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July 13, 2001
Judge Marilyn Patel ruled within the past couple of days that Napster must stay offline until it can prevent trading of 100% of copyrighted works. This standard is unreasonable and excessively high. Don't get me wrong: I believe that Napster is a framework for wholesale copyright infringement. However, given that there are legitimate uses of the service (and there are--I know a band that has voluntarily distributed its music on Napster to get known), the service should be permitted to stay online as long as it can provide a reasonable rate of theft prevention. What's reasonable anyway? In this case, the most reasonable standard to apply to Napster is a comparison with real life: as long the rate of illegal music trading on Napster is less than the rate of illegal music trading using other means, then Napster should be permitted to run. Stated another way, people will trade music using the most convenient means: if it's easier to trade music by some other means than Napster, then they won't use Napster. Judge Patel has imposed a far stricter standard than is needed to accomplish the goal of getting people to stop using Napster to trade music. In doing so, she has excessively restricted the service to the point where it is now unusable for even legitimate purposes, such as my friend's band wanting to share its music. Copyright ©2001 by Patrick Madden, all rights reserved. |