lawsuit with AMD before microcode copyright laws were created. Ergo the copyright symbol now printed on all Intel chips. Laws not created by a Congress only because WE relected 95% of the incumbants even when we were mad at them in 1992.

The industry had not made any attempt at new business models until very recently - the last five years. And then only because of Napster and other new technology problems. They refused to address the piracy issue even with DAT - instead banning DAT from US. In Canada, every DAT tape, whether used to record music or for digitial data storage - a royalty is paid automatically to the recording industry anyway.

That the industry can not find a way to harness the internet that benefits consumer, artist, and industry is hardly their fault... is clearly and directly traceable to industry top management. 85% of all problems are directly traceable to top management. Life teachs one thing repeatedly. The solutions almost always existed but the top management refused to listen to those who come from where the work gets done.

This little life secret is fundamental to the American success story. When top management is that anti-American, then new, little companies rise to meet the challenge. Only when Congress protects these 'we fear to innovate' companies do these anti-American managers survive. Rather than endorse the Napster concept, they ignored the whole thing. Now they would blackball Bertelsmann for attempting a negotiated solution? How myopic.

The computer industry does not have a lot of government interference. Therefore DEC, et al upended the anti-American IBM, Unisys, Honeywell, etc. Then the Compaqs, Intels, Ciscos, and Microsofts upended DEC, Data General, Perkin Elmer, Macrodata (MacDonnel Douglas), etc when their management became anti-American.

However USX and Bethlehem Steel are again going to Congress for more protection from another mythical problem - dumping.

That is not to say that the music industry is as anti-American as big steel or AT&T. But the lessons from these 'we fear to innovate' companies do apply to the music industry. The music industry is running for lawyers and government protection rather than realize and correcting their neglect.

I fear you worry about something trivial as Napster. The real problem is international piracy - especially mainland China. The theft numbers there are phenomonally greater and up to now have not been addressed by an industry that was willing to accept this piracy.

More important than Napster is a problem that water marking (yes, just like in paper) and DVD movie encryption stantards is to address. Again, the industry only in the past five years woke up to a problem that existed since the VCR and cassette tapes.

I worked for a company called Aydin who instructed us, verbally of course, to duplicate and steal software from all other divisions. At that time, I would have been the first one in line to testify against these theives. But the industry provided no recourse then. The industry remains all but ignorant to software piracy. Even all Chinese negotiators at a GATT hearing on pirated software had nothing but pirated software in their computers. Software piracy got too bad before the industry finally took notice.

Aydin broke open the dongle for a CAD software package AND actually had an offical company print to duplicate the dongle. At least 20 machines ran pirated CAD software. We even had prints to prove the theft but could do nothing to end this theivery. Again because the industry and especially government only talked about copyright laws but provided no standards. They ignored the problem. In most of the world, 80 to 90% of all software is pirated.

Again, Napster is only a symptom. It is legal to duplicate your CDs for all friends but illegal to do so through Napster. It is illegal for China to distribute CD everywhere but the industry makes rediculous and trivial attempts to end the problem - even leaving laws in confused, archaeic states.

Actually more is being done to stop hardware design piracy internationally by defining standards and testing new methods. But then Sony, Toshiba, and Phillips have more pro-active management. Domestically, the music business would rather use lawyers to prosecute Napster than to create new and uniform copyright standards for new technologies and to create new methods of distributing music.

The stealing does occur. Napster is on the undefined edge of legal vs illegal. My perspective is not about wanting freer music. My complaint is that the industry knew these problems were coming decades previously and did nothing until very recently. What was the biggest first function of the Intenet? To share copies of Grateful Dead concerts. Music piracy? Twenty years later, the industry still did nothing to address the issue? How myopic. They have the problem they deserve - and a reasonable solution is still not defined in US copyright laws.

They mostly ignored the China problem until is was too big. They ignored the laws that Napster straddles until the problem because too big. They have been reactive rather than proactive - and have the problems they deserve. 85% of all problems are directly traceable to top management. The music industry has the piracy problems that they all but wanted.

BTW I also said the artist were victims. But again, the employees will always be the first victims when top management is anti-American - anti-innovation. I have been posting these 'we fear to innovate' examples both here and in the many previous Cellar Mark x for years. Don't worry about the artists. They were victims years ago. It is too late to help them. The old problem is just starting to affect them.

Address the real problem - a management that fears to innovate and that entrenches itself AND a Congress that cannot even trash the useless penny and nickel, that demands to have Clinton's penis examined, and that still cannot address copyright and patent laws. These other problems are only symptoms of myopic management and a 'do nothing' Congress.