Dear Sinister, Odd we've never discussed this before. Isabel you seem to be quoting posts which I did not receive without actually quoting them in your letters, so if someone has taken this tack I apologize but it didn't make it to my inbox. But I think you can draw a nice bundle of parallels between Napster and our old friend the Cassette. Both of them give us a capacity we did not have prior to their inception. Cassettes allowed us to make custom mixes for friends, thereby exposing them to new music and encouraging them to spend more money. Yayyyy capitalism. Napster allows us to test out tracks by bands we're curious about before we consider spending money on them. Cassettes allowed us to make copies of recordings which were not made available to the general public. Napster does also. Both can be abused. Some people have been known to copy entire albums on cassette. In fact the record industry once feared that this would spell its demise. Yes someone needs to buy an album before they can copy it onto a cassette first, but MP3s need a CD to be ripped from in order to be made just as cassettes need a source. Perhaps Napster is a more convincing because it is closer to hi-fi and it's easier and quicker. Okay, and some rumor control. Warner Brothers did *not* buy out Napster. Napster already entered into an agreement with Bertelsmann, so Warner would probably have to buy them out in order to do this. Napster *is* planning on switching to a fee-based service as early as Summer, and I for one am willing to pay if they have a fair system of paying artists whose songs are downloaded. Peer-to-peer file-sharing as a distribution for music is not going to go away, even if Napster does. I'm not trying to say CDs will be irrelevant anytime soon, but Napster or its possible successors will be around, and in the end they will not be free. The music industry had a record year last year, people *are* spending money on music like they used to. More than they used to even. In a high-bandwidth world, a free Napster would definately affect some bottom lines, but more likely than not the same 5 labels will be present in whatever final form Napster or its successor takes. I just hope the consumer doesn't get screwed in the process, like they usually do. The consumer and artists certainly stand a good chance of coming out ahead. Incidentally, to anyone who's tried unsuccessfully to download B&S rarities from me, please be patient. I apologize for my slow connection, but it's the best I can offer without fear of legal reprisal. -- Brian Pennington, aka Mick McMick | cellophanesky@mac.com | ICQ# 39021436 Sandcastle Records: <http://www.indiepages.com/sandcastle/> the Cellophane Sky:<http://home.earthlink.net/~cellophanesky/the/index.html> "Better a tear of truth than smiling lies." - Duncan Browne +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the undead Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "tech-heads and students" +-+ +-+ "the cardie wearing biscuit nibbling belle & sebastian list" +-+ +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "peculiarly deranged fanbase" "frighteningly named +-+ +-+ Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +----------------------------------------------------------------------+