Comrades,
Going through past posts, I found a question by Sven Buttler regarding our
views on Napster which I did not respond to at the time. However, I have
been thinking about the correct position to take for some months now.
Below is part of a post I sent privately to Pakito who had just
unsubscribed.
==================================================
Despite illusions held by some that Napster was doing what they did out of
some Robin Hood-style altruism of robbing the rich to give to the poor, it's
now abundantly clear that Napster was in it for the money all along, since
while they did not earn money directly from the swapping of songs or from
downloads of their software which facilitates it, Napster had thier sights
set on making money indirectly through advertising and quite possibly
through an IPO later on.
My position on the Napster controversy is that on the one hand, the
arguments focus on the consumers versus the recoding companies which charge
too much for their products and which exploit the musicians, which is true.
On the other hand is the issue of bourgeois property rights of the recording
companies, which most of the consumers are rightly against.
However, left out of these arguments in the populist bourgeois media, as
well as some leftist media (such as League of Revolutionaries for a New
America) are the musicians, who lose out on royalties on their music sold,
however much a pittance it is compared to the surplus value which the
recoding companies extract from their talent and labour.
I however feel that it's still premature to deny the musicians their due,
since they are not living and working in a socialist society just yet. If
Marxist-Leninists ignore the musicians and instead support the populist
position that it's OK to grab their songs for free, then I can expect the
Marxist-Leninists will lose out in attracting musicians to our cause.
Workers World has a more correct perspective on the whole issue and
recognises the current position of the musicians and calls for the Musicians
Union to control the music industry and charge a reasonable fee for the
music downloaded using these new information technologies.
In short, Napster and others like them are a bloody bunch of parasites.
Question is: Will the current consumers who are making so much noise about
Napster's tie-up with BMG still continue to steal music and deny the
musicians due income on the fruits of their talent and labour.
What are your views on this issue? (I asked)
To which Pakito replied:-
=======================
"Thanks for your message!
Ous position on Napster is quite similar to the Workers World's one. Music
must be unionized and control themselves the industry, along with other
workers (technicians, etc). We have made a proposal which was took to the
negotiating table of FARC and government."
==========================
Below is the Workers World position I referred to.
Fraternally
Charles
==============================================
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Aug. 10, 2000
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
Musicians' union should control distribution
NAPSTER & THE RIGHT TO FREE MUSIC
By Greg Butterfield
Napster, an Internet-based software program that allows users to share
digital music files, received a temporary reprieve from a two-judge appeals
panel in
San Francisco July 28. The appeals court said Napster could continue to
operate.
Two days earlier, on July 26, U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel had
ordered the site shut down. Patel ruled in favor of the Recording Industry
Association of America, which sued Napster last year.
The owners of the recording industry are angry because millions of people
use Napster to swap popular music for free instead of buying pre-recorded
compact disks. Napster's network also makes available many out-of-print
recordings
and the works of musicians who don't have recording contracts.
The RIAA charges Napster with aiding and abetting "wholesale copyright
infringement." Napster's lawyers argue that the service's more than 20
million users are engaged in lawful trading for personal, noncommercial use,
as
defined in the 1992 Audio Home Recording Act.
Basically, Napster users do what music fans have always done: they share
copies of their favorite songs with friends. The difference is that music
lovers
now have a pool of millions of friends to trade with, instead of a handful.
In its legal fight, Napster's owners try to portray themselves as underdogs
fighting the recording monopolies to keep music free. It's true that Napster
provides a free service right now. But its investors want to build it into a
profitable business based on controlling the distribution of artists'
work--just like the big recording companies do now.
Napster CEO Hank Barry said he wants to come to an agreement with the RIAA.
Barry hinted this might entail charging users a subscription fee or per-song
fee for copyrighted music.
The controversy over Napster raises important issues for the international
workers' movement. Chief among them is, who will control the revolutionary
new technology that allows the free exchange of music, art and all kinds of
information?
Will it be dominated by capitalists seeking profit? Or will workers and
oppressed people control it?
'INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS'
On Capitol Hill, in the media and in corporate boardrooms from Wall Street
to Hollywood, the Napster controversy is portrayed as a defining challenge
for
preserving "intellectual property rights."
Intellectual property rights is a concept by which monopoly capitalists try
to enforce their control over the production and distribution of drugs,
software, movies, music--just about anything they can copyright.
This issue goes way beyond the right to copy and listen to music. For
millions it's a life-and-death issue.
Take the case of AIDS drugs. Pharmaceutical companies claim to have
"intellectual property rights" over the cocktail drugs used to prolong and
improve the lives of people with AIDS. These companies keep their profits
high by jacking up the prices of their drugs.
Recently the government of South Africa, where some 4.2 million people are
infected with HIV/AIDS, tried to produce a generic version of these drugs so
it could cheaply treat the population. The U.S. government and Vice
President
Al Gore, representing the interests of the drug monopolies, threatened to
impose sanctions on South Africa.
Any country that seeks to join the U.S.-dominated World Trade Organization
must agree to abide by strict laws protecting the "rights" of capitalist
companies to
control the fruits of socialized human labor.
NO BOSSES REQUIRED
Music that's been digitized in the MP3 format can be shared over the
Internet like any other kind of file. CDs are easily converted to digital
format
using a "ripper" program.
For years it was mainly college students who swapped music via computer.
College campuses were among the few places with the fast connections
necessary to
download the large music files efficiently.
But the growth of high-speed Internet connections in homes and offices and
easy-to-use sharing programs like Napster have brought millions of new music
aficionados into the digital world.
Since Napster came on the scene in 1999, some 20 million people have
downloaded the software and shared music files.
While college students were the main audience for MP3 technology, the record
industry grumbled. But then it became a mass phenomenon, as more and more
people chose to bypass paying outrageous markups for CDs and cassettes.
So the monopolies decided to try to suppress the new technology--at least
until they can figure out how to control it profitably.
There's lots of hand wringing in the corporate media about what it all
means. Even if Napster is eventually shut down, how can the profiteers put
the
genie back in the bottle?
Already many Napster fans are switching their allegiance to other, so-far
non-commercial sharing programs. These programs, using "peer-to-peer"
technology, connect individuals directly to one another's computers, rather
than a
central server like Napster's. That makes them a much harder target for a
legal
crackdown. These peer-to-peer programs offer additional capabilities
because, unlike Napster, they are not limited to distributing MP3 music
files.
In the near future, this technology could offer amazing tools for education,
culture--and political organizing.
Leaflets, speeches, petitions, videos and more could be made instantly
available worldwide to the international workers' movement.
The technology could also open up a whole new epoch of artistic expression
as the world discovers the works of artists who have been marginalized or
ignored because they aren't considered "commercial": workers, people of
color,
women, lesbian, gay, bi and trans people, the disabled, youths, etc.
Musicians who champion the new technology, like rapper Chuck D of Public
Enemy, argue that artists can use it as a basis to struggle for new rights
from the
music industry and other corporate arbiters.
In a commentary on the Public Enemy Web site,
www.publicenemy.com/terrordome/,
Chuck D wrote, "In the past, most artists had little say over how their
product would be marketed anyhow. This is a prime opportunity for artists to
understand that they can operate beyond the naïve slave or limited
employment positions
of the old music business templates."
In fact, the musicians' union should be put in charge of Napster. That way
the musicians can control the distribution in a way that would insure they
would
get paid for their work.
At the same time, while this new technology is shaking up old industries,
the capitalist class is scrambling to find ways to harness it for profit.
New
laws will be passed. New restrictions will be put in place. New fees will be
imposed.
What Napster shows is that there's no need for a boss to intervene in the
exchange of music or any other information. In their efforts to make
profits, they can only get in the way.
It will take a struggle--not just at the keyboard, but in the streets--to
push back the capitalist monopolies that want to control the flow of
information
and culture in order to profit from it.
Ultimately, the international working class must expropriate the parasitic
boss class and bring this tremendous socialized technology into harmony with
socialist ownership.
- END -
(Copyleft Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and
distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed.
For more
information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail:
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Web:http://www.workers.org)
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