Linus Torvalds et al. on Napster

ContinuousPark writes "MSNBC/WSJ has this piece with brief comments on Napster by Linus, Larry Wall, Bruce Perens and Eric Raymond. "

Comments

This should have been on the front page, but..

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..that wasn't James Hetfield saying "Grabasses Bad," it was Linus himself.

"Piracy is bad," says Linus Torvalds, creator of Linux, when asked about the matter. "Of course you should be able to sue over copyrights. The one good lawsuit in the whole Napster case is by Metallica: a suit by the actual authors. While it's probably motivated mostly by money, I can still at least hope that there is a strong feeling of morals there, too."

This isn't what your average /. reader wants to hear. They're looking for the "Oh, it's okay, go ahead and steal all the music you want!" Still think it isn't theft? Listen to Larry Wall:

"Open Source should be about giving things away voluntarily," [Wall] says. "When you force someone to give you something, it's no longer giving, it's stealing. Persons of leisurely moral growth often confuse giving with taking."

In other words, if Metallica doesn't want you to have free MP3s of their work, they don't have to let you. Sure, they may be shooting themselves in the foot by alienating their fans, but it's their right to do so!

If artists are going to jump on the MP3 bandwagon, what they don't need is for people to go downloading their music without permission. They need to be educated as to why MP3 is in their best interest, i.e. how it can make them money, and how they can use it to escape the RIAA's iron grip.

Personally I think Linus hit the nail right on the head when he said, "And then [the RIAA] have the gall to use the holy word 'copyright' to try to protect their shipping control. That, I consider to be immoral. Go, Metallica. Die, RIAA."
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Re:This should have been on the front page, but..

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Oops, this story did make it to the front page.
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