MP3 fanatics everywhere breathed a sigh of relief Friday when two federal appeals judges granted Napster Inc. a reprieve, allowing the popular music trading service to remain online -- at least for the time being.
Napster was facing a midnight PST shutdown ultimatum after a lower judge sided with the Recording Industry Association of America, claiming that Napster allowed its users to violate copyright laws.
As it stands now, Napster -- which was created last year by a freshman at Northeastern University and now boasts 20 million users -- is allowed to continue functioning until the case receives a full hearing, probably during this coming fall.
In the wake of the decision, the company proposed a "buycott," where users were encouraged to go out and buy their favorite albums and write the record companies telling them that Napster users are active CD-buyers.
Users were not so upbeat. Napster chat rooms were filled with emotional members, planning protests against the recording industry -- whose seemingly successful suit would have forced the company to halt the sharing of copyrighted music -- effectively shutting it down.
Here at Dartmouth, where the use of Napster and similar services used to download copyrighted songs is both in violation of copyright laws and against the College's honor principle, students were similarly upset by the initial decision.
Tom Denniston '02, who identified himself as a longtime Napster user, compared the decision to expel Napster from the Internet to the 1984 Betamax case, when companies owning television copyrights alleged that people were infringing copyright laws by using video tape recorders.
"They ruled that because there was some legitimate use, you can't make it illegal," Denniston explained. "It's the same sort of thing."
"You can't just shut down services that people might use illegally just because some people do," he said.
When he heard the initial decision that the site was going to be forced to shut down operations Friday, Denniston was one of the users who logged onto the service right away to download some last songs before it was too late.
"There were a lot of things I wanted to get before it closed down," he said, referencing classical music and songs by Janis Joplin.
Almost all the students who talked to The Dartmouth yesterday said they had MP3s on their computers. Some said they had used Napster or Macster -- the Macintosh-equivalent of Napster -- to retrieve the files, while other said friends had sent them songs via BlitzMail. Still others said they had found the music files within Dartmouth's file sharing network.
"If I hear a song I like, I want to listen to it," Katherine Duncan '02 said. Just this weekend, Duncan purchased No Doubt's "Return of Saturn" -- whose songs she originally owned in their MP3 format.
"I personally don't buy a lot of CDs," she said. "I'll buy a book before I buy a CD because I can look through it."
She said MP3s -- from Napster and other similar sources -- allow her to browse before buying whole albums.
"I dislike spending $15 to $20 when I only like two songs on an album," she said. "I feel like I've wasted my money."
Wasting money is at the root of the conflict over MP3s.
Major record companies, backed by the recording industry, sued Napster, alleging that the use of Napster was contributing to copyright infringement.
After the stay decision Friday, recording association President Hilary Rosen said, "The Court of Appeals decision today granting Napster a temporary stay of the preliminary injunction is obviously a disappointment, but we remain confident that the court will ultimately affirm once it has had an opportunity to review the facts and the law."
"It is frustrating, of course, that the tens of millions of daily infringements occurring on Napster will be able to continue, at least temporarily."
However, students were seemingly unfazed by the fact that downloading MP3 files may hurt the recording industry.
"I know it's not entirely ethical, but hey, I'm a poor college student," Michael Weiss '02 said. "What can I do?"
And Scott Brown '02 said, "I think it's completely illegal, but the record companies rip off the musicians and the consumers enough anyway, so I really don't care. I think most people just see it as free music and they don't really think about it."
Some students equated their use of pirated MP3s to other supposedly-illegal use of copyrighted material such as audio tapes and video tapes to justify the use of MP3 technology.
"I think it would be wrong if someone tried to reproduce the CDs and sell them," said one '02 female who asked to remain anonymous.
She added that MP3s do not replace CDs and audio tapes because they stay on computers. "You'd have to have it anyway if you were away from your computer," she said.
One member of the class of 2002 who works at the Kiewit Help Desk said it is standard procedure to ask students calling in because of computer viruses whether they downloaded files from Napster or similar services.
"People aren't ashamed to admit it," he said, explaining that students will not so readily admit that they have been downloading pornography or other such illicit files from the Internet.
"Macster and Napster are so readily available," he said. "And it's music. The alternative would be spending money on CDs."
He said if the hearing's final result banned Napster from the Internet, the trade in illegal music would continue. He pointed out that even before the service was available, people were downloading pirated songs.
"It just entailed a little more work on their part," he said.
Duncan agreed. "I understand why they've brought the lawsuit, but I think it's just an exercise in futility. If you shut down Napster, others will pop up."
Economics Professor Andreas Bentz said he has not followed the case, but he explained that if a company is providing a free product -- as Napster does -- it will have a negative effect on someone else -- a basic economic concept called negative externalities.
"Profits are needed to attract people into the industry," he said, explaining that new music is a new product. "If the profits aren't large enough, then you won't do it."
When schools across the nation began banning Napster and similar services earlier this year because they were clogging college networks, Dartmouth considered such action, but chose to wait it out.
