Last spring, the heavy metal band Metallica made headlines by filing a lawsuit against Napster, a popular Web site that allows users to swap digital music files with other users. As part of the lawsuit, the band named more than 300,000 listeners who had used the Napster software to illegally download their songs. Napster responded by blocking these users from accessing the site. More than 30,000 of those Napster users have since appealed the ban, claiming that they were misidentified and had not downloaded Metallica songs. Rapper Dr. Dre followed suit a few weeks later by requesting that 239,612 Napster users who had allegedly downloaded his songs be barred from the site.

Napster.com went online last August, offering users free software that enables them to search for their favorite songs and download them to their computers. The software, developed by 19-year-old Shawn Fanning, allows users to swap songs that they have stored on their hard drives in the MP3 format, which compresses bulky music files and makes them easy to store and send. Napster soon became enormously popular among college students, and several universities had to forbid students to use it, as the Napster traffic was overwhelming their servers.

In addition to Metallica's lawsuit, Napster is facing legal challenges from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), which represents record companies, and from several other musicians including Dr. Dre. Metallica's lawsuit alleges that Napster fosters an "insidious and ongoing thievery scheme."

Napster argues that the site is protected by the "safe harbor" provision of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which protects Internet service providers from liability if copyright laws are violated by users of their service. Since Napster's servers do not store MP3 files, but merely facilitate swapping of files by users, the site's lawyers claim it is not liable for users' copyright infringements.

On May 5, a U.S. District Court judge in San Francisco rejected Napster's motion to dismiss RIAA's lawsuit, ruling that Napster was more than just a conduit for MP3 files, and therefore was not protected by the "safe harbor" provision. The case now proceeds to trial, where the future of Napster, and perhaps the future of digital music on the Internet, could be determined.

On One Hand...

Every time a music fan transfers a MP3 file from a CD onto their computer's hard drive, and offers the file to countless other people through Napster, that person violates copyright laws. Purchasing a band's CD ensures that band members are compensated for their work, but obtaining songs through online swap service cheats musicians out of their rightful share. Napster claims it cannot be held responsible for these copyright violations because the MP3 files do not pass through their servers, but the very nature of the site belies that claim. Because it provides the necessary software, Napster enables and even encourages its many users to participate in an illegal activity.

The Internet may be the future of music distribution, but until laws are in place to protect the rights of the musicians, sites like Napster should be shut down.

On the Other Hand...

Now that the software that powers Napster and other sites exists, the practice of swapping digital music files over the Internet will be impossible to stop.

Napster does not encourage the infringement of copyright law, and its copyright statement includes the following: "As a condition to your account with Napster, you agree that you will not use the Napster service to infringe the intellectual property rights of others in any way."

Musicians and the record industry should accept that MP3 files swapping is here to stay, and realize that the practice can benefit them. People still subscribe to ma

• Shawn Fanning wrote the program the fuels Napster because he was "bored" with his first-quarter courses as a Northeastern University computer science major. He called his site Napster, which was his nickname as a kid because he had nappy hair.

• Although Napster boasts 10 million users after only eight months on the market, it has no revenue.

• The record industry reported profits of $15 billion in 1999.

• In April, the high-speed cable service provider Cox@HomeSanDiego told several hundred of its customers to stop running Napster or lose their cable modem accounts.

• Metallica's Lars Ulrich personally delivered to Napster's office 60,000 pages containing the names of 335,435 individuals who Metallica alleges violated copyright laws by posting the band's music on the service.

• In the 1920s, the American Federation of Musicians launched a protest when The Jazz Singer inaugurated the talkies and put silent-movie orchestras out of business

• A 1984 U.S. Supreme Court decision in favor of Betamax ruled that Hollywood studio could not ban the arrival of Sony's VCR simply because users might tape some programs illegally.

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