it seems that your main point is that altho sharing music on napster is bad, metallica's invasion of privacy in this case is worse. but however you choose to justify it, downloading music from napster _is_ stealing music. sure, i've heard the arguments that a lot of people end up buying the music they download, but that doesn't change the fact that they stole it in the first place.
but to kind of brush over this and call metallica the real bad guys seems wrong to me. metallica is doing what they can to prevent the theft of their art. the theft of stuff is generally seen as a pretty bad crime in our society, and once you commit this crime you should be willing to put up with the consequences. if you're going to use the 'it's technically illegal, but it's kind of okay' excuse to defend napster, i believe you should extend metallica the same courtesy.
for the record, i have downloaded my share of music from napster, and i personally believe the argument that it does more good than bad in the end. but i am also personally willing to deal with the consequences of my actions. i think that metallica is being pretty bitchy about this whole issue; they're not the most financially strapped band in the world. but i also believe that they are in their right to be bitchy. let's try and be fair about this and consider that an invasion of property ownership might warrant a (relativly slight!) invasion of privacy.
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it seems that your main point is that altho sharing music on napster is bad, metallica's invasion of privacy in this case is worse. but however you choose to justify it, downloading music from napster _is_ stealing music. sure, i've heard the arguments that a lot of people end up buying the music they download, but that doesn't change the fact that they stole it in the first place.
but to kind of brush over this and call metallica the real bad guys seems wrong to me. metallica is doing what they can to prevent the theft of their art. the theft of stuff is generally seen as a pretty bad crime in our society, and once you commit this crime you should be willing to put up with the consequences. if you're going to use the 'it's technically illegal, but it's kind of okay' excuse to defend napster, i believe you should extend metallica the same courtesy.
for the record, i have downloaded my share of music from napster, and i personally believe the argument that it does more good than bad in the end. but i am also personally willing to deal with the consequences of my actions. i think that metallica is being pretty bitchy about this whole issue; they're not the most financially strapped band in the world. but i also believe that they are in their right to be bitchy. let's try and be fair about this and consider that an invasion of property ownership might warrant a (relativly slight!) invasion of privacy.