Peter Sinclair: Philosophy swap as Napster nabbed

They're going down like ninepins. Last week, this column was devoted to the death of Deja.

This week it mourns the passing of Napster - or at least, Napster as we knew it.

In a statement late last week which hovered somewhere between a press release and a death-knell, Bertelsmann, the giant conglomerate which owns BMG Records and has been foremost among Napster's persecutors, announced it had obtained warrants for an equity stake in the file-swapping company that might range as high as 58 per cent, conditional on creating a music-for-money service with its new partner.

Meantime, its loan of over $US50 million may not be used by Napster to defend itself in the ongoing copyright battle in which BMG remains a player.

Through teeth presumably ungritted, newish Napster chief executive Hank Barry, a music-industry old-timer, was insisting the network was still "about file-sharing, file-sharing, file-sharing ... "

Rubbish. It was now clearly about cashflow, cashflow, cashflow ... You'll find a Napster apologia on their website.

Some members of the RIAA have already started dancing on the grave.

"The US recording industry is committed to bringing music online to its fans," said Hilary B. Rosen, chief of the RIAA, an organisation which has so far displayed an almost pathological aversion to the idea.

"Hopefully this development is just one more positive step in that direction."

Such hypocrisy is likely to cut little, if any, ice with Napster's many millions of users, especially its credit-cardless legions of teenagers who learned last week that they would soon be asked to welcome Napster's transformation into a subscription-based music-swapping service.

On the evidence so far, they are remarkably resistant to the idea of being told what to do with their own property, let alone paying for the privilege of doing it. Particularly when the chief executive of Seagram, owner of Universal Music Group indulged in some unseemly gloating at Napster's expense, scoffing at its proposed $US4.95 monthly membership fee.

"We think a $15 number is much closer to the mark," he said.

"You should regard it as somewhere between unlikely and very unlikely that we would be licensing our music to a service that would be remunerating us on the level of $4.95 a month."

This seems an expression of the reflex avarice which has so discredited the music industry in the public mind, and which inspired Napster's technology in the first place.

You'd think that about $US5 a month from millions upon millions of people might be enough for anyone.

It is also the attitude which, it can be said with complete certainty, will drive music-lovers into the arms of Gnutella, FreeNet, File Rogue or one of their kin - somewhere, at any rate, far beyond the smothering reach of the Bertelsmann bear-hug ...

* Contact Peter Sinclair at petersinclair@email.com

Bookmarks


HOW TO DO IT: Jerusalem, Tactics

Let's applaud the success of two Telecom-sponsored local sites, bookmarked previously on this page, at the New York Festival's New Media Competition. Chosen from some 900 entries from around the global village, both took bronze in the arts and secondary education categories respectively, a huge accomplishment. Jerusalem celebrated the dance opera of New Zealand choreographer Michael Parmenter, and the ingenious animations of TACTICS were an education and a delight in the run-up to the America's Cup.

Advisory: revisit and rejoice

HOW NOT TO: Spectacular Cards

Some of the most hauntingly beautiful photographs your columnist has seen - the work of Fay Looney - are combined at this new local card-site with one of the most user-unfriendly ordering systems he has encountered anywhere. This object-lesson in how not to do it requires the user to write down on a bit of paper a series of code-numbers every step of the way - FL506 is a stunning view of Rangitoto from Cheltenham Beach; SV5 specifies a blank card (no verse); FT3 selects the Monotype Corsiva font; and so on and on for page after page, a journey which ends in an extraordinarily complex order-form into which you must type (correctly) your various jottings.

Advisory: too hard, Fay!

Links


Deja

Napster

Bertelsmann

Napster/Bertelsmann Q&A

RIAA

Universal Music Group

gnutella

New York Festival

Jerusalem - A Dance Opera

Tactics

Spectacular Cards