[WEB4LIB] Re: Jack Valenti: Copyright and creativity

[Chris Deweese]

This "Napster" phenomenon is nothing new.  Digital piracy was taking place long ago as many people on this list probably know.  Private and members only FTP sites for distributing movies, software, and music will still always exist.  Napster is the first time that the general non-technically knowledged public could get a tool to do all the work of finding (music at least) pirated materials.  That is the reason that the RIAA has made such a huge deal about Napster & napster clones.  The underground piracy groups will not go away and there is virtually no way for any industry offended by those groups actions to stop them from continuing their practice.  Napster is really almost an enemy to some of these underground groups because it exposes a part of their culture that was once isolated from the general public.  I walk around now remembering the time years ago when all my friends were trading MP3s at the Internet provider I worked for (because we had 3 T1's worth of bandwidth) and now MP3 & Napster are household words.  
I think most are "guilty" of napster use.  But using napster has not curbed my CD purchases.  Nor has the availability of movies in digital format.  In fact, I just bought a DVD player for my home PC and I wish I had some more money to help my DVD collection grow from its modest size of 4 :)
Copyright holders have a right to be paid well for time and money invested into their products be it music, movies, software, or books.  Whatever it is.  But the industries also have a "commitment" to the consumers to make sure that the prices they offer are fair.  I think napster has shown that a majority of people will still buy CD's but maybe the music industry needs to rethink their business model.  Of course in this country sometimes I'm amazed at how resistant to change we really can be.  Especially if there's money involved.

And I definately agree with other comments made about misuse of the term Hacker.  The media has slowly tried to make up for it by using "Black-Hat" "White-Hat" and "Crackers" (those who break software to copy it illegally)  I think they just need to leave those phrases out of their journalist dictionaries.  Anyone who tinkers with technology or has a truly deep interest in it can be considered a hacker.  Does that make us all these bad people?  So much fear uncertainty and doubt is used in a lot of articles about such topics.

Chris Deweese
Webmaster
http://www.lcls.lib.il.us/
Lewis and Clark Library System

PS-for a little british humor on some of these subjects might I recommend the register (http://www.theregister.co.uk/)