Slashdot Mirror
Ask Metallica About Napster
Notes before you post:
1) Due to an anticipated high volume of questions, please confine yourself to one question per post, and keep it short! As usual, we'll allow 24 hours for posting and moderation, then select 10 - 15 of the highest-moderated questions and send them to our interview guest(s) by e-mail. Answers will be posted as soon as we get them back, hopefully within the next week.
2) Please read some of what other people have had to say before posting; Richard Stallman made some comments about Napster and Metallica in his interview here earlier this week. Bruce Perens has written an interesting piece on Napster and Free Software which we also suggest reading, along with Jon Katz's most recent editorial about this brou-ha-ha. We also suggest a fast look at this story (and the comments attached to it), and possibly a quick perusal of other material on the subject previously published here and elsewhere.
3. Credit where credit is due: Emmett Plant set this up. It wasn't easy. Please thank him profusely. He deserves it.
Lars/Metallica, how on earth can you hold these two ideals, which are POLAR OPPOSITES? You say that it should be an artist's decision whether or not they want to participate in this new medium, yet you also say you want to kill it outright. My question is this: How do you feel that putting Napster out of business and thereby removing that right-to-chose from EVERY other artist is fair to anyone but yourselves? Also, how do you justify this point of view to fans of non-signed bands who depend on Napster for distribution?
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Just lurking, thanks!
Also, do you realize the amount of live material that Napster users share? I own 9 Metallica CD's, and have no less than 30 mp3's of live concerts, interviews, etc. I'm hardly "ripping you off". However, I am an avid Napster user, because it's a great way to find rare live material. Why don't you make high-quality mp3's of an occasional concert available on your web site?
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Just lurking, thanks!
(1) This is a multi-part question. Many people think that the RIAA's claims of harm to artists are way overblown. Has any research been done on the actual effects that MP3 distribution has on artists? For instance, do you know that the people downloading the music do not own the albums? Do you know whether they actually keep and listen to the MP3s rather than purchasing the cds, or do they delete what they don't like and buy what they do like? Could MP3s actually be helping record sales by exposing people to more music that they would not have purchased because they had never heard it? Has there been any investigation at all of what's really going on before the lawsuits were filed?
(2) Is the availability of MP3s allowing people to be more discriminating in their purchases since they can listen to an album before deciding to buy it? Do you believe that people should or should not be able to do this?
(3) Do you believe that a significant number of your fans will download your music to avoid paying for it?
(4) Do you believe that the current model of distribution is becoming outdated and that a better model should be found that eliminates much of the overhead associated with the cost of a cd today?
(5) Is it desirable or possible, in your opinion, to link artists and their fans more directly so that fans feel like they can support the artists they like without feeling like they've been taken to the cleaners by the record companies?
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Are you free to answer any way you please in this interview? Or has your label requested that your responses to our questions be reviewed by their lawyers before being posted back to Slashdot? And if so, did you agree to this?
I really need to feel like you guys are speaking your minds, and not just saying what the lawyers think is okay for you to say. No master pulling your strings...
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Hand me that airplane glue and I'll tell you another story.
You mentioned that we need laws banning file-sharing software such as Napster. How far should these laws go? If in 10 years time, computer users labour under draconian restrictions on communications software under what is titled the Lars Ulrich Digital Copy Enforcement Act, to the effect that sharing music files (of any sort) without the digital signature of a major record label or copyright authority becomes grounds for loss of Internet access and/or legal sanctions, how will you feel about the fans and small-time bands whose attempts at networking are crippled by these restrictions?
Almost twenty years ago is a memory you recalled once in an interview that I read in a magazine I can't remember at this time. It was basically describing how the two of you used to drive around in the late Cliff Burton's blue Volkswagen listening over and over to a tape simply labelled 'MISFITS' on a piece of masking tape. Despite the fact you couldn't stand it after a while (and Cliff's drumming on the dashboard), the fact here is that you were practicing something that most people in the world do: listening to "pirated" music.
This tape was obviously not a store purchased tape, and while it could be argued that Mr. Burton did at that time (if not later) legally own copies of the music on that cassette, it was still, by legal definition, an illegal copy.
I'm not saying Napster is right or wrong. I'm not saying what you did back then is right or wrong. I'm trying to get at the idea that you've been there; having copies of music. Personally, I'm more like Mr. Ulrich in the way that I collect a large amount of music, and quite frankly, even though I have numerous opportunities to make a cassette or CD of someone's album, I much prefer to have the physical store-bought item (liner note, album photographs, etc). However, this is something that something that many people do and even you yourselves have.
Allowing this free exchange of music shouldn't hurt you, Metallica, much. Isn't it true that most of your revenue comes from the sale of Metallica related items and concert sales? Surely the potential loss of sales due to Napster trading isn't going to effect your bottom line to a dramatic extent.
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Never hit your grandmother with a shovel, for it leaves a bad impression on her mind...
When I heard that you were accusing 300,000 people of pirating your music I thought to myself, "That's funny - there's no way they could have listened to all that music in a single weekend."
Do you guys actually have any semblance of proof that all those songs that Napster lists are actually Metallica songs? As far as I know, it is perfectly legal for me to name my MP3s whatever I want. So if I want to call something "Enter Sandman" or "One", I'm well within my rights to do so. It certainly doesn't constitute a copyright violation. It would seem to me that the only way to prove that people actually pirated your music is to download each of the hundreds of thousands of tracks and make sure they are Metallica songs. Have you guys done this? Assuming the answer is no (I don't see how you could have), do you really expect your lawsuit to carry any sort of legal weight, or is it just a ruse, just a scare tactic?
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I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
This question may seem trite, but it isn't. Please bear with me:
Let's say you guys were living in the Star Trek universe, where everyone has a replicator. A replicator will cough up a copy of anything you want (food, clothing, 1GHz Pentiums, etc.). So although people still work (because time is still a scarce resource), nobody bothers trying to sell the artifacts of their work, since it's rather pointless.
So: If you guys were living in the Star Trek universe, would you still do what you do? That is, if it were effectively impossible for you to sell the artifacts of your work because everyone could make copies of it, would you still do creative work, or would you do something else? (Remember, in Star Trek-land, you have a replicator, too, so you don't need to worry about getting basic needs met.)
(This is a relevant question because digital media today operates in exactly the same manner as Star Trek replicators.)
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
The responses from Metallica during the chat for the most part were in the instantly recognisable "canned press-release-like" drone, although there were a few responces that seemed more honest and off-the-cuff.
I asked them to compare MP3 distribution to radioplay. Like Napster, the radio networks are basically a huge legitimate way to transmit information (in the form of music) to users.
My question then was to why is one method considered illegal while the other is legal and seemingly OK with Metallica (I have heard Metallica songs on the radio, so I assume they have no problem with stations broadcasting their music).
There response was that MP3's are of higher quality.
So what if someone would encode an MP3 at a bitrate producing a quality similar to radio and distributed that one instead? They had nothing to say to this one.
I'm sure everybody's going to ask this, but I might as well go ahead.
In several articles about your actions against Napster, you were quoted as saying something like (paraphrased): "Napster takes our music and treats it as a commodity, instead of as art."
My question is, how is it that trading your music for free over the internet makes it a simple commodity, but selling it for far too much money though record companies and stores makes it somehow "art"? It seems to me that by selling your music at the high prices that most music CDs go for these days makes it more of a commodity than giving it away for free. A CD probably costs you about $2 once you take into account the cost of materials, of manufacturing, of distribution, and of actually making the music itself. That estimate is a bit high, I've seen much lower figures. If you were truly producing art rather than a commodity, why do you charge twenty bucks or more for each CD?
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
If you were offered the opportunity to sell your songs online, where listeners could pay $1 - $2 per song (and NOT have to but the entire album), and have the ability to preview them, and this was all done in a way that prevented unauthorized sharing, would you accept? How about an online jukebox, where fans could pay, say, 25 cents to hear a song once?
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Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
While suing Napster and such may accomplish your goals in the short term, how will you continue if and when Napster-clones move to offshore servers, thus out of reach of both US and any other country's copyright laws?
RMS: "Metallica justifies their lawsuit saying they think it is an outrage that their music has become a "commodity". Apparently they think music is a commodity when shared between fans, but not when large companies sell copies through record stores. What hypocritical absurdity!" I couldnt say it better. Does Metallica want to stay with the "commodity" argument?
There have been recent allegations that it was a lawyer or other spokesperson participating in the chat instead of Metallica or that the person answering was giving scripted answer. Evidence to back this up comes from the speed with which some answers came back -- faster than many experienced programmers would type them -- and from their generic irrelevancy to many of the questions asked.
Which members of the band where actually doing the typing if any, or was another person answering for the band?
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
I'll admit it, I learned about your music through hearing mp3's of it on friends' computers. I found that I really liked your stuff as well. Enough that I bought a CD and am probably going to buy a few more. With that in mind, have you considered taking a couple of songs, a representative sample of your work as a whole, and releasing them online for free distribution? I think you'd really open yourselves up to a lot of people who don't know your stuff and certainly would indebt those of us who support alternative music distribution methods to you for being leaders in the industry. You guys rock, keep up the awesome music.
-Mike McLaughlin
MP3's have been around for atleast 5 years. Many people, myself included, have bought CD's because we've heard tracks from MP3's. I bought S&M because of MP3's I've heard off of the album, I also bought 5 other CD's last year because of it. The only CD player I have is my CD-ROM drive in my computer, so I usually do not buy them at all. With the RIAA posting a 12.3% 90 billion dollar sales INCREASE last year, these two peices of information would suggest that MP3's are generating even MORE sales for artists through "word of mouth" promotion. From this information, how do you justify your actions, and how can you even say you're doing it for the benifit of all artists, as your actions would seem to be doing the opposite?
Ignoring for now the moral arguments, do you not think that you are facing a sisyphus task in attempting to stop the people from copying information when that is exactly what the information society is all about? Perhaps you can manage to stop Napster, but that will not stop the 330,000 people who you claim have been copying Metallica songs using their service, they will simply have to find another medium to do it in, and as long they are connected to the Internet they will find one.
The reason that you will find much hostility in this forum against your actions is not that we care a lot about copying music. Most of the people here are programmers and system adminstrators, we make decent livings and can afford to buy the albums we want. But we are also people who live on and love the Internet and the freedom of speech it brings and we fear that the same arguments you use for arguing the end of Napster could be used to force shut any forum where information can be spread openly and freely. We fear that efforts like yours will lead an authoritarian cyberspace, where individual freedom means nothing in the face of corporations and states who decide what we can say, what we can do, what we can watch, and to a large extent who we are. A world where information creator and consumer alike are puppets to the same masters pulling all the strings.
Those of us who are endeavouring to build the networks of tomorrow have no malicious intent against you, we want for future society to reward and encourage art and innovation just as much as you do. But there is something we love more then art and music, and it is Freedom. If your idea of how to solve the issues that artists face in the information age is to deprive us of that Freedom, you will not be successful.
As the world turns, technology changes, and society changes with it. What made sense yesterday no longer makes sense tomorrow, and going back is not an option. We do not need to be enemies in this matter, for we have the same goals. So why not call back the lawyers, the litigators, and the guns, and instead turn your efforts to trying to build a tomorrow that promotes both innovation and freedom, creation and integrity? For that is the only way that anyone stands to gain.
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We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
Metallica retains copyright [rare], but I presume has granted an exclusive licence to Elektra. Does your contract oblige you to enforce your copyright? How vigorously? Can you post the terms? Is this the main motivation behind your suits?
I use Macs for work, Linux for education, and Windows for cardplaying.
If MP3 distrobution is such an anathema to the possibility of profiting from music, and MP3s are costing the industry so much money...
How do you explain the fact that CD sales INCREASED by more than a billion dollars over the last year, and how do you explain the success of artists such as Limp Bizkit, Check D, The Offspring, Less Than Jake, Phish, The Grateful Dead, etc...
... all of whom take a very positive view of fans trading their mucic, many of whom have been very vocal in supporting the MP3 format, and a number of whom provide archives or links to archives of MP3s, on their own websites?
Imagine all the people...
With other programs such as Gnutella, Freenet, etc. that are anonymous and are not controlled by a centralized company which you could sue, like Naptser, don't you think that you should be spending your time and money developing your own Internet solutions from which you can profit, rather than trying to push back the flow of technology which will only become more and more difficult to combat?
- I like pudding.
The fair use law says that I can make copies of a Metallica CD I buy for my own personal use. An example being I copy onto a tape because I only have a tape player in my car. This is legal. Along the same lines, do you think it's wrong for me to download that same Metallica CD that I have purchased, using Napster to my MP3 player so I can take it to class? It's true that if I were technically savy, I could convert all of the CD myself to MP3's, but logically is this not a legal use of Napster, so that 100,000 people don't have to waste time and effort doing this conversion when it's already been done?
- I like pudding.
How much money do you get from the sale of each CD, and how much goes to the record company?
Would you be interested in a system that allows you to circumvent the record company, sell your music for half the price you do now, and get quadruple the cut that Metallica gets on each sale? The internet has the potential to offer such a system.
- I like pudding.
Your record company calls this illegal behavior. Do you think it should be?
2) Have you considered the possibility that you might be able to make more money (and avoid the huge cut that record companies take out of the price of a CD) by selling mp3 files directly to the public?
It is harder for a person to self-justify copyright infringement for a mp3 files at $0.50 a song than for $20 a CD, yet you'd make more money in the former case.
The cake is a pie
Was it your decision, your manager, your lawyers or record company that made the call to go after the Napster users?
This post brought to you by your friendly neighborhood MBA.
Hi Guys.
As a long-time listener (okay, fan, of the group's music, your actions in this case have successfully alientated me in ways that even your albums since Load haven't been able to. That being said, I do not question your right to defend being paid for your artistic efforts, I merely question your methods.
In your Yahoo! interview (http://www.metallica.com/news/2000/000503.html), you claim that Napster "cuts out the middle man." My question is this:
Why don't -you- cut out the middle man instead? Screw the record companies' bloated marketing system, screw the warehousing distribution juggernaut, and still make money by -using- the Internet and the emerging formats (MP3 included) to distribute your music directly to your fans.
As it stands, you've taken a hugely unpopular stance, and have irreprably damaged your reputations as being rebellious in the face of The Man. You've become The Man, boys. And nobody is sorrier to see that happen than your true, old-school, die-hard fans.
I won't burn my old concert T's, but your actions made that previously unthinkable idea cross my mind.
Rafe
V^^^^V
Rafe
Opinions expressed by the author may not actually exist in the wild.
You have said repeatedly that your goal is to put napster out of business. This despite the fact that there are already alternatives to this (Gnutella) that seem to be so distributed as to render a lawsuit against one central artery useless (as there is none). There is a saying that the internet routes around censorship, and it appears that even if napster were to go completely away, the internet would route around this by completely cutting out the "middle man" you spoke of in your yahoo chat.
When this happens, will you then go after the individuals who are trading your songs?
Even though Metallica may be profiting off of the current situation, 99% of the other bands are not. Indeed, distribution of MP3's will only bolster sales of the bands that are not the top .1% of the pop-chart barrell. As more and more technology comes out, and more and more anti-independent artist laws (ala, the DMCA, WIPO, etc.), the recording industry will have a very scary monopolistic future, where the consumer will pay per song listening licenses, of which nearly all profits will go to the publisher- who will in turn control content and artistic control over the music. The trend in regulation may eventually turn out like the movie industry- artists are effectively not allowed to create and profit off of their work without having the hands of the publisher and government involved "protecting" the rights of the artist.
My question for Metallica is, while your suit against Napster may be good for your profits in the short term- how can you justify the long term deleterious effects of the such a lawsuit on not only the indie artist scene, but to bands such as yourself, trying to recoup any profits that have been previously taken away by the middlemen (publishers)?
I hate to say it, Metallica, but as far as I can see, you are slitting your own throats, and taking everyone else down with you.
I'm a huge Metallica fan. Lars is the reason I'm a drummer today. But something in an interview with James from "Behind the music" (I think) when he was talking about how he started to like the Misfits, when Cliff gave him a tape and they played it in the van all summer long, made me curious. Have any of you (Metallica) ever copied a tape, record, 8-track, CD, etc. from a friend? This is an infringement of copyright isn't it? I don't mean to make you seem evil, but is it simply the scale of Napster/mp3's that is of concern? PS I feel very bad about doing this as I tend to side with Metallica on the issue! Ian Farrell
Does this mean Metallica is answering questions, or that their publicist and/or lawyer is going to do all the talking?
circa75.com
Have you read the 1989 OTA Report on home taping, which concluded that so-called "bootlegging" was no threat to music industry profits, and that it in fact served as free advertising? It turned out that the users making tapes illegally were also both more likely to buy more music themselves and more likely to encourage other fans to do so. While obviously the technology has improved significantly since 1989, aren't we really dealing with the same issues? After all, CD sales are way up, despite Napster. And you yourselves have credited bootleg tapes with your own popularity - why are you seeking to put napster out of business and deny other artists similar outlets?
First of all, let me say that I completely support musicians being paid for their work. That said, I am not going to pay $15 for an album when I only want 1 or 2 songs. In the past, that would have meant taping from a friend's copy of the album. Nowadays, I would rather just buy them directly. I want to pay for those songs. Tell me where I can purchase MP3s of your music. And by the way, some proprietary digital format that limits my ability to copy my owned (not licensed) music for my personal use is not acceptable. My question: What are you doing to make the record companies allow me to pay you? Or how about letting me pay you directly?
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Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
I have seen alot of news and posts on this subject, but I haven't seen anything adressing this side of the subject.
I am prolly close to the same age as most of the members in Metallica. I grew up between LA and SF (or the Bay Area). I was into as much hard stuff as I could get into in 80's.
This seemed to be a time when bands like Laaz Rocket, Violence, Sachred Reich, and METALLICA were trying to get themselves known. They would spend late nights putting up and passing out the flyers, AND, it seemed that all these bands would distribute their music to ANYONE who would listen. Piracy was a way to defeat the Radio gods who wouldn't play the kick-A** music of these bands.
In the 80's I lived for the "new" crappy sounding re-re-re-re-re-recorded tapes of bands coming out of LA (Rainbow) and the Bay. Eventually when my isolated spot of the desert (Antelope Valley) got the album, I'd be one of the first to by it.
Now with napster I have the 90's version of that. There are stations out there that will play the occasional "good" band (subjective opinion), and I wanna see if that was the one good song on the album, or does the whole album rock.
Nowadays I check out an album on Napster, instead of waiting forever to hear "this killer new band I got a tape of!" then I go buy it in the store. If it sucks it doesn't get listened to.
I expect a completely good album from Metallica, BUT:
#1. What about people who don't know about Metallica? (yes they do exist), and
#2. what about me using Napster in basically the same method I did back in the 80's (with tapes) to check out and buy bands now.
If you tell me I was wrong in the 80's, then I know you are truly corporate. Don't BS ME MF's!!! I was there, I know you begged people to just give you a listen!!!