The Digital Beat

Napster's second coming

Digital Beat

All the things you download

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A couple years ago, Napster founder Shawn Fanning sauntered onto MTV in a Metallica t-shirt, daring the band that most vehemently opposed piracy to knock him off his perch. So much for the rebel yell. Napster is reborn and, this time, it's shilling for the Man. Fanning might be cashing in, but Metallica gets the last laugh after all.

The news comes with the announcement that Roxio, makers of popular CD-burning technology, will be rolling out a legal version of Napster later this year. Roxio is already somewhat of a scourge in the major labels' eyes, because it's facilitating the burning of pirated tunes, among other things. According to the company, Napster will be on the up and up. Much like the music industry's own fledgling services, PressPlay and MusicNet, Napster will provide digital downloads for a monthly subscription fee. Roxio is already talking to labels about providing content. Maybe the labels will overlook the burning thing.

This isn't the first time someone's tried to help Napster go legit. Bertelsmann, the media giant, tried in vain to transform the file-sharing site into some kind of commercial project. But that proved more than disastrous. Before Bertelsmann could apply its makeover, Napster was ordered to shut down for facilitating copyright infringement. Since Napster is now being resurrected from the dead, however, Roxio can start with a clean slate. Relatively, that is.

In an amazing stroke of irony, music publishers recently filed a $17 billion lawsuit against Bertelsmann in February for funding the service when it was still illegal. How comical can it get? The big corporation that buys the punk becomes the punk by association. Now another company, Roxio, is wielding the brand to do battle with the meaner, stronger breed of file-trading sites like Kazaa, Morpheus and LimeWire. Napster, one of the most recognizable brands in the high-tech culture, is suddenly hotter than ever.

But that doesn't mean it's going to be any good. I don't care if McDonald's lends its name to a file-trading site, there's still no compelling reason for surfers to pay for online tunes. Yes, it's getting harder to suck down bootlegs -- thanks, in part, to the increased number of spoofs, fake MP3 files, flooding the networks. But with a little due diligence a T.A.T.U. fan doesn't have to work hard to get "All the Things She Said" for nothing.

The biggest irony of all is that the very people who once decried Napster will soon make their songs available for trade through the service. Now it's all too little too lame. If the major labels had hopped on the bandwagon early on, they might have found some creative way to exploit the peer-to-peer networks, rather than seeking ways to shut them down. It was inevitable that they would ultimately seek to cash in on the craze. And this proves, once again, how punk rock rebellion ultimately fuels the very corporations it opposes.

DAVID KUSHNER
(March 3, 2003)