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Umm... no. There should be no confusion about the difference between permutations of the following (CS degree/no degree | hacker/cracker | self-taught/schooled). Just because people gravitate toward where the money is doesn't mean all geeks are equal. CS degreed geeks are certified geeks! CS degreed geeks are assumed to have intimate knowledge of computers at every level of detail; down to where the Physicists and Material Scientists take over. That's the whole idea behind accredited engineering degree programs. That's why I switched majors from CS to CSE
That's Computer Science.
NOT:

• CounterStrike
• a 6-week seminar, were everyone gets an "A"
• a For-Dummies (TM) book
• something you can find in a cereal box
• a Napster(TM) download

I know that people need something to pay the bills; so IT/Computer-related work seems to be the quick and easy solution. Pretty soon, geek jobs won't be cool and the mainstream (and money) will shift. I don't care, I'm in for the long-haul.

School is really my plan to avoid work. Maybe I should get into research! Then, I won't have to produce anything of marketable value!

: Cancer

True - though the greater scientific collaboration available due to the utility of the Internet has certainly allowed research to proceed faster.

: World Hunger

I'd be interested to know if efforts like the Motley Fool's annual charity drive on behalf of organizations like Share our Strength is having an impact.

: Suicide

I've known a lot of depressed individuals who have found support from online communities that could never have existed without the Internet. MUDs and MOOs and MUCKs, web-based discussion forums, you name it. A friend of mine recently started a website that focuses on sexual freedom and expression for the physically disabled. By virtue of its place online, that effort is able to reach a far greater audience than the individual would ever have had the chance to reach on her own.

: War

I'm not sure there's an example of the Internet stopping a war yet. But I wouldn't be surprised if it happened in the near future.

: Britney Spears

That truly *would* be a service to mankind. I suppose if we look at communities like Napster as providing greater access to alternative or otherwise unknown artists, then maybe it has the ability to broaden people's palettes to where pap like Britney Spears will no longer satisfy the masses. We can hope, anyway.

This could work out very well for Bertelsmann. It's like having a private chain of radio stations that only plays their music. Bertelsmann has around 18% of the music market globally; the top three players are all around that level.

I guess that clears *THAT* up.. Obviously you can't chat on Napster or swap files other than MP3's.. unless of course you were to use wrapster or some such insidous software. After all, everyone knows that napster could *never* be used to distribute underage porn

Okay, I didn't realize it'd require a port. However, I take offense to your "hostile to free software" comment. Windows has an extensive freeward community

I assume "freeward" is a misspelling for "freeware." In that case, I know about all royalty-free binaries, but most of them are not free software. There's a difference.

OSS software does not need to run on an OSSOS.

But copylefted free software can never be written in Visual Basic, as that would require providing the source code of the MS Visual Basic runtime and releasing it under a compatible license. Tough luck getting Microsoft to comply there. (Or is the VB runtime covered by the operating system exception to the common licenses?)

And there isn't that large of a library of GPL'd Windows software to infect Windows programs with GPL either.

Did someone hijack their DNS, or is there internal vandalism going on?

According to sections lifted from the Privacy Policy for Napster, they will:
"We also ask you after registration if you would like Napster to scan your hard drive(s) for material that you would like to share with the Napster community. This scan, of course, is optional, and you choose which directories you would like to share with other users.....
In addition to information on your Internet connection, each time you login to one of our servers, the Napster service collects your user name, connection speed and the names and location of the files you have chosen to make available. All of this information is publicly displayed and/or available to any user of the Napster service, and may be recorded by any other user who chooses to do so, or by Napster"

In signing up for Napster, don't you agree to these conditions. If so, why the brouhaha about them scanning file names. It's not like they didn't SAY they were going to do so.

Course, if you're _only_ getting copyrighted material, then you might have a problem with this...

BTW. Just being Devil's Advocate here. Personally, I've gone out and bought more CD's after listening to the artists on MP3 that I would have without such a test-drive. When I still had broadband I regularly tried out stuff by artists and bought the stuff I liked.

Since you wanted a lawyer point of view on "fair use" here we go:

Fair use is, in US law, a defense to copyright infringement. It is a theory developed by the courts to limit the scope of copyright legislation.

The only fair use recognized directly by legislation is:

"Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include - (...)"

The main reason for copyright is to promote creativity according to the constitution:

The judicial doctrine of fair use is usually limited by the commercial aspect of a copy or usage. Make any commercial copy and it is probably not fair use (except for Sec 107)

So the biggest problem, in the USA at least, is that you have no right to fair use. You can only invoke fair use as a defense to a copyright infringement suit. (sorry folks!)

Some country, like Canada (where i come from), have a more robust fair use doctrine. The Copyright Act in canada specify that you have the right to make a private copy for your personal use. (sec 80 of the copyright act):

"80. (1) Subject to subsection (2), the act of reproducing all or any substantial part of
(a) a musical work embodied in a sound recording,
(b) a performer's performance of a musical work embodied in a sound recording, or
(c) a sound recording in which a musical work, or a performer's performance of a musical work, is embodied onto an audio recording medium for the private use of the person who makes the copy does not constitute an infringement of the copyright in the musical work, the performer's performance or the sound recording."

This is almost what "fair use" is.
Some cyberlaw experts, such as Pr Lessig, are in favor of a more robust fair use in order to protect you from the RIAA (see for example the brief of the law professors in the Napster trial : http://dl.napster.com/amicus_law.pdf)

Hope this helps you !

On a more personnal note I think the Slashdot community is right; fair use should be extended to protect certain private copy of recording. However, since the copyright lobby seems to have the ears of the US congress, it is very unlikely to happen in this lifetime ... but it's not Australia yet !

***** disclaimer *****
THIS IS NOT A LEGAL OPINION, do not act on behalf of the content of this comment, always consult a lawyer for legal opinion.
***** thanks **********

With the large number of blackhats likely to be in the population of those pissed-off about the way things have been going, I'm surprised that the RIAA and its major members still have intact web prescence. Not that I'm advocating or condoning civil disobedience as a means of political action. Oh, and I'm also surprised to see that the MPAA site is up.

RIAA v. Napster Is founded on some people can use it for piracy so it should be shut down. Since it is users trading music, all Napster's delivering is indexes.

Contributory copyright infringement. The primary use of this is to pirate music published by the Big Five labels. If you want to promote your band's music or discover independent music, there are better tools such as MP3.com. They'll even manufacture CDs for your band that contain Red Book audio plus a CD Extra track with MP3 files.

what if the mp3 is encrypted with a key that has to be checked out of a centralized server?

One word: OpenNap. OpenNap servers will use one well-known key. If you trade MP3s over OpenNap instead of Napster Inc's network, you already have the key to descramble them.

See also Pinocchio's comments on Napdot to see why a restricted Napster just won't work.

Napster users engage in commercail use of the copyrighted materials largely because (1) "a host user sending a file cannot be said to engage in a personal use when distributing that file to an anonymous requester" and (2) "Napster users get for free something they would ordinarily have to buy."

By this logic a canned food drive is a commercial activity because food (which ordinarily one has to buy) is given to anonymous recipients. Man this upsets me. An ordinary person would think that charging money is what constitutes commercial use.

The music industry stole music from us. We are just taking it back!

Why is it that hotline never gets mentioned???

Because Hotline is a pain. Yes, it's simple enough to use and has potential, but the reality is pretty unpleasant to use. You find that someone has something you're interested in. You have to see what particular hoops you have to jump through to get access "...go to this web site and sign up for this spam-bait..." To hell with that. I share over AudioGalaxy and Napster and the BearShare Gnutella client because I like to share, not to try to make a nickle from people.

Surely more bytes have been transfered over Hotline servers than ANY other file (not just mp3) sharing peer to peer system!!!

Probably, but if you're interested in MP3s, and are not looking for movies or warez, everything else is less of a pain.

split the search tasks up into hierarchies. you search for N inside a given range. if the result can't get found within that range, you propogate the request of the tree

Which is exactly how Napster works. And look what happened to the company that hosts the biggest nap network.

Have you ever borrowed a CD/cassette tape from some one and copied it onto another tape? I'm sure most of you have. Have you ever taped a TV show/movie off of TV? Are these things illegal? No. You know why? In the copyright, it allows these sorts of things to be done legally. Songs, mp3, etc fit under this copyright. It allows you to legally share these forms of copyrighted material.

I liked the comment by Cortney Love on this page: http://www.napster.com/speakout/artists.html.
I know I wouldn't buy a Metallica CD if I heard all the songs on their CD. Because only 2 or 3 songs on the CD are any good, the rest...aren't. I have some CDs where I can listen to them all the way through with out having to skip all the songs to listen to 2 of them. Artists shouldn't be scared of Napster, if they make good music, their albums will sell.

Limp Bizkit, his record sales are in the millions. But, how could that be when people could just download the songs off of Napster (which is what I did)? Simple, because people think his music is good (which most is, some isn't). Metallica is just complaining because nobody likes their new album (don't blame them).

Okay, great. Now the courts just have to take out every other way to distribute copyrighted MP3s, and the recording industry will be saved! It shouldn't be too terribly hard to take down AOL Instant Messenger, Gnutella, Hotline, IRC, OpenNap, FTP, all Web sites, all E-mail, Carracho, and every other way to distribute MP3s online. Oh, and then there's the offline trading. They're gonna also have to ban CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-R and all variants thereof, Zip, Jaz, Orb, SuperDisk, and all external hard drives.

Yeah right. The recording industry is wasting all kinds of money to try to stop MP3 trading. I'm willing to bet they've lost as many millions of dollars trying to stop MP3 trading than they've actually lost from piraters. A significant number of MP3 traders actually do buy CDs that have more than one good song on them, and the crummy artists with just one decent song tend to get their music pirated -- because most people would never have paid for their album in the first place!

If the recording industry had any sense, they'd realize that it's impossible to stop MP3 trading. Impossible. Taking down Napster or making it fee-based will only lead most people away from that option, causing them to switch to one of the many alternatives listed above, or even another that I haven't mentioned or that will eventually pop up.

Now hear this: Artists who embrace MP3, including but not limited to The Offspring, Moby, Dave Matthews Band, Limp Bizkit, Radiohead, Madonna, Ben Folds Five, Foo Fighters, Prince, and every artist on MP3.com, are a lot more likely to sell their songs because they actually show their support for everyone's favorite music file format, and realize how beneficial -- not harmful -- MP3 is to them. The same people who buy from these artists will think twice about buying from an anti-MP3 artist like Metallica, who had thousands of their (former) fans banned from Napster.

In summary, the recording industry and anti-MP3 artists are only digging graves for themselves by attacking Napster. The fewer people who respect you, the fewer buyers and investors you'll have.

http://www.napster.com/speakout/

SETI@home works in client-server fashion: your desktop computer asks the main server for a chunk of data, then chews on the data and talks to the server again. This is massively parallel computation, but it isn't peer-to-peer, it's client/server.

When you put data on this fiber ring, within a very short time all the computers on the ring have seen the data. So if you want a bunch of computers to cooperate on a job, this would be a great way for them to update each other on what they are doing. If you did it right, you would have massively parallel distributed processing: all the computers in Canada tied into a single InterComputer. And just as Napster can spread popular songs around where a single FTP server would be hammered, an InterComputer potentially could handle truly large computations that any single computer (or even Beowulf cluster) couldn't.

Multicast data packets aren't new; that's why they said it takes only a few changes to try out their ideas. Multicast packets are currently designed to die fairly quickly so they can't clog a network up too much; these guys want the packets to go all the way around the ring.

P.S. That joke about the backhoe chopping the fiber was only a little bit funny, and then only the first time. When a backhoe hits a cable today, half of Canada does not lose Internet service! It isn't a trivial ring; it has some redundancy redundancy.

steveha

The Napster/Bertelsmann Q&A says this:

Will Napster continue to offer a free service?
Yes! We are committed to creating a system in which users can choose to participate without paying any money. We realize that Napster is nothing without its user community -- you make us what we are. However, for a small membership fee we feel that we can facilitate an enhanced service that you'll find even more valuable and that will allow us to generate revenues to be able to make payments to artists and songwriters for music files that our users share with each other. We are working with Bertelsmann and other potential allies in an effort to work out the details of how all this will work and we will, of course, keep you fully informed as details become available.

I suggest that we boycott UUNet immediately.

Will Napster continue to offer a free service?

Yes! We are committed to creating a system in which users can choose to participate without paying any money.

--

Since this is slashback, I guess this is kinda on topic. There's a new version of napster available for the windows folks.

Although the Authors Guild is signatory to this letter, I suspect that the whole scenario is similar to the current conflict between musicians and the RIAA on one side and consumers, MP3.com and Napster on the other. In that case, a few, very high profile, musicians have sided with the RIAA to try to eliminate fair use (e.g. My MP3.com) as well as unfair distribution (e.g., Napster) in one fell swoop. The less-well-known authors, or those who are not beholden to a single publishing company (e.g., Stephen King and Orson Scott Card) may very well have no objections to Amazon.com's completely legal and ethical desire to facilitate the transfer of physical copies of copyrighted works from person to person.

sorry about that.

music,, discourse, and protest.

not.

How are you market-predictors supposed to tell when something has peaked, anyway?

Just because I don't use the Internet to do consumer things does not mean it is not transforming society.

The internet is doing plenty of cultural advancement- into "b2b" where the last innovation was the shipping bill.

Way behind the scenes, the Internet is bringing just-in-time business practices to lots of firms (some of which they were NEVER meant to go to), for instance.

Also, the Internet continues to create new forums for music,, discourse, and protest.

These restrictions are arbitrary, needless, and will probably eventually run mp3.com out of business. Since they already have a rip of my CDs, it's not like they're using a log of server space to record that I have 25, 100, or even 10,000 of them. A simple database insert will record everything necessary.

The other restriction of periodically proving your ownership makes it even more useless since you lose all the portability of mp3s. Might as well use Napster or myplay.

Check out my mix.

Hmm.

The IOC bans websites from using or showing video clips, the story hits Slashdot and now free-speach advocates are getting crazy shouting that it's an infrigment of their Nature-given right to watch an event which is, by the way, international.

You know what happens next - kids with video capture cards start recording every bit of Olympic activity they can, "DivX ;-)" it and send it out on Napster and Gnutella. Oh, and don't forget those that will create hexadecimal dumps of the movies' content in text and print those on t-shirt with "The IOC can suck my dI0Ck" on the back.

C'mon, it' s pretty obvious that the IOC has learned a less on from the De-CSS episode and is seeking to improve the rating for a pretty much dying event.

I can see it already: thousands of kiddies all watching Curling just to see what the fuss is all about.

Not bad, IOC. Not bad.

[Check out this other Jesus-powered IOC]

Greg

"People don't have the right to privacy when they are publicly making available infringing songs," Hoffman said. "A burglar doesn't have that right when he's walking with a television under his arm."

What an incredibly misleading analogy. An mp3 is a digital representation of a song, not the real goods. Audio signals are removed and repetitous or similar patterns are looped, so what the listener is hearing is a reasonable fascimile of the music - no more. Comparing it to breaking into private property and stealing a television set is quite a stretch.

Your Support for Napster Can Make a Difference

Actually, if you read the Napster web page on the deal, you will see that the idea is a simple, two-tiered system. A flat rate (strongly suggested $4.99) for a series of perks, and normal, unlimited access will continue to be free.

People should be very careful before passing judgements about the way the system will work. I think most of this is over-emotional reactionism, just like when NBC declared Florida a Gore state at 8:00 Tuesday!
---------------------

Hmmm... Combine the hax0red TiVo with one of the lovely storage devices from mondays' slashdot article and you could store some serious TV time... Commercial free and what you want when you want it. I'm sounding like a commercial for TiVo/Network Engines, I know... Anyways, this could make for some interesting TiVo applications. It could also make for more pirating controversy because people will have an easy way of recording _all_ of their movies/shows/etc and freely/easily distributing them via scour or gnutella. The lawyers would have a field day! Anyways, just my $.02

so you know, hong kong is the piracy capital of the world--those of you who think you're all l33t and with it when you download Blair Witch 2 Cam 0day, just know that half the population of hong kong has probably seen that movie off their $1.40 VCD screener which they bought at the corner of watsons.

okay, it is illegal to pirate software, movies, games, music. but it is done, and youll find it in every corner of every street in hong kong.

the mp3 scene here has become HUGE. companies advertise their mp3 players on buses, DSL isps offer free mp3 players after 9 months of stickin with their shit slow DSL--come on, an isp offering their customers a free mp3 player, it couldn't possibly be to playback music downloaded off napster now could it? its obvious what theyre trying to appeal to, and get this: this particular DSL provider is the BIGGEST in hong kong, and just happens to be Cable & Wireless HKT--by far the biggest phone company in hong kong, and the sole provider of land lines.

the govt however, has tried to stop this. 2 16-year-old kids were arrested and sentenced to 2 years for running 10-hit-a-day 5-song mp3 websites, in an attempt to scare the public. too bad the public heard about it, and i believe started some sort of demonstration, it is my understanding that the kids were released and their records wiped clean. some govt.

computers are common in hong kong, probably 99% of the urban population have had at least 2 computers thus far, and a good 70% of them, at a minimum, with internet access (check the exact stats here. every person i know not only has napster installed, but a quite substantial mp3 collection, and probably half of them have bought burners as a result.

a personal friend of mine was charged with some sort of hacking, which i wont go into, and his computer was confiscated, with his binder of burned cds, which included about 50 mp3 cds, plus what was on his hds. they were returned to him, fully intact.

but hk, in which only 50% of microsoft software users are actually using their software legally licensed, isn't quite as bad as some parts of china, where only 5% of their ms software is licensed (this figure is NOT an estimate... any admins feel like checking the logs, in particular the origin of this post?), the situation is MUCH worse, and the govt couldnt care less. govt officials, even higher up in the hierarchy, use pirated ms software. i found a .gov.cn website which included links to mp3 albums, and i will be sure to post it if i find the url again.

i really cant remember the topic of this post, oh well. its almost like MP3 is fully legal in hong kong. ive seen raids where cops would take away the vcd vendor, but not the guy with a bigger stall selling mp3 cds.

There are a couple more resources if you're really interested in his views.
MTV has an article and here's another.
My favorite is probably here though.

Just a thought....

Malk-a-mite

Check them out here..


------------
CitizenC

Some more links:
http://www.aspfree.co m/a uthors/chrisk/monitorsunnyline.asp
Old Slashdot story on Packet shaping....
http://slashdot.org/asksl ash dot/99/07/06/1433234.shtml

The joys of a search engine...
Malk-a-mite

Columbia has also declined to ban Napster. The campus press published a story about it. The staff editorial of the day was in favor of not banning Napster, but there was a dissenting piece also.
--

• Napster does not, and cannot, control what content is available to you using the Napster browser. Napster users decide what content to make available to others using the Napster browser, and what content to download.
• 
  ...
  Napster makes no representations or warranties of any kind, express or implied, as to the operation of this web site, the Napster service, or the information, content, materials, services or products included or referenced on this web site.

Yeah I would also like to know where the mirrors are.

I am dissapointed to see that descramble or decss are not found on Napster. Should I be searching for something else or does it simply not exist on Napster?

Here is the perfect legal use of Napster and I can't even find it.

"And since the record industry sold more CDs then ever last year, that of course proves what all these lawsuits are about *cough*."


How long will that last?? Once affordable technology catches up, CD sales are going to be huuuurting.

Even if Napster is helping CD sales (which I think it is) by people using it to sample music that they will then purchase, that'll only last so long.

The only reason I've seen this is that I personally have bought a total of 2 CDs this year because of the fact that I have a Personal Jukebox.

I think that the RIAA is being very smart in being afraid of Napster (and clones).

Napster may not be a bullet to the brain, but it's definately an infectuous disease of some sort.

"And since the record industry sold more CDs then ever last year, that of course proves what all these lawsuits are about *cough*."


How long will that last?? Once affordable technology catches up, CD sales are going to be huuuurting.

Even if Napster is helping CD sales (which I think it is) by people using it to sample music that they will then purchase, that'll only last so long.

The only reason I've seen this is that I personally have bought a total of 2 CDs this year because of the fact that I have a Personal Jukebox.

I think that the RIAA is being very smart in being afraid of Napster (and clones).

Napster may not be a bullet to the brain, but it's definately an infectuous disease of some sort.

[IANAL, etc.]

The brief the White House has filed is not a 'shut down Napster' argument. It simply states that Napster should not be allowed to use the Home Recording Act as a legal defense (which is one of the many defenses Napster has put forth.)

This is a VERY good thing.

Quite. It would also fly in the face of the legal precedent set by the Diamond Rio case, which basically stated that an MP3 player (and the computer it relies on) is not a digital recording device as defined in the AHRA .

But in simple terms, what does the AHRA say? That (if you're American) you're granted immunity to make non-commercial copies for your own private use if you use analogue equipment or digital with SCMS enforced. Note it doesn't say it's legal/lawful - just that you have "immunity from suit". Pro-level equipment (that doesn't follow SCMS and will copy anything) doesn't allow you that immunity, and neither do computers (which have no way to implement SCMS - well, there's SDMI *cough* :-) ).

You can't have it both ways - either your computer is a digital recording device and you pay the RIAA tax on every computer, hard disk and data CDR media, or it isn't and while people will go on burning audio CDs and storing MP3s on their disks they won't be granted their immunity under the AHRA.

It's a lame defence on Napster's part though - they're trying to justify their users actions with some very shaky interpretation. It's also quite amusing that they're taking the "OK, there's massive infringement but our users are allowed to do that" attitude while their Terms of Use still state "you will not: (i) use the Napster service to infringe the intellectual property rights of others in any way".

The White House doesn't particularly favour the RIAA - it's just speaking sense. Napster are shooting themselves in the foot badly with this defence - they'd be wise to just drop it before they look like fools in court.

--
qube

You seem to have an overly high opinion of the "conformity", if you will, of corporations. There are companies that let you gamble and buy drugs, steal music and videos, and hire prostitutes, all over the web.

What on earth could you be doing thats is worse than this?

I have a funny feeling that you're a minor-league developer who has let the slashdot "black-helicopter" club feed your paranoia.

IANAL either, but I know a little about copyright. The data format has absolutely zero to do with the cases (either of them). Damages come in two flavors: actual and statutory (potentially plus attorneys fess, for either). Actual damages are what the copyright holder lost plus what the copyright infringer gained, while statutory damages are set by the court within a sort of fixed range per work infringed. The range moves up when a court finds that an infringement is "willful" and moves down when the court finds the infringement is "innocent". The range for statutory damages is set in 17 USC 504, paragraph c, with the "normal" range at $750 to $30,000, with the ceiling for "willful" set at $150,000 and the floor for "innocent" at $200, all per work infringed.

In the MP3.com case, Universal did not request actual damages, but elected statutory (it's either/or and the copyright owner must choose). The judge had already found "willful" infringement but apparently didn't see the need to set the punishment outside the normal range, setting it at $25,000 per CD.

For Napster, the total dollar amount of the MP3.com award isn't relevant, the benchmark is the "per work" part of the award. In other words, the precendent for Napster is $25,000 per CD. However, Napster didn't do anything to attempt to limit usage of the service and the little evidence of intent I've seen suggests that Napster intended to create an unregulated sharing service. If the appeals courts agree that they're liable, I'd expect a higher per CD damage award, on more CDs. However, I think Napster has a chance to win an "ISP" defense based on on appeal and there's also a fairly good chance of winning an appeal on the issue of "contributory infringement" - I think Judge Patel is stretching the theory of contributory infringement to get a particular result and I'm not sure appeals courts will agree that it stretches that far. There are also other legal "outs" for Napster, this brief (PDF) lists several potential good ones.

For MP3.com, the design of their service creates a very different case and any chance of winning on appeal will depend on getting court to look at the end result of the service (which is itself lawful), and not the implementation details.

4. Online piracy is the unauthorized uploading of a copyrighted sound recording and making it available to the public, or downloading a sound recording from an Internet site, even if the recording isn't resold. Online piracy may now also include certain uses of 'streaming' technologies from the Internet.

First of all they make the distinction between uploading, downloading and streaming. In pure TCP/IP terms all these acts are the same... a uni-directional flow of data yet they single out these three practises. However gnutella is a lot more focussed on 'transferring' - seems fine to me.

4. Online piracy is the unauthorized uploading of a copyrighted sound recording and making it available to the public

So if for example I upload a file to a site... that's fine. So provided it isn't me that makes the file I upload publically available then its perfectly ok. So now when I upload a file to geocities i do nothing wrong, and similarly when geocities ftpd sets the file world readable it does nothing wrong.... no piracy there.

downloading a sound recording from an Internet site

The word 'site' typically only descibes passive services like websites & ftp sites. Napster on the other hand is more interactive and typically you would say "Napseter Server" or "Napster User" and not "Napster Site". If someone talked about a napster site I would immediately think of this one.

Online piracy may now also include certain uses of 'streaming' technologies from the Internet.

It may now!!!. Sounds to me like "Streaming didn't used to be a crime but we are going to pretend it is one now" or perhaps they mean "We dont really know whether it is or not".

Really if those are the definitions we are up against i find it hard to believe the lawyers, who are much scorned for bending the words of legislation against the spirit that legislation was created in, cant come up with a half decent defence.

Bite my Napster!

But seriously, if these guys are going to ignore technology and try to fight progress, they're going to end up losing, no matter what the courts say. A ruling in their favor will only strengthen my resolve.

I agree this could be cool though I have not seen many un-tagged MP3 files.

*blink* *boggle*

Huh? Man, please tell me where you're getting all these tagged MP3 files from! The vast majority of the MP3 files I've found on Napster/OpenNap/mp3.com are untagged -- and of the rest, a significant number don't even have the "sync" (whatever that is) that mp3info wants, so I can't even add the tags myself!

Wow. Trolling at level 0.

There are plenty of legally arguable fair uses of Betamax (and video taping technology for that matter) beyond time-shifting TV shows.

Well that was the only one made to the Supreme Court in MPAA v. Sony Betamax, and that was the one on which the case was decided. Remember, neither video camcorders nor video rentals existed at the time.

Now you're just making stuff up. Napster never asked for any such list and the RIAA never refused one. In fact I remember a post on Slashdot by someone saying such a list didn't exist to which another poster replied with a link.

Well I'd appreciate such a link if you could dig it up. In the meantime, I'm most certainly *not* making stuff up. This and indeed all my arguments are taken directly from Napster's legal filings. Particularly their opposition brief (pp. 19) and appeal brief (pp. 5, 13-14). (One other thing: turns out I was mistaken with my 1 million figure; the actual estimate of RIAA-copyrighted recordings is a whopping 10 million.) Unless you are accusing Napster of lying to the judge by pretending they'd petitioned the plaintiffs on the court record for such a list (not a very clever lie, IMO), then you're the one making stuff up.

And the judge came down on Napster because there was no doubt in her mind, nor should there be any in anyone else's mind, that Napster existed solely for the purpose of being able to distribute copyrighted music. Their advertisements claiming that you won't find crappy no-name bands on their site are proof to this effect. Then they smugly lied and pretended that they existed to support independent artists.

Guess what? All of Sony's advertisements for the Betamax highlighted the fact that you could copy movies off TV and watch them as much as you want--which is unambiguously copyright infringment. Napster's advertisements highlighted the fact that it could allow users to noncommercially copy copyrighted recordings from other users--which is of at worst ambiguous legality because the AHRA specifically excludes all noncommercial copying of recordings from being considered infringing. Even if this noncommercial copying were illegal (again, the AHRA specifically legalizes it), Napster's practices are no different from Sony's. Indeed, even if Napster did just invent its New Artist program to stave off a lawsuit, the fact is that they already have more artists signed to it and authorizing the sharing of their songs than there are artists signed with all major labels! Similarly, it is almost certain that Sony came up with the "time-shifting is fair use" idea after they had been sued. Luckily, the correct standard from the Sony case is not when the noninfringing use was first advertised, or whether the defendent even considered such a noninfringing use for their technology. The standard is, once again, whether the service is "capable of significant noninfringing use." This is a direct quotation from the Supreme Court's Sony decision (emphasis added). So long as this condition is fulfilled (and it very obviously is), Napster can't be held liable.

I have no problems with judges throwing the book at offenders who are smug about their crimes and lie and try to use technicalities to squirm out. The judge did this in the Microsoft trial and did the same here too.

If you do consider the Supreme Court's precedent setting standard in a perfectly analagous case a "technicality", then I guess you have no problem outlawing VCR's which, incidentally, now provide the majority of MPAA income. Meanwhile, the judicial system functions on the basis of laws and precedents, whether you call them "technicalities" or not. MS was found guilty because it was determined that they broke the law, as it is set by Congress and interpreted by judicial precedent, "technicalities" and all. The fact that they were arrogant (much more so than Napster) about it didn't help their case, but is no reason to find them guilty. In the Napster case, on the other hand, Napster is clearly not liable, both on the basis of the applicable laws (the AHRA and the safe harbor provision of the DMCA) and on the basis of a Supreme Court precedent, the strongest judicial precedent in the land.

Wow. Trolling at level 0.

There are plenty of legally arguable fair uses of Betamax (and video taping technology for that matter) beyond time-shifting TV shows.

Well that was the only one made to the Supreme Court in MPAA v. Sony Betamax, and that was the one on which the case was decided. Remember, neither video camcorders nor video rentals existed at the time.

Now you're just making stuff up. Napster never asked for any such list and the RIAA never refused one. In fact I remember a post on Slashdot by someone saying such a list didn't exist to which another poster replied with a link.

Well I'd appreciate such a link if you could dig it up. In the meantime, I'm most certainly *not* making stuff up. This and indeed all my arguments are taken directly from Napster's legal filings. Particularly their opposition brief (pp. 19) and appeal brief (pp. 5, 13-14). (One other thing: turns out I was mistaken with my 1 million figure; the actual estimate of RIAA-copyrighted recordings is a whopping 10 million.) Unless you are accusing Napster of lying to the judge by pretending they'd petitioned the plaintiffs on the court record for such a list (not a very clever lie, IMO), then you're the one making stuff up.

And the judge came down on Napster because there was no doubt in her mind, nor should there be any in anyone else's mind, that Napster existed solely for the purpose of being able to distribute copyrighted music. Their advertisements claiming that you won't find crappy no-name bands on their site are proof to this effect. Then they smugly lied and pretended that they existed to support independent artists.

Guess what? All of Sony's advertisements for the Betamax highlighted the fact that you could copy movies off TV and watch them as much as you want--which is unambiguously copyright infringment. Napster's advertisements highlighted the fact that it could allow users to noncommercially copy copyrighted recordings from other users--which is of at worst ambiguous legality because the AHRA specifically excludes all noncommercial copying of recordings from being considered infringing. Even if this noncommercial copying were illegal (again, the AHRA specifically legalizes it), Napster's practices are no different from Sony's. Indeed, even if Napster did just invent its New Artist program to stave off a lawsuit, the fact is that they already have more artists signed to it and authorizing the sharing of their songs than there are artists signed with all major labels! Similarly, it is almost certain that Sony came up with the "time-shifting is fair use" idea after they had been sued. Luckily, the correct standard from the Sony case is not when the noninfringing use was first advertised, or whether the defendent even considered such a noninfringing use for their technology. The standard is, once again, whether the service is "capable of significant noninfringing use." This is a direct quotation from the Supreme Court's Sony decision (emphasis added). So long as this condition is fulfilled (and it very obviously is), Napster can't be held liable.

I have no problems with judges throwing the book at offenders who are smug about their crimes and lie and try to use technicalities to squirm out. The judge did this in the Microsoft trial and did the same here too.

If you do consider the Supreme Court's precedent setting standard in a perfectly analagous case a "technicality", then I guess you have no problem outlawing VCR's which, incidentally, now provide the majority of MPAA income. Meanwhile, the judicial system functions on the basis of laws and precedents, whether you call them "technicalities" or not. MS was found guilty because it was determined that they broke the law, as it is set by Congress and interpreted by judicial precedent, "technicalities" and all. The fact that they were arrogant (much more so than Napster) about it didn't help their case, but is no reason to find them guilty. In the Napster case, on the other hand, Napster is clearly not liable, both on the basis of the applicable laws (the AHRA and the safe harbor provision of the DMCA) and on the basis of a Supreme Court precedent, the strongest judicial precedent in the land.

Wow. Trolling at level 0.

There are plenty of legally arguable fair uses of Betamax (and video taping technology for that matter) beyond time-shifting TV shows.

Well that was the only one made to the Supreme Court in MPAA v. Sony Betamax, and that was the one on which the case was decided. Remember, neither video camcorders nor video rentals existed at the time.

Now you're just making stuff up. Napster never asked for any such list and the RIAA never refused one. In fact I remember a post on Slashdot by someone saying such a list didn't exist to which another poster replied with a link.

Well I'd appreciate such a link if you could dig it up. In the meantime, I'm most certainly *not* making stuff up. This and indeed all my arguments are taken directly from Napster's legal filings. Particularly their opposition brief (pp. 19) and appeal brief (pp. 5, 13-14). (One other thing: turns out I was mistaken with my 1 million figure; the actual estimate of RIAA-copyrighted recordings is a whopping 10 million.) Unless you are accusing Napster of lying to the judge by pretending they'd petitioned the plaintiffs on the court record for such a list (not a very clever lie, IMO), then you're the one making stuff up.

And the judge came down on Napster because there was no doubt in her mind, nor should there be any in anyone else's mind, that Napster existed solely for the purpose of being able to distribute copyrighted music. Their advertisements claiming that you won't find crappy no-name bands on their site are proof to this effect. Then they smugly lied and pretended that they existed to support independent artists.

Guess what? All of Sony's advertisements for the Betamax highlighted the fact that you could copy movies off TV and watch them as much as you want--which is unambiguously copyright infringment. Napster's advertisements highlighted the fact that it could allow users to noncommercially copy copyrighted recordings from other users--which is of at worst ambiguous legality because the AHRA specifically excludes all noncommercial copying of recordings from being considered infringing. Even if this noncommercial copying were illegal (again, the AHRA specifically legalizes it), Napster's practices are no different from Sony's. Indeed, even if Napster did just invent its New Artist program to stave off a lawsuit, the fact is that they already have more artists signed to it and authorizing the sharing of their songs than there are artists signed with all major labels! Similarly, it is almost certain that Sony came up with the "time-shifting is fair use" idea after they had been sued. Luckily, the correct standard from the Sony case is not when the noninfringing use was first advertised, or whether the defendent even considered such a noninfringing use for their technology. The standard is, once again, whether the service is "capable of significant noninfringing use." This is a direct quotation from the Supreme Court's Sony decision (emphasis added). So long as this condition is fulfilled (and it very obviously is), Napster can't be held liable.

I have no problems with judges throwing the book at offenders who are smug about their crimes and lie and try to use technicalities to squirm out. The judge did this in the Microsoft trial and did the same here too.

If you do consider the Supreme Court's precedent setting standard in a perfectly analagous case a "technicality", then I guess you have no problem outlawing VCR's which, incidentally, now provide the majority of MPAA income. Meanwhile, the judicial system functions on the basis of laws and precedents, whether you call them "technicalities" or not. MS was found guilty because it was determined that they broke the law, as it is set by Congress and interpreted by judicial precedent, "technicalities" and all. The fact that they were arrogant (much more so than Napster) about it didn't help their case, but is no reason to find them guilty. In the Napster case, on the other hand, Napster is clearly not liable, both on the basis of the applicable laws (the AHRA and the safe harbor provision of the DMCA) and on the basis of a Supreme Court precedent, the strongest judicial precedent in the land.

Remember, Napster's defense is that they do not pirate the music themselves, they only provide a service for sharing the files.

Actually, no. If you read Napster's legal filings you will find that this is not their defense. Nor can it be. They are being sued for contributory copyright infringment, not actual copyright infringement, and contributory copyright infringement is an uncontroversial part of copyright law.

Instead, Napster's first line of defense is quite a bit more simple: the sharing of files on Napster is not illegal. No one is breaking the law on Napster, and thus neither is Napster. The basis for this shocking (well, shocking if you get your news from large corporations as most of us do) argument is quite simple: the 1992 Audio Home Recording Act, which quite plainly makes all noncommercial copying of recorded music legal. Since no one is making any money or getting any commercial benefit for sharing their music on Napster, there is no copyright infringement going on, and thus no contributory infringement.

The RIAA is arguing that when the bought and paid for the AHRA in 1992, that wasn't what they meant for it to say. What they meant for it to say was that noncommercial copying was ok only if it was done on DAT, because the other part of the AHRA allowed the RIAA to charge ridiculous royalties on every DAT tape sold to compensate for the loss of royalties due to copying. This isn't what the AHRA actually says, but the recording industry hopes the judge doesn't notice (so far it looks as if she hasn't).

Now, Napster's second line of defense, if the above fails, is to note that a significant portion of the uses of Napster are fair uses. According to the standard set by the Supreme Court in the MPAA vs Sony Betamax case, this is all that is necessary for a provider to be absolved of contributory infringement. (Actually, according to the Betamax case, it is only necessary that the system be capable of substantial noninfringing uses.) There is little doubt that this is true. A surprisingly large portion of Napster traffic is that of unsigned artists/artists who have explicitly allowed their material to be traded. Indeed, there are several times more artists in Napster's "New Artists" program than there are signed by the major labels--and all of them allow trading of their music. Furthermore, many copies of RIAA-copyrighted songs are made for protected fair use purposes, like sampling and space-shifting.

Amazingly enough, Judge Patel managed to get around this point by insisting that it doesn't matter that Napster is capable of substantial noninfringing uses, or even used for substantial noninfringing uses, it only matters that its "primary" use is infringing. No matter that this test was explicitly rejected by the Supreme Court. No mention of how she even figured out that Napster's "primary" use was infringing, except that Napster's internal memos alluded to it. Well, Sony's advertising for the Betamax played up its infringing uses and didn't mention its fair uses, but the Supreme Court ruled that it doesn't matter what the company says, only if the product is also capable of substantial noninfringing uses. Judge Patel doesn't seem to care.

But Judge Patel is going to get overturned on appeal, and that will be sustained by the Supreme Court. Without a new law to replace the AHRA and change the Betamax standard, the RIAA doesn't have a legal leg to stand on. Indeed, they're pushing for such a law now; they held hearings on it a couple months ago, although the Senate wasn't too impressed by the RIAA's whining this time around.

But just so you know, the defense of "it's not us, it's the people using our system" doesn't legally hold water. Luckily all of Napster's other defenses are pretty watertight.

Well congrats. You're friends with a lot of warez d00dz. Unfortunately, this has obviously colored your view of humanity, or at least your view of Internet users. See the thing is, these days the two are getting more and more synonymous. Napster has over 20 million users these days, and chances are only a very very few of them are like your illustrious friends, willing to spend hours of their time working on entirely suboptimal solutions for avoiding paying for a CD. (i.e. downloading MP3s, converting them to .wav and recording on a CD-R. Gak! Talk about a humongous waste of time for a finished product barely more listenable than a tape!)

As it turns out, there is apparently a large body of independent evidence backing up my claims that most Napster users engage in significant fair uses like sampling and space-shifting, and that the majority of their "non-fair uses" (if even there are any, since the AHRA explicitly legalizes all noncommercial copying of audio recordings) do not displace purchases which would otherwise be made. The Jupiter study is the only one I can find which has been released to the news media. (Sorry for relying on the press release; the actual study, like all their studies, is only available for a very large fee. However, it's worth noting that this was an independent study, not commissioned by Napster.) However, there are references to many others which substantially agree with the Jupiter study in Napster's court filings. I suggest you read the Opposition to RIAA's Motion for Preliminary Injunction (182 kB PDF) and Napster's Brief Appealing Preliminary Injunction to the Ninth Circuit (216kB PDF) in particular. They not only include quite a lot of information on the various independent studies of Napster (plus the ones commissioned by Napster and the RIAA), but a lot of other data indicating that much if not most Napster traffic is non-infringing, even if the AHRA's safeguarding of non-commercial copying is disregarded, and that Napster use helps CD sales.

Beyond that general statement, I'd like to point out a few specific places where your argument is particularly lacking.

[re: the health of the publishing industry in the face of libraries] It's been empirically proven. The industry is healthy, despite the existence numerous of libraries.

LOL! This in no way precludes the fact that libraries have damaged book sales; all it says is that libraries haven't put the publishers out of business. Meanwhile, not only are the RIAA-member labels "empirically" "healthy", but their profits are the highest they have ever been in history, rising a remarkable 8% in the first half of 2000 over a year earlier, all whilst Napster's user base was ramping from 0 to 20 million! There are probably more Napster users than library users, and the recording industry has never had it this good.

[re: the Jupiter study]I don't see how they could gather a reliable sample. Napster is essentially anonymous, it would be virtually impossible to get a truely random sample here. They obviously did not do a before and after, and most likely it was not random in the least. The biggest hint we get is:
"But when we conducted our consumer survey, controlled for key music purchasing factors-such as existing spending level, age, income, gender, and online tenure-we still found that Napster usage is one of the strongest determinants of increased music buying." If you ever studied statistics, you would know this does not mean anything like: Those who start using napster, start buying more music. Quite the contrary, it means: Those who use napster, are more likely to buy music. In other words, Jupiter looked at a certain population based on the above controls, and determined that those who used napster were 45% more likely to buy CDs than those who appeared the same based on those criteria and did not use the service. The problem with this statistic is that it does not tell you whether or not those same music lovers in the selected populations would be more inclined to use napster and would be self-selecting in the survey. It does not deny the possibility that those users DECREASED their CD purchases since they started using napster

Unfortunately, your reading comprehension is apparently not so good. How, pray tell, do you conclude that Jupiter "obviously did not do a before and after" study when one of the factors they controlled for was "existing spending level"??? When the press release specifically said on numerous occasions that Napster users had "increased" spending levels rather than "greater" or "larger" or "higher" spending levels?? (For the English-challenged "increase" is a verb meaning to become greater or larger; it explicitly implies a period of time and a before-and-after comparison.) And for crying out loud, why on earth would a firm as respected as Jupiter release a study which made the horrifically obvious error of only measuring whether Napster users (i.e. music fans) buy more music than non-Napster users (non-music fans)? And by the way, in case you have never taken a statistics course, it is dreadfully easy to find a random selection of people and to measure their before/after music buying. One simple method for doing so:

1) Call random people on the phone (all telephone-based poll studies are seeded with randomly generated telephone numbers, checked only to make sure they are valid numbers).

2) Ask the person answering if they have ever used Napster. If no, thank them for their time and call someone else.

3) If yes, ask them a variety of questions on their demographic information/Napster using habits/music buying habits. For example, "how many CD's a month did you buy before you started using Napster?" and, "how many CD's a month have you bought since you started using Napster?"

4) Compile and realize that Napster use causes a 45% increase in CD buying over before the same person used Napster.

Obviously you lack experience with the internet and the vast quantities of warez (pirated software) available to those who know how to get it. If you had, you'd know that the warez groups are able to distribute warez out to thousands, and millions, of people with just one copy, in a compressed format, such that if even one byte is corrupt, the entire package is bad. Similar systems could easily be setup within napster, and in fact, there were atleast such groups when I used mp3s more regularly. They took responsibility for ensuring a clean rip and a decent encoding, not to mention distribution [which is largely moot now] With decreased file size sensitivity, these groups could essentially gaurantee very high quality mp3s.

...Combine this with the above mentioned "mp3 group", and it could happen with reliability [i.e., check summing schemes] What's more, these groups can get and distribute the songs before others can even buy them, they don't even half to wait....but people do anyways. I encourage you to look at the warez groups, it may give you a little insight here.

And I encourage you to actually go on Napster, as it will give you a great deal more insight into how songs actually get uploaded these days. Alright, I'll do it for you. Since we've used the new N'Sync CD as our example, I just searched for "It's Gonna Be Me" off of that album. In its current incarnation, Napster is limited to returning 100 results. But of those 100 results, there were fully 40 different filesizes. Thus we find that out of 100 files shared, there were 40 different rips. (To be fair, a couple of these were from N'Sync's performance at the MTV Music Awards; on the other hand, I believe all these live performances had the same filesize, so it's possible we would have gotten more source files if they were excluded.) To make sure that "It's Gonna Be Me" wasn't a bit of a fluke, I did the same experiment with Britney Spears' "Baby One More Time". 60 different source files in the first 100 results. I think this pretty much demolishes your argument. Now let's take a look at why.

You made the comparison to the warez scene and to the early MP3 scene, both of which you are apparently more familiar with than with Napster. First, let's go through the typical process by which a new game gets warezed.

1) A member of a warez cl4n, typically picked out in advance, buys the game the first day it comes out.

2) Then they get out their debugger and their disassembler and get to work. Most games these days ship with either a CD check mechanism or a key input mechanism as copy protection.

3) The cracker determines which is at work, or whether a more novel copy protection scheme has been utilized.

4a) If it's a CD check mechanism, the cracker "simply" needs to find the routine called in memory by the CD check (with his debugger), go there and figure out how it works (with his disassembler), find out where it is called from, and what it calls when the CD check is passed (debugger and disassembler needed here), then go back to the original calling function and hand edit the hex machine code to skip the CD check and call the function called after the check would normally be passed. Also they need to hope the scheme isn't more complicated than this, that the CD isn't expected any other time during the game. Oh, it is? You just need to change all of those functions too. And repackage the game with a new installer which copies files which would have otherwise been left on the CD off it. And maybe edit out any wasteful pieces of code, like video and CD audio tracks, that would make a full HD installation too large. All of this with your hex editor working on assembly or with an editor working on obfuscated decompiled junk. Then you need to test your edited game, make sure all the packaging works and installs correctly, and ship it out.

4b) If it's a key check, well you're in luck--you might be able to bypass it according to the above method. Or maybe you can't. In which case you need to code your own key generator. Don't worry; it's just a matter of finding the key-checking function with your debugger/disassembler, and reverse engineering it. In possibly obfuscated assembly code. What if it's a true cryptographic one-way hash? Well, it's back to square one. If you're lucky, though, you'll be able to figure it out and generate working keys. Now you just need to code that algorithm into your own app, package it with the original game, and ship it out.

5) Where do you post to? Well, you probably ship it to your warez d00dz buddies first, and then maybe you go on IRC for a couple hours to brag and barter for other warez. Or maybe you upload it to a ratio FTP site. Or maybe you post it on your own warez website, in which case you have to set up banner ads which will pay you a lot for click-throughs, because you'll require a password which can only be gotten by clicking on a series of ads.

6) Be sure to include a little text file detailing your crack, shouting out to your warez budz, etc. Sign it with a clever handle, hopefully something with lots of z's and x's. Be sure to include some neat ASCII art to top it off!

Phew. I may have gotten the process a bit off (you might be able to correct me; I was never into the whole BBS/warez scene, although some friends were), but I think it's mostly right. And who actually goes through the trouble to get warez? Kids with a lot of time on their hands. There's emphatically no Napster for warez, so the only way to get some is to have some (i.e. for ratio sites) or to jump through a lot of hoops on IRC or the web. Even if noncommercial software sharing were legal like noncommercial music sharing (it's not; the AHRA explicitly excludes software), little of what goes on in the warez community would qualify; ratio sites, barter exchanges on IRC, and even forced banner ad clicks all qualify as "commercial" under current law (the DMCA). Sharing files on Napster, on the other hand, is not, because there is no quid pro quo exchange.

Alrighty. Now, let's take a look at how the average song gets on Napster.

1) Someone buys a CD.

2) They are one of the millions of people who want to listen to it on their Rio/other portable MP3 player.

3) They rip it using one-click ripping software included with their Rio etc.

4) Some (large) portion of users will have their default MP3 directory shared on Napster; others may have to *gasp* move the file to their Napster directory.

5) Log onto Napster to get more MP3's, and don't even notice that you are sharing a new file.

That's it. In other words, there is a vast vast population (we're talking in the millions) who doesn't have to do anything intentional to provide a source file for Napster. Most of them certainly must realize what's going on, and probably many are slightly proud of providing new source material to Napster, since it's a form of giving back to a great service and community. But they don't have to go out of their way to do so. Furthermore, there is emphatically no subculture surrounding MP3's to increase one's standing in, and no way of signing "your" rips anyways (technically you could use the ID3 tags, although no one ever looks at those). There is no ego boost to doing something that thousands of people are going to do "accidentally" just by using their Rio's and signing on to Napster.

Frankly, your notion of an "MP3 ripping group" is anachronistic and laughable. The proportion of the 20 million Napster users who would even care who ripped their MP3s, much less be impressed by them the way warez kids are by warez clans, is miniscule. And in any case, they are the sort of people you used to hang out with on #mp3--the ones who would trade MP3s just as easily if Napster and every other peer-to-peer program were shut down.

They are the type who will actually buy huge hard drives and work out the technicalities of hooking up real speakers to a computer (or converting MP3's to .wav and recording on a CD-R! God that's funny!) just so they can "save money" and be all b4d4ss. They used to make up a significant proportion of the MP3 sharing community; now the vast majority of MP3 users also buy CD's, and indeed buy more CD's then they did before, as a result of their MP3 collections. For them, for most people, MP3 complements purchased music, not replaces it.

Books build on each other and on the mind in a way that music does not [part of the reason why libraries are key]. One can go to a library, and providing they have enough diligence, teach themselves hundreds of usefull things--even more than you think you know. The reader can improve themselves in ways that society can grasp and appreciate.

Music may be marvelous, but it is simply not interchangable with the many forms of books. Society has long placed a preference on reading, and has regarded music as a form of entertainment. Consider, for a moment, what portion of your curiculuum has been dedicated to books versus music. Most likely, your answer is something around 1/40th. If you were told that your kids weren't going to read anymore, but would listen to music in class instead, how would you react? You know damn well how you would react...It's a question of priorities, just one more reason why you can't quite make that analogy.

Books are more informational than music. Books have several academic uses that music has no analogue for. There is no musical equivalent to the textbook. However, the majority of library check-outs are for entertainment and artistic pleasure, and from a cultural or artistic perspective, there is no arguing that books are any more or less "superior" than music. As for why literature is more often studied in schools than is music, it's generally for the following reasons:

1) Music, like visual art, is more difficult to appreciate than are books. Most music is either not terribly artisticly redeeming, or is too subtle and complex for serious study much below the college level.

2) Furthermore, books tend to be more concrete and thus easier to teach than music or visual art. It's easier to write a paper on a book than a song, especially when you have more practice with the first. This doesn't mean they're any less worthy of individual study or appreciation, though.

3) Habit and prejudice.

In any case, there is no good argument that fictional books are more socially redeeming than music, and no good argument why we should have an almost infinite selection of (government-subsidized no less!) free books while we have to either pay for music or listen to the 150 predetermined hits/year the RIAA purchases radio time for.