Word: napsterized
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...Napster Promotes Internet Piracy
...response to the recent Metallica suit (Editorial, April 26), I found it heartening to see a band finally standing up against Napster. It's disappointing that many students still try to pervert "freedom of speech" into a freedom of piracy...
There are many simple ways for Napster to cut down on piracy, but so far it has done nothing. Here's one example: Metallica has made it very clear that none of their work is authorized for free distribution. Napster's best feature, their search engine, quickly shows a number of users with Metallica MP3's. Why hasn't Napster banned them? Maybe it's because once this starts, Napster would end up with very few (if any) users left...
Technology may soon make the decision in this particular lawsuit obsolete; new programs known as "Gnutella" and "FreeNet" may allow the Napster-like sharing of all types of data, not just MP3 files, and such services would be difficult to shut down because they would not rely, as does Napster, on a central server for searches. However, if carried to its conclusion, the spirit in which the lawsuit was filed would make universities into electronic gatekeepers, watching each packet of data sent across the network and monitoring students' activities online for fear of being held legally responsible...
Such a role is incompatible with a university's mission to promote academic and intellectual freedom. Harvard University has already expressed its well-founded intent to continue to allow Napster use, and Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis '68 has rightly written that "content filtering would be wholly incompatible with the principle of free inquiry and open access to information...