Harvard Stands Up for Napster

harvardian writes: "Just thought I'd mention that Harvard joined the ranks of universities refusing to ban Napster. The story from our campus newspaper is here."

Comments

Harvard Doesn't Support Napster

[Andrew Dvorak]

Like all media, I must point out that Slashdot is not alone in titleing its posts. The title, while not entirely correct, does catch a visitors attention -- it did so mine.

Anyways, I should like to suggest that this is not an endorsement of Napster nor a bias in favor of Napster, but a stand for what is and ought to be RIGHT!

Something along the lines of the thinking of many corporations or universities influenced by many corporations:

My company publishes photos. Coincidentally, computers can be used as an application to scan and upload and redistribute photos. So I want your educational institution to ban the use of scanners because of the increased probability of somebody scanning and distributing our work.

While obviously ficticious, this analogy is not an exaggeration of how the corporations are influencing the schools.

Though, on the other hand, Napster's primary userbase trades encoded CD tracks, recordings, or otherwise contrary to the wishes of many copyright holders, without so much as contributing money to an artist (often) whose sole occupation is entertaining via their artistic talent.