This page ©2001
Chip Brown.

Taking a Napster

I may be the ultimate in computer lunatics. I own a computer with two CD-Roms, scanner and all the works. Why do you ask? Well, I tell everyone it's how I make money, but in all actuality I am addicted to technology.

Someone asked me last week if I ever used Napster. Napster? I went and had a look and it's a site that allows one to download current songs to a CD and not have to pay retail price for them. "Shoot fire," I think to myself, "self, this is a better deal than Columbia House's eight for a penny offer you fell for last month."

So, I checked and my computer was capable of using Napster so I set up an account. In a matter of moments I would be swimming in pirated music!

Now, I realize that the courts are trying to decide if Napster is a way to rip off artists or the consumer's way to restructure the music industry. What I learned that day, is that this doesn't need to be hashed out in court. If I were the music industry I would give every American a free subscription to this service. If they have the same experience as I did, they will be quickly cured of their evil plot to steal music.

I found a song I liked and began downloading. The little box said the estimated download time was one hour and fifteen minutes. Well, I needed to wash the dishes anyway, so I left my computer chugging away stealing this song from the Internet. An hour and a half later I checked back and saw that I still had fifty eight minutes left on my download. I don't know who keeps time in my computer but it was about to stretch my one hour and fifteen minute download to a full three hours. I began ranting and raving until my wife went shopping to get away from me.

So I went and swept and mopped the kitchen and watched Murder She Wrote on TV. An hour and a half later I went back and the box said I had fifteen minutes left on the download. Well, fifteen minutes isn't that bad, after all it's a good song.

Then "click" it happened. AOL signed me off for what it called inactivity. After all this time my download of my pirated song was lost. I signed back on and began going through the Napster process again. I couldn't find the song on the list anymore. It was there six hours ago the first time I tried to download it.

It was about this time my wife got back home. As she came up the stairs she asks me how the download went and I vented my frustration. She handed me the CD of my song she had bought at Walmart for $9.99. Then she explains to me how I had spent six hours trying to download one song. At $5 per hour for my time I had wasted $30. Multiply that by the 12 songs on the CD and to download this whole CD from Napster would cost me $600.

It's times like this I hate being married to an accountant.

But you know what, I think the music industry is worried about nothing. For every man out there stupid enough to try to download music for free, there is a woman to point out his stupidity.

Beside's it's only a $12 CD. Now, when someone comes up with a way to download $50 concert T-shirts off the Internet the music industry can complain to me about losing money.

But the fact of the matter is, I can understand why kid's use Napster, as CD prices are getting out of hand. And I understand the music industry getting angry at the theft. To be quite honest, I wouldn't want to be the guy who has to judge this case. Somebody might find out I'm not even a lawyer.

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